See no evil: sex abuse, money, and fraud
As we have noted so many times before, the mainstream media has repeatedly demonstrated that it has no interest in pursuing the counter-narrative story of fraudulent claims of abuse against Catholic priests.
But there are now discouraging signs that the mainstream media is equally disinterested in bogus abuse claims against public school teachers.
About a year ago, the media reported that the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) paid out a whopping $30 million to settle nearly six dozen claims of child sex abuse by teachers at a single elementary school. Each and every claimant was awarded a nifty $470,000.
Now it appears that several of those claims were outright bogus, LAUSD doled out settlements it should not have, and at least one teacher may have been falsely accused.
A shocking whistleblower lawsuit (pdf) filed by a lawyer who worked for LAUSD recounts case after case of individuals who received enormous settlements based on outright fraud. According to the suit:
- A claimant was not even in a class taught by an abuser, and "the claimant essentially maintained that others wanted and got money and he should also get some as well";
- A female claimant received $470,000 based solely on the claim that "she was touched just once on the shoulder";
- Three claimants received $470,000 each on claims of abuse by a teacher whom the district never even had a complaint about; and
- At least two claimants received $470,000 settlements based on factors such as "being angry" and "not wanting to go on amusement park rides."
Where do I get my reputation back?
Falsely accused?
ex-LAUSD teacher Martin Springer
Springer vehemently denied that he had abused anyone, but since he worked at the school where child sex abuse by another teacher sparked a Los Angeles media firestorm, Springer got fingered as an abuser as well.
However, soon after the $30 million in cash was doled out to accusers, the criminal case against Springer crumbled. And it turns out the case was not very strong to begin with.
Before the case was even dropped, prosecutors admitted that the alleged abuse by Springer was "minimal" and that Springer was never threatening to anyone, as had simply touched a girl's leg. And the teacher's attorney suggested the obvious, that the criminal accusations against Springer were motivated by the prospect for financial gain.
Yet despite the flimsiness of the charges against Springer, LAUSD still paid out at least six settlements of $470,000 each related to the questionable charges against Springer.
What is the takeaway from it all? The mainstream media has now shown that it has no appetite for sex abuse fraud stories, even when it is fellow taxpayers shelling out the settlement money. The Los Angeles Times has not printed a single syllable about a story right under its nose about this stunning fraud going on today at LAUSD.
Should the mainstream media not report the outcome of this whistleblower lawsuit, against LAUSD, then they will have failed utterly in their duty to inform the public. After all, the 30 million dollars came straight out of the public purse. The whistleblower who tried to stop it was thrown to the lions.This outrage should be a front page story, its got everything an editor could ever dream of.
A more putrid mess has never been created in the history of public education in the U.S. The charges of sexual abuse against Berndt at Miramonte elementary was the greatest stroke of diabolical luck that LAUSD superintendent Mr. John Deasy could have hoped for. After this story broke he initiated a witch-hunt against senior teachers using false claims of physical abuse with wholesale accusations of incompetence. To date thousands of teachers have been forced into retirement or resignation, a couple have committed suicide and many more have had their livelihoods destroyed. Our union, UTLA has a policy of non-defense of members which strongly communicates complicity on their part. Why is unknown as of now. This story will not be covered in the media principally because the newspapers, television and even NPR and PBS are slopped at the same trough with money from the same wealthy people that support education "reform," i.e. Gates. Broad, Walton, Arnold and Rhee to name only a few.
To report on the fraud in the LAUSD would open the gates to queries of fraud regarding the ongoing extortion of the Caholic Church.
The media never cared if children were being abused, they were only interested in putting the Church in their crosshairs so as to facilitate their leftist political agenda.
I think the article’s points about the media not wanting to discuss public institutions that are the site of child sexual abuse, and especially not wanting to discuss public monies that have been expended, are serious and telling points to make here.
Nor do I imagine that torties would want to get too close to this either. Despite the fact that the mechanics of the Anderson Strategies would work as well here as they did against the Church, yet the necessary ‘ground’ for them – the coalition of interests and forces that would be as necessary to support a Stampede here as such a coalition was necessary to support the Stampede – doesn’t exist.
And, moreover, such a coalition could never form. Politicians would not be so eager to allow the enabling legislation of a Stampede if the public saw that its own tax monies were about to be the stuffing in some LAUSD piñata. It was all well and good for the pols – and the media for its own purposes – to make it easy to make a run at the Church piñata. After all, those monies were from the putatively fabulously wealthy (and notably obstructive-to-the-secular-agenda) Church; anybody who took money from the Church Stampede was simply getting fresh and ‘new’ cash (which they could then infuse into the economy as they saw fit). But anybody who might benefit from a Public School Stampede is going to be taking tax monies, no matter how you slice it or spin it.
And all the while, for these secularizing interests, the public would hopefully continue to lose confidence in the Church as a moral exemplar and the Church would lose legitimacy as a source of moral input in the public sphere – where the secularizing elites wanted to cut a rival source of meaning down to size (just as Mussolini and Hitler and Stalin sought to do back in their day).
Judges and DA’s and law enforcement aren’t going to be so eager to help take tax-monies away from the public coffers (which are not in great shape in most States anyway, and certainly not in CA). And those involved who are either responsible to an electorate for their office or dependent upon public goodwill for their department’s annual budgets are certainly not going to want to be associated in the public eye with helping a Stampede to turn the public-coffers into a piñata.
The Stampede was never primarily about ‘the victims’ (of whom there are no doubt genuine instances). For the political and elite sources supporting the Stampede it was about the convenience – to their interests – in having the Church as the target of the Stampede.
But the last thing the government would want to do at any level would be to allow the legitimacy of its own institutions to be so undermined. That would be outright political suicide for public confidence in the governmental authority and even perhaps its legitimacy. And it would be political suicide for the individual pols as well. And budgetary suicide for the public agencies involved. Nor would the mainstream media want to risk circulation by running with a fresh Stampede against the public coffers.
LOL! Do you actually think the church and it's insurers haven't better legal representation than this? So because there may be some false claims, real claiments shouldn't be compensated? Your hysterical. LOL! Where's your proof vast numbers of claiments against your church are false? Whip it out, sunshine.
http://video.pbs.org/video/2365187642/
In my country we have a slang expression …'rats in the ranks'. It means being undermined by colleagues from within your organization. So I can't help seeing a parallel between the abovementioned scandal in the LAUSD and the most recent revelations in the Fr. Gordon MacRae website, (THESE STONE WALLS). Please find time to read this latest TSW article because it is truly stunning in its implications. To spark your interest will reveal that a Monsignor Edward Arsenauld has been convicted, after pleading guilty, to three felonies counts of fraud. Generously helping himself to funds from a hospital, and also from the deceased estate of a priest. This is the same guy who was chairman of a national catholic committee that laid down guidelines, for the diocesan administrations and insurers, in the handling of abuse claims against priests. Also the same guy who was official delegate of an Archbishop… and so was personally involved in deciding the cash settlements of numerous claims against priests in his diocese. Claims that were too often taken at their face value… and not examined in any great depth. In other words too quick to assume the guilt of the accused priest. Am I myself assuming too much? Maybe, but my past experience as an auditor taught me that nobody should be above suspicion, and that leopards rarely change their spots.
So what I would hope for is this….that one day the whistleblower at LAUSD and Fr. MacRae would meet up together and have a heart to heart talk. The topic of the discussion should be …. 'rats in the ranks'.
Malcolm- what a bombshell this revelation would be if that corrupt Monsignor's transgressions were related to cover-ups of abusive priests. Sadly, this story will get little, if any, attention in the msm for the obvious reasons.
It is a bombshell just the same for those of us intent on having the truths about the Church abuse matter revealed.
Let's hope these rats in the ranks will start to cannibalize each other.
For your trackbacks-
http://kollmancatholicdigest.com/massive-fraud-uncovered-abuse-cases-l-public-schools-media-barely-notices/
I have put up a comment on the immediately previous thread and it strikes me that some of the material I discussed there would also be of relevance here. So I will put those bits up here as well.
There is a link as to how “controlling public opinion has been studied and charted”.
In that regard, I could also recommend Gustave LeBon’s classic The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind and also the relevant portions of Hitler’s Mein Kampf (in which we discover that even before he met Goebbels Hitler was very canny and informed on the subject of how to manipulate public opinion for his own purposes). I have recommended both of these books in prior comments.
I could also again recommend Saul Alinsky’s 1971 Rules for Radicals as even more topical and relevant to the Stampede; it is a step by step manual on now to create a PR crisis for your targeted individual or organization.
About the only major element of Alinsky that wasn’t incorporated into the Stampede was his thinking on how the “organizer” can “maneuver and bait the establishment so that it will publicly attack him as a ‘dangerous enemy’”. Victimism basically side-stepped the necessity for this step by going back to Mein Kampf’s ideas on how to demonize one’s target (through selective focus on only the bits convenient to your agenda and insistently exaggerating your target’s evil and monstrousness); by using the horror of the crime (alleged) against the victim, Victimists (and later, Abuseniks) could manipulate public opinion to simply presume that the alleged crime was committed in the first place, and thus get the game started from the far more convenient first-base.
Whereas Alinsky presumed an unsympathetic media establishment, the Victimist movement here – similar to Hitler in Germany in the 1930s – realized that the media establishment was largely going to be a very receptive and willing collaborator in the spread of such ‘stories’, satisfying the post-1960’s media need for emotionally-gripping stories to keep up circulation and the journalistic calling’s need in that era to feel that it was not simply ‘reporting’ history but ‘making’ history. And that ‘making history’ rather nicely captures the lengths to which the media were willing and eager to go. As we have seen.
Regarding Publion's comment at 3.41 pm on the 27th February. He again used the baseball anology about how the Abuseniks have conveniently started the game at 'first-base'. Meaning they avoided having to prove that the particular abuse really happened. Just the same it might be useful to focus of them as they stand at 'first-base'. Will invent a victim called 'Flash Harry' and look at his claim. Of paramount importance is the medical evidence, from a specialist, hereinafter called a psychologist (or psych). What does the psych know… other than what Harry tells him? Harry has already joined a victim's support group, and they advised him on how best to present to the psych, Harry tells the psych that following the abuse he was confused about his sexuality, and has never had a real relationship with a woman, and has been denied the joy of fatherhood. Between heart-rending sobs he relates that his working life has suffered from his lack of clear identity and self-confidence. His real potential just wilted on the vine. A life totally destroyed. Now does anybody really think that a psych will conduct an independent investigation to check out the truth of this narrative. It would be too expensive, so in the absence of any contradictions, or obvious red flags, it would be accepted as plausible. All this becomes the foundation of the medical report. Logic and reason tells us that if the Church fails to check out his veracity, then it has no grounds to challenge the medical report. Flash Harry then confidently advances to 'second-base'. I guess this sport has peculiar 'rules'.
We have a chaff shower from JR.
The 1st at 409PM: Apparently, connecting un-congenial dots is “degrading”. And a nice vivid little term it is, that “degrading”. But it is also a sly way to a) avoid having to deal with the issues raised by the document and b) creating a pretext for donning the Wig of Victimization and hoping to distract readers and derail their considerations. Perfect Playbook stuff.
Then another fine Playbook bit: he creates a false issue (i.e. proving that claims are false) rather than deal with the far more un-congenial and unpleasant (for Abuseniks) point: that when all things are considered, the probability is rather high that the Stampede vision is a grossly (but strategically) exaggerated phantasm constructed for the purposes of enabling and lubricating the Stampede.
And that the burden of proof is on the accuser (nowadays ‘the victim’) – now there is a most surely un-congenial bit that has to be somehow avoided and driven from consideration.
And it is perfectly true that if “victims” who have already gotten their check “aren’t activist” then “that’s their business”. But it’s also a point that raises some serious question(s) about JR’s entire theory (or phantasm) about “victims”. Perhaps, as he declares, “they’ve gone through enough”; it’s a possibility, surely. But so is the possibility that they have gotten what they came for and don’t really care about anything else, and perhaps even don’t want to risk any closer examination of the claims that were the basis for getting their check, especially after the torties went to the trouble of demanding a secrecy proviso as part of the settlement.
Readers may consider the probabilities as they see fit.
Then, in that queasy but characteristic fashion that combines scatology with some undemonstrated assertion, JR indulges his abiding interest in “a**h**es”. But of course.
Then JR returns to the “what’s your business here?” bit again. Apparently the content of my ideas doesn’t (or can’t) engage his attention; so rather than deal with the concepts and questions and issues, he will try to go for ‘motivation’ – maybe some plop can be tossed there. I’ll leave him to it.
As for “victims” having no proof, we have seen that in all of the stories and claims that we have been able to examine here (and on the BigTrial site as well), and we have even seen the point made by the very pro-‘victim’ authors of the Michigan Manual for prosecutors.
As for the 1st at 412PM, we see once again that JR has to create his own version of my material, since he doesn’t want-to or can’t come to grips with my actual points. He can refer to my prior comments on this thread. We are dealing with probabilities of veracity, not with absolute assertions either for or against veracity. So once again, he needs to consider the map more carefully.
Then on the 1st at 426PM: This is as good an opportunity as any that JR has given us here to consider the probability of the conventional Abusenik scenario: that one negative experience with one type of adult authority figure will totally and permanently undermine a person’s ability to trust anybody in any capacity ever ever again.
But the connection between the behavior of a “rapist” and the behavior of SNAP is, indeed, a delicious bit. No objection from me on this.
But once again we are confronted with the reality – reported by himself – that JR seems to consistently elicit in others the decision not to be associated-with him. Whatever the reason(s) for that fact, it is what it is. That the reason for this is merely and only that “free speech” is not respected in this country … can only be considered as one of several possible explanations.
Then the 1st at 433PM: As was discussed at length in the relevant comments on this site at the time, no documentation has been seen that supports the Abusenik phantasm that “abusers were passed around” for the purpose of “abusing again”. Bishops tried counseling and various other therapies (which was considered state-of-the-art at the time) and in some cases that didn’t work; Bishops tried to resolve the issue without creating permanent consequences for accused priests and unhappy publicity for allegants. Bishops may even have had their doubts about some of the allegations (which, from what we have seen, is hardly characterizable as an essentially and largely irrational reaction to some of the stories). But no documentation whatsoever has been seen which demonstrates that Bishops, as if in some Mob or organized-racket scenario, were blithely and callowly moving priests around for the purpose of providing them with fresh fields of abuse-possibilities. Or does JR forget what the Stampede vision consists-in?
Thus his self-serving mis-interpretation of my material – to the effect that “this whole scandal’s just an invention” to me – also fails, as does his characteristic epithetical bit.
And again with the “3 popes” bit. As I said on this thread in prior comments: the Popes apologized for whatever genuine damage was caused, and for the inability of hierarchs to more quickly come directly to grips with the situation in an overtly and primarily crime-oriented manner.
In his recent history of Catholicism James Hitchcock observed that in the adult lifetime of the Popes up to Benedict XVI, the Vatican had seen three major dictators in Europe try to use what is now termed sex-abuse as a way to coerce the Church (Hitler, as I mentioned a while back in comments, had gone so far as to say about priests: I don’t want to make martyrs out of them, I want to make them out to be criminals). This, says Hitchcock, contributed to the length of time it took the Vatican to see what was going on in the U.S. Having instituted appropriately stringent ‘abuse’ regulations in the Canon Law revisions of 1917, with follow-on refinements in 1922 and 1962, the Vatican had presumed that Bishops were sufficiently informed as to their responsibilities.
There is some truth, I would say, to his observation. However, taking into account everything we have seen (and not-seen) in analysis of various material on this site, I would also say that the Vatican may also have realized that there was now in this country a strong secularist push, supported by the government itself and the assorted national elites, that had glommed onto the same approach of ‘making criminals’. And the Vatican may have figured it would weather such a storm just as it had weathered such storms in the 1930s in Europe.
And I would also say that the material we have seen, taken in conjunction with – say – the trials in Philadelphia (still going on), certainly support the possibility (perhaps probability) that there has been a great deal of strategic exaggeration that has gone into the construction of the Catholic Abuse Narrative. The confluence of i) the natural dynamics of tort cases (to burnish as much as possible and in any way possible the Plaintiff’s story and alleged consequences of the ‘tort’), ii) the media’s eagerness for a steady supply of soap-opera and melodrama, iii) the government’s own desire to undermine the public credibility and authority of an organization that was resisting major elements of the government’s preferred agenda, and iv) the government’s own intensifying tendency to seek to take the place of the Church or ‘religion’ as citizens’ primary source of ultimate meaning in life … all of these elements and dynamics have played their role in taking such genuine instances of Catholic clerical abuse (however defined) as there were and turning them into the fever-vision of gross decadence and monstrousness that has fueled the Stampede.
Wha
Oh! Was it the commies that did those things inside your church? I did not know that.
It was Saul Alinsky that raped all us catholic kids? I didn't know Alinsky was a priest! And it was Alinsky then who passed Alinsky around to rape again?
Oh wait a sec it wasn't the commies? It's Hitler, we raped catholic victims are more like? Thanks for the news.
Among the many things that JR clearly does not know, we must now include conclusion that he has inaccurately drawn from my comment of the 27th at 341PM.
And we still don't know just what was and was not done "inside your church" compared to the Abusenik scare-visions specifically constructed along the lines of what I describe in my comment above) to lubricate the Stampede.
If you don't know what really happened inside your church; it isn't because victims haven't told you. Dolt. It's because the church hasn't told you. Do you think 3 popes have apologized to their victims for nothing? For rapes that didn't occur? [edited by moderator]
It's all OK now, unless a Catholic priest does it-
http://www.star-telegram.com/2014/02/24/5596703/a-teacher-sexting-and-the-right.html?rh=1
On the 28th at 1127AM JR once again tries to run the play from first with the at-bat and the base-hit merely presumed: the ‘victims’ have “already told” us what “really happened inside your church”.
But – and here’s the scam – that presumes that a) the victims were telling the truth and b) they were describing what in effect was not simply the specific instances possible in any human organization, but the phantasmagorical nightmare painted (for obvious reasons) by the Abuseniks, the torties, and much of the media.
Having not noticed – either through ignorance or design – any of this complexity in the issue, JR awards himself yet another opportunity for an epithet. One thinks of those Wolf’s Lair command conferences, with The Boss sweeping his hand over broad blank-ish white swathes of a map of Russia, simultaneously irritated and bewildered by the doltish inability of the actual military professionals to see how easy it was to move forces to victory – after all, look how easy it was for him to move his finger over six, twelve, eighteen inches of the map. Where the trained professionals looked at the map and saw ravines and rivers and all manner of possibility for enfilade and defilade and pitifully few roads to effect reinforcement or mutual support or supply, The Boss merely saw oodles of blank paper waiting for the all-creating sweep of his masterful finger. The Great Blockhead went to his end convinced that the only reason for his profound and utter failures was that he was surrounded by a systematic coterie of incompetent ignoramuses who clearly were in league against him because they were jealous of his genius.
The fact that “3 popes” have apologized does not sufficiently ground any inference that in doing so they were admitting to the entire Abusenik fever-vision in all its phantasmagoric aspects. We see here yet another attempt to run the old Playbook play last seen in assertions that if allegations were settled (without trial) and checks were cut, then that was proof that all the allegations were totally true.
The nature of the human enterprise leads me to believe that there were certainly some genuine cases of classically-defined rape perpetrated by clerics – although determining in any specific case whether it is genuine or otherwise-classifiable remains profoundly problematic. And that the Pope would apologize for those indicates that the highest level of the Church wants to see things change.
But just as a settlement (and check) does not constitute any sort of ‘proof’ that an allegation is or ever was true, so too the apology by a Pontiff for whatever genuine harm was perpetrated does not in any way constitute a wholesale admission that each and every allegation and allegant qualified as truthful, accurate, and genuine.
Perhaps JR should study the map a bit more carefully.
Where are your fake claims. You say they exist. Where are they? Put up or shut up show us. Otherwise you're whistling in the dark.
The scandal isn't about that you had child rapes. It's that you protected the abusers and ignored the raped. You still are. You are nothing if not consistant.
More classics from the Playbook, and ones that have already been dealt-with, even recently.
On the 1st at 106AM JR again tries to run the play of reversing the burden of proof – which is, he may recall, on the accuser in the Western legal tradition. Thus in the Abuse Matter the burden of the proof is on the accuser (to prove that what s/he said the accused did actually happened and that the accused did it). As I mentioned just in the past couple of days here, JR’s sly try consists in trying to avoid the profound Abusenik proof-problem by playing with his little word-blockies: it is the questioners here who are the ‘accusers’ – apparently – and JR wants to toss his hot-potato of the proof-problem to us.
But we are just questioning, not asserting. And neither JR nor any of the Abuseniks here have come up with any evidence or even a coherent rationale that would overcome the clearly powerful potential incentives for false-reporting, on top of the very difficult and profound issues with the ‘spectral evidence’ that is at the heart of almost all Abusenik allegations.
In addition to all of which, we recall, was the rather unhappy performance of JR’s own story over the course of nine months’ discussion here, and the Billy-Doe material from Philadelphia, and the non-performance of the highly-touted document cache releases – among other things: all of these items have certainly done nothing to reduce the possibility-of (and perhaps have done a great bit to increase the probability-of) the existence of false claims, and in great numbers (given the bennies which the Stampede thoughtfully provided to seduce fresh allegants).
So: No, we are not “whistling in the dark” – rather, we are going to shed some light on the dark gravy-train.
Then – minutes later at 109AM – JR suddenly informs us that the “child rapes” actually aren’t and never have been the gravamen of the “scandal” (this is an old scam he pulled quite a while back in comments; and readers need only look at more recent comments to realize how much “our rapes” have figured in his various presentations). No, the gravamen of the scandal – suddenly – is only that “you protected the abusers and ignored the raped”. Oh, and that “you still are”.
We have seen in extended analyses of various document caches that the ‘protected’ bit isn’t borne out very well by the documents except in a very few cases (as opposed to being the widespread institutional Standard Operating Procedure screamily asserted by the Stampede fright-visions).
We have seen that the Church – as even JR has acknowledged – can do little for ‘victims’; and that not even JR knows what “the raped” want (and actually cannot even explain coherently and credibly what he himself wants (the genuineness of his victimhood, for the purposes of this instant discussion, being very generously presumed); and that ‘victims’ already remunerated don’t even seem interested in other victims or SNAP or setting up any sort of coming-together dynamic; and that we are therefore left (and JR – alas – is therefore left) merely with an invisible and utterly free-floating and imagined Victimry of the Mind, in the shape of myriads of still-un-reported victims who are still floating around out there somewhere.
And to claim then that “you still are” (i.e. not doing anything) is to try to pass off in 2014 a 3×5 one-liner from 1985 or maybe 2002 (it would all depend on the legitimacy problem inherent in the allegations and how the various Bishops handled that). But it does appear that JR is a time-traveller, and the passage of eventful years and decades has no traction with his mind.
In all of which he remains consistent; but now also, thankfully, rather obvious.
Your priests raped minors. Your Bishops passed them on to rape again. 3 popes have lamely apologized to us. And you're going to pretend it's all bull?
I have come across a document that I think is very valuable (link provided at bottom of this comment). It is the recent Michigan prosecutor’s Manual for handling sexual-assault cases. What we see here is the current state of legal thinking driving prosecutors approaching this type of case.
The Manual was put together with great help from advocacy groups and several activists/’researchers’ who have published a great deal in this area and also conduct lucrative training sessions for various law enforcement and DA personnel.
I point out also that this is a publicly accessible document and if you are reading it, then torties and their staffs have read it too, and much of what it contains probably have been included in those prep or grooming sessions torties hold with allegants who have signed on to become formal Plaintiffs in a lawsuit before they get to work on the story.
A technical point: as so often with documents online, the browser numbering differs from the page-numbering of the original document. In this case, there is a difference of 12 between the browser-numering and the original page-numbering, thus browser page 13 would be original-document page 1. Thus if I give page references, they will consist of 2 numbers: the first is the browser page number, and the second is the original document’s page number printed on the page itself. Thus: ‘13/1’ will mean that you can find this page by the browser listed as page 13, or you can find the page by scrolling down the original document’s pagination until you come to 1.
This document is 298 pages long, and I am not going to analyze the entire thing. I am just going to bring forward some of the material that I think will help readers here.
Page 1/cover page: The document is entitled Michigan Prosecutors’ Sexual Assault Prosecution Manual. Beneath the title is a sub-title: victim-centered, offender-focused prosecution of non-stranger sexual assault. Right off the bat, we are heading off the rails, in terms of classical Western justice: i) rather than use the more proper legal terms of ‘accuser’ and ‘accused’, the new legal thinking in these cases presumes guilt even before the trial begins: we have a “victim” and an “offender”. Naturally, use of ‘accuser’ and ‘accused’ would recall classical – one might also say constitutional – legal practice, and that is precisely where this ‘new thinking’ does not want to go and does not want anybody else to go. Then ii) the focus of the trial should be kept tightly on the (already presumed guilty) “offender”, and not on the accuser/alleged victim. Then iii) the focus should be “victim-centered”, which – as we shall see below – means that everything must be done to smooth the path of the accuser/alleged victim while – as noted and as we shall see below – the “focus” must be kept on the “offender” and his (always ‘his’) guilt-supporting characteristics.
Page 1/x (= Roman numeral): The text acknowledges that sexual-assault cases are “among the hardest to successfully prosecute”. Given, as I have often said, the lack of evidence this statement is most certainly accurate. But as we shall see, the Manual’s authors have a solution to this: they claim here that “sexual assault is truly not like other crimes” (thus then, since they have categorized “sexual assault” (hereinafter: ‘SA’) as fundamentally different from all other crimes, then the ‘old’ constitutional thinking does not and cannot apply to SA cases – very neat indeed). A sober legal thinker might have concluded that SA “is truly not like other crimes” and thus concluded that this is so because there is so often a) a lack of evidence and thus b) great room for mischief in terms of false accusations or simply c) the profound dangers of getting the Sovereign Coercive legal Authority into the ominously bad habit of convicting accused persons without substantive evidence and also d) getting jurors and the public used to the idea that you don’t really need substantive evidence to convict. But that isn’t where these activists/authors are going here.
On page 13/1: A few studies are cited to the effect that SA accusations are not often reported (one could wonder then if they are not reported simply because they didn’t happen). And also – neatly and pre-emptively – other studies that claim to have demonstrated a very low incidence of false-accusations (how any ‘study’ can determine that dispositively without an exhaustive police investigation and trial is anybody’s guess; ‘surveys’ were very probably used and claimed to be valid research instruments). So right off the bat here, this systematic presentation goes for trying to neutralize some very weighty objections by referring to putatively scientific studies (‘surveys’, most likely) that pooh-pooh the objections beforehand. And the authors even note that the actual reporting figures are “low”, but – and here is the shell-game – they are “low” only if one accepts those ‘studies’ that claim to accurately insist that the numbers should be much much higher.
On page 16/4: The authors here define what is meant by “victim-centered” and “offender-focused”. The former (“victim-centered”) means that you presume from the get-go that a) “victims are never responsible for the crimes committed against them” and b) “offenders are always responsible for their crimes”. These SA cases are truly not like other cases at all, indeed. Note also the presumption that a prosecutor facing an SA allegation must already be thinking in terms of “victim” and “offender” instead of thinking in terms of “accuser” and “accused”.
The latter (“offender-focused”) requires the “knowledge” of the nature of sex-offenders (which “knowledge” the authors here just happen to have ): that adult sex-offenders “are often serial or repeat offenders “ (thus the DA can presume that no matter how iffy this case is, the “offender” (formerly: ‘the accused’) may reliably be presumed to have done this lots of times before and that such persons are “often practiced liars” (so the prosecutor can salve his/her conscience as to any classical Western law scruples in the sure and certain “knowledge” that the accused is already guilty and guilty of serial crimes and also a habitual and well-practiced liar).
Thus (page 17/5) “prosecutors should incorporate this knowledge of sex-offenders into the investigation and prosecution of [SA] cases”. But then, to cover their tracks here, they quickly add: “… while keeping an open mind about the facts and not prejudging the facts in the course of an investigation”. And what happens if the “facts” do not conform to the sure and certain “knowledge” that these authors have just given to the investigators?
On page 35/23: The authors get into the psychological dimension of “trauma” and “stress”. And in (apparently) scientifically distinguishing between a “traumatic” event and a merely “stressful” event, they then undermine whatever scientific objectivity might lie in this useful and valid distinction by quickly declaring that the key element in deciding whether an incident is “traumatic” or “stressful” is purely the personal response of the individual (who is also, in SA cases, the ‘victim’ making the accusation).
But – apparently not satisfied that they have nailed the lid down here on what they want DA’s to take-away from the Manual – they then state baldly: “Using these definitions, [SA] would always be categorized as a traumatic event”. So there is no such thing as a merely ‘stressful’ SA; they are all ‘traumatic’ by definition (or at least by the authors’ definition). And they ‘know’ this because – waitttt for ittttt – SA ‘victims’ “always report” the symptoms of “traumatic” level effects. Back to getting the “knowledge” from the very persons who are the accusers. (Some readers may already have detected in this thoroughly modern and putatively scientific compendium the clear similarities to the dynamics that enabled the unhappy events of 1692 in what is now Salem, MA.)
And – they continue – even though “most instances of SA do not result in physical injury”, yet “most victims report having intense fear of injury and/or death during an assault”. And we are back to square-one in this putatively scientific compendium by relying merely on the “report” of persons who have claimed to be victims.
And in an even more sly example of a conceptual shell-game here they claim that “an event is NOT defined as traumatic by the severity of the reaction to the event but by the presence of the factors described above” [capitals in the original text]. But in those “factors” they just mentioned above, there is precisely the “factor” of “the strong feelings” with which “the person responded to the event”. So they sound like they are being scientific here, but have actually conceptually said both that the person’s responses do-not, but then actually do, constitute a major and vital criterion in the categorization of an experience as “traumatic” or merely “stressful”.
Then, on page 37/25: we are actually given a comprehensive chart of the Physical, Cognitive, Emotional and Social reactions to “trauma” (and thus to SA). This is, if you look at it and think about it, a perfect how-to manual, in convenient chart-form, for any tortie or front-organization grooming a prospective allegant. And if you read over the categories, you will find many familiar phrases – almost word for word – from various allegants’ claims (including in the most recent Philadelphia trial of a priest, currently being followed on Ralph Cipriano’s BigTrial site). What an amazing coincidence.
And then on page 38/26: the authors admit that only 8 percent of persons in this country develop PTSD from the experience of a “traumatic event” (which all SA’s -we recall – are). But but but: the authors then top themselves in that bit by proceeding quickly to claim that in terms of categories of such experiences of a “traumatic event”, those who have experienced “rape” (note that the term has changed from SA to “rape” here) report (there is that ‘report’ again) to the extent of 49 percent of them having developed PTSD. And this is the highest percentage of ‘reported’ PTSD among all those who have experienced a “traumatic event” of any kind, including those who have had a serious accident or injury (17 percent), been shot or stabbed (15 percent), experienced their child’s life-threatening illness (10 percent), or witnessed a killing or serious injury up close and personal (7 percent). Readers may want to consider this overall claim.
And we note that “rape” is suddenly introduced here, distinguished from “other sexual assault” (24 percent) and is not further defined.
There follows a section on “The Neurobiology of Trauma” but they are already off the scientifically-valid rails by having based all of their determinations merely on the basis of what self-declared ‘victims’ have simply ‘reported’ to them.
And on page 47/35 and following: They get into some seriously interesting maneuvering: they will take on five “counterintuitive” characteristics of SA ‘victim’ behavior that prosecutors must simply ignore as casting doubt on credibility: Delayed Reporting (this must be considered the norm, rather than the exception, in SA cases as opposed to all other crimes); Inconsistent Accounts of the Assault (memory may be neuro-chemically impaired – which is the old repressed-memory bit, gussied up with some neuro-chemical bit – and thus the “victim’s report may evolve over time” … and can you imagine a tortie asking for a more convenient bit of ‘science’ to help plaster over the weakness in a client’s claims and allegations? Also, the author’s surmise that the victim may not even have realized at the time of the ‘experience’ that she was being assaulted – but then, one wonders, how could this be “traumatic”?). And the list continues for your reading consideration.
There are also section on “Privacy” and the “Privacy of Protected Medical Records” and of “Mental Health and Counseling Records” and even a how-to advisory on how to protect against “Addmitting Evidence of Specific Instances of Sexual Conduct” (although the authors insist that the “offender’s” prior sexual conduct be examined very closely and thoroughly.
Well, the entire document is available for your perusal. Readers may wish to consider the tactical and strategic implications of a nation starting its legal system down this road, and the hardly-improbable consequences as this approach migrates into other types of cases or into other Branches of government (especially the Executive and the Legislative).
The material is probably not brand-new or unique to these authors, who may well have simply culled and collected numerous bits already floating around in the victimology sphere and put them all together in one document here. Similar documents may exist in many States as DA’s or Attorneys-General may well have adopted the content of it. It purports to be state-of-the-art thinking in its field.
I will also add a time-saver here: it is quite possible that Abuseniks commenting here may quickly glom onto this thing as ‘proof’ that they were telling the truth all along and so on and so forth. I have tried to give an assessment of the very serious conceptual and logical and scientific-method flaws in it.
I have also noted that this material (if not this actual document) may well have been easily accessible to the torties – such that in various Catholic Abuse Matter cases we will now see an ‘echo effect’. That is to say, the ideas contained in this document were available to torties (and DA’s coaching allegant/witnesses) and thus in even the most contemporary or the most historical cases we will see these ideas underlying various claims, allegations, assertions and bits of the story (or – if you wish – ‘victim narrative’, recalling that it may well “evolve over time”).
If a tortie had set him/herself the task of coming up with a ‘scientific’ Manual that would be both most convenient-for and most supportive-of their objectives and agenda, I cannot imagine a more congenial collection of bits than are contained in this document. If a DA wanted to console him/herself that prosecuting an accused despite the lack of reliable evidence or even the lack of a reliable allegant/witness would be a good thing to do, then I can’t imagine a more helpful document than this one. This document basically explains-away all the inherent difficulties with this type of case, slathering liberally a mélange of scientific-sounding assertions and a basically insufficient (survey) method of acquiring its basic ‘information’.
So the next time you hear a story that makes you wonder, consult the chart mentioned above here, and see how neatly things might fit together.
http://www.michiganprosecutor.org/materials/465.pdf
Yada Yada yada! You talk a lot but you say little that isn't degrading.
Where are all the false claims you say have happened? Where are they?
Where are they?
Are they, perchance, wearing the wig of non-existance?
If victims who have been compensated aren't activist. That's their business. They've gone through enough. Shall I introduce you to the woman here in L.A. who was raped analy so bad that she has had lifelong damage to her rectum? On second thought I don't think she needs to meet your "type". She's dealt with enough a**h**es.
What's your business here?
Just to troll here and repeat, "victims have no proof"? Prove we have no proof.
It's rather incredulous that a woman was raped so badly that she has lifelong physical damage – yet she didn't report such a horrendous crime to all/any of the proper authorities at the time it happened (eg. parents, school, police), and this damage (both physical and emotional) somehow went unnoticed by anyone else (parents, siblings, doctors, teachers, friends) at the time, to remain unreported and so as to enable a vicious predator to escape immediate justice, but more importantly, being swiftly, and hopefully permanently, removed from civilized society.
Can you explain that for the majority of us that do/can not relate to any such circumstances?
Or, is there more to this story?
Victims have next to zero trust of anybody. That's the outcome when a supposedly loving and "good" authority figure like their priest rapes them. When victims meet SNAP and feel that strange controlling behavior SNAP demands, which is very much like a rapist, they walk away.
I've had rightwing victims refuse to allow me to speak at meetings of victims; because i was criticising SNAP. Just like the NCR. It was the only time I was broaching the subject with these victims and I was silenced. I got the message and left. Sound like the land of free speech to you?
Oh really? No documentation that abusers were passed around to abuse again? (And they did it all over the world.) So this whole scandal's just an invention to you. What an idiot!
3 popes apologizing for what didn't happen; that'll be the day.
The 'scandal' is a media creation – it isn't real.
There is ample proof that the media created and still nourishes this 'Frankenstein' creation due to their leftist ideology, which is in direct opposition to Catholic theology/philosophy.
This ample proof is offered here at TMR, and elsewhere, on a daily basis.
The popes apologized for those crimes that actually were committed by clergy, not for the media-created 'scandal', or 'Frankenstein'.
Pope Frank doesn't like capitalism very much D. Or haven't you noticed that? neither did Benny .And could you please explain JP2's unbelievable support for Maciel?
Did the press create Maciel?
Offenses commited by individuals does not a scandal make- just think about the individual offenses committed by members of your community.
Get a dictionary, a thesaurus and a Catholic bible (eg. NAB-revised St. Joseph's edition) and reread any these Pope's Apostolic Exhortations regarding charitable economies before you embarass yourself any further (if that is even possible). Do yourself (and us) a favor, start with Evangilii Gaudium.
Delphin is a religious. a member of the clergy, I believe. He's outed himself.
Here's a present for coming out. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/01/1281312/-Bill-Maher-s-excellent-commentary-on-income-inequality?detail=email
Maher is a leftist atheist bigoted drug-addled whoremonger and pimp, I will pass on anything he has to say, particularly through the Kos-commie prism and worldview.
The wreckage of our lives is our proof. Victims have long histories of issues that show up like an earth quake on a Richter scale.
I got straight A's and National Merit awards before my abuse then straight to d's and f's after the abuse. There's part of my proof.. Our behavior and very personas changed obviously and right when we said it happened.The past is our proof. Your rapes left lives destroyed.
Another issue which no one has addressed yet is the issue of conflation. The abuseniks commonly conflate materials (e.g., "emotional abuse" in which the nun yelled at a student who probably deserved to be yelled at is conflated with serial rape,and this is justified because they would both be a form of "abuse"). We have the same conflation problem in terms of evidence. Any law student who has taken forensic evidence can tell you there are legitimately two types of evidence. The problem arises when the two are pushed together or mixed up.
There is "medical evidence" best summarized as: "where does it hurt?" and there is legal evidence best summarized as "prove that it hurts." The assumption is that a person ordinarily goes to their doctor for relief of a disagreeable condition, and thus would not lie to the doctor (thus a person who stubs their toe would not claim that their elbow hurts; they would truthfully claim that their toe hurts so they can get relief). In the abuse cases, there is the possibiity of a huge monetary payout (and possibly the chance to damage the Church which would be another payout). This means that the medical model (which assumes one always tells the truth to one's treating doctor) really cannot apply. The legal model which demands proof must be used. Unfortunately the stampede (to borrow from Publion) does not want a legal model. This problem needs to be addressed in the abuse cases the same way it is addressed in other personal injury cases, e.g. by having an independent medical exam by a professional of the defendant's choice as well as an exam by the plaintiff's "expert." Of course, the abusenik mentality will claim that this is "re-victimizing" the alleged victim. I could not imagine a plaintiff in an auto accident case being allowed to say "trust me, my leg is broken." They would have to provide an x-ray or other objective evidence. Objective evidence seems to be missing in most abuse cases. There are assertions of symptoms (drug addiction, failed marriages, etc., etc.) but these are not evidence of the specifically alleged tort (e.g., of sexual assault), merely evidence that something is wrong with the plaintiff. Legal evidence demands a clearer nexus or connection between the symptoms and the alleged tort. To again use the auto accident idea, a person could limp because their leg was broken (as they claimed), or because of arthritis or some other condition. A person's symptoms (usually self-reported) do not establish that connnection, there needs to be more rigorous proof.
Rigorous proof is unfortunately sorely lacking in these cases.
So no rapes could ever be proved true based on your model. Yet there are thousands serving hard time for being found guilty of rape. Explain that, if you will.
Building on the ‘Fr. Jim Smith’ comment of the 4th at 711PM, I would add this:
We also see the compiling of lists of ‘facts’ – usually in the form of characteristics or of consequences – that are presented as ‘proof’ that the X that has caused them is horrific and terrible and – the key bit – so awful and so very very unusual that no usual rules (of examination or of assessment or of adjudication) can be allowed to interfere with the ‘emergency’ task of having a ‘war’ against this outrageous X.
We saw this in the Michigan Manual for prosecutors, whereits proponents (not disinterested and objective scientific experts but ‘advocates’ and ‘activists’ types of ‘experts’) quickly established this essential breach: “sex-abuse is truly unlike any other crime”(and thus, of course, the usual – and classically constitutional – rules for handling crimes do not and cannot apply). And once that hole is blown in the hull then there is no stopping the inrush of chaos. (And how long before some fresh bunch of ‘activist-advocate-experts’ will claim that yet some other crime “is truly unlike any other crime” and another hole will be blown in the hull?)
Thus we see ‘lists’ of the damage connected to sex-abuse. But what is never pointed-out is that a) most studies hedge their claims by pointing out that such damages ‘may’ or ‘can’ be caused, but few studies actually go so far as to claim that such damages are absolutely guaranteed to be an outcome.
And b) we notice that the ‘damages’ that are claimed to be scientifically proven to be the specific and guaranteed outcomes of sexual-abuse are actually lists of various forms of human unhappiness that could as easily be the result of half a hundred other human experiences too.
Ditto with lists of characteristics about the ‘perpetrators’. First, we often see not a characteristic but rather an assertion (or phantasm) about such a class of persons. Second, we see little demonstration as to how this or that particular characteristic’s connection was determined. And third, we see a list of personality derangements that could as well apply to a wide range of types.
Over on the BigTrial site “Dennis” has tried to mimic informed competence by putting up just such material as if it were reliably-established information useful to the readership (rather than simply useful to the Abusenik agenda).
And lastly, this raised yet another point about the Anderson Strategies: they did not create or initiate, but certainly took advantage of, a profound trend from the 1960s that I would call the ‘Advocacy Temptation’: various responsible professional elements in society were tempted to join the ‘heroic’ wave by not simply performing their ‘old-school’ tasks but rather putting all of their status and credibility into joining the (fill in the blank) Cause.
The mainstream media is an element that I have already discussed at length in this regard. But ‘science’ – especially the so-called ‘soft sciences’ of psychology and cultural and societal dynamics – was also thus seduced decades ago. Thus in just about any topic which you might imagine to have ‘advocates’, be careful of the ‘science’ or ‘studies’: are they i) based on information derived by ‘surveys’ and ‘self-reports’ that ii) are not followed-up with further investigation by the conductors of the survey and iii) is this fact known to the interviewees and iv) do we know how the interviewees were selected in the first place and v) do we have a list of the actual questions asked in the survey to see if the very phrasing of the questions could or would skew the results?
In this regard, if you go back and read over the first or second John Jay Reports, you see how much trouble they took to explain clearly all of the underlying foundational technique material so that a reader would know just how the conductors of the Study derived and processed the information that would be the basis of their conclusions.
You won’t see this from the Abuseniks because such careful study is not at all how to keep a Stampede going; there’s no quicker way to stop a Stampede than to start examining and assessing (which is why the Playbook has so many bits designed to prevent or derail such examination and assessment, and why the Stampede has proven so seductive to such types as it has attracted to itself).
“Rigorous proof” is not at all desirable if you want to keep a Stampede going – because a Stampede feeds off of phantasms and illusions rather than facts. Facts kill Stampedes – and don’t think Anderson and his kind don’t realize that. Fears and rages and visceral emotions fuel Stampedes; careful and clear thinking, clearly and understandably shared, stops them.
In regard to JR’s remarkable bits on the 5th at 1140:
Second, where are these “thousands serving hard time for being found guilty of rape” – if he is referring to the Catholic Abuse Matter, which is the subject here.
And if he is referring to the general run of “rape” convictions in the country or the world (who knows here?) then I would point out that, in this country anyway, the weakening of evidentiary principles – precisely along the lines indicated in the Michigan Manual and in many of my prior comments on this site – will have contributed tremendously to the problem of determining just how many of those convictions actually were supported by sufficient evidence.
And first, it appears that it is actually beginning to dawn that without evidence there is a serious problem in trying to effect valid and legitimate convictions in any genuine system of law based on hard-won Western legal principles.
The Victimist/Abusenik solution to that problem, of course, has been to claim that since “sexual assault is truly unlike any other crime” then those hard-won Western legal principles need not – and indeed must not – apply.
Responding to JR's 11.40 AM response, I shall explain why people are in jail for rapes. JR claims that the legal model would preclude convictions, and his own assertion that there are "thousands serving hard time" for rape demonstrates the exact opposite. The fact that there are many properly convicted (generally using the legal model for evidence and due process) rapists shows that the legal model does work. Abuseniks do not like it because it is rigorous.
The thousands in jail for rape are presumably there because the police used a rape kit to recover clear evidence from the real victim (how many priests have been convicted on the basis of a rape kit? Spolier alert: NONE), the cops interviewed a random (i.e. not merely friends of the accuser but a truly random collection people who observed something) selection of witnesses, the cops did the interviews in a contemporaeneous manner (not 50 years later). Next the accuser, random witnesses, and the objective evidence were all subject to "confrontation and cross examination" by a defense attorney.The cops and defense lawyers are generally able to evaluate the scene of the crime (as it existed when the event allegedly took place) to see if such a crime was even possible. The jury also gets to look at everyone involved in a contemporaeneous manner (i.e., at the time of the crime, not after they have been "self medicating" for 35 years) and pass its judgment. That is how the legal model works. And JR is correct, it does produce a lot of valid convictions. That is why someone who truly thirsts for justice should not fear the legal model. The legal model not only (generally) convicts the right people, it generally frees the falsely accused.
The advantage to the legal model is there is much less chance for a false conviction (although it does happen). The medical model is great for personal treatment by one's own doctor, but it is terrible as public policy for judging other peoples' guilt or innocence. Of course, if guilt is already assumed, there is no need for such old fashioned ideas as evidence and proof that a given symptom really did result from a specifically alleged tort.
O.K. None of our rapes ever happened. Pay none of us. ….Oh, wait a minute! You are paying none of us.(save but a few) And the rapes still happened.
How many perpetrators, think like you? Most I would say. Screw the kid there's no one there but the perp and his victim. It's the perp's word against the victims. Therefore according to your "logic' the rapes never happened. Only they did happen again and again and again. So you protect all the rapists with your logic and discredit all the raped. How's that working for you?