Not a game: False accusations against Catholic priests means jail time
Convicted bank robber Shamont Sapp has admitted in U.S. federal court that he falsely accused four different priests of sexually abusing him back in the 1970s.
Even though his crimes carry up to 25 years in prison, Sapp has negotiated a plea deal with prosecutors, and he will likely serve only 41 months, according to The Oregonian, one of only three media outlets to report this story.
Quite a character
We originally reported on the case of Sapp back in early February. While serving time in prison for ten bank robberies, Sapp not only drummed up four bogus abuse claims against Catholic priests, but he also filed a bizarre lawsuit alleging that Hollywood stars Jamie Foxx and Tyler Perry had stolen his idea for the lowbrow comedy film project Skank Robbers. (Thankfully, the movie never actually made it into production.)
Yet with regards to his attempted scam against the Catholic Church, Sapp found three of his targets by scouring old newspapers in search of priests who had already been publicly accused of abuse. He then filed lawsuits claiming that he too had been abused by those same priests.
Sadly, however, according to the Oregonian, one of the priests Sapp accused of abuse had never been accused before, and Sapp's bogus 2006 lawsuit terribly damaged the reputation of the innocent priest.
[COURT DOCS: Read the sealed indictment against Shamont Sapp]
[COURT DOCS: Read the plea agreement letter between Sapp and the feds]
Too greedy for his own good?
Sapp's wild scheme eventually reached the point that he filed four money-seeking claims in four entirely different dioceses: Tucson, Arizona; Covington, Kentucky; Spokane, Washington; and Portland, Oregon. In some instances, Sapp actually alleged sexual acts that took place in those different cities on the same day.
One cannot help but wonder if Sapp hadn't composed a scheme that was so blatantly ridiculous and implausible, he would have got away with his scam. One, simple claim of abuse may have netted Sapp a nice settlement. As we have relayed before, one East Coast attorney once wrote:
"I have some contacts in the prison system, having been an attorney for some time, and it has been made known to me that [accusing a Catholic priest of abuse] is a current and popular scam."
And – surprise – the attorney actually wrote this in 2001.
Who knows how many such similar scams have been committed in the last dozen years against innocent priests?
Indeed, while anti-Catholic groups such as SNAP and BishopAccountability.org desperately strive to hide the truth from the public, it has been estimated that just in Los Angeles alone, as many as ONE HALF of all accusations against Catholic priests are either "entirely false or so greatly exaggerated that the truth would not [support] a prosecutable claim for childhood sexual abuse."
"Bring one American victim forward who's been proved false in his or her abuse claims.You can't even name one."
TMR must have been reading your mind (with the appropriate antiporn filter in place) when this little la bomba was developed and published.
Read it and weep for the suffering innocents- aka, falsely accused priests; the new martyrs for the coliseums of the godless.
LOL! Sapp was exactly that, a sap.
If all you said is true. the crazy, as you so richly
example, will always be with us.
What a pathetic attempt on your part , to use a Sapp as an example. He lived up to his name.
How difficult would it be to get a few saps to betray real victims with a false claim(s)?
I would expect nothing less from people exactly like yourselves. Devoted to stupidity and the illusion that the illusionary bride of christ is without blemish.
One person can start a stampede and one person can steer a stampede. The real thundering herd here is anyone who buys your dreck as truth. Your's is still a very tiny herd.
One of our activists victims was approached by a "survivor" who had gone through most of his compensation and yet offered her $18,000 to write his story of making a criminally false claim and to publish it on her blog for victims!!!!!!!!. I only wish I was making this shit up.
Isn't it amazing how when the church needs someone to smear all honest claiments, up they pop.
Wow Sapp's fraud was sure hard to find. Duh!
I wonder if Jeffrey Anderson mouthpiece Laurie Goodstein will report this. And I wonder if the tort lawyer in Sapp's cases should receive some sort of censure.
What is the point of this article.
Guy falsely accuses priests of abuse. Guy in prison. GOOD.
Are you trying to assume because Sapp did what he did clergy abuse survivors would be jumping and down, and all survivors agree with what SNAP does ?
I still say treat all catholic priests as abusers like we teach our kids to stay away from strangers. They must earn respect like anybody else.
Dennis, to treat ALL Catholic priests as abusers is false witness and grossly un-American. Your mindset is disgusting.
Maybe I should just decide that all people named Dennis are idiots based on your comments! But I happen to know many intelligent Dennises and you sir are not one of them with the blatant outrage you spew! God have mercy on you!
Dennis, statistically almost half of abuse victims are molested by their own family members. It would be more logical to warn your children not to accept improper touching from their grandfather, uncle, or indeed from yourself! Sordid, but true.
But this – I say again – was part of the Anderson Strategy from the get-go, and before that it was simply PR/Stampede Strategy 101: A) you want lots of numbers as soon you can (and you don’t care if they’re based on truth and accuracy or not) in order to inveigle public opinion into thinking that there is (and perhaps always has been) a huge and outrageous Problem; that way the public will watch the further operations of the Stampede with the contented and satisfied sense of justice being done.
And B) a good way to get a lot of numbers is to make it easier to lodge a claim (with a tortie, if not with the authorities) – so i) you get the media to publicize the (nicely-waxed and polished) ‘stories’ without analyzing them (the Anderson Axis media strategy); and ii) you point out to fellow torties that the Church is a pot of gold and your media allies play-up settlement sizes to ‘prospective allegants’ (or – if one wishes – ‘prospective victims’) in order to fan the scent of fresh warm cash into the Out There and sit back and wait for the allegations to start rolling in.
For the interested and inquiring and enterprising, front organizations or useful-idiot organizations – especially on the internet – can provide general info like the old Possession Narratives used to do, as well as provide handy lists of accused priests and even some useful bits of specifics so that you can ‘think’ and ‘come forward’ (after you have made your various decisions and selections). And perhaps offer the phone or fax or tweet info for a particularly skilled tortie or two who are already out on the lot waiting for prospectives to come on down.
Thus – as the ‘numbers’ start shooting upwards – you can then go to the politicians (especially if you have some useful front organizations concerned ostensibly for ‘victims’) and demand that in the face of such an outrageous emergency then ‘evidence’ isn’t as important as simply meeting the demands of the victims. The pols start jiggering the rules of evidence and in other ways making it easier to get allegations turned into cash quickly and with a minimum of fuss and bother.
And meanwhile, the Message is continually being sent Out There and being amplified like a rapidly-growing California wildfire: there’s nice big payouts, they don’t really check your stories, you get to be ‘hero’ because you ‘came forward’, nobody’s going to come after you if you do get caught, and just about any priest will do for a target.
And while one would expect some types to be looking for easy cash, and torties to always have an eagle-eye out for potentially remunerative cases and types of cases, it is really the politicians and the media who have played the most corrosive role in all of this: the media abandoned its own responsibility for accurate and searching inquiry and analysis, and the pols neutered the justice system’s core integrity and principles.
This fellow in the article definitely went overboard, but the basic scam – if you don’t get tooooo greedy or ridiculous – could for quite a while work very well, as we have seen. It wouldn’t take much of a story at all to bring in a nice payday. Then you simply bank the swag, shut up, and fade back into the woodwork
KenW,
How does trying to protect my child or any other child as un-american ? Do you also consider every parent who sent their children to catholic schools and sat down with them and told them Father so and so is not to touch you, or your not to be alone with Father so and so or Sister so and so un-american ?
How about all those people who go to church and when the priest is on the alter they are thinking can my priest be a molester ?
For to many years people judged a book by its cover that the white color and black garb could be nothing but saintly, however your clergy educated our thinking that this is not true.
Dennis, teaching your children as you are is VERY DANGEROUS. You are instilling in them a myopic mindset where they are developing a tunnel visionm to focus on where pedophelia is not while ignoring where it is. As to being un-American, it's called the presumption of innocence, and the stats and the radars of case workers bears witness to priests being non existent in their case priorities. One thing that IS a fact is that those who were abused are very likely carry on the abuse, and using that thinking, I can rightfully typecast yourself as an abuser, and tell my children Dennis Ecker is not to touch them, and they are not to be alone with him. After all, Dennis claims to have been abused, and the stats bear witness to the abused going on to be abusers, therefore, Dennis Ecker IS an abuser. How does it feel? Not too good, eh?
"What is the point of this article."
Seriously, you ask this at TMR? And, then, you go on to submit a comment to debate yourself? You must have retired early on a head injury (fall out of the bus?).
"Guy falsely accuses priests of abuse…"
As pertains to the many 'guys' falsely accusing priests of abuse that don't get caught (see your first dumb question above).
"Are you trying to assume because Sapp did what he did clergy abuse survivors would be jumping and down, and all survivors agree with what SNAP does ?"
This mental meandering is nothing more than another failed attempt at the usual spin, distortions, lies and extrapolations the antiCatholic bigots apply to all facts that support honest claims that the Church abuse matter is just another know-nothing witch hunt. This article presents what is known as "evidence"; what has been sorely missing from the vast majority of [bogus] claims against priests.
"I still say treat all catholic priests as abusers like we teach our kids to stay away from strangers…"
But, you didn't want to treat "all' 'surviviors' en masse similarly just a mangled sentence ago, double standard much?
The kids need to treat their own parents (predominantly male members of the family, especially fathers), male teachers and male homosexuals 'as abusers' since it is from these men that the great majority of the abuse occurs. Catholic priest dwellings are among the safest of all for children. The FBI statistics (fact) support this truth.
It is worthwhile to note that the most vocal critics (at TMR) of our mostly (>95%) innocent priests are members of those offending groups in which, according to FBI stats, the majority of abuse occurs.
What say you? Got lawyers?
You can not stop lying D. There is one gay poster here me. Singular not plural.
Your arguments are idiocy; here's why: The vast majority of gay people, exactly like the vast majority of "straight" people, do not touch underage children sexually. If what you said is true. gays who weren't catholic clergy would be in court and jail across the world but we are not because we have not done as you so falsley claim i.e. rape children because we are gay..
There goes your blame the gays for the scandal b.s..
The fact that 80 +% of church victims are male; only shows that priests had more opportunity to be with young males without raising parental or parishioners' suspicion.
Also studies of priests. Catholic studies mind you. Describe priests overall as sexually immature. Is that innocent gay priests' fault or systemic to your church's training and selection of priestly candidates?
KenW,
Wrong again. If you wish to think of me or anyone else as an abuser, murderer or anything else if you are doing it to protect your children so be it. I commend you for keeping the safety of your children in mind so that they never suffer the pain I or other survivors went through.
NO person should automatically receive respect like your catholic clergy received. If you are my age you were raised most likely by the "old School" respect your elders. However, that has changed so we can protect our kids and that is respect your elders only if they deserve it.
If you wish to defend the abusers and blame the victims you are not only un-american but in human which lacks feelings. Heartless like your so-called innocent priests.
You project that Anderson is a criminal? He should sue you for libel.
Was Anderson's Sapp's lawyer? Anderson, as dumb as he is,has no need ,on any level, to accept a false claiment.
Anderson needed SNAP cuz that's where the victims all went for info. Why would he attack SNAP he needed them? SNAP was controll central for meeting victims. That is why the church created it's own victim's group SNAP. To control victims; and how we appeared to the public ( Which was hardly ever and mostly in front of churches at mass to "BLAST" something or to talk about protecting unharmed children rather than speaking about our own very real injuries.Which fed directly into the Church's PR spin to not talk about the already raped but the premise that the church had stopped allowing the rape of it's children. Yay!)
"Bank the swag"?
If anyone shouldn't be talking about "Swag banking' it's the catholic church.
Think about it. What kind of victims' group never mentions the people it supposedly represents but consistantly only talks about victims who are not yet victims?
Looks like we'll have to withstand some more of the lefties infamous pretzel-logic, once again (boring….).
Meanwhile, while the little devils attempt to kick up as much dust as possible to try to cover up the clear-as-day emergence of evidence of false claims, we can now watch as the house of smoke and mirrors constructed by the antiCatholics, dregs (druggies, thieves, liars, whores, pimps), attorneys (they can go in the dregs category) and their media lackeys (ok, they're dregs-worthy, too) begin to collapse into and onto themselves as they churn out their feeble excuses for sustaining their inglorious crusade.
This Sapp is among the first, but not the first, of many frauds. It's only because he was so incredibly stupid that he got caught; how many other dregs that are just a tad more slippery get away with their baseless, evidence-less and ever-changing stories (like some of the ones we've heard here)?
The truth cannot be hidden for long.
Who can be surprised at either the response of the Abuseniks or the material they put up to deal with this article?
Before getting to the Abuseniks themselves, I note that ‘Delphin’ (the 14th, 755AM) has provided a nifty quotation (though I can’t locate its source in the comments that are up as I write this) that neatly captures the scam: name one American (a curious specification here) victim “who has been proved false in his her abuse claims”. But that is precisely the problem: the claims have by and large never been examined. We do have the Philadelphia allegations of Billy Doe – but they are so incredible that the entire validity of that trial’s process has now been called into question as a result and is under appeal. We do have JR’s own claims – examined, at least, on this site – but they have not performed well under analysis at all, and worse so with each successive effort to compensate for the problems with the prior effort.
I very much would like to see more of these claims examined. But avoiding-examination was precisely the object of the Playbook and enabled by the Stampede. Readers, for example, are welcome to consider how they think JR’s material as we have it here would fare under examination in open court process (which examination was never conducted).
JR (the 14th, 1206PM) tries to spin it as simply the work of “the crazy” and of somebody (the almost inevitable juvenile play on words) who is a “sap”. But I don’t think the guy was a “sap” at all; he simply went overboard and was in a position where he could be examined.
So in regard to JR’s bit about “how difficult would it be to get a few saps to betray real victims with a false claim”: first, nobody ‘made’ this man do it – he simply and shrewdly sized up the opportunities that were opened up by the Stampede, which – second – were precisely the type of opportunities the Stampede was designed to open-up in the first place. Third, we don’t really know how many “real victims” there are or were (let alone how many more are ‘out there’ but haven’t come forward yet). Leading to the fourth point: let the readers consider the possibility or probability of large numbers of persons taking advantage of those stunningly seductive opportunities – especially once they saw how easy it all had become to chalk up a nice payday and get yourself considered some sort of ‘hero’ in the process.
“One person” cannot start a Stampede. A particularly competent person can figure out a way to make a Stampede easier to get-going and to be-sustained, but (think of any Western movie you’ve ever seen) it takes a whole lotta individual heads of cattle to actually do the stampeding itself. And as I mentioned in my prior comment here, a whole lot of official types (politicians and media types) to make it all seem a pretty sure bet.
Then JR tells us another ‘story’ which remains simply that. I only wish we could prove whether JR was “making this sxxt up” – but for now the readers must come to such conclusions as they will draw in that regard.
Is JR suggesting that this false-accuser mentioned in the article was somehow instigated to do so by the Church? And it could be as easily theorized that once you start actually looking at stories, up pops incredible material and untruthful accusers – which then leads to the thought that there are more of them, and perhaps many more of them, out there.
And thus so much for JR’s ketchup-tossing effort to dismiss this very interesting bit covered in this TMR article.
Then ‘dennis ecker’ returns (the 14th, 1006AM) to question (without the requisite question-mark) “the point of this article”. First, this false-accuser was in prison already, so he wasn’t sent to prison for his false-accusations (although he may now be doing more prison time for them). He was of a criminal bent, and quickly realized a good Scam when he saw one, and signed-himself onto the bandwagon.
So I am not “trying to assume” that “clergy abuse survivors” definitely did the same thing; I am simply going to say that the probability of such stuff is increased now, with the publication of this article (on top of all the other developments in that direction that we have considered on this site).
Although actually, the sentence beginning “Are you” and ending with “what SNAP does” doesn’t actually make any coherent sense as it is written. (Which is another characteristic give-away with the Abuseniks: when they can’t actually address issues, they tend to write incoherent or nonsensical sentences; so that it looks-like they’ve said something, but then when you look twice, they actually haven’t – which is a pattern that may well apply to their own allegations and claims as well).
So, “I still say” that we are far better advised to treat all allegations as un-demonstrated and potentially fraudulent, until further serious examination can be conducted. Which, again, is precisely what the Stampede strategies were designed to avoid and prevent.
And in the matter of “earning respect”, it is the quality of one’s material that will do that. And nothing else.
Then (the 14th, 1221PM) JR asks if I “project that Anderson is a criminal”. (Nice mimicry with the “project” bit.) Once again, he has drawn insupportable conclusions from the material that he is looking-at. I never said Anderson “is a criminal” – he is a sharp tortie who put together a clever and extensive strategy that worked. That’s what torties do.
And I completely agree with him that Anderson’s strategy required an organization like SNAP (the “cuz” is a bit much of a muchness, though – once again the queasy thought that JR is deliberately trying to use non-grammatical material for … whatever purposes) to front for him because he simply couldn’t go out under his own aegis as an attorney and troll for victims. SNAP and other such organizations provided the perfect ‘front’ to get that job done, while also – as I mentioned in my prior comment – doing some prep work for him or for whatever tortie would finally be selected by the motivated shoppers.
But but but but then: JR must have suddenly realized in mid-paragraph that he had just agreed-with the idea that SNAP was a creature of the torties’ and not of the Church (as he has, for his own reasons, been claiming all along). And so in the very next sentence he now goes-for the idea that there are (apparently) two SNAPs: one created or embraced by Anderson (for strategic reasons I have discussed at length on this site) and another SNAP created by the Church. This is a fresh crack-dream created before our very eyes.
But, yet again, we see here the almost instinctual capacity to make stuff up as you go along, with no regard for truth or accuracy or even reality. This is, as I have often said, a hallmark of the type of mentality that the Stampede has encouraged, remunerated, and amplified.
And again with the bleat about “our own very real injuries” which we have seen so often before and examined at length here.
Thus, lastly for this comment of his, I repeat my statement: “bank the swag”.
And then (the 14th, at 1229PM) JR asks us to “think about it”. (But in doing so, recall that we must not a) think thoughts that JR doesn’t like nor b) think about the quality of his own thought.)
And with that being said, we proceed to his ‘thought’ here: “What kind of victims’ group never mentions the people it supposedly represents but consistantly only talks about victims who are not yet victims?”.[sic] If anyone can figure out the rationality or even the basic coherence of that comment, I – for one – would welcome their sharing it here.
Once again, we see the Abusenik move of making nonsensical comments when they haven’t got anything else.
To which of the (apparently) two SNAPs is he referring here? Certainly, the one always seen in various media reports is often ‘mentioning’ what it considers to be ‘victims’. And I cannot at all comprehend the bit about consistently talking only “about victims who are not yet victims”. Again, would this be the one SNAP or the other SNAP? And could he offer some links to quotes as to a) which he is referring and that b) specifically give us an example of what he is ‘thinking’ about here?
What we see in this crop of comments by the Abuseniks is merely the agitated scrambling to somehow avoid the difficult challenge that this TMR article presents to their Cartoons and claims. And the more agitated they get (because the ‘narrative’ has now gotten away from them and beyond their Talking Points) then the less sense they make, because – I would say – once they are beyond the safe harbor of their Talking Points and spins and stories, they don’t really do much solid thinking at all – and perhaps never expected that they would ever have to. Or that anyone else ever would do.
We are not victims or even fellow citizens that post here, according to P and D? We are called "Lefties" and "Abusenicks".
Why are you so frightened of the truth? It's not smelling of incense and candle wax therefore it can't be the truth?
Why should the state pay your debts for you?
Lets compare
How many falsely accused priests are there ?
to
How many priests who are guilty of abuse who never get to see the inside of a court room because how the catholic church protected them, or because of SOL.
I'm not saying what Sapp did was right, but you saps should look at a gift horse that there is not more. Take your lumps and stop crying. False accusations are no one elses fault but the catholic church's
False accusations are more common than you'd like to believe. There are 3 in my diocese alone. Extrapolate that ratio nationwide, 50% is more real than you'd like. But what does it matter to you? Your'e already on record as judging ALL priests guilty.
As for JR’s of the 15th at 108AM: Abuseniks are citizens and I have never denied it or asserted otherwise. So, for that matter, are priests. (And I point this out again: in order to get his “Abusenicks” JR actually had to go to the trouble of adding a letter; this misspelling tic continues to appear as some sort of deliberate bit, for whatever reason.)
We have been trying to get at the “truth” all along here. (Although by his own words there appears to be a difference between the truth and JR’s personal “my truth”.) And the ketchup-y “smelling of incense and candle wax” works here simply as a distracting epithetical bit – that yet reveals support for my thought that with the Abuseniks there are indeed two truths – the one ‘out there’ and then the one that is ‘their own’.
And this bit needs to go into the Notebook on the Playbook because it complements the Clohessy assertion that there should be two standards of judgment in Catholic Abuse Matters: a strict standard (that should be applied to the Church) and a second and much looser and indulgent standard (that should be applied to Abusenik claims and allegations and assertions).
But this was and remains an essential element in the Stampede: the presumed definition of ‘truth’ had to be somehow weakened in order to make room for the allegations, since they would in large part not perform well if examined for actual ‘truth’ (in the legal sense and in the legal forum where the big-bucks were to be had in the settlements).
The Abuseniks and the Anderson strategies are and always i) have been not simply “frightened of the truth” but also – through those strategies – ii) have actually created a deliberate structural element whereby “the truth” is weakened until it becomes, for all practical purposes, nothing more than the old witchy “spectral evidence”.
Thus then JR tries to finish with a snappy, if not quite relevant, conclusion about “the state having to pay your debts for you”. But a) we have not established what genuine “debts” are owed and there remains a very large possibility – if not even a probability – that settlement payments are going to persons who have simply taken an opportunity to cash in on the piñata that was created by the powerful combination of i) the Anderson strategies and ii) the efforts of special interests (among the media, the politicians, and assorted other venues) to create both the piñata and the sticks that can whack it.
And b) there remains hovering all of this – as JR has (no doubt unintentionally) suggested – the unsettling and queasy possibility that very large amounts of money were acquired under false pretenses, sworn to under oath in court documents and legal documents (the allegations that comprise the gravamen of the formal Complaints filed by the various torties with the various courts).
And in all of this, I would recommend – for readers so inclined – the post-World War 2 chapters in Burleigh’s 2007 book Sacred Causes: in his Chapters 5 and 6 he discusses at length, with voluminous quotations and numerous references in support, the ways that the Soviets attacked the Church in the countries that had then come under the aegis of the Iron Curtain in the immediate postwar period. Trumped-up legal charges, pre-determined ‘show trial’ court cases, highly dubious witnesses, claims of treason and – but of course – sexual impropriety of all sorts, all of which were drummed-up and deployed against prelates and priests who spoke out against their country’s slide into the shadow of Communist culture and society and governance.
If Burleigh’s prewar and wartime chapters are powerfully and competently valuable for Catholics wishing to get a clearer comprehension of the doings of the Church and the Vatican in those years, then his 5th and 6th chapters are equally stunning in revealing dynamics, tactics, and strategies deployed by the Communists in their campaign to eradicate the Church as a rival and opponent to their agendas and plans.
And – as if it needed to be said – readers of those latter chapters will suddenly sense just how ‘familiar’ the Communist tactics are (on top of the Nazi and Fascist tactics of the pre-war and war years), in the light of what we have been seeing here in the Catholic Abuse Stampede for the past thirty years.
BT
I told you i was smarter than you.
SNAP's pr spin is "Protect the children."
The church's pr spin is "We do protect the children (now) and here's how….."
The perfect feed-in "line" from SNAP. That the church might have the "perfect" answer. It makes the church appear caring for children and responsive to THE victims' group. and therefor responsive to victims period.
One problem, the "oldest and largest victims' group" never talks about victims' injuries; or quotes from scientific reports about the injuries that come from being raped as children.
SNAP never makes demands on the church for the already harmed. NEVER!
Do you get it now?
If you say I use crack again,p. I will sue you for LIBEL. Can you understand that?
More goodies.
‘Dennis ecker’ (the 15th, 937AM) suggests we “compare”. Well, that is certainly a reputable move, if we have known elements to be compared.
But what elements does he offer for this comparison? On the one hand, “how many priests who are guilty of abuse who never get to see the inside of a court room because how the catholic church protected them, or because of SOL”.
But a) that’s precisely not a known element or quantity (and, rather, it is what we’ve been trying to get a better picture-of all along here).
And b) it was precisely the objective of the Anderson Axis strategies that the torties’ allegations and claims (lodged and indeed sworn-to by their Plaintiffs) never would come to a court-room in the first place. With the Anderson Axis forged with the media, then the courts would have been the only remaining forum for clear and careful examination. And that’s why the pols had to be dragooned into this thing, to weaken the courts.
Thus c) is it more probable that i) accused priests were “protected” by the Church or because of the SOLs being weakened, or ii) that the very objective of the Anderson Strategies was exactly and successfully to prevent any of the cases from coming to the public examination of a trial (to the extent, of course, that any trial in the Catholic Abuse Matter can reliably be expected to conduct genuine trial process – see, for example, the recent Philadelphia trials)?
And on the other hand, we are offered “how many falsely accused priests there are”. But again, as can be seen from what I have just said above, we have no way of knowing this quantity either. But from what we have seen of such cases or stories as we have been able to examine here, and from the demonstrated Abusenik capacity (or not) for veracity and rationality … then there remains very substantial grounds for doubt as to this offering of his as well.
So, once again, we see the Abusenik gambit of offering proposals that actually aren’t workable proposals at all, unless – of course – we already presume (as in the Stampede) that the quantities are known and the answers are ones that we already have discovered (reached, that is to say, not by analysis but by mere presumption).
This is simply more of the same stuff we have been seeing all along here.
And then a conclusion that cannot resist JR’s juvenile play on Sapp/sap. And the bit about the “gift horse” that actually – when you read it carefully – makes no sense as it is written.
And thus the utterly ungrounded wind-up assertion that “false accusations are no one else’s fault but the catholic church’s”. But how have a vaudeville act without a snappy line to go-out-on?
Then JR (the 15th at 1101AM): I don’t recall his ever being so overt as to claim he was “smarter than” me, but by all means let that bit stay up there where it was tossed.
JR’s effort at ‘thought’ has led to the assessment that since SNAP is forever going on about ‘protecting the children’, and since the Church has been saying (and its formal regulatory procedures and the actual (and seriously declining) numbers of allegations demonstrate) that it is ‘protecting the children’, then … in JR’s ‘thinking’ this makes the Church “appear” as if it is caring for children while also “being responsive to the victims’ group” (exaggerated and indecipherable formatting omitted – and why not simply say ‘SNAP’ here?).
But in what way does this comparison or connection demonstrate that the Church and SNAP (is this the first SNAP or the other SNAP, according to JR’s prior declaration?) are in cahoots? It can as easily be asserted – and with far more evidence – that SNAP (the one we know, as opposed to the other one in JR’s head) has made demands, and that the Church has demonstrably taken steps to meet those demands. Is this not – even in the Abusenik universe – a good thing?
Nor can it be in any way supposed that this is all smoke-and-mirrors, since we have demonstrable evidence that the Church has instituted the most far-reaching regulatory processes of any organization in the known world, and that the numbers of allegations indicate the success of those processes.
Whereas, in fact, we have seen nothing from the Abusenik side except repetitions of the usual Talking Points (now three decades old) and the usual efforts to toss plop and ketchup to distract-from or deride the realities that they cannot themselves account-for.
This type of thinking (such as it is) is a marvelous companion to the type of historical ‘thinking’ that went into the recent Abusenik assertions about the Church, the Vatican, and World War Two and so forth.
And as for SNAP’s undoubted short-comings, I have already addressed them: SNAP was a necessary front-organization for the torties and for the more-deeply hidden special interests who – as I have several times explained at length on this site – never had a primary interest in victims (genuine or otherwise) and merely sought to use allegants as pawns and pretexts to carry out their own larger and deeper agendas.
I have only recently here discussed the problems with his “rest homes” – or, actually, residential therapeutic facilities – for ‘victims’, and further back, the profound clinical problems with simply trying to determine for therapeutic purposes i) who is genuinely damaged because of the alleged abuse and ii) who was damaged beforehand and whose damage actually helped enable the allegations and – on top of all that – iii) who among allegants would accept such a therapeutic regimen and who among allegants would receive the approval of their attorneys to do so. If JR wishes to go-on about what little is being done for victims then he hasn’t come up with any workable solutions for the “cold hard facts” of these problematic realities.
Thus, too, the histrionic exaggerated-format shouting “Never!”. As so often, if an Abusenik doesn’t have a valid and competent point to make, he will simply ‘shout’ the point that he does want to make. This is rather childish, and even primitive.
And it is at least as possible – and perhaps even probable – that the reason SNAP makes no “demands on the church for the already-harmed” is simply because in the Anderson Strategies, the objective for the torties was to get the cash (by settlement if at all possible) and get out of town (so to speak). And ditto for the larger and deeper special interests, who certainly don’t want the deeper investigation and analysis that any further looking-at the “already-harmed” would set in motion. And all of this is on top of the fact that we don’t know who actually is one of the “already-harmed” – but again, nobody among the major instigators (torties and special interests) wants to start a process of actual clear examination that they have already gone to so very much trouble to prevent and avoid.
Does JR at all get that now?
And (the 15th at 1141AM) we see the JR threat. Of course, I didn’t say he used crack; I simply characterized his material as (having the quality of) a crack-dream. And it is perfectly possible that his own issues have created the capability for crack-dreams without his ever actually having used the stuff. It would require some substantive therapeutic assessment – for real. And perhaps even a closer formal examination of his allegations (such as he swore-to under oath, once upon a time). Wouldn’t that be interesting?
I don’t think he understands that.
I also note the repeated predilection to threaten legal action against people he objects to. Was this also an element in his allegations against priests in whose class he was having difficulty? Again, if so, it was precisely the objective of the Stampede to invite such types onto the stage, especially when so long a period of time had elapsed.
But while we are on the subject of JR, I would also point out another addition to the Notebook on the Playbook: good tortie ‘preparation’ calls for the inclusion of as many additionally-damaging factors as possible (in order to increase the ‘attractiveness’ of the allegant and to fatten the desired settlement sum). In JR’s recent re-telling of his own experience (where, we recall, no sexual act was consummated and we have only JR’s word and surmise that one was actually intended) we get the classic add-ons of great fear and serious threat of violence, or at least the plaintiff’s claim to have felt he was in great fear and danger of violence. All very standard procedure, as these things go. (The ‘Maria Goretti’ martyrdom bit was an extra touch, specifically tailored to the setting, and the ‘no women to console him’ bit – in an all-boys school – ditto.) That’s how it’s done.
But we notice that all of these tropes were deployed in a situation which did not result in any sexual-act and in which there is no corroborating evidence whatsoever that such a sexual-act was actually contemplated by the accused. Which, if you look at it, leads to a rather anti-climactic and somewhat unbalanced presentation.
This is not to say definitively that there was no incident whatsoever down there in the chem-lab one day. Perhaps, that in trying to get (the troubled and troublesome?) student JR to memorize some of the periodic-table, the priest lost his temper and perhaps commited an act of physical assault out of frustration. Which is still not acceptable, as I said in prior comments. Although I cannot at all say with any degree of certainty whatsoever if even this second scenario ever took place . Or, for all anybody knows, the priest was trying to defend himself from a physical assault by JR. What ‘evidence’ we have neither rules-out nor supports any of these scenarios. (Now we see the problem with ‘historical’ cases and SOL-weakening.)
How many of the Catholic Abuse cases might have involved some or all of these types of thing? Given that so very many of them were merely civil-action cases, and for increasingly attractive settlement-sums, there is no small reason to wonder, and no small reasonable probability that this sort of thing played a significant part. Especially given the media’s demonstrated tendency (or even commitment, perhaps) to play it all up, just the way it was faxed over to them by the torties after they has gussied-up the stories.
You should be sued for libel P. You're a lying piece of dog duty. Every thing I've said is true including my thinking of Maria Goretti during my abuse.
It is a felony to have sex with a child, orgasm or not; penetration or not. The very act of touching a child improperly by an authority figure such as a teacher and a religious is enough to cause life long PTSD. And that, you verbose cluck, is the truth.
Every excuse you make for a sexual act against a child is criminal and sociopathic to boot. It also says much about your entire take on this scandal i.e." no penetration, no orgasm, no problem." That in anyone's terms is evil. There's no other word for it, evil. Since none of the victim posters here are liars or fraudsters. Where do you get the cajones to insult, demean and defame us. Write a letter to Mr. Sapp. He's the only one guilty of what you accuse the vast majority of victims to be, a fraud.
If anyone needs time on the shrinks couch it's P and D. They lack empathy, they have shown literally none here. Therefore they have all the symptoms of being sociopaths and deeply ill. Hiegh thee to a doctor yourselves.
Now comes JR (the 16th, 1105AM). Once again, he wants to have a legal case started on – waittttt for itttttt – his mere word (such as it may be) that it all went-down as he says it does. But perhaps he has already had some nicely remunerative experience in life where that scenario actually played-out for him.
Then a quickie lecture on law and psychology. In the matter of the former, he claims that “it is a felony to have sex with a child, orgasm or not”. Just to keep things on conceptual the up-and-up here, what he means by “to have sex with” would have to be defined here, as would the necessity of its definition fifty years ago, depending on the State; and that would also have to take into account the various legal definitions distinguishing sexual-assault from rape and so on.
And then we would have to consider his own report of the event and what he claims did (and did not) happen. And then we would also have to consider the evidence for his allegation, which – as I have pointed out on various occasion, including on this thread itself – doesn’t quite cover all the bases coherently. And we would have to justifiably rule-out the plausibility of such alternative scenarios as have been put forward.
And in the matter of the latter: this bit about “the very act of touching a child improperly by an authority figure such as a teacher and a religious is enough to cause life long PTSD” [sic] is a) not – as written – a clinical maxim (he’s welcome to provide a valid reference if he thinks otherwise); and b) instead seems to be a stitched-together bit of internet-wisdom specifically designed to back-up Abusenik cases (mere “touching” by those not authority figures somehow psychologically triggers “lifelong PTSD” but the same by others (peers and pals) does not? A “child” would make such a cognitive and conceptual distinction?
For that matter, what is a “child” here – how is it defined in the legal forum or the psychological forum or both? Certainly, for the psychological forum, the difference between an infant or a toddler or a high-school student is far too developmentally broad to encompass so simplistic an assertion. And actually, if we move beyond the Catholic Abusenik area, there are those who claim that such a “touching” can trigger stress in anybody of any age – which so dilutes the definition and its dynamics as to make it useless for effective clinical distinction and analysis.
But it’s a handy and verrrry attractive bit of pop-psych for torties looking to add another layer of wax onto just about any allegation that comes into the office. And for blast-faxing to all the friendly and un-skeptical media allies whom the tortie has in the rolodex or the email-list.
This has been the problem with the entire PTSD diagnosis (and its later off-shoot, ‘repressed-memory’) from the get-go almost forty years ago. At that time, the PTSD concept was formulated to help focus diagnostic and therapeutic efforts for Vietnam-war combat vets (i.e. those vets who had been in the stress and shock of actual combat). This seemed quite plausible and certainly presented as a Problem that needed to be addressed. But as it quickly became clear that eligibility for government benefits were involved, vets who had not been in direct combat situations insisted on being included (the justifications for their ‘stress’ becoming increasingly stretched in the process). And once the government began to bend toward the concept, then it made grants available to researchers as well as benefit monies to person claiming the affliction.
But the fundamental problem at the core of the concept was that its symptoms depended so heavily merely on the self-reports of the person claiming the PTSD. And that instantly created the possibility of what is formally known as ‘malingering’ in clinical parlance, meaning: faking the symptoms (or, in old legal parlance, “spectral evidence”). Unlike medical or traumatic injuries that could be verified by medical or surgical observers and also be verified by lab tests and such, these claims instead began to veer precipitously toward introducing what we know as ‘spectral evidence’ into the clinical field, and in a very big way: the patient claimed to have ‘pain’ in this or that form, but it was emotional or psychological – which are domains where clinical tests are not at all reliably conclusive and where symptoms – as noted above – might be mimicked (to put it nicely).
At that point, the pressure began to build simply to ignore or at least significantly downplay the problem of clinical evidence and accept the word of the sufferer, and then and thus commence (some sort of) treatment and further research – with government monies pouring in for both.
But then – and very quickly – a nascent victimist/feminist synergy began to insist that this PTSD concept must also be applicable to ‘rape’ as experienced by women at the hands of a violent patriarchy. The flow of government monies and the clinical conception were opened wider. Then it was not simply ‘rape’ but any unwanted sex experience (although one feminist light proclaimed that ‘all sex is rape’ and things went on from there). Then the migration to ‘violence’, ditto. Then it moved to a causative mechanism of a ‘violence’ that wasn’t simply physical but that might also be emotional or psychological (thus on top of the symptoms being so ephemerally emotional or psychological, now the causative mechanism was equally so).
All of this reached epidemic (if I may) proportions by the end of the 1970s and the very early 1980s.
And since the mid-1960s, under the governorship of Ronald Reagan in California, there had been a movement toward remunerating victims of violent crimes (initially, this was a Republican effort to draw attention to the problems of violent urban crime and to create a bit of a satisfied demographic by using public monies to reimburse those who were the victims of it). But when this stream blended with the growing stream of expansive-PTSD diagnosis from the (Democratic) Left – where it was quickly realized that entirely new demographics of payable remuneratees could be created simply by playing-with and expanding the clinical ‘definitions’ … then the whole Thing took off, expanding conceptually (and fiscally) in geometric progressions.
All of which had almost from the beginning attracted the new ‘soft-news’ and ‘advocacy journalism’ media: ‘stories’ of ‘victimization’(which was not a widely-used term before that era) began to appear everywhere, and in every conceivable context. And they were almost always presumed to be true (which sharpened the ever-bankable Pure Innocence-Assaulted-By-Pure-Evil dramatic dynamic).
And simultaneously, legal theory began to bend toward the whole phenomenon, such that before long the entire foundational concept of legal trials and the justice-process itself had been altered. Whereas previously a) the State brought charges against an accused (whose innocence was presumed) using the testimony of the witness (or, increasingly, the ‘victim’ – which term presumed the commission of the crime and – ominously – the guilt of the accused) – now b) the dynamic of justice was conceived to be the State operating merely as the agent of the Victims in order to secure the deployment of the Sovereign Coercive Authority against defendants who were increasingly i) presumed to be guilty and ii) guilty of so outrageous (and already-presumed) a crime that any concern for ‘evidence’ was considered to be mere patriarchal and oppressive obstructionism against meeting the (presumed valid) claims of the Victim.
By the early 1980s all of this was in place, and the whole synergy was racing along like a wildfire driven by the Santa Ana winds through chapparal.
It was at this point that the original team of Doyle and his tort-lawyer and psychologist associates put together the Report that was not formally considered by the Bishops when it was offered to them in 1985. They saw, I think, how all of this could – especially in an increasingly secularist milieu – be aimed at the Church. (Nor do I here infer or imply that the Church was totally and completely steaming-along with a thoroughly robust and spiritually and maturationally developed clergy and hierarchy; my City-Cohorts imagery applies here. As I think Doyle was trying to say: the Church in this country was a sitting-duck, in many ways.)
But for whatever reason(s) Doyle’s Report was bumped-off the agenda that year of 1985, and here we are.
Back then to JR here. To JR all of this is simply ‘verbosity’ (and I am a “verbose cluck”) because all of these complications and dynamics interfere with the Cartoon on that little screen behind his eyeballs which he so often mistakes for “truth” (or, perhaps, he confuses his “personal truth” with that other type of truth that is not based on that little screen).
Some – if not most – of the profound problems we have noticed here with Abusenik claims and with the Stampede can be traced back to the dynamics I have discussed above. And the other problems are in so many cases the result – in the Catholic Abuse Matter – of the introduction of yet another set of confluent streams: those who – inside or outside the Church – are set against (one or all): the Catholic Church, a male priesthood and hierarchy, religion generally, God generally, the Beyond in any way or shape or form, patriarchy, oppression, the oppression of moral or conceptual standards, essentialism, the sense of any order or Order in human affairs … and the list can go on. There were and are many sticks looking for a piñata.
If JR can (accurately) quote anything from my material where I “make” “an excuse” for “a sexual act against a child” then he can put it up here. (Nor will I threaten legal action or arrest for him attaching to me the legal descriptor of “criminal” and the clinical descriptor of “sociopathic” – again with Peanuts here: ‘The Doctor is in’; and again with the Abusenik predilection to issue declamations and denouncements Ex Wiggedra.)
All I have been saying is that so far I haven’t seen very many verified instances here of a ‘sexual act against a child’ to begin-with (notice that JR has coyly replaced the usual assertion of ‘rape’ here). Nor have we seen any material put up by Abuseniks to resolve this particular and very vital problem with their claims, assertions, and material.
He has put up “no penetration, no orgasm, no problem” in double-quotes here. Is he actually attempting to attribute that statement to me? (Short answer: he can’t because it isn’t.) But in putting it up, he has now cleared the stage for himself to don the Wig of High Moral Outrage and declaim about how “evil” that statement is (which – if he didn’t make it up himself – is certainly not mine). And the Playbook’s fond hope, of course, is that readers will move along to outrage and not-consider the accuracy of the statement or the complexity of the issues on the table here.
Then another utterly un-supported (and – in light of what we have seen here – highly dubious and implausible) assertion that “none of the victim posters here are liars or fraudsters”. Which is a premise and claim that has yet to be established, to say the very very least.
And – but yet again – I and others who question un-supported assertions are accused of demonstrating that we “lack empathy”. And we’ve seen all this before. Thus: if we don’t buy everything that’s pushed our way, then we “lack empathy” and are “evil”. This is a Cartoon – and no parent with a manipulative child would be unfamiliar with it.
And the concluding “therefore” in which the Wig of Diagnosis pronounces (infallibly, it is to be presumed) that we “have all the symptoms of being sociopaths and [are] deeply ill”. This comes, I would imagine, from a dictionary check for “sociopath” and then a shoe-horning and constructing of us as fitting that diagnostic bill. This is the type of Playing-with Conceptual Blocks that has fueled so much of the Abusenik Stampede. (Would not the deliberate filing of a false allegation and the accepting of large sums thus falsely obtained not also qualify as sociopathy? And the consistent disregard for truth as one bethumps readers with larger and larger doses of implausible stories and incoherent claims, and the consistent berating of readers if they do not accept it … would all that not also qualify in JR’s toy-block construction of being “sociopathic”? And what about the overt inquiry as to the personal life-information of readers with whom one disagrees – would that inescapably threatening behavior not also qualify as some form of “sociopathic” in this cartoon definition?
Once, again, the Wiggy Doctor is invited to brush-up on the clinical dynamics of Projection.
"No penetration. no orgasm. no problem" is exactly what you inferred in your criticism of my particular abuse. [edited by moderator]
There's no way 50 percent of L.A. cases were false or exaggerated, if so there would be more than one quote from one lawyer saying it.
Also, surprise surprise, someone in prison spent time filing fake lawsuits. Says nothing new or significant at all. The high number of priests molesting children is the reason inmates have figured out to do this.
Catholics need to live with the repercussions of these crimes and stop trying to deflect the truth and their guilt.
Kay Ebeling blogger at http://cityofangels12.blogspot.com
Try life with a precious child of your own who has been raped by two clergy in childhood and taken to the altar and raped at gunpont, who provides polygraphs and 52 pages of describing the latter event and who appeals for polygraphs for priest candidates, but is denied. "No other churches do it" says the so-called Bishop. They should be required by law to submit to a 2-question polygraph. Children's lives would be spared; children by the hundreds of thousands!!
My first reaction to your comment was to simply think you are a nut. Then, I seem to recall a similar comment recently from you (or it could be I am thinking of a SNAP employee who made a similar comment recently, simply out of nowhere with no facts or reference. However, I have some interest now. Where did this take place? Which decade? I find it hard to believe that we did not hear about this. Whose child, yours? What "so-called bishop" responded to requests for polygraphs? Who needs to take them? seminarians? Who is denied of what? Did this case go to court? Who reported this? you-a child or and adult who had a 'repressed memory'? Was this abuse/crime deemed credible somehow, assuming there were no witnesses? What's th name of the rapist/s and abuser/s?
If this happened, that is a terrible crime. You left this comment here when it is not a victim's blog. You should know that there are many resources for victims.Who are you directing your words"Try lifewith a precious child…" Where are these children you say whose "lives would be spared…children by the hundreds of thousands". Do you mean that they are in the general public?
Are you aware of the glaring statistics of the past decade with regard to Catholic priests and the incidence of child abuse? Maybe not. Between 2005 and 2012, there was an average of 7-that is SEVEN per year reports/accusations deemed credible in the US. (You may refer back on the media report for fast facts as to the truth of this matter.That is what this forum is about.
Maybe you refer to other clergy? you did say clergy? You are not talking about other groups in the population when you suggest "legal requirement to submit to a 2 question polygraph"…say to become a teacher or a coach, scoutmaster, cop, sesame street actor, rapper, daycare worker, bus driver, or parent for that matter.(You do know the stats for parents, right? Maybe not.
You might have missed it but in 2010 (according to govt numbers), 63,527 cases of CSA were reported in the US. Maybe these are the "thousands" you refer to. However, in the same year, 2010, there were 6-that is SIX accusations against Catholic priests in the US!
Please shed some light (like the truth/proof/reference) on your comment here so that I, for one, might grasp what you are getting at here. Thanks.
Why is it just Catholics? Protestant ministers and clergymen/persons of other denominations abuse at a rate just as high as that claimed for Catholic priests. What about public school teachers, who abuse at a rate TWICE as that claimed for Catholic priests, yet the public served by public schools doesn't "need to live with the repercussions of these crimes"??? Why is the Catholic Church held to a much higher standard than the rest of the population? The Catholic Church is an easy target; that's all. It views are unpopular, and its doctrines little understood. If you asked non-Catholics, most would regard the Catholic Church with suspicion and/or opposition, so it isn't that strange that it tales of abuse would find a sympathetic ear in the media and the justice system.
I think the reason is that the Catholic Church claims to be the middleman between us and God, and yet they do all these disgusting things that must surely have Jesus weaping. It is no wonder that so many people, including myself, get angry with the Church.
Dispite all that, I remain a Catholic.
And on the 17th at 108PM JR claims that what he put in double quotes was "exactly what you inferred" – that "you" meaning me. Ummmmmmm – no it wasn't. It was exactly what JR's ever-cartoonish mind made out of it, but that's a) something else altogether and b) not my problem. But if he didn't have his own Cartoons on the screen behind his eyeballs, what would he have, really?
And on the 17th at 313PM Kay Ebeling weighs in that "there's no way" that half the LA cases were false or exagerated because – waittttt for itttttttt! – "there would be more than one quote from one lawyer saying it".
One quote from what sort of lawyer? The torties whose entire plan from the get-go was to avoid calling attention to the question of credibility and – to the greatest extent possible – prevent that question from ever coming to light?
Or from the DA's who were just thankful that the media were going after the hierarchy for (alleged) "cover-up" rather than themselves for (alleged) nonfeasance?
And if we mean AOLA counsel, how many retained defense counsel could make the observation before the victim-Wiggy scream would be raised that the Church was re-victimizing the (alleged) allegants all over again and must therefore shut-up?
Then, further demonstrating her media chops, Ebeling will pooh-pooh the fact that "some in prison" filed false lawsuits. That he was simply taking advantage of a plan that was designed from the get-go to make it easy to get away with a fat settlement derived from unexamined premises – none of that has occurred to her, or at least she has not considered it worthy of her professional attention.
But then she parrots and trumpets – as if it were proven fact – "the high number of priests molesting children". But it isn't a proven fact. Which is precisely what we have been working on here all along.
And then she somehow has written a Cartoon script whereby that (unproven)" high number of priests molesting children" somehow (she doesn't say how – maybe it's magic) "is the reason the inmates figured out to do this". Which as written is a sentence that makes no sense and as an idea requires the ability to imagine that the Bugs Bunny you have just seen driving a bus in a cartoon on TV might very well be driving you to work on the city bus route when you step out the door.
Catholics "will need to live with the repercussions of these crimes", she intones (as if she knew what she was talking about and could prove it). Rather – I would say – Catholics here are already dealing with the repercussions of the unsupported allegations and claims and assertions – enabled by such 'reporters' as Ms. Ebeling – that have been having a pandemonic field day for the past thrity-plus years.
Do you really think that if anywhere near a large percentage of claims against your church were false; that the oldest corporate body on this planet, with untold wealth, would not mount a defense for itself? That it wouldn't have to rely on only P to come up with a nonsensical endless rant about "stampedes"; "abuseniks"; "types" "ilks" and "wigs"?
A child raped at gunpoint in front of an altar by two priests? May we have the identifying reference or link for this legal case?
May we have an identifying reference or link for you, P? Just your name and monastery will do. Thanks.
That is a silly comment, ,JR, even for you. What reason would there be to not inquire about Constance Taylor's remarks? Here, I thought tht you liked the truth to come out with all the supporting facts so that victims could be believed.
Christopher it's not just catholics. The victims who post here were all victims of catholic clergy.
"The catholic church is an easy target" because they took care of the perpetrators over the catholic children. They are an appropriate target; and will be till they deal fairly with the people they have injured.
In JR’s answer to ‘Christopher Browne’ (the 17th, 853PM) we again get a useful encapsulation of the logic of his own Cartoon, which also reflects yet again the need to Keep The Ball Rolling.
We see, yet again, the sly insertion of the presumption that “the victims who post here” are all genuine victims (which has not only i) not been established but ii) has become an increasingly dubious and improbable and implausible proposition as time goes on).
Ignoring all of the many (and extensively explained) elements that lie beneath the surface of the career of the Catholic Abuse Matter he simply insists that the Church was “an easy target” (and a “target” in the first place) merely because it “took care of the perpetrators over the catholic children”. [sic]
But first, we continue to not-see any actual evidence of just how many actual and genuine cases perpetrated by those “perpetrators”. And while – given the weakness of human nature – I can accept the logical possibility that there were some cases (even at the higher end of the spectrum of abuse), I cannot find any evidence (nor has any such evidence been proffered here by any Abuseniks) that there existed the huge waves of such abuse (however defined) that constitutes the core vision of the Abuseniks about the Church.
Second, then, that lack of actual evidence undermines the claim that “the Church took care of” all of the priests (who have not, in their vast numbers, been proven to be “perpetrators” in the first place).
Third, then, that the Church’s efforts to provide therapeutic resources for various troubled priests is spun as somehow “taking care of” priests (with alcohol, substance-addiction, or other issues as well as sexual acting-out issues) that somehow constitutes some sort of ‘proof’ that the Church was (fill in the blank) in regard to such priests, priests in general, and victims (whether genuine or otherwise classifiable).
Also, then, that – fourth – such care was also (fill in the blank) in regard to a ‘cover-up’ (for problems that have not actually been demonstrated to exist in the spectacular and massive proportions painted by the Stampede’s lurid visions.
Thus – of course – the description and assertion of the Church as “an appropriate target” consequently remains un-grounded and undermined.
And, lastly, we recall that JR himself claimed here that the Church could not do anything for victims (again, no distinction between those who are genuine and those otherwise-classifiable) except provide cash. And I have recently discussed that point extensively in regard to JR’s later idea - contradicting his own prior assertion – about “rest homes” for victims (again, no distinction between those who are genuine and those otherwise-classifiable).
And the only element that we have not seen in this encapsulation is some bit about any myriads of victims (again, no distinction between those who are genuine and those otherwise-classifiable) who are still ‘out there’ and who still have not come forward in the past thirty years but who must be reliably presumed to exist. (Their ‘existence’ based upon the visions of the Stampede, which are profoundly questionable to begin-with.)
This gives us a picture of the remarkable (and remarkably dubious and suspect) circularity of the Stampede: there is an aggregate vision of the awfulness and size of the ‘abuse’ (however defined), which sustains the expectation of such awfulness and size, which expectation then justifies the Stampede because that vision of the awfulness and size of the ‘abuse’ (however defined) must be
‘real’ and therefore must be out there.
And – of course – it is considered not-empathetic rising to the level of sociopathy if anybody questions this circular dynamic in any way. So: no-questions, doubts, or serious thinking, please – and if you do conduct such questioning, or entertain such doubts, or do some serious thinking, then you are not only “sociopathic” but “evil” as well (because – doncha know? – ‘empathetic’ people don’t do any of that stuff at all).
And if my surmise is correct that some persons with deep-seated and serious core life and personal derangement-issues managed to get themselves onto the ‘victim’ roster (as if they were perfectly or mostly normal before the alleged ‘abuse’ but were substantially deranged after the alleged ‘abuse) then those are the type of deep-seated problems for which clinical therapeutic intervention holds only very modest hope of resolving even under the very best of circumstances.
But at the bottom of the whole Thing about massive numbers and spectacular offenses and ‘cover-up’ there remains nothing but the initial ‘framing’ and spin of the core visions put forward by the Abuseniks and the torties in the first place.
The possibilities in terms of organizational dynamics are clear: you can keep this sort of Thing going for as long as people are willing to presume the initial (un-supported) lurid visions.
And – for certain types who need a ‘stick’ to beat the piñata (for financial or other, more personal, reason – then this Thing can provide a cause du-jour for the rest of their natural lives.
And I think this puts the torties and the remunerated and all of the special-interests hovering in the shadows of this Thing in a difficult position: a) somebody has to stay out on the webverse hustings trying to flog more life into the Thing (in defiance of any logic, probability, or evidence to the contrary) in order to Keep The Ball Rolling but b) those somebodies really have to be a bit … ‘unusual’ (to put it nicely) because once it becomes a matter of actual examination of the Thing, then the whole scam starts to come apart and reveal the obvious stitching whereby the whole Thing was put-together at the beginning. And the types that would be attracted to this type of on-going flogging of the dying horse consequently make the whole cause and the whole Thing look even more dubious.
As we have seen and continue to see.
[edited by moderator] I wish all of us women who have been inappropriately touched, groped, assaulted and/or raped could use our bad experiences to get a payday and then attack a certain group over, and over and over again. I was assaulted by the grandson of a protestant fundamendalist minister. Maybe I should attack his church branch, the guy who told me during assault that "God doesn't help people like you." I am tired of the sniveling and bigoted attacks from these "victims." We other victims are not so special I guess. When you pretend that Catholics are all guilty, that all Catholic priests are guilty, etc., then you have lost your credibility. Period. And during most of these incidents, bishops and other leaders thought these sick men could be cured. But let's pretend that's not the case, and its all maliciousness, shall we Jim? I suffered from PTSD and nightmares, heavy drinking, etc. But I don't get to be a recognized victim courted by lawyers.
Julie,
I am sorry that you suffered the abuse you had to endure. My question to you is did you ever report your abuse to anyone who could have done something like the police department or have you lived in silence hoping the pain of your attack will go away ?
Your comment clearly comes across as anger that justice has not been done. Only you can pick up that ball and see that the person who hurt you never has a chance to hurt someone else because you have remained silent.
You could be the starting point and strength to expose the wrong doings in your church. Most likely the person who hurt you has hurt others.
Julie. We were catholic children attending catholic schools. Believing whole heartedly every tenent you believe. We trusted our teachers; our priests who were the clergy; the very definers of our faith. They betrayed my own trust and my families trust. They knew at the time , because I told them, what was happening to me. They did nothing for me. They did not and I could not tell my parents. Out of SHAME of failing as a male.
Not as P has said because I was failing the perps class; which I certainly was. The idea of a sixteen year old me, coming up with a lie that would put my rather frail masculinity in question, is crap.
Julie I'm very sorry for your own abuse. Just because they may have "thought" they were doing the right thing does not excuse the enabling, the criminal responsability of aiding a criminal before and after his crime, accessories to felonys are felons themselves.. Render unto …oh u know.
(Julie I'm again very sorry about your abuse but P and D don't seem to recognize that there are heavy PTSD consequences for abused people.)
P may have thought like that, as a child, of lying on a big time scale. I never did. I was an extremely devout catholic child who even confessed masturbating as a sin in confession. I later found out other friends never mentioned it in their confessions. I was no male version of Patty McCormack in "The Bad Seed" I was the good kid injured.
Once again (the 18th, 1141AM) JR tries to run this old bit, which has been dealt with extensively in prior comments on this site: if the Church was innocent why didn’t she mount a defense against the allegations? This is a corollary to the bit: since the Church settled all those allegations out of court, then that proves the allegations were true.
As I have explained at length (does JR not recall or is it that JR simply is pathologically attached to his (few) Talking Points and nothing else?): it was precisely the objective of the Anderson strategies not to bring ‘justice’ but rather – in best tortie fashion – to get the best and easiest deal for your allegants/clients – and then call it a day, bank the swag, get out of town and stay low and out of sight.
And Anderson’s strategies worked – as Doyle and his cohorts had presciently asserted in their 1985 Report.
Ditto the “untold wealth” of the Church, which no doubt performed at least three functions: i) it caused the prospective-‘victims’ to salivate and ii) it was the pretext by which the torties could lubricate their clients’ slide into the belief that since the Church was so wealthy, then it probably deserved to have to spread all that wealth around (to the presumptively deserving allegants, by amazing coincidence); and iii) it attracted the deeper special-interests – especially in the government Branches – because the Church’s “untold wealth” could somehow be tapped to provide payouts that the government was increasingly too fiscally strapped to provide itself. Neat.
The nonsensical bit about “a nonsensical endless rant about ‘stampedes’” can stay right up there where it was put. And once again, JR is invited to bone-up on the clinical definition of ‘projection’ (I recommend a professional dictionary and not just some app derived from a general-purpose student dictionary.)
And (the 18th, 1133AM) another tired swipe with the “identifying information” not for a particular case, but rather for a commenter. As if JR’s own name (presuming the usual presumptions) has been any guarantee of rational, coherent, and usefully-engaged material. Burleigh’s book provides numerous historical examples of the hoary gambit of trying to undermine the person rather than address the actual ideas and assessments that the person put forth – Nazis, Fascists, and Soviets all deployed this against their opponents, especially the Church. Indeed, the entire Catholic Abuse Stampede might well be considered as a latter-day running of this same old play: if secularism cannot refute the Church’s objections, then it can try to undermine the Church’s credibility and status as a moral observer of cultural and societal events and dynamics and policies and agendas.
And the added bit about my “monastery”. I have no “monastery” connections. I have some experience with horses however, which is why I recognize large steaming piles of plop when I see them.
What, by the by, do I mean by “pathological” as I have used it above? I mean that a person is driven by interior dynamics in such a way that no information that would interfere with the dependence on certain strongly-held conceptions can be allowed to intrude on that death-grip on the teddy-bear of the person’s delusions, thus i) rendering those delusions impervious to rational input (let alone correction); ii) thereby protecting the bond between the person and the delusions which have somehow become fixated in the personality and the self-conception and the life-activity; iii) resulting in the individual’s being locked-into the conceptual time-warp where everything must be reduced to terms acceptable-to and congruent-with the core delusional matrix.
That’s not a diagnosis. It’s just a description of the dynamics of fixated-delusionality. I think it might of some use in the present situation.
I've had therapy. I don't see the good of using one's abuse as a way to push one's bigotry. I have forgiven my attacker. I would hope that foremost, for a victim's standpoint, is to ask, what are they doing about this issue now, rather than simply ranting and saying they are doing nothing about the abuse. Jim you need peace of mind I wish to goodness you could have that. I cry a lot, have flashbacks, but am generally OK actually.
Sorry Julie about your injuries.
For me posting here is therapy. Telling the truth to nonbelievers. Quite christian of me on one level.
Julie,
You state you have forgiven your attacker. If that gives you peace so be it. BUT, can you forgive yourself if the attacker you forgave attacks another young lady or young boy ?
You have the power to forgive your attacker, but you also have the power to forgive him through a set of bars.
I know what I am saying is a tuff task to do. But your attacker turned you into a victim. Have you turned yourself into a survivor ?
I'm a child clinging to a teddy bear? LOL! Your teddy bear is Jesus and "his" church. May I quote him to you. "He who is without guilt" etc. etc.
Very real crimes were commited and very deep injuries happened. Man up, plop heel, and pay up too.
We see before our eyes a remarkable (and just about synchronous) shift in focus on the part of our resident Abuseniks (which, nicely, avoids having to deal with any more inconvenient material): in response to material by ‘Julie’ (the 18th, 1256PM) as to her own experiences, the two currently-resident Abuseniks will embrace here with the warm embrace of the genuinely-abused and offer sage support. This is a Wig they have not often trot out often here.
‘Dennis ecker’ (the 18th, 723PM) asks her if she has ever reported her experiences; were she to report it, he exhorts, then she might become “the starting point” by which she might “expose the wrong doings of your church”. This is interesting because for all of his asserted direct and true and accurate ‘knowledge’, he has not – by any information we have in all of his material here – ever gone to the police with any of all that direct and true and accurate ‘knowledge’ that he has about one or all of the priests in the Church.
If I read ‘Julie’s comment correctly, she seems precisely to be pointing out that although she underwent such experiences as she mentions, yet she is “tired of the sniveling and bigoted attacks of these ‘victims’” and – even more specifically – she says that “when you pretend that Catholics are all guilty, that Catholic priests are all guilty, etc., then you have lost your credibility”. And she continues in that vein.
But for the Wigs, she must be embraced – not, I would say, because she requires their ministrations but rather because she can be used to provide a pretext for their trotting out these mostly-unused Wigs that we see here.
Also, I wonder if ‘dennis ecker’ realizes that the “your church” ‘Julie’ refers-to here is not the Catholic Church.
Then (the 19th, 758PM) JR weighs in precisely in the same way: but again, I don’t think that he realizes that ‘Julie’ is referring to a Protestant-Fundamentalist clergyman, as JR swings quickly into his standard Talking Points.
From what we have seen by his own report, there is some serious question as to precisely what it was that actually was “happening to me”. And we need to pin that down accurately before we can then judge that “they did nothing for me” – since it remains hardly implausible that they i) “did nothing” because precisely nothing could be determined to have happened to JR and that JR is mad at them because – whatever they did – it was not ii) what JR wanted them to do. (And in this brief excursus here, I leave out all of the many other dubious aspects and elements of his story which have been dealt-with at length in comments on recent prior threads.)
And as I said before – working only from the material JR himself provided : for a teenage boy to have rejected a teacher’s (alleged) sexual advances like Horatius at the Bridge is hardly plausibly characterizable as a cause for “shame of failing as a male” (exaggerated formatting omitted). Precisely the opposite. Unless – of course – there was more to it that we have not been told but that JR factors into this “shame” trope.
But if you look at JR’s current re-telling of his story (combining it with his re-telling in comments a couple of threads back) you may get the idea that the waxy bits specifically convey that impression of a tortie and his ‘story crew’ taking an allegation and burnishing it as best they possibly can in order to make it more compelling and attractive to the ‘empathies’ of a jury or whoever would be reading the Complaint.
And suddenly we are told now that JR – the heretofore-asserted scholarship-quality marvelous student – was indeed “failing the perps class”. [sic] (Just like that faculty-administrator memo from the document cache released this past summer, mentioned.) And as I noted here even on this thread, have we not seen the sustained tendency in JR to threaten legal-action against people who annoy him or don’t give him what he wants? And again: the vital point in all of this is not JR’s particular characteristics, but rather the fact that the cumulative and mutually-supporting Anderson strategies were precisely designed to i) invite such types as this up from the bottom to the surface where ii) they would be ‘valorized’ as somehow being ‘heroic’ (and truthful) while simultaneously iii) they would be remunerated handsomely while achieving a revenge they could only contemplate before the Stampede., without any real fear of being brought to account because their ‘stories’ would – it was presumed in the Anderson theories – never be examined.
And the readership is welcome to weigh the reliability and plausibility of JR’s slyly pre-emptive claim that it would be “crap” to hypothesize “a sixteen year old me, coming up with a lie that would put my rather frail masculinity in question”. To which I respond: a) I do not see JR of any age ‘lying’ as being inconceivable at all, especially against persons who have not given him what he wants; b) I still cannot see how claiming to have stymied a teacher’s (alleged) sexual advances like Horatius at the Bridge could in any realistic scenario be construed as putting his “own frail masculinity in question”. Unless, of course, i) those other students of that half-century long-ago had already formed some clear and distinct impressions on their own about their peer JR’s “frail masculinity” or ii) the teacher had somehow been approached by JR in such a way that might easily cast the burden of the initiative on JR rather than on the teacher.
Nobody can know for certain now, and I really don’t care to get any further into JR’s life-opera than is absolutely necessary for the purposes of analyzing the Stampede, but I think it is clear that – once again – JR casts his credibility and reliability further into doubt every time he essays a re-telling of his story.
Thus: imagine if such a story as this – and I would say they are legion – were actually examined in specific detail. But, again, it was precisely and specifically the objective of the Anderson strategies to ensure that such examination would never take place, either in the media or in the judicial system. Thus the Stampede as we have seen it.
Because what we are doing here on this site is nothing more than what any good attorney would have done in pre-trial depositions or in a court-room. We have already seen what happens to Abusenik stories (and to Abuseniks themselves) when such analysis is made here; thus we can see precisely why Anderson and all torties knew that they absolutely could not let these claims and stories and allegations be examined in legal process … and that was the genius of the multi-Plaintiff cases and also of having a compliant allied media make sure that public opinion had been moved beyond the rational-examination stage and into the outraged-presumptive stage of response as quickly as possible.
And again: JR is going to continue to ignore the – alas fundamental – point that even a) the possibility of PTSD consequences are at the very very best only possible and b) are more probably highly implausible except in the cases of the most extreme events. There is nothing certain or guaranteed in such a causative sequence such as there is in the demonstrated reality that if you hit a stationary or moving ball with a certain amount of force then the ball will certainly and absolutely head off in some (other) direction (assuming no counter-force is present). But we see in this bit – once again – JR’s use of ‘Julie’ as a mule to cattily insert his own Talking Points once again.
And the fragment of the scriptural quotation (Render unto Caesar … ?) which appears to have no relevance whatsoever here. But that’s hardly unusual for JR.
And then – with sublime slyness – JR tries to paint me as somehow “lying on a big time scale”. And then – again using ‘Julie’s material as a mule – he asserts that “I never did”. The readership, having considered the cumulative performance of his material here, is welcome to judge.
Let the record show here that it was JR who connects himself to Patty McCormack’s truly superb 1956 film portrayal of a fundamentally and profoundly and pervasively deranged character, who was actively cooperating with its derangements even in childhood. And – we must wonder further – how many more of that type were precisely summoned up from the depths by the Anderson strategies, to provide the ‘numbers’ for the allegations and claims and stories that constituted the Stampede.
Thanks to JR for making the point.
[edited by moderator]
Here's from my POV a big problem with your church. Your pope says gay people are "disordered" simply because we are gay. Your fish stinks from the head.
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I never knew all my feelings were just a collection of wigs. Thank you for dehumanizing me to that extent. Now if you could only humanize yourself……
More comments went up while I was composing my prior comment.
JR (the 19th, 713PM) now reports that posting here is “therapy” for him. I would advise that there is much more to “therapy” than simply pushing one’s preferred Talking Points (or perhaps fixed-delusions) out onto the web. Without making any specific recommendations, I would simply point out that effective therapy is not something one can achieve on one’s own but rather requires serious and actual and sustained engagement with some (competent) other. Perhaps his own recent reference to “masturbation” (especially as opposed to the actual sex-act with another person) would clarify this point for him on a level that he can more easily grasp.
And that point of mine is simply reinforced when he then quickly defines his posting here as “telling the truth to nonbelievers” [sic] First, we really don’t know if we are getting much “truth” at all; and second, the plausibility of his assertion here being accurate – when taken in sum with all of his material – hardly registers on the high end of the scale.
And third: notice the curious deployment here of the term “nonbelievers” … to refer to … whom? Surely it is JR who has proudly been trumpeting his religious non-belief here. But I think that there is a different conceptual context beneath his assertion: it is we who are the non-believers because we don’t totally ‘believe’ the Abusenik Talking Points. Thus the Abusenik Cause and Claims are constituted here as a sort of ‘religion’ themselves, and those who question or doubt are “non-believers”.
It might then occur to some readers to bethump JR about his ‘beliefs’ (in regard to which the rest of us are “non-believers” in exactly the same terms he so often bethumps religious believers in comments: fantasies, dreams, cartoons, un-proven and un-provable and so on and so forth. The hot ironies.
But how he then manages to imagine that all of his posting is “quite christian of me on one level” [sic] is anybody’s guess. (And I note again that I don’t know of any word-processing programs that do not automatically capitalize the word “Christian” such that a writer would have to go back and override that spelling deliberately.)
Then (the 19th, 718PM) all of my foregoing points are demonstrated by JR who a) cannot see how he might be “a child clinging to a teddy bear” and b) immediately swings into his usual vaudeville routine about “Jesus and ‘his’ church” being a “teddy bear” (teddy bears, plural, actually). I’ll stick with my original thoughts on the matter, having seen nothing here to indicate that they are inaccurate.
And once again, a scriptural reference that doesn’t seem coherently connected to anything going on in the discussion. I could suggest that JR get in the habit of explaining his choice of this or that scriptural reference or other type of reference, but that doesn’t seem to be in his standard repertoire. Abuseniks, as I have said, don’t really like to have to explain what they claim and say; they simply expect to be accepted in whatever they claim and say. And those who do not conform to that expectation are “not empathetic” and are “sociopathic” and – but of course – “evil”.
And then his concluding exit-line off the stage: a) the repetition yet again of the Talking Point that “very real crimes were committed” – which we don’t really know for a fact, and about which JR – with the possible exception of his own (non-)experience – doesn’t know for a fact either. Indeed, my point all along here has been that we don’t really “know” (to use the term in its formal sense) how many crimes were actually committed; we only have the Abusenik Stampede spin and a whole bunch of unexamined claims, assertions and allegations (that – when you come right down to it – don’t seem able to stand up to much scrutiny at all, from what we have seen here). Thus we only “know” in that cartoon sense that the phrase “everybody knows” conveys.
And b) – as I have pointed out before – we also don’t actually “know” if or how many “very deep injuries happened”. Especially, to repeat, when one tries to distinguish between i) deeply-troubled persons whose derangements pre-dated the alleged abusive (however defined) incident and ii) more or less normal persons who were so substantially and deeply deranged by the alleged incident (very few of which rose to the more extreme end of the abuse spectrum even in the formal and well-waxed allegations). Even in JR’s case, we are required to accept that a largely ‘normal’ student was deranged to the point we now see, thus also for the bulk of a lifetime, merely on the basis of an experience where so very little – if anything – sexual actually took place. The readership may consider this as they will.
And then this comment too concludes with a comment that doesn’t make sense: “plop heel” makes no sense in English. But how nicely helpful of him to remind us of the bottom line in all of it: “pay up”. Just so. And the swag will quickly be banked.
Regarding the ‘dennis ecker’ comment, I would simply point out again the odd use of “tuff” – which one would have to deliberately impose on the word-processing program, and which – moreover – is an oddly non-adult (if I may) usage for a grown-up to use. What dynamic or internal ‘pose’ is driving such a usage? Surely the firefighter/EMT depicted in the news photo (from a dozen years ago) is now clearly well into chronological adulthood. Whence, then, this (and there are others) youthy or juvenile usage?
P, thank you. In time, everything will be heard true and fair.
I simply note that JR (the 20th, 848AM) manages to avoid all the substance of the ideas under discussion and instead casts himself as a victim. Pitch-perfect.
And I will simply say that the core dehumanization of victimism lies precisely in the person who embraces the ‘victim’ identity (or, if you prefer, the ‘survivor’ identity – queasily filching thereby the experience of the Holocaust) as the basic human identity. This results in a profound limiting of the human identity, and consequently in a profound limiting of the conception of the ‘victim’s vision of human life as simply being – so very similar to Lenin’s – merely a matter of Who Does (or Did) What To Whom.
And it is precisely the concern of genuine psychological therapy to bring “feelings” into some sort of congruence with larger human realities beyond those “feelings” (and beyond the ‘delusions’ that are the conceptual corollaries of those personal “feelings”).
The Wig imagery is designed to address inauthentic ‘poses’ adopted internally, not “feelings”. I could suggest reflection on that point as being potentially constructive. And even ‘re-humanizing’.
P stop making personal attacks. It's the sign of a lower mind. You could have treated the victims who post here, well and say exactly what you believe to be true; but you've choosen not to. How does that help anything? You could have stated your beliefs and behaved like a gentleman. you choose not to. To what end? What purpose does that ad hominem attack behavior of yours get you? Sympathy? Who wants to sympathize with a bully? Only the very desperate people who need to submit to power for the sake of power that they might feel powerful themselves…..for a moment?
Who has delusions theist boy ? Me or you?
Since my attacker was not a Catholic priest, there is no way I have any recourse this far down the road. I completely understand how a person is destroyed by something like this, but you can't stay in the muck. Take medication, therapy or do whatever. Many, many women live with having been raped, groped, assaulted, etc.
It's not the abuse that has opened up windows for us to sue our abusors now but the recognition that other crimes were commited by the bosses of our rapists that placed us more at risk for being raped in the first place. When the public and state learned of the cover ups and the transfers, that changed the climate and the state opened up SOME, FEW windows to sue.
Julie, I agree, many women like yourself have been terribly harmed by abuse. If you could sue someone for compensation wouldn't you? I believe you should be able to. Canada has no statutes of limitatons, either criminal or civil, regarding sex crimes against children. Why do we?
Your perp may have made a very good life for himself and family while you suffer. You should be compensated.
Well now (the 20th, 1137PM): if I recall correctly, I am a “lying piece of dog duty” [sic[, “fool”, “idiot”, both “sociopath” and “sociopathic”, and should “shut up!”. And should be subjected to either arrest or a libel lawsuit.
I am now informed that “personal attacks” are “the sign of a lower mind”. I could not agree more.
Apparently, however, the underlying dynamic operative here is a corollary to the Clohessy double-standard (i.e. there should be a strict standard applied to the Church, and a much looser standard applied to the Abuseniks): JR can say whatever he likes and it doesn’t strike him as the “sign of an inferior mind”, while he can easily see “the sign of an inferior mind” wherever he isn’t agreed-with. Neat.
I still have not seen any credible evidence – or even probability – as to the genuine status of “the victims who post here”. And less so – it surely seems – every time I look.
And what does it mean to have “treated well” the allegedly genuine “victims”? It means to buy everything they put up and offer “empathetic” (which is apparently synonymous with ‘approving’) clucks and ooohs and ahhhhhs. But – doing the math – one dishonesty plus any number of dubious-honesties doesn’t add up to truth. So I’ll be honest and not ooooh or ahhhh or cluck. Empathy for dishonesty sounds a little too much like the old ‘sympathy for the devil’, as the Songster saith.
I haven’t “choosen” to do this; if I am going to stay responsible to truth and accuracy then I don’t really have much choice. Which – it seems clear – is not the approach embraced by some other commenters on this site, but that’s not my problem.
Thus then the Wig of Rebuke that I “could have behaved like a gentleman” – when taken in the context of the vast corpus of material we now have on the record here – simply demonstrates (once again) that for the Abusenik and Wiggy mentality, there is no ‘yesterday’ when it comes to a coherent position: we are supposed to take each performance de novo with no thought as to seeing how it connects coherently to whatever was said on some ‘yesterday’.
And the comment continues – rather uncharacteristically – in a rather high-declamatory style and tone: “To what end?”. To which I respond: to the “end” of demonstrating the dynamics and stratagems characteristically deployed by the Playbook, which has led to the clear possibility (and perhaps probability) that the Stampede consists of an awful lot of not-quite-true-and-accurate stories, claims, and allegations. And has always been intended to prevent that uncongenial reality from being discovered through any sustained analysis and assessment.
And as opposed to my material constituting any amount of “ad hominem” attack – which is actually defined as an effort to sidetrack actual analysis of material by seeking only and merely to shift (negative) focus onto the person making the comment – my material has been analyzing the material and the various Playbook plays and – necessarily – the dynamics operative in the mentality that makes them. All of which are necessary to give a fuller picture of just what elements have sustained the Stampede. For my material to be accurately characterizable as “ad hominem”, it would have to be demonstrated where I avoided the conceptual content of material and instead simply ‘attacked’ the commenter, to the exclusion of any actual analysis and assessment. JR is welcome to put up (with accurate quotations) any instances where I have done that in comments; they are “verbose” precisely because I take a great deal of space precisely to assess and analyze content material as fully as I think necessary. Thus there are few one-liner posts from me. And even fewer that are essentially content-free and analysis-free.
And in doing all that, I am of the firm opinion that I have indeed “helped” something (and not just “anything” either).
Am I a “bully”? Have I threatened anybody with lawsuits? Have I told anybody to “shut up!”? Have I fired off mere and un-explained epithet after epithet?
Nor – unlike the Abuseniks – am I looking-for “sympathy”. Whereas for the Abuseniks, “sympathy” is precisely the emotional gambit that the Playbook calls-for – in order to prevent any rational analysis and assessment. That’s how it’s done. (We were – of course – not supposed to notice any of this.)
I can’t see where I am “desperate” to “submit to power” and “for the sake of power”. Nor will I follow the ‘desperate need to submit to power’ trope any further down any of its several possible paths.
Once again, the Wig of Diagnosis is advised to consult a competent clinical dictionary for the meaning of “projection”. And then consider constructive courses of action from there. And best of luck with that.
(And is there actually a commercially-available word-processing program that can translate material into a high-declamatory style? That would be truly amazing.)
If you continue to libel me publicly. I will sue you. My name is attached to my posts. If I am libeled a liar by you about my abuse; you've libeled me as a victim. harming my credability as a victims' advocate. A reputation that I use to fight for victims. Smearing that reputation smears my ability to work for victims. And you are sueable for that. You don't have to believe me but unless you have proof that I'm lying, telling the world I'm lying, about what really happened to me, is libel.
Using innocent victims as a way of pushing your beliefs, fantasies about us, shows only that you believe none of us that have addressed you here. You paint us all liars with no proof on your part and that's libel.
I could be sued for my truth telling about SNAP by SNAP. But they would have to prove I'm lying. I'm not. They would loose. Instead they just tut tut me, pat me on the head, and pretend I'm damaged goods. Something that, sincerely, only happens to me in two places SNAP and here. What an odd coincidence…..
In regard to JR's of the 22nd at 1152AM: Pitch-perfect. If I didn't have an established record of posting on this site, I imagine readers might think I somehow put this 1152AM post up under JR's name just to satirize everything about his material that I've been writing about.
Following up on my immediately previous post: if JR could supply a quotation (accurate, it needs to be said) as to where I called him a "liar" or declared definitively that is is "lying" … well wouldn't that be nice? But it doesn't exist so he won't because he can't.
Whether genuine "innocent victims" appreciate being classified by him as being in the same boat with him does – certainly – provide food for thought.
Again always leave the readership with the INFERENCE I'm a liar. You are shameless. LOL!
"Genuine innocent victims"!!!!, as compared to me, according to you is saying I'm a liar. YOU ARE SO BUSTED!
I demand you be named. You deserve to be sued. [edited by moderator]