Is Paul Shanley Guilty?
Jonathan Rauch, March 14, 2005
Reason Magazine
"As his parents tell it, in years of therapy Greg had tried, unsuccessfully, to recall being molested by anyone. When his parents showed him the Globe article, he didn't remember Fr. Paul Shanley or recognize his photograph. The Fords persisted, showing Greg a snapshot from his first communion with Shanley. At last Greg collapsed, sobbing, and said that from age 6 to 11 he had been raped by the priest. Later he estimated this happened 80 times. He alleged that Shanley took him from his one-hour Sunday school class, raped him, then returned him to his classmates."
"Last month, Paul Shanley was sentenced to 12 to 15 years in prison for child rape. Because Shanley was 74, this was effectively a life sentence". full story
If Paul Shanley's a monster, the state didn't prove it
Former D.M.H. Psychiatrist and Wife in Murder/Suicide including 7 Year Old Daughter
Tragic morning shakes Laguna Lake neighborhood after police responding to 911 call find two adults, one child dead
By Leslie Parrilla
San Luis Obispo police officers found Olivia Rivard and her parents, Mike and Barbara Rivard, dead inside the home on Frambuesa Drive after responding to a 911 call shortly before 7 a.m. Wednesday. Two other children were safely removed from the home. ... Rivard previously worked at another local psychiatry office and at Atascadero State Hospital. He was a staff psychiatrist at ASH from January 2000 to May 2006, hospital spokeswoman Barrie Hafler said. full story
Convicted child abusers are much less dangerous than the British public and the government believe
The end of innocence
Advocates of keeping lists and restricting employment point out that the sexual abuse of children is a horrendous crime which can lead to a lifetime of anguish. But the main justification is not the awfulness of the offence but the supposedly incorrigible character of the offender. "The nature of sexual attraction to children is that it is often lifelong and compulsive," explained Lady Scotland, a Home Office minister, in 2004. Such claims have been repeated so often that they have acquired the ring of truth. They are mostly false.
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Men convicted of sex offences involving children are not, in fact, all that likely to commit further crimes. Of those released in 2002, 17% were in trouble again within two years. That may sound appalling, but compared with other ex-cons, sex offenders were paragons of virtue. The re-conviction rate for all criminals was 60% (see chart). Most incorrigible were men who stole from vehicles, 85% of whom had been re-convicted within the same period.
It is also likely that most of the child sex offenders who got into trouble after their release were collared for a different (and less appalling) crime. A study by America's Department of Justice found that, while 39% of child molesters were arrested again within three years of release, just 3% were suspected of another sex crime against a child.
Jan 19th 2006
O.C. man sues over beating jail death of son
Lawsuit contends deputies set up John Derek Chamberlain to be beaten, ignored his pleas for help, then covered up their involvement.
By Christine Hanley
Los Angeles Times
October 4, 2007
The father of a Mission Viejo man who was beaten to death at Theo Lacy Jail has filed a lawsuit saying Orange County sheriff's deputies misidentified his son as a child molester to other inmates, telling them "he needed to be taken care of" and promising them special privileges if they followed through.
The wrongful-death lawsuit, filed last week in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, also accuses the deputies of ignoring John Derek Chamberlain as he cried for help for more than 20 minutes during the attack Oct. 5, 2006, and then trying to cover up their involvement by backdating a jail log.
"The guards just stood there and didn't do anything," Newport Beach attorney Jerry L. Steering, who is representing Chamberlain's father, said Wednesday. "They had to have seen it. They had to have heard it." full story
Sex offender recidivism less than other felons'
Sunday, September 02, 2007
Chattanooga Times Free Press
By Lauren Gregory
"It goes against normal public perspective because people believe they are always going to reoffend," said Tim Dempsey, chief executive officer of the nonprofit Chattanooga Endeavors, which seeks to help those released from prison transition back into society. "But if you're just looking at risk, sex offenders have always been in that lower-risk category." full story
No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times
by Dorothy Rabinowitz
Review from Publishers Weekly:
Wall Street Journal editorialist Rabinowitz has collected her stories on false accusations of sex crimes into one harrowing account of failed justice. Though readers may be familiar with the court cases she details, which took place in the 80s and 90s, coming upon them all together is nonetheless chilling. Rabinowitz devotes the most attention to the Amiraults, a woman and her two grown children who ran a successful preschool in Malden, Mass., and who were all sent to jail on charges of child sex abuse. No scientific or physical evidence linked them to the crimes; rather, the courts relied on the testimony of children who appeared on the stand after lengthy coaching sessions in which counselors had used anatomically correct dolls and leading questions to encourage them to accuse their teachers. At times the author's careful documentation begs for interpretation. Why, for instance, did the public buy the increasingly bizarre accusations of teachers tying naked children to trees in the schoolyard, or of anal penetration with knives that left no physical mark? Rabinowitz leaves such speculation to others. But she presents her cases expertly-so well that her stories helped reverse the convictions of five people, which in turn helped her win the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for commentary. She writes clearly and for the most part resists melodrama, letting the facts speak eloquently for themselves.
Tennessee Men Accused of Setting Fatal Fire After Learning of Neighbor's Child Porn Charges
12:45 p.m. September 14, 2007 By Duncan Mansfield
HELENWOOD, Tenn. – Everybody in this little mountain community knew that Timothy Carl Chandler had been arrested on child pornography charges. It was in the newspaper and all over the TV news.
Two of Chandler's neighbors decided to do something about it, police say. They're accused of trying to scare him off by setting fire to his tiny house tucked away in a hardscrabble Appalachian hollow.
Chandler, 53, escaped from the flames. But his wife was killed in what authorities are calling an example of vigilante justice.
“I really wish it wasn't me who got out,” Chandler told Knoxville television station WBIR. “I wish it was her. She didn't deserve that.” full story
[ed - The same lies and scapegoating used to justify civil commitment are the ones that feed into crimes such as these and the many registry-abetted beatings and murders throughout the country.
Americans used to roar like lions for liberty;
now we bleat like sheep for security. - Norman Vincent Peale]
Great, Pithy Post!
I read this post on a foaming-at-the-mouth blog earlier today. They were referring to the the sites' indignant response to the Human Rights Watch report blasting the Pedo hunting industry. Wish Id written it although I'm not sure I share his optimism but I hope he's right.
"Well, you better get ready for lots more. After twenty five years of hysteria about sex offenders, including flying saucers whisking preschoolers off to Mars to be violated with broom handles (think that's not hyperbole?) and innocent lives (including many, many children's) being ABSOLUTELY AND UTTERLY DESTROYED by LYING prosecutors and therapists and hysterical bipolar mothers, the CHICKENS ARE ABOUT TO COME HOME TO ROOST! And if you played any role in creating the witch hunt, you might want to carefully consider your options right now!"
Despite Administration assertions to the contrary, Civil Detainees in California's $388 Million Coalinga State Hospital Remain On Strike
October 1, 2007
Despite Administration assertions to the contrary, Civil Detainees in California's $388 Million Coalinga State Hospital remain on strike in the second month of a non-violent action.
They charge that the Hospital's new Director, Norman Kramer, has also reneged on his recent promises to:
- Meet with Representatives of the Detainee Provisional government by Friday of last week.
- Transcribe tape recorded minutes of their prevous meeting with him and to make these available to Detainees and the media.
- Remove Clinical Director Rocky Spurgeon, one of the primary Defendants in a Detainee lawsuit recently reconfirmed by the U.S. Court of Appeals, 9th Circuit Court and sent back to the Federal District Court for trial (1).
The Administration's repeated denial to media that a Detainee strike is underway at C.S.P. is seen by strike organizers as a means to circumvent adverse press coverage and establish a sense of normality which they hope will prevail by the time of the U.S. Department of Justice's visit there later this month. The scope of the D.O.J. inspection is quite broad and seeks to determine the conditions of confinement and treatment of Detainees in the dramatically understaffed facility. A drastic reshuffling of Administration staff since the strike began including one senior staff member being escorted off the premises by police escort gives little credibility to the Administration's assertion that a strike is neither underway nor having an effect on the Hospital's operations.
Detainees plan further, as yet unspecified, strike actions in the coming weeks.
For background on the strike including the issues leading to it, please go to: http://www.sexgulag.org .
###
Contact:
Friends & Family of California Civil Detainees
Allan Marshall, Director
Tel: 702-421-0467
Email: detainees@gmail.com
Civil Detainee Contact:
Mike St. Martin
CO-414-3, Unit 7
P.O . BOX 5003
Coalinga , CA 93210-5003
Telephone: 559-934-0391 / 559-934-0392
Shades of the Gulag - civil detention of sexual predators punishes acts suspected to occur in the future
Humanist Jan-Feb, 1998
by Barbara Dority
On June 23, 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Kansas v. Hendricks that the state may brand sex offenders as "violent sexual predators" and commit them indefinitely after they have served their full prison sentences, based on speculation about what they might do in the future.
In a majority opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas, the Court also declared that indefinite civil confinement is not punishment, that the new definitions stated above do not violate due process rights, and that a yearly review of a person's confinement need not be conducted by an impartial court but can be facilitated by a special committee set up by the state and accountable to no one. read full article
Maine Court puts needed halt on sex offender hysteria
The Associated Press
used to expose convicts to public scorn. see full story
Copyright © 2007 Blethen Maine Newspapers
The Guide Magazine: Uprising at California Sex Gulag
By French Wall
Civil detainees at California's Coalinga State Hospital are in their second month of a strike, protesting the conditions at the understaffed facility and "treatment" protocols that make it all-but impossible for them to gain their freedom. Coalinga houses more than 600 men who have completed prison sentences for sex crimes, but who remain incarcerated under California's civil-commitment law.
According to organizers, about three-quarters of those incarcerated in the Coalinga facility are participating in some way with the strike, which began August 6. Strikers are refusing to take part in the facility's activities and treatment programs, and are displaying "protest tags" carrying slogans such as "When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty." On September 2, over a dozen Coalinga detainees ratcheted up the protest by undertaking a hunger strike, vowing to refuse food until conditions are improved. read full story
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