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
The American Psikhushka (excerpt)
Ever since the US Supreme Court’s 1997 Kansas v. Hendricks decision, 14 more states have passed laws instituting civil commitment procedures for sex offenders (for a total of 20 states). These laws allow committal due to “mental abnormality”, which is a far lower standard than for any other mental disability and are quite clearly intended as further punishment for a despised group (subsequent court decisions allowed continued incarceration even when no “therapy” was offered.) As a society we once roundly condemned such psychiatric abuse – now we routinely practice it.
Psikhushka (Russian: психушка) is a Russian colloquialism for psychiatric hospital. In the Soviet Union, psychiatric hospitals were often used by the authorities as prisons in order to isolate political prisoners from the rest of society, discredit their ideas, and break them physically and mentally; as such they were considered a form of torture. The official explanation was that "no sane person would declaim against Soviet government and communism".
Psikhuskas had already been in use since the late 1940s (for example, Alexander Esenin-Volpin was imprisoned in 1949 for “anti-Soviet poetry”) and this increased during the Khrushchev era in the 1960s. (One of the first psikhuskas was the Psychiatric Prison Hospital in the city of Kazan. Beria transferred it to the NKVD in 1939. In 1969 the head of KGB, Yuri Andropov, submitted to the Central Committee of CPSU a plan for creating a whole network of psikhushkas.)
Soviet psychiatry created and then abused the diagnosis of sluggishly progressing schizophrenia (вялотекущая шизофрения) – a special form of the illness that supposedly affects only the person's social behavior, with no trace of other traits: "most frequently, ideas about a struggle for truth and justice are formed by personalities with a paranoid structure," according to the Moscow Serbsky Institute professors. Some of them had high rank in the MVD (the Ministry of Internal Affairs), such as the infamous Danil Luntz, who was characterized by Viktor Nekipelov1 as "no better than the criminal doctors who performed inhuman experiments on the prisoners in Nazi concentration camps" .
Psychiatrists described a “sufferer” of sluggishly progressing schizophrenia as a person appearing quite normal most of the time but who would break out with a severe case of "inflexibility of convictions," or "nervous exhaustion brought on by his or her search for justice," or "a tendency to litigation" or "reformist delusions." The treatment involved intravenous injections of psychotropic drugs that were so painfully administered patients became unconscious.
“Criminal lunacy” became part of the Criminal Code in 1961 and described a person who was unable to “realize his actions or to control them.” Such actions included, “dissemination of patently false statements defaming Soviet political and social system,” “abuse of a national emblem or flag” or “active participation in group acts that break public peace.”
Russian historian and archivist Anatoli Prokopenko said, “By certifying people who were undesirable for the State as insane, it was possible to isolate them in psychiatric hospitals without court actions or public, internal or international upset.”
The sane individuals who were diagnosed as mentally ill were sent either to a regular psychiatric hospitals or, those deemed particularly dangerous, to special ones, run directly by the MVD. The treatment included various forms of restraint, electric shocks, a range of drugs (such as narcotics, tranquilizers, and insulin) that cause long lasting side effects, and sometimes involved beatings. Nekipelov describes inhuman uses of medical procedures such as lumbar punctures.
At least 365 sane people were treated for "politically defined madness" in the Soviet Union, and "there were surely hundreds more"1.
Lest you think this was an abuse peculiar to the Soviet Union, another example is drawn from the work of a prominent Chinese forensic psychiatrist, who discussed crimes committed by persons with schizophrenia: "Among the cases under discussion ... the person would often display absolutely no sense or instinct of self-preservation, for example by openly mailing out reactionary letters or pasting up reactionary slogan-banners in public places—and even, in some cases, signing his or her real name to the documents ... ".2 By these criteria, political dissenters who openly attempt to build a democratic structure in China, rather than conspiratorially trying to undermine the communist state, are especially susceptible to being called mentally ill.
American psychiatrists are certainly not immune to bending science to the service of the state. Remember how not so very long ago they claimed homosexuality was a mental disorder and inflicted medieval tortures on people trying to “cure” their gayness?
Remember when “drapetomania” was a treatable psychiatric disorder? The term derives from the Greek δραπετης (drapetes, "a runaway [slave]") + μανια (mania, "madness, frenzy"). This was a diagnosis proposed in 1851 by physician Samuel A. Cartwright, of the Louisiana Medical Association, to explain the tendency of black slaves to flee captivity. In the case of slaves "sulky and dissatisfied without cause" – a warning sign of imminent flight – Cartwright proposed "whipping the devil out of them" as a "preventative measure."
We laugh at the obvious pseudo-science behind such nonsense, but you can bet the victims of those diagnoses weren’t laughing. The same holds true for the present day victims of civil commitment. Unless and until objective and independently verifiable criteria can be established, the civil commitment of sex offenders cannot be seen as anything other than a rank abuse of psychiatry and a failure of the law to protect the human rights of a despised minority. For a country that continually pats itself on the back for being a shining beacon of liberty, this is nothing less than a shameful shortfall from our professed ideals.
Notes:
0 This article excerpted from various Wikipedia entries and other web sides.
1Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History, Doubleday, April, 2003, ISBN 0-7679-0056-1
2 Munro R: Judicial psychiatry in China and its political abuses. Columbia Journal of Asian Law 14:1-125, 2000
Video: Compulsory Psychiatric Medication in the US
Excerpt from documentary film "One Nation, Under Siege". Statement by Dr. Rima Laibow drawing parallels between use of psychiatric medications and techniques by Soviets to incapacitate political dissidents and the current U.S. practice of using those same techniques for identical purposes.
September 29, 2007 Coalinga Update:
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, the primary Defendant 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 trial1.
Roadblock” for his reputation of deliberately frustrating attempts by Detainees to exercise the few rights they enjoy.
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 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.
1 Hydrick, et al. v. Schwarzenegger, et al. http://vlex.com/vid/20630509
Avoiding Kids: How Men Cope With Being Cast as Predators
September 6, 2007
JEFF ZASLOW, Wall Street Journal
These days, if Rian Romoli accidentally bumps into a child, he quickly raises his hands above his shoulders. "I don't want to give even the slightest indication that any inadvertent touching occurred," says Mr. Romoli, an economist in La Cañada Flintridge, Calif.
Ted Wallis, a doctor in Austin, Texas, recently came upon a lost child in tears in a mall. His first instinct was to help, but he feared people might consider him a predator. He walked away. "Being male," he explains, "I am guilty until proven innocent."
In San Diego, retiree Ralph Castro says he won't allow himself to be alone with a child -- even in an elevator.
Last month, I wrote about how our culture teaches children to fear men1. Hundreds of men responded, many lamenting that they've now become fearful of children. They said they avert their eyes when kids are around, or think twice before holding even their own children's hands in public.
Men, do you find yourself limiting contact with kids for fear that you'll be accused of being a predator? Is there anything that can be done about this societal problem? Share your thoughts3.
Frank McEnulty, a builder in Long Beach, Calif., was once a Boy Scout scoutmaster. "Today, I wouldn't do that job for anything," he says. "All it takes is for one kid to get ticked off at you for something and tell his parents you were acting weird on the campout."
It's true that men are far more likely than women to be sexual predators. But our society, while declining to profile by race or nationality when it comes to crime and terrorism, has become nonchalant about profiling men. Child advocates are advising parents never to hire male babysitters. Airlines are placing unaccompanied minors with female passengers.
Child-welfare groups say these precautions minimize risks. But men's rights activists argue that our societal focus on "bad guys" has led to an overconfidence in women. (Children who die of physical abuse are more often victims of female perpetrators, usually mothers, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.)
Though groups that cater to the young are working harder to identify predators, they also ask that risks be kept in perspective. Big Brothers Big Sisters of America does criminal background checks on each of its 250,000 volunteers, and has social workers assess them. Since 1990, the group says, it has had fewer than 10 abuse allegations per year. More than 98% of the alleged abusers were male.
"If we wanted to make sure we never had a problem, one approach would be to just become Big Sisters -- to say we won't serve boys," says Mack Koonce, the group's chief operating officer. But, of course, that would deny hundreds of thousands of boys contact with male mentors.
The Boy Scouts of America now has elaborate rules to prevent both abuse and false accusations. There are 1.2 million Scout leaders, and the organization kicks out about 175 of them a year over abuse allegations or for violating policies.
These policies can be intricate. For instance, four adult leaders are needed for each outing. If a sick child must go home, two adults drive him and two stay with the others, so no adult is ever alone with a Scout. "It's protection for the adults, as well as the children," says a Scouts spokesman.
The result of all this hyper-carefulness, however, is that men often feel like untouchables. In Cochranville, Pa., Ray Simpson, a bus driver, says that he used to have 30 kids stop at his house on Halloween. But after his divorce, with people knowing he was a man living alone, he had zero visitors. "I felt like crying at the end of the evening," he says.
At Houston Intercontinental Airport, businessman Mitch Reifel was having a meal with his 5-year-old daughter when a policeman showed up to question him. A passerby had reported his interactions with the child seemed "suspicious."
In Skokie, Ill., Steve Frederick says the director of his son's day-care center called him in to reprimand him for "inappropriately touching the children." "I was shocked," he says. "Whatever did she mean?" She was referring to him reading stories with his son and other kids on his lap. A parent had panicked when her child mentioned sitting on a man's lap.
"Good parenting and good education demand that we let children take risks," says Mr. Frederick, a career coach. "We install playground equipment, putting them at risk of falls and broken bones. Why? We want them to challenge themselves and develop muscles and confidence.
"Likewise, while we don't want sexual predators to harm our kids, we do want our kids to develop healthy relationships with adults, both men and women. Instilling a fear of men is a profound disservice to everyone."
Hi-tech tool against paedophiles unveiled
By Duncan Walker
BBC News Online
A computer database which can identify paedophiles and their victims within seconds has been unveiled by police. The Childbase system uses sophisticated software to compare the faces of people in new abusive images with those in pictures already investigated.
"We are trying to make the global village an area we police in a global sense.""
© BBC MMVII
August 27, 2007 Coalinga Update:
Now in the third week of a non-violent strike, Civil Detainees in California's $388 Million Coalinga State Hospital point to a staff shakeup and a facility-wide shutdown as evidence of the strike's effectiveness and the administration's desperation in containing the revolt. Detainees, refusing to participate in most programs during the strike, have effectively shut down all Sex Offender Treatment.
August 23, 2007 Coalinga Update:
Acting Director Rocky Spurgeon and Program Clinical Administrator, Gary Renzaglia resigned but may remain in D.M.H. Nighttime surprise searches, including strip-searches, rousted Detainees from bed-many of them elderly, infirm, or in wheelchairs- and herded them into an inner courtyard outdoors while staff conducted searches.
August 22, 2007 Coalinga Update:
Detainee James Allen Hydrick, 48, was assaulted by Police Staff for refusing to relinquish a protest leaflet. After a tug-of-war for the leaflet, Hydrick was placed in a choke-hold and nearly passed out. Another inmate's medical emergency was ignored by staff who instead insisted that he remove a "protest tag" from his clothing.
August 21, 2007 Coalinga Update:
An unsigned directive to Hospital Police stated "...effective immediately, patients are not to gather in the halls... Patient I.D . tags are to be cleared of any attachments. ...Patients have "no right to assembly" at this time. "Sit-downs" are not allowed."" [NOTE: Many Detainees have been wearing "protest tags" asserting their civil rights since the strike began].
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