Louisiana Overhauls Fucked Up (The Arse) Laws

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Louisiana Overhaul of Discriminatory Law: Hundreds Cleared from Sex Offender List

Community groups and lawyers deal blow to the state's over 100 year-old 'Crimes Against Nature' law
Sarah Lazare
June 13, 2013

Over 700 people accused of selling or soliciting sex for money were wiped from the sex offender registry in Louisiana last night after a historic settlement to beat back the state's archaic 'Crimes Against Nature' laws.

The development marked a huge victory for sex workers, members of the LGBTQ community, poor people, and women, who disproportionately bore the brunt of a law that slapped heavy punishments on accused sex workers.

The victory came after Women with a Vision, BreakOUT!, and the Center for Constitutional Rights worked with affected communities to file a class action lawsuit.

"Yesterday when I heard, I was so excited. This was a grassroots, queer-led, effort. People were screaming for change, and they won," declared Deon Haywood, executive director of New Orleans-based Women with a Vision.

Louisiana's Crime Against Nature by Solicitation (CANS), was created in the late 1800s to criminalize sexual devience, and today targets the selling of oral or anal sex for a fee.

Before 2011, police had full discretion over whether to charge accused sex workers with prostitution, which results in a misdemeanor, or CANS, which mandates registration as a sex offender.

Salon reports:

In practice — and particularly in New Orleans, whose police department is currently under a federal consent decree for discriminatory practices — that has meant the disproportionate charging of people of color and LGBT people for “crimes against nature.” The Department of Justice report on discrimination in the New Orleans Police Department noted that “in particular, transgender women complained that NOPD officers improperly target and arrest them for prostitution, sometimes fabricating evidence of solicitation for compensation. Moreover, transgender residents reported that officers are likelier, because of their gender identity, to charge them under the state’s ‘crimes against nature’ statute — a statute whose history reflects anti-LGBT sentiment.”

"There is a thing called guilty of walking while transgender," explained Haywood.

The Center for Constitutional Rights explains that sex offender status heavily penalizes already marginal communities.

People affected by this law have been barred from homeless shelters, physically threatened, and refused residential substance abuse treatment because providers will not accept registered sex offenders at their facilities. As in the earlier case, all plaintiffs in this action proceeded anonymously for fear of retaliation.

A federal judge last year ruled that forcing people convicted of CANS to register as sex offenders violates their constitutional rights. Yet, when hundreds remained on the registry after this federal ruling, community organizations worked with the affected community and lawyers to file the class action lawsuit that was settled last was settled last night.

Community groups explain that the victory was won by people directly affected by the law. "This case would move forward by people standing in their truth and sharing their stories," explains Deon Haywood, whose organizatin takes on issues of Sex Worker Rights, Drug Policy Reform, HIV Positive Women’s Advocacy, and Reproductive Justice outreach, according to their website.

"We did something people said we couldn't do," says Haywood. "They said we couldn't organize the population represented in this case. They said we couldn't win because of who we were. People say change doesn't happen in the south. But it just did." Common Dreams

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The Centre For Constitutional Rights has this, endorsing as it does, everything I said in my previous article.

In Louisiana, people accused of soliciting sex for a fee can be criminally charged in two ways: either under the prostitution statute, or under the solicitation provision of the Crime Against Nature statute. This archaic statute, adopted in 1805, outlaws “unnatural carnal copulation,” which has been defined by Louisiana courts as oral and anal (but not vaginal) sex. Police and prosecutors have unfettered discretion in choosing which to charge. But a Crime Against Nature conviction subjects people to far harsher penalties than a prostitution conviction. Most significantly, individuals convicted of a Crime Against Nature are forced to register as sex offenders.

The registry law imposes many harsh requirements that impacts every aspect of our clients’ lives. For example, they must carry a state driver’s license or non-drivers’ identification document which brands them as a sex offender in bright orange capital letters. They must disclose the fact that they are registered as a sex offender to neighbors, landlords, employers, schools, parks, community centers, and churches. Their names, address, and photographs appear on the internet.

Many of our clients have been unable to secure work or housing as a result of their registration as sex offenders. Several have been barred from homeless shelters. One has been physically threatened by neighbors. And another has been refused residential substance abuse treatment because providers will not accept sex offenders at their facilities. more

Steubenville Ohio - The Steubenville Files

Link below updated.

I don't think I have read anything that quite justifies my loathing for America as does this catalogue, nay, this cesspit of corruption in that worst of all places, small town America.

The Steubenville Files
localleaks.blogs.ru/
January 1, 2013

On August 27, 2012 two members of the Big Red High School football team in Steubenville, Ohio – USA were arrested and charged with the rape and kidnapping of an out of town 16 year old girl that took place on August 11th. At the time of this gang rape, the girl was intoxicated and unconscious. The victim had been intentionally drugged with a “date rape” intoxicant. She was photographed and video was taken of her in this condition, and there is evidence that she was hauled in a comatose state to multiple parties – and almost certainly raped by more members of the local high school football team than just the two players who currently stand charged. There is even evidence that she was urinated upon during this hideous assault.


Despite all this, it looked as though a town rife with corruption, cronyism, illegal gambling and fixated upon their star high school football team (a major economic revenue engine) were prepared to orchestrate a major cover-up in order to sweep the entire affair under the rug. As this disclosure will document, this cover-up was perpetrated by people in the high school administration, local government and law enforcement.

– Enter Anonymous –

On December 23, 2012 a cell within Anonymous called “Knight Sec” took up the cause of giving a voice to the victim of this horrible crime, and began unraveling this conspiracy of silence designed to protect a group of these high school football players who had become well known to their fellow students as “The Rape Crew”. Fueled by intelligence they had received from many students at Big Red High School, they launched Operation RollRedRoll by releasing this video. Take careful note of the various screen capture images of pictures taken by these monsters of this poor defenseless girl, and note their many comments made in tweets and Facebook posts regarding their crime (now since deleted). More

"The Steubenville Files" UPDATE: We've just updated the info on what happened at Coach Belerdine's house. http://localleaks.blogs.ru/

Pariahs Among Us: Sex Offender Laws in the 21st Century

Nothing I need to add really, between what I have said previously and the content, it pretty much says it all I guess.

But if the blog had a tag: How many lives can we ruin today, for no good reason, then this story would fit it to a tee.

In actual fact, - lives ruined forever - will get you a result in the search bar.

But I don't think anything is going to prepare you for that part of the article that involves Louisiana. Sick puppies is the term that first springs to mind, and I ain't talking about the offenders, I'm talking about the State.

 Pariahs among us: Sex offender laws in the 21st century

Stringent sex offender laws in the United States destroy lives and do little to mitigate repeat offences.
Charlotte Silver
14 Oct 2012

Maybe it is not so surprising that all we can think to do with a subject we are simultaneously obsessed with and repulsed by is to shout our alarm about it at every opportunity.

Sex crimes: The only kind of offence in the United States that compels all convicted perpetrators to register their name, address, date of birth, fingerprints and a photograph on a public website.

And what constitutes a sex crime? The breadth of this damning classification is alarming and includes public urination, consensual teen sex, sale of sex and exposure of genitals (including in the case of children) - as well as violent rape.

One poignant example of the irrationality and senseless devastation of overreaching sex offender laws is the story of Evan B, as told by Lara Geer Farley. When Evan was in high school he was arrested for exposing himself to a group of his female peers. A court sentenced him to four months in prison, but after he was released he was obliged to register as a sex offender. The stigma drove Evan to drop out of school, leave his home in Salina, Oklahoma and move to Tulsa, where the arduous requirements associated with his sex offender status meant that he could not maintain employment. A month before he should have turned 20, Evan shot and killed himself.

And this: A comprehensive Human Rights Watch report, published in 2007, draws attention to the common case of teenage boys aged 15, 16, 17, who have consensual sex with their teenaged girlfriends, finding themselves charged with pedophilia. They will be labelled and publicly registered as "pedophiles" for the rest of their lives.

In some states, boys as young as 10 who expose themselves to their female friends or relatives are forced to register as a "sex offender" before they understand what sex - or exposure - is.

 Outcasts

Additional laws that govern the lives of sex offenders after they are released from prison (if time is served) vary from state to state. But for all, surveillance and stringent notification guidelines are key. In addition to publicising one's status on a website, some states require registrants (the preferred moniker) to inform their neighbours, future employers, landlords, delivery men - or any other solicitor or visitor who knocks on their door - of their status as a "sex offender".

Some states require convicts to wear GPS devices, so that law enforcers can monitor their whereabouts at all time.

Louisiana requires registrants to advertise their status in large red type on their driver's licence.

Other states require periodic plethysmograph tests, in which a pressure sensitive wire is connected to the registrant's penis while being shown various sexual images. The test is designed to detect "sexual deviance".

The registrant is required to attend therapy and "behaviour modification" sessions, check in with probation officers, as well as, of course, engage the services of an attorney, none of which is cheap. Most of these costs are carried by the offender, or as is often the case, his parents.

In addition to adopting legislation that inverts the life of anyone cast as a sex offender - making him quite literally a public spectacle - hundreds of counties have established "exclusion zones". These are areas that surround various public places - parks, schools, libraries, etc - where registrants may not live, work or even walk by.

The proliferation of sex offender registration and residency restriction laws began in 1994 when the US Congress and Senate unanimously passed the Wetterling Act, which required convicted sex offenders to register their information with the state of their residence. Over the past two decades, the federal government has passed law after law that publicised the registry, tightened its stringency and perhaps most crucial, broadened its domain.

In 2006, Congress passed the Adam Walsh Act, which aimed to eliminate the inconsistencies among different states' sex offender laws. However, the ugly reality is that it expanded the "sex offences" that demanded registration and thus doomed juvenile, non-violent offenders to, potentially, a lifetime of registration. The law was easily renewed by the US House of Representatives this August - a true indicator of just how politically expedient these laws are.

Even Patty Wetterling, the woman responsible for the enactment of the Wetterling law, in 2006 lamented the direction the country had taken to handle sex offences: "People want a silver bullet that will protect their children, [but] there is no silver bullet. There is no simple cure to the very complex problem of sexual violence."

Advocates of "sex offenders" speak up

Hard evidence and reason suggest that registries and residential requirements do nothing to protect society from sexual assaults. Arguments in support of registration laws rest on a fear-based assumption that notification will protect children, but that assumption is baseless: As many as 90 per cent of sexual assault cases are conducted by family members or acquaintances. Furthermore, recidivism rates among sex offenders are under 25 per cent.

While sex offender laws provide the illusion of "security", the reality remains that rapists continue to walk free. According to statistics compiled by the US Department of Justice, 91 per cent of rapists will never be prosecuted, and only a fraction of those will be convicted or spend time in jail.

Nevertheless, these laws keep coming.

This year in Southern California, as Halloween approaches, some counties have passed ordinances banning registrants from decorating their houses with cobwebs and pumpkins, instead requiring they post a placard that notifies all passersby that there are "No candy or treats at this residence". Furthermore, registrants may have no outside lighting on October 31.

California's branch of the national coalition, Reform Sex Offender Laws, has filed a lawsuit against the ordinance on behalf of five unnamed sex offenders, as well as three of their spouses and two of their children. The suit claims the ordinance violates the plaintiffs' first amendment rights - by both forcing speech and denying their right to celebrate the holiday.

In the meantime, a San Francisco law firm has filed a case against the stringent residency restrictions placed on registrants in four counties in Southern California.

These lawsuits in California are some of the first legal challenges to the mounting set of restrictions placed on a broad class of "criminals" throughout the country.

News of lawsuits challenging punitive legislation is appearing next to headlines reporting that some states may well reject the Adam Walsh Act because they simply don't have the funds to implement its burdensome requirements (Texas estimated it would cost $38m) or are ethically opposed to legislation that would place juvenile offenders on a registry for life.

The hypocrisy of sex offender laws that allege to combat sexual crime by pouring millions into surveillance and registry programmes is reflected in the difficulty experienced by rape support centres that are struggling to merely survive.

The National Alliance to End Sexual Violence (NAESV) reported in a 2012 Rape Crisis Center Survey that 67 per cent of rape crisis centres were forced to reduce the amount of hours they spend dedicated to prevention and awareness programmes; 50 per cent of programmes have eliminated staff in the past year; and 65 per cent of programmes have a waiting list for counseling services.

Sex offender laws have enabled the creation of a being - the pariah - the very notion of which is rooted in an unenlightened (and assumed by most of us to be discarded) view of humanity. A society must surely protect its vulnerable members from violence and assault. Draconian sex offender laws do not further that aim. They have simply accorded the state the power to brand an individual as undeserving of the most basic human and civil rights.

Source:

Al Jazeera

Sex laws 
Unjust and ineffective 
America has pioneered the harsh punishment of sex offenders. Does it work?

Footnote: for what it's worth, Blogger has a complete bollocks made of the HTML on this new mandatory interface. It used to be so very simple, now it's like mad woman's shit, it's all over the place.

Masked Men Carved Anti-Gay Slurs Into Nebraska Woman’s Body

This is what happens when the national dialogue is preoccupied with the sexuality of others.

Along with a preoccupation for Jesus that is. Not to mention the IQ of the perps, prejudice and intolerance, always being inversely proportional to intelligence.

Police: Masked Men Carved Anti-Gay Slurs Into Nebraska Woman’s Body
by Neetzan Zimmerman
23 July 2012

An openly lesbian Nebraska woman appears to have been the target of a horrific hate crime which took place inside her own Lincoln home.

Police: Masked Men Carved Anti-Gay Slurs Into Nebraska Woman's Body

According to the victim, three masked men broke into her home yesterday morning and tied her up with zip ties. They then proceeded to carve the word "dyke" into her skin and spray painted "we found u dyke" on her basement wall.

"They put gasoline on the floor and they lit the match. I think the intent was to burn her," said close friend Erin Thompson. "Then they left and she managed to get out. She was still bound, so she was crawling on her hands and knees, and she got out the back door."

The unnamed woman, who was naked and bleeding, managed to make her way to her to the home of neighbor Linda Rappl. "I was in shock," Rappl told CNN. "She was naked, her hands were tied with zip ties. All I could see was a cut across her forehead and blood running down."

Rappl covered the sobbing woman up and phoned 911.

Lincoln Police have no suspects, but said the incident, which has been classified as a hate crime, is still under investigation.

Mayor Chris Beutler released a statement today calling hate crimes "despicable and appalling," and vowing that the city's police force with do all in its power to "ensure that justice is done."

Lincoln's LGBT community responded en masse to the shocking assault, with hundreds attending an impromptu vigil last night in solidarity with the victim.

"Our hearts go out to the victim, her family and close friends. Many in our community are understandably experiencing a great deal of sadness, anger and confusion," said Tyler Richard, president of the LGBT support group Outlinc. "We look to our entire community to pull together in this difficult time."

Advocate group Star City Pride has launched a victim recovery fund which is collecting money to help the victim's "physical recovery and her overall healing."

According to Rappl, the woman was treated at the hospital before being released to an emergency shelter where she is currently residing. Gawker

Bill Hicks was never one for illusions about Ameriki.

#OpLithChild: Peadophile Politicians and Judges

I read this article late last night as a result of a last trawl through Twitter. Although I rather wish I hadn't done at that time of night.

The only thing that comes anywhere near the horrors of this story is the blatant corruption of the Lithuanian judiciary and government.

Now I know it might be easy to dismiss this as something 'over there,' the backward Baltics, and something that couldn't happen in dear old Blighty, but it has and it does. The McCanns are walking the streets and Robert Green is in jail.

#OpLithChild: Pedophile politicians & judges, murder & a child to be returned to the mother who pimped her

This story envelopes a dysfunctional family living within in a devastatingly broken system — the mother accused of selling her daughter to a pedophile ring of high ranking authorities, including judges and politicians. The videos are unsettling, the transcripts of the investigation will make you angry. The murders will make your imagination go wild. The activism, will amaze you. Many factors played a role in uniting a country, demanding justice. Those cries for justice have gone unheard.

In a nutshell: A girl just three years old was pimped out by her own mother to three adult men; for 4,000 Euros per month. Those three men are high ranking members of the Lithuanian Government. Most of the key figures in this story are dead — murdered — with the exception of the mother, and the court is trying to force the child to live with her again — this child is the last breathing witness.

To turn this injustice around, we need your help; Welcome to #OpLithChild.

The story.

A daughter was born after the marriage of Drasius Kedys and Laima Stankunaite in 2004; years later they divorced. Mom got custody but neglected her child, so the father brought her to live with him, with the court’s approval.

The young girl began telling her father that she had been raped by several men, and that her mother would take her to a rented apartment, where she had to satisfy the sexual needs of three men, was molested, and sexually abused. Drasius called the police promptly – just after the investigation began it ended abruptly and illegally when it was found exactly which particular men were being accused of the pedophilia – judge/judges and politicians.

Jonas Furmanavicius, the Judge of the Kaunas Regional Court and politician Andrius Usas were both accused; another was only remembered as Aidas by the child.

Drasius Kedys, the father, was relentless, submitting over 200 statements to the Lithuanian law enforcement authorities asking to investigate the case of pedophilia thoroughly. Drasius suddenly went missing. On the day that this was announced, Judge Jonas Furmanavicius and Violeta Naruseviciene, the sister of Laima Stankunaite (the mother), who, according to Kedys, had also been an alleged accomplice in this procuration case, were all shot in Kaunas.

Drasius was charged with these crimes, although his fingerprints were not found on the firearms; no other evidence confirmed his alleged guilt — at this point, the demonization of the only protector the child has ever known began publicly – he was accused of drug abuse and as a member of a gang, although there was no evidence of such.

In April of 2010, Drasius was murdered. Gone — the only trusted person for the Lithuanian girl to go to, to love her and to protect her. Ripped from her life. A detailed investigation of his murder did not occur.

Drasius’s body was found near the Kaunas Lagoon. The story gets worse. The authorities deemed his death as the result of drinking, then choking on the contents of his stomach, however, an independent investigation by experts confirm that he was beaten, tortured, then drowned.

The young girl’s custody was given to the father’s sister, Neringa Venckiene. Like her brother, Neringa was relentless, pursuing justice in her niece’s case and the case of her allegedly murdered brother.

The prosecutor’s negligence prompted another committee to be formed to delve into this case in order to get to the truth. The committee found the girl’s allegations to be true after sifting through the evidence. This resolution was announced publicly and presented to the President — never disputed or appealed.

After two thorough psychiatric and psychological examinations, the girl was found to be truthful. The same cannot be said of the mother, or the other party accused, Andrius Usas. Lie detector tests did not result in their favor. They lied.

As far as we’ve gotten in this story, it should not surprise you that both defendants remain free. Although their guilt was found to be worthy of trial by prosecutors, it was up to the court to take action - official allegations have not been made against Jonas Furmanavicius, nor against potential procuress, the girl’s mother Laima Stankunaite.

The young Lithuanian girl suffered from two years of abuse, having to endure unconscionable things, such as oral and vaginal sex at three years old. Are you upset yet? It gets even worse. The court is forcing her to go back to her mother. The child is close to her aunt and feels secure, however, the court is ripping that bond from its very foundations, shattering the young child’s life — again. In 2010 DELPHI reported, “Audrone Skuciene, Aunt and godmother Kedys was shocked by the court decision and said that the relatives do not intend to enforce the order.” (that’s loosely translated).

After finding out she would have to return to her mother’s, the child suffered from shock. She became ill, vomiting, screaming and crying; an ambulance was called (see: video above). Since then, the court remains steadfast that the girl be forced to live with her mother — the mother who sold her to strangers for their perverted sexual satisfaction. The girl feels unsafe, sleeping in bed with her aunt every night. The mother has no stable residence, no income and no heart. Can this get worse? Yes, yes it can. When the child is returned to her mother, both will be sent to a foreign country. Both are witnesses to the clan of pedophiles; both are not victims however. Article with links, extras, clips and petition. (Slow server)

Joseph Ratzinger Paedophile Protector J'accuse The Shocking Story of Dutch Clerical Abuse

I ran one of the stories featured here a little earlier today, so of the words I wrote previously, I shall avail myself now. See: Time for the truth about Catholic sex abuse in the Netherlands.

Firstly though, a third party description regarding the work carried out by Dutch journalists, Joep Dohmen and Robert Chesal in exposing the horrific goings on in the Dutch Catholic Church.

A short report then follows; both men receiving Journalists of the year awards, and after that, the horror stories.

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Church of child abuse
by Marcel Van Silfhout
March 20, 2012

The stories that reached the newspapers are painful and tragic

The scandal was first revealed in Ireland. Then more scams surfaced in the United States and Australia, followed by Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and The Netherlands. The Vatican might hope for an end to the sweeping devastating scandals about child sex abuse at countless Catholic institutions. But realists will say: “its just the beginning”. All eyes were on Pope Benedict XVI what would he say in his Easter message. Would he say sorry at least? He didn’t.

As said, Holland wasn’t the first and only country to disclose the existence of a wide range of paedophile priests, monks, fathers and teachers in the past decades. But the number of scandals in this little country is still impressive.

It all started with the excellent investigative reporting done by Joep Dohmen (NRC-Handelsblad) and Robert Chesal (RNW-Radio Netherlands Wordwide) late February. Since their publications of child sex abuse in a monastery and a boarding school of the so-called ´Salesianer Order´ there hasn’t been a day without new revelations. Meanwhile, Dohmen and Chesal received hundreds of new complaints about various cases of abuse in Catholic schools and seminaries. They counted at least 137 Catholic fathers and monks involved in the offences. As a result, the Dutch Catholic Church has started an investigation.

The stories that reached the papers are confronting, painful and tragic. Many men, aged between 45 and 80, for the first time in their lives, cried out loud, disclosing the traumatic incidents when they were young, innocent, vulnerable and defenceless. As boys they were sent to these schools by their parents who had full trust in the holy Catholic Church, its institutions and its devoted priests.

The boys, sometimes girls, didn’t dare to complain. And if they did, nobody believed them. Parents even became angry with them when they tried to speak out. The detailed descriptions of sex abuse in these stories could only be summarised by the adequate word that former Archbishop and cardinal Ratzinger used just one week before his election to the papacy in 2005. He referred to priests who abused their position as ´filth´.

More important, most of the cases of child abuse are criminal, a clear matter of violating the law. But due to the fact that it happened mainly in the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s makes it impossible to bring them to justice. In Holland, punishments of 8 to 12 year are given, but crimes such as these can only be prosecuted within 12 to 20 years.

As a result, the Dutch government has decided to extend the time period to take up child abuse cases to an unlimited period. There is reason to do so: Child abuse belongs to the highest ranks of criminal offences. One has to read some of the many detailed stories. All the victims have suffered psychological damage of highest degree throughout their lives. Though some of them have reached the age of 80 years, they still suffer from nightmares, shame, depression and total distrust. The scale of the scandals might be astonishing and the list of dramatic consequences is beyond imagination.

Nevertheless, the Dutch Archbishop Johannes Simonis has managed to get Holland into stupefaction once more. In the famous late-night talk show Pauw And Witteman, Simonis said: ´Wir habben es nicht Gewusst,´´ (we didn’t know) a phrase that is used in Holland as the famous understatement made by Germans when they tried to explain their failure to prevent atrocities committed by the Nazi regime. Simonis excused himself the other day for using this notorious phrase, but of course these same words apply to his boss, the German Pope Benedictus XVI. He did know.

According to the authoritative Süddeutsche Zeitung, former Cardinal Ratzinger was fully aware of a paedophile priest ´Brother H´ who should have got therapy, but later on continued his activities of child sex abuse. The New York Times also accused Benedictus of failing to act over an American priest who molested up to 200 deaf children between 1950 and 1974.

In an editorial, the Dutch quality newspaper NRC Handelsblad is clear about the almost impossible position of the pope. “The net is closing around Pope Benedict XVI´ and ´he has become part of the problem.” A few weeks ago the Dutch emeritus professor Hans Küng wrote in the same paper that it was Cardinal Ratzinger´s office at the Vatican that demanded the exclusive authorisation of all cases concerning rampant child sex abuse in order to keep those events discreet. In other words, it was the Vatican policy executed by Ratzinger personally to keep it all secret.

The Vatican is still defending its vision that most of the cases are old, known and cleared. Catholic spokesman speaks about ´incidents.´ But it is clear in Holland, Germany, the United States, Australia, Austria and Switzerland that the scandals aren’t incidents. They are structural phenomena.

On Palm Sunday, Pope Benedictus XVI didn’t mention the child sex abuse scandals, but he did say: “God gives the one who believes the courage to withstand intimidation by rumours made in common opinion.” If this is all that he had to say at Easter, it is clear that the Vatican once more brings us callousness and arrogance, instead of the necessary apologies, transparency and investigations. Just another ´wir habben es nicht gewust´ (we didn´t know) won´t work.

(Marcel van Silfhout is an investigative reporter working for public Dutch Television). Oman Tribune

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Robert Chesal and Joep Dohmen honoured as Journalist of the Year
27 January 2011

Recognition for the work of journalists, and recognition for the thousands of victims of church sex abuse. This is how Radio Netherlands Worldwide reporter Robert Chesal characterised the 2010 Journalist of the Year Award. Robert Chesal and his colleague Joep Dohmen from the newspaper NRC Handelsblad received the award from the hands of Culture Minister Marja van Bijsterveldt.

Joep Dohmen, Minister Marja van Bijsterveldt, Robert Chesal

The annual prize is awarded by the editorial staff of the Journalists’ magazine Villamedia Magazine. Robert Chesal and Joep Dohmen were honoured for their series of publications on sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church; publications preceded by months of investigative journalism.

One revelation after another

Reports about church sex abuse had surfaced years earlier in Ireland, the United States and Germany, but everything remained quiet in the Netherlands, until Robert Chesal called up Joep Dohmen following an interview about abuse at a boarding school. Robert put the right journalistic question: “Was this man’s report an incident or symptomatic of a much wider problem?” Their collaboration led to a stream of publications featuring one revelation after another and eventually gave rise to the creation of the Deetman Commission which was charged with investigation the reports. Radio Netherlands Worldwide

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This is the text I previously employed to introduce the post below under the header:

Peadophile Priests Prime Ministers Politicians and Police

Not a story about the UK, if from reading the header, that is what you were expecting, but more details surrounding the previous shocking expose, Forced Child Castrations Reportedly Found in Roman Catholic Care.

Evil is a word I seldom use, the main reason being, the way the word has been hi-jacked by the religious, giving a single word the status of an entity in its own right; evil, like the Devil, lurking in some dark corner as it were.

But there is evil here, not in the form of some supernatural demon, but like evil the world over, evil in the only form it takes, the only form it has, man alone. And nothing so evil as man cloaked in the garb of all evils, the apparel of religion. And in this particular case, worn by those of the Catholic Church.

And let not one of you, for the love of what ever fictional entity you may pray to, have the affront to tell me, ''but this isn't true Catholicism'' because it is. This cult of perversion and pederasty is every bit true of Catholicism as intolerance, misogyny, and the cult of death, is Islam.

The paedophile will never stop abusing children, if only in his fantasies. The wife beater, for all his contrition and promises after the act, will never stop beating his wife, and the priesthood will never stop physically and sexually abusing children. It is what they are, it is their being, their fundamental make up, it is as unalterable as their DNA.

And unimaginable as it might seem, there are those that carry even more guilt than those that perpetrated these horrific acts on children, those that let it happen decade after decade, the Joseph Ratzinger's of this world.

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Time for the truth about Catholic sex abuse in the Netherlands
19 March 2012

The revelation that a number of minors who were abused in Dutch Roman Catholic institutions were also forcibly castrated has shocked the Netherlands. It casts grave doubt upon the recent findings of a commission set up to look into abuse in the church. RNW's Robert Chesal, who first brought the sex abuse scandal to light, argues that only parliament can be trusted to investigate further.

We now know that former Dutch cabinet minister Wim Deetman did not meet the expectations he raised when he chaired the commission of inquiry into sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic church. He did not get to the bottom of the abuse scandal or reveal all of the horrors that took place behind church doors in the Netherlands. More

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Forced castrations reportedly found in Roman Catholic care
17 March 2012

Underage sexual abuse victims were castrated in Dutch Roman Catholic psychiatric wards in the 1950s, according to the Rotterdam-based newspaper NRC Handelsblad.

Castration was performed on young men who were thought to be homosexual, but also as a means of punishing those who blew the whistle on abusers, the paper quotes sources as saying.

NRC discovered proof of the forced castration of one young man and strong evidence that at least ten other abuse victims were subjected to the removal of their testicles. The proof includes court documents, medical records, letters from lawyers and private correspondence.

According to the paper, the practice was reported in 2010 to the Deetman Commission which completed its investigation of sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic church last December. The commission, led by former cabinet minister Wim Deetman of the Christian Democrat party (CDA), made no mention of the castration of abuse victims in its final report. More

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Covering the Catholic sex abuse cover-up
16 December 2011

Roman Catholic bishops in the Netherlands protected sexual abusers and covered up their crimes, according to a major new report released today. The church-installed Deetman Commission says there were up to 20,000 victims of abuse between the end of World War II and 1981.

Radio Netherlands Worldwide journalist Robert Chesal - together with NRC Handelsblad's Joep Dohmen - brought to light the abuse that led to a national scandal. Robert Chesal looks back at how the story unfolded.

You could say that 2010 was the year when the Roman Catholic sex abuse scandal went viral. Until February of that year, abuse of youngsters by Catholic clergy was primarily seen as a problem in Ireland and the United States.

German scandal
But that month, as northern Europe lay buried in snow, a simmering problem began to reach boiling point. Reports from a Catholic boarding school run by Jesuits in the German capital Berlin spoke first of a few, then of a dozen, and then of over a hundred victims of abuse by priests.

One of those reports reached me at the RNW newsroom in mid-February. That same day I read that Pope Benedict XVI had ordered the entire Irish bishops' conference to appear at the Vatican, where they would receive a dressing down for failing to tackle abuse in their dioceses. I decided to investigate what, if anything, had happened in the Netherlands. More and the bigger picture.

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"Catholic church knew about sexual abuse in 1958"
30 November 2011

A Dutch current affairs programme has uncovered evidence that in 1958 the Netherlands’ Catholic Church hierarchy was told that children were being physically and sexually abused in its institutions. The evidence is contained in a letter found in the archives of the Catholic child protection services. The letter was written by a judge who warned the board of the child protection services that clerics were sexually abusing children.

The board took action and sent various letters to the boards of institutions to warn them. The confidential letters mentioned a black list of abusers. But the church hierarchy failed to take steps to stop the abuse. End

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Dutch bishop faces new abuse allegations
15 November 2011

The Dutch police have been asked via Interpol to investigate new sex abuse allegations against retired Dutch bishop 'Cor S.' Radio Netherlands Worldwide has learned this from conversations with the sex crimes division of the Irish national police. In the Netherlands, both the police and prosecution service deny having received the request.

Cor S. (full name withheld) is one of six Roman Catholic priests who face allegations from Emmanuel Shikuku, a former seminary student from Kenya. All six are members of the Mill Hill Missionaries, a society based in Maidenhead, England which has told Radio Netherlands that all the allegations are untrue.

Altar boy
Mr Shikuku, now 42, has told the Irish sex crimes police he was the victim of a long series of rapes, coercive sexual contact and other forms of abuse by Mill Hill priests starting in the late 1970s. Four of the alleged perpetrators are Dutch and two are believed to be British. More

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Abuse in Dutch Catholic care: more evidence
24 September 2011

Serious abuses went on unreported for years in Dutch Roman Catholic homes for the mentally disabled. They included sex offences, castration, secret medical experiments and possibly murder. One Catholic brother was banished to Africa for doing unethical brain research. Radio Netherlands Worldwide tracked him down.

Until recent years, most abuses in Dutch institutional care were kept out of the public eye. One exception was a scandal in 1978 involving medical experiments at 'Huize Assisië’, a Roman Catholic boarding school for mentally handicapped boys in the southern town of Udenhout.

Brain x-rays
The home's medical doctor and a Catholic nurse known as Brother Dionysius performed spinal taps on approximately 180 patients, including minors. They injected fluid and air into the patients' brains in order to take x-rays of the cerebral cortex. These were used for brain research which was quietly being carried out. After the injections, the patients suffered nausea and headaches for days. Their parents were neither asked for permission nor notified of the procedures. More and quite shocking.

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Abuse victims urge ICC to prosecute the pope
13 September 2011

Victims of sexual abuse by the clergy have asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague to prosecute Pope Benedict XVI and other leading Vatican officials for crimes against humanity. A worldwide network of victims accuses the pontiff and three cardinals of aiding and abetting wide-scale rape and sexual violence against children by priests. Fat chance! more

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High child death rate in 1950s mental institution investigated
17 August 2011

The Dutch Public Prosecutor’s Office is investigating the cases of 34 mentally disabled youngsters who died whilst in the care of Roman Catholic clergy at the St Joseph care home in the southern province of Limburg at the beginning of the 1950s.

However, it has now also come to light that 40 girls at another Catholic home in the same town, Heel, also died in the period 1952 - 1954. In the case of these deaths, at the St Anna home for mentally disabled women, the girls were all aged 12 or younger, whilst the boys who died at St Joseph's were between 11 and 18. More

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There are in fact, five pages of this stuff, page two can be found here, Radio Netherlands Worldwide, personally, I've had enough.

A choice of two videos below, both highlighting the Vatican's complicity in protecting priests at all costs and the total disregard in which it held the child victims of clerical sexual abuse.

And one last word, dripping with irony as it does, Rick Santorum's recent cheap politicking regarding euthanasia in the Netherlands. (See Rick Santorum tag)

It would appear that euthanasia has been practiced in the Netherlands, eugenics certainly have, and we know by whose hand, that of the Catholic Church.

Rick Santorum is a Catholic. And like every other subject that Ricky has an opinion on, he also has an opinion on paedophilia in the Catholic Church: Santorum Hypocrisy Writ Large: Church Paedophilia a 'Basic Homosexual Relationship'

Perhaps one or two of you might like to give Ricky a tweet regarding this post.

Mick Peelo looks at some internal Vatican letters that appear to paint a picture of Vatican obstructionism towards investigations into clerical sexual abuse.

Sex Crimes and the Vatican is a documentary film by Colm O'Gorman, who was raped by a Catholic priest in the diocese of Ferns in County Wexford in Ireland when he was 14 years old. Father Sean Fortune was charged with 66 counts of sexual, indecent assault and another serious sexual offence relating to eight boys but he committed suicide on the eve of his trial. Colm started an investigation with the BBC in March 2002 which led to the resignation of Dr Brendan Comiskey, the bishop leading the Ferns Diocese. Colm then pushed for a government inquiry which led to the Ferns Report.

Big tip of the hat, Dutch reader, Maren.

Peadophile Priests Prime Ministers Politicians and Police

Not a story about the UK, if from reading the header, that is what you were expecting, but more details surrounding the previous shocking expose, Forced Child Castrations Reportedly Found in Roman Catholic Care.

Evil is a word I seldom use, the main reason being, the way the word has been hi-jacked by the religious, giving a single word the status of an entity in its own right; evil, like the Devil, lurking in some dark corner as it were.

But there is evil here, not in the form of some supernatural demon, but like evil the world over, evil in the only form it takes, the only form it has, man alone. And nothing so evil as man cloaked in the garb of all evils, the apparel of religion. And in this particular case, worn by those of the Catholic Church.

And let not one of you, for the love of what ever fictional entity you may pray to, have the affront to tell me, ''but this isn't true Catholicism'' because it is. This cult of perversion and pederasty is every bit true of Catholicism as intolerance, misogyny, and the cult of death is Islam.

The paedophile will never stop abusing children, if only in his fantasies. The wife beater, for all his contrition and promises after the act, will never stop beating his wife, and the priesthood will never stop physically and sexually abusing children. It is what they are, it is their being, their fundamental make up, it is as unalterable as their DNA.

And unimaginable as it might seem, there are those that carry even more guilt than those that perpetrated these horrific acts on children, those that let it happen decade after decade, the Ratzinger's of this world.

Time for the truth about Catholic sex abuse in the Netherlands
By Robert Chesal
19 March 2012

The revelation that a number of minors who were abused in Dutch Roman Catholic institutions were also forcibly castrated has shocked the Netherlands. It casts grave doubt upon the recent findings of a commission set up to look into abuse in the church. RNW's Robert Chesal, who first brought the sex abuse scandal to light, argues that only parliament can be trusted to investigate further.

We now know that former Dutch cabinet minister Wim Deetman did not meet the expectations he raised when he chaired the commission of inquiry into sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic church. He did not get to the bottom of the abuse scandal or reveal all of the horrors that took place behind church doors in the Netherlands.

Whistle blowers punished

We know this thanks to investigative journalist Joep Dohmen of the newspaper NRC Handelsblad. Dohmen wrote about a boarding school student who had been sexually abused by a Dutch monk. When the former student reported the abuse to the police in 1956, he was brought to a Roman Catholic psychiatric ward, declared a homosexual and then castrated. The same surgery was probably performed on at least ten other schoolmates of his who tried to blow the whistle on abuse.

The main abuser in this case was ‘Gregorius,’ the brother superior of the Roman Catholic Harreveld boarding school in the east of the Netherlands.

We cannot yet say for sure why the Deetman Commission left all this information out of its voluminous report on sexual abuse in the church that was published just three months ago. The commission received a clear complaint detailing the castrations in 2010, which it now says it did not investigate "for lack of sufficient leads".

This explanation looks shaky at best, seeing as Joep Dohmen was able, in just a few months’ time, to find irrefutable evidence of one such illegal castration and strong indications of ten more.

Senior politician involved

But Dohmen found something even more important. He discovered that the Deetman Report failed to mention a certain political figure who tried to secure a royal pardon for Gregorius and other convicted Catholic brothers from Harreveld. That was Victor Marijnen, a former Dutch prime minister and leading member of the Catholic People's Party (KVP). The KVP later merged with Protestant parties to form the Christian Democrats (CDA) - the political party of inquiry commission chairman Wim Deetman.

Victor Marijnen was in an extraordinary position in the 1950s. Not only was he a rising star in his political party, he was also vice-chairman of the Dutch Catholic child protection agency, and –most pertinently– director of Harreveld boarding school. The Deetman Commission was aware of these connections and the potential conflicts of interest they represent. The commission was aware of Marijnen’s letter to the Queen on behalf of sexual abusers, too, but omitted these facts in its report.

Reacting to Dohmen's revelations, the Deetman Commission explains that it did not mention Marijnen because it did not detail any cases that could be traced back to an individual, for the sake of protecting privacy. However, elsewhere in the same report we see numerous mentions of cases that can be traced back to individuals, even highly-placed figures such as bishops Ad Simonis and Philippe Bär. The commission did not shy away from slapping these men on the wrist.

It's not unreasonable to conclude that the Deetman Commission refrained from investigating the castration because it knew this would inevitably lead to closer scrutiny of the Harreveld situation, exposing the role of Victor Marijnen and showing Mr Deetman’s own political party in a very negative light indeed.




The big picture

But this may be too narrow a view. The bigger picture is this: Victor Marijnen was just one member of a wider elite of Catholic notables who weilded vast power in the 1950s. They were captains of industry, chairmen of commissions, judges, high-ranking civil servants and politicians. And it was through this old boys network that abuse at Harreveld and other Roman Catholic institutions was covered up.

In short, the Harreveld castration story reveals collusion between institutions, bishops, politicians, the police and the justice system that enabled sexual abuse in the church to continue unpunished for decades on end.

Questions to answer

It's now clear that the critics were right when they complained that a church-installed commission of inquiry could not, or would not, get to the bottom of the abuse scandal. There must now be an impartial inquiry whose integrity is beyond doubt. Only parliament can fulfil this role. And perhaps the first witness called to testify under oath should be Wim Deetman himself. Radio Netherlands

Journalists of the Year 2010
RNW's Robert Chesal and Joep Dohmen of NRC Handelsblad were named journalists of the year in 2010 for their work in exposing sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic church in the Netherlands.

Dohmen also published the book "Vrome Zondaars" (Pious Sinners) on the same subject.

Forced Child Castrations Reportedly Found in Roman Catholic Care

Jesus Christ! is there no end to the horror stories that keep coming out of the Dutch Catholic Church?

Forced castrations reportedly found in Roman Catholic care
17 March 2012

Underage sexual abuse victims were castrated in Dutch Roman Catholic psychiatric wards in the 1950s, according to the Rotterdam-based newspaper NRC Handelsblad.




Castration was performed on young men who were thought to be homosexual, but also as a means of punishing those who blew the whistle on abusers, the paper quotes sources as saying.

NRC discovered proof of the forced castration of one young man and strong evidence that at least ten other abuse victims were subjected to the removal of their testicles. The proof includes court documents, medical records, letters from lawyers and private correspondence.

According to the paper, the practice was reported in 2010 to the Deetman Commission which completed its investigation of sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic church last December. The commission, led by former cabinet minister Wim Deetman of the Christian Democrat party (CDA), made no mention of the castration of abuse victims in its final report.

NRC also writes that a prominent Dutch politician tried to secure a royal pardon for Catholic brothers convicted of sexual abuse at Harreveld, a former boarding school in the Netherlands. The politician was Vic Marijnen, who later became Dutch prime minister.

Marijnen was chairman of the Harreveld board of governors at the time when the abuses took place. He was also vice-chairman of the Netherlands' main Catholic child protection agency and leader of the Catholic People's Party (KVP), which later merged with Protestant groups to create the Christian Democrats.

In a reaction, the church-installed Deetman Commission says it did not publish any findings on the castration of abused minors in its final report because it had "too few leads for further investigation." The commission did not report on the actions of Vic Marijnen because "the case was unmistakeably tied to circumstances which could be traced back to an individual person." In its final report, the commission left most identities anonymous as a means of protecting individuals' privacy. Radio Netherlands and more Catholic Church abuse stories.

H/T Maren.

Child Rape Penn State Catholic Church ''Everyone's doing it''

They may well be, but that hardly makes it right.

In one with which I am in total agreement, the writer argues throughout the article that reality and the behavioural safeguards that it keeps in place, all but disappear when the incredible, in the form of religion, takes precedent to become the guiding light and the moral compass of its adherents.

What was it that Orwell said, ''As with the Christian religion, the worst advertisement for Socialism is its adherents''

Yes quite, he also said, ''One cannot really be a Catholic and grown up'' although I feel he did a disservice to the truth by singling out Catholicism, rather he might have said, one cannot really be religious and grown up.

The free pass we atheists, we realists, are expected to afford those that embrace the most preposterous beliefs, is quite frankly far beyond the pale. I'm not going list even a few of the thousands of bizarre beliefs that we are asked to respect the believer for, suffice to say, were the ''religious'' tag not attached to ridiculous articles of faith, then half the world would be in the asylum.

Perhaps a better quote might have been, one cannot be a realist and religious. The two are totally incompatible. And it this point that the writer repeatably makes throughout her essay. If religion becomes your reality and the ''law'' of a deity takes precedent of the laws of man, then all things become possible in the unreal world that these people have chosen to create.



Child Rape, Penn State and the Catholic Church: Is Religion Especially Bad?

The child rape scandal at Penn State raises inevitable comparisons with the Catholic Church. Does religion make these kinds of abuses worse?
By Greta Christina
November 22, 2011

I can't be the only person who heard about the Penn State child rape scandal and thought, "Holy crap -- it's just like the Catholic Church." The abuse of power by a trusted authority figure; the coverup by people in authority; the unwillingness of witnesses to speak out; the grotesque, morally bankrupt defenses of a beloved institution by its followers... all of it is depressingly familiar.

And I can't be the only critic of religion who's been wondering, "Hmm. If Penn State has been acting like the Catholic Church... then did the Catholic Church child rape scandal actually have anything to do with religion?"

I still think it does. But it's a complicated question. Let's take a closer look.

Apologists for the Catholic Church and its role in the extensive child rape scandal often use the "But everyone else does it!" defense. "Priests aren't the only people in positions of trust and power over children who abuse that power," they say. "Parents, relatives, teachers, babysitters, coaches -- they rape children as well. It's all terrible... but it's unfair to single out the Catholic Church as if it were special."

Atheists and other critics of the Church typically respond to this defense -- after tearing their hair out and screaming -- by pointing out: The rapes aren't the scandal. The coverup is the scandal. The rapes of children are a horrible tragedy. The scandal is the fact that the Catholic Church hid the rapes, and protected the child-raping priests from discovery and prosecution: lying to law enforcement, concealing evidence, paying off witnesses, moving child-raping priests from diocese to diocese so they could rape a whole new batch of children in a place where they wouldn't be suspected. The scandal is the fact that it wasn't just a few individuals in the ranks who protected and enabled the child-raping priests: it was large numbers of Church officials, including high-ranking officials, acting as a cold-blooded matter of Church policy. The scandal is the fact that the Church treated their own stability and reputation as a higher priority than, for fuck's sake, children not being raped.

And many critics of religion have concluded that the nature of religion itself is largely to blame for this scandal. They have argued that religion's lack of any sort of reality check, and its belief in a perfect supernatural moral authority that transcends mere human concerns, makes religious institutions like the Catholic Church far more vulnerable to abuses of this kind.

By some strange coincidence the original photo in the article is the exact same one as this from my archives. Well perhaps not exactly the same, as I'm sure the sharper eyed among might discern.

I've made this argument myself. And in my own writings on this subject, I've asked what I thought was a rhetorical question: "If these scandals had taken place in any organization other than a religious one -- would you still be part of it? If it were your political party, your softball league, your university, your children's school, your employer? Would you still be part of it? Would you still pay your league dues and show up for softball night? Would you still pay your tuition and send your kids off to the school every day? Or would you be walking out in moral outrage?"

But it seems that this question wasn't so rhetorical. It seems that, at least sometimes, the answer to that question is, "Yup -- we'd be defending our school."

At least sometimes, the answer is, "If we see our coach raping a child -- we won't alert the police. If we're in positions of authority in a school and we hear reports about our coach raping a child -- we won't alert the police, and we won't investigate. And if we hear that a coach at our school raped children, and that the authorities at the school knew about it and didn't alert the police or investigate, we will become outraged -- not at the fact that the rapes occurred, not at the fact that the witnesses and school authorities did nothing, but at what we see as unfair treatment of the perpetrators, and at the very fact that the media is covering it."

Clearly, defending the indefensible is not unique to religion.

Clearly, institutions centered on something other than a belief in the supernatural are perfectly capable of inspiring this grotesquely contorted form of loyalty. This unwillingness to believe that the people and institutions we admire could do anything that vile; this ability to rationalize actions we would normally find thoroughly despicable when we've made a commitment to the people who perpetrated them... this clearly isn't just about religion. This is about the more fucked-up directions that the human brain can go in.

So I want to take a step back. I want to be rigorous, and ask: Is there anything special about the child rape scandal in the Catholic Church? Does the fact that the Catholic Church is a religious organization have any effect on how the child rape scandal has been playing out for them? Is there any real difference between the child rape scandal in the Catholic Church, and the child rape scandal at Penn State?

I've been looking at this hard. And I'll acknowledge that I don't think the difference is as great as I'd originally thought. The degree to which many students and supporters of Penn State have behaved like blind religious zealots has, quite frankly, shocked me.

But I still think there is a difference. There are non-trivial differences between these two scandals: differences of degree, and differences of kind. I want to look carefully at those differences and at whether religion has any part in how the Catholic Church has behaved, and continues to behave, when it comes to the rape of children.

How Much Worse Was It?

1: Scope. At Penn State, one man, former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, has been charged with the rape of seven children. In the Catholic Church, over 4,000 priests raped over 10,000 children. According to conservative estimates. The actual numbers are likely to be much higher.

And at Penn State, about eight school officials and staff members are currently thought (according to grand jury records) to have turned a blind eye to the alleged rapes. In the Catholic Church, the Church officials who either ignored the rapes or deliberately acted to conceal them number in the hundreds -- going all the way up into the top echelons of the Church hierarchy.

That is a huge freaking difference. To be comparable in scope to the Catholic Church child rape scandal, the Penn State scandal would have to extend to multiple major universities across the country, with a deliberate campaign of concealment extending throughout the Association of American Universities and into the top levels of the Department of Education. And as appalling as the recent events at Penn State are, that's clearly not what we're looking at.

Have non-religious institutions sheltered and defended child rapists? Yes. But have any of them done so on anywhere near the scale that the Catholic Church has? Not to my knowledge.

And it's hard to see religion as irrelevant to that. Religion is uniquely unfalsifiable -- and it thus has a unique lack of any sort of reality check. And most religions have a belief in a perfect moral authority, and a belief that it understands the wishes of that moral authority and knows the right way to interpret them. So because of this lack of reality check, and because of this belief in a perfect supernatural moral authority that trumps human morality, religious institutions have a uniquely powerful armor against any sort of criticism or self-correction. And because of that armor, appalling situations -- like the widespread rape of children by priests -- have the capacity to spin wildly out of control, with a scope that's hard to imagine in secular institutions.

2: Duration. As far as we know, the alleged rapes of children by Sandusky at Penn State, and the conspiracy of silence about them, have been going on since about 1996. The rapes of children by Catholic priests had been going on for decades -- possibly centuries -- before people finally began talking about them. Go to page three.

Herman Cain and Joe Paterno ''This shit has got to change''

Postings and replies to comments have, and will be, sporadic for a few days due to family matters.

There has been much in the media about Penn State of late, though I haven't had the time, or even the inspiration to blog it, a colleague has been keeping abreast of things and the results can be found here. http://jerseyabusescandal.blogspot.com/

That said, that which I'm posting below, falls more in line with the general ideals of what you might have become accustomed to here at Only in America.

What Do Herman Cain and Joe Paterno Have in Common?By Akiba Solomon
November 12, 2011

I don’t give a damn about football.

I don’t care about Joe Paterno or his precious legacy as the winningest coach in Division I history. That he espoused honor and scholarship to his players, put Pennsylvania State University on the national map, made the school $52.3 million, or meant a lot to the 4,000morally deficient cult members students who literally riotedafter the 84-year-old was fired for looking the other way while his defensive coordinator, Gerald “Jerry” Sandusky, allegedly raped, sodomized, fondled and manipulated young, poor boys under the guise of charity.

I care about Victim 2, the 10-year-old boy whom coach Sandusky hand-picked from his Second Mile mentoring program for “underprivileged” boys from “dysfunctional” families and allegedly raped in a Penn State shower.

And Victim 1, whom Sandusky allegedly molested from age 11 to about 14, when the two were discovered “wrestling” at the child’s high school.

And Victim 4, who at 12 or 13 went to Sandusky’s family picnics, sat at his banquet tables, and travelled to various Bowls where his mentor allegedly sodomized him and threatened to send him home when he refused to do more.

I care about Victims 3, 5, 6, 7 and 8, the other young men whom Sandusky had easy access to because they were poor and needed what every child does—nurturing.

In a guest post on Mark Anthony Neal’s New Black Man blog, Kevin Powell connects the Paterno/Sandusky/Penn State madness to the sexual harassment allegations against Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain:

What Herman Cain and the disgraced male leaders of Penn State have in common is the issue of power and privilege we men not only wield like our birthright, but which has come to be so inextricably linked to our identities. So much so, in fact, that many of us, regardless of race, class, religion and, in some cases, even sexual orientation or physical abilities, don’t even realize what a disaster manhood is when it is unapologetically invested in power, privilege, patriarchy, sexism, and a reckless disregard for the safety and sanity of others, especially women and children.

For sure, nothing sadder and more tragic than to see 84-year-old Coach Joe Paterno, who I’ve admired since I was a child, throwing away 46 years of coaching heroism and worship (and 62 total years on the school’s football staff) because the power, glory, and symbolism of Penn State football was above protecting the boys allegedly touched and molested by Sandusky. Equally sad and tragic when Mr. Cain’s supporters are quick to call what is happening to him a lynching when this man, this Black man, has never been tarred and feathered, never been hung from a tree, never had his testicles cut from his body, never been set on fire, as many Black men were, in America, in the days when lynching was as big a national sport as college football is today. Anything, it seems, to refute the very graphic and detailed stories of the women accusing Mr. Cain of profoundly wrong, unprofessional, and inhuman conduct.

Powell gets at what I’ve been trying to figure out over the past couple of days. When I heard about Herman Cain, I thought of Clarence Thomas and Dominique Strass-Kahn, even though the details of their alleged crimes and misconduct are different in scope and severity.

When the names “Sandusky” and “Paterno” hit the news cycle, I visualized a new Mount Rushmore featuring those two, Eddie Long and a string of Catholic priests whose names I don’t know but whose crimes have marred thousands.

I don’t give a damn about Herman Cain and his Godfather’s Pizza fortune, his national bestseller, his Koch Brothers-from-another-mother, his coon-time gospel-singing, his Ubecki-becki-becki-becki-stan-stan-saying, or the fact that he’s running for president on a Tomfoolery platform. He doesn’t embarrass me anymore because he’s proven that he isn’t a member of my Thinking Peoples’ tribe.

What has me in knots is how Cain has the nerve to make an offhand joke about Anita Hill endorsing him while he’s facing sexual harassment allegations from at least four women. That’s how seriously he takes the crime of sexual harassment.

I’m thinking about how Joe Paterno can hold his head up, cuddle his wife and wave at the TV cameras with the backing of Penn State’s student body of football stans. That’s how seriously he takes his role in this mess. The same goes for the witnesses—including assistant coach Mike McQueary—who didn’t call the police immediately.

Patriarchy eats its women and children and criminally cripples its men.

This shit has got to change. Alternet

Paul Craig Roberts on Dominique Strauss-Kahn

And one or two other things.

Strauss-Kahn simply had to be eliminated.

The Amerikan Police State Strides Forward

By Paul Craig Roberts
May 18, 2011

The International Monetary Fund’s director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was arrested last Sunday in New York City on the allegation of an immigrant hotel maid that he attempted to rape her in his hotel room. A New York judge has denied Strauss-Kahn bail on the grounds that he might flee to France.

President Bill Clinton survived his sexual escapades, because he was a servant to the system, not a threat. But Strauss-Kahn, like former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, was a threat to the system, and, like Eliot Spitzer, Strass-Kahn has been deleted from the power ranks.

Strauss-Kahn was the first IMF director in my lifetime, if memory serves, who disavowed the traditional IMF policy of imposing on the poor and ordinary people the cost of bailing out Wall Street and the Western banks. Strauss-Kahn said that regulation had to be reimposed on the greed-driven, fraud-prone financial sector, which, unregulated, destroyed the lives of ordinary people. Strauss-Kahn listened to Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz, one of a handful of economists who has a social conscience.

Perhaps the most dangerous black mark in Strauss-Kahn’s book is that he was far ahead of America’s French puppet, President Sarkozy, in the upcoming French elections. Strauss-Kahn simply had to be eliminated.

It is possible that Strauss-Kahn eliminated himself and saved Washington the trouble. However, as a well-travelled person who has often stayed in New York hotels and in hotels in cities around the world, I have never experienced a maid entering unannounced into my room, much less when I was in the shower.

In the spun story, Strauss-Kahn is portrayed as so deprived of sex that he attempted to rape a hotel maid. Anyone who ever served on the staff of a powerful public figure knows that this is unlikely. On a senator’s staff on which I served, there were two aides whose job was to make certain that no woman, with the exception of his wife, was ever alone with the senator. This was done to protect the senator both from female power groupies, who lust after celebrities and powerful men, and from women sent by a rival on missions to compromise an opponent. A powerful man such as Strauss-Kahn would not have been starved for women, and as a multi-millionaire he could certainly afford to make his own discreet arrangements.

As Henry Kissinger said, “power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.” In politics, sex is handed out as favors and payoffs, and it is used as a honey trap. Some Americans will remember that Senator Packwood’s long career (1969-1995) was destroyed by a female lobbyist, suspected, according to rumors, of sexual conquests of Senators, who charged that Packwood propositioned her in his office. Perhaps what inspired the charge was that Packwood was in the way of her employer’s legislative agenda.

Even those who exercise care can be framed by allegations of an event to which there are no witnesses. On May 16 the British Daily Mail reported that prior to Strauss-Kahn’s fateful departure for New York, the French newspaper, Liberation, published comments he made while discussing his plans to challenge Sarkozy for the presidency of France. Strauss-Kahn said that as he was the clear favorite to beat Sarkozy, he would be subjected to a smear campaign by Sarkozy and his interior minister, Glaude Gueant. Strauss-Kahn predicted that a woman would be offered between 500,000 and 1,000,000 euros (more than $1,000,000) to make up a story that he raped her.

The Daily Mail reports that Strauss-Kahn’s suspicions are supported by the fact that the first person to break the news of Strauss-Kahn’s arrest was an activist in Mr Sarkozy’s UMP party – who apparently knew about the scandal before it happened.

Jonathan Pinet, a politics student, tweeted the news just before the New York Police Department made it public, although he said that he simply had a ‘friend’ working at the Sofitel where the attack was said to have happened.

The first person to re-tweet Mr Pinet was Arnaud Dassier, a spin doctor who had previously publicised details of multi-millionaire Strauss-Kahn’s luxurious lifestyle in a bid to dent his left wing credentials. Link

Strauss-Kahn could just as easily been set up by rivals inside the IMF, as well as by rivals within the French political establishment.

Michelle Sabban, a senior councillor for the greater Paris region and a Strauss-Kahn loyalist said: ‘I am convinced it is an international conspiracy.’

She added: ‘It's the IMF they wanted to decapitate, not so much the Socialist primary candidate.

‘It's not like him. Everyone knows that his weakness is seduction, women. That's how they got him.’

Even some of Strauss-Kahn’s rivals said they could not believe the news. ‘It is totally hallucinatory,’ said centrist Dominique Paille.

‘If it is true, this would be a historic moment, but in the negative sense, for French political life. I hope that everyone respects the presumption of innocence. I cannot manage to believe this affair.’

And Henri de Raincourt, minister for overseas co-operation in President Nicolas Sarkozy's government, added: ‘We cannot rule out the thought of a trap.’

Michelle Sabban is on to something when she says the IMF was the target. Strauss-Kahn is the first IMF director who is not lined up on the side of the rich against the poor. Strauss-Kahn’s suspicions were of Sarkozy, but Wall Street and the US government also had strong reasons to eliminate him. Wall Street is terrified by the prospect of regulation, and Washington was embarrassed by the recent IMF report that China’s economy would surpass the US economy within five years. An international conspiracy is not out of the question.

Indeed, the plot is unfolding as a conspiracy. Authorities have produced a French woman who claims she was a near rape victim of Strauss-Kahn a decade ago. It would be interesting to know whether this allegation is the result of a threat or a bribe. As in the case of Julian Assange, there are now two women to accuse Strauss-Kahn. Once the prosecutors get the odds of two females against one male, they win in the media.

It has not been revealed how the authorities knew Strauss-Kahn was on a flight to France. However, by arresting him aboard his scheduled flight just as it was to depart, the authorities created the image of a man fleeing from a crime.

The way Amerikan justice (sic) works is that prosecutors in about 96 percent of the cases get a plea bargain. US prosecutors are permitted by judges and the public to pay for testimony against the defendant and to put sufficient pressure on innocent defendants to coerce them into making a guilty plea in exchange for lesser charges and a lighter sentence. Unless the hotel maid has a spell of bad conscience and admits she was paid to lie, or gets cold feet about perjuring herself, Strauss-Kahn is likely to find that Amerikan criminal justice (sic) is organized to produce conviction regardless of innocence or guilt.

On May 16, the day following Strauss-Kahn’s arrest, the US Supreme Court threw its weight behind the Amerikan police state by destroying the remains of the Fourth Amendment with an 8-1 ruling that, the U.S. Constitution notwithstanding, Amerika’s police do not need warrants to invade homes and search persons. Link

This ruling is more evidence that every American is regarded as a potential enemy of the state, not only by Airport Security but also by the high muckety-mucks in Washington. The conservatives’ “war on crime” has created a police state, and conservatives, who originally stood for limited government and civil liberty, are euphoric over the expanded and unaccountable powers that a conservative Supreme Court has handed to the police.

On the same day the federal government reached the $14.3 trillion debt ceiling, which forced the Treasury to “borrow” money from federal employee pensions in order to continue funding Amerika’s illegal wars and crimes against humanity. The breached debt ceiling serves as an appropriate marker for a country that has squandered its constitutional heritage and has arrived at moral as well as fiscal bankruptcy. ICH

UPDATE -
In the several hours since I wrote this article, authorities have announced that Strauss-Kahn, who was refused bail on specious grounds, has been put on suicide watch. Why announce it unless it serves an agenda? From the beginning every statement and action of the authorities is designed to convey the impression of guilt. Is putting Strauss-Kahn on suicide watch a way to paint a picture of a person who can't face the public humiliation of his crime? Is it a way to use the humiliation of constant interruption to break down his character and resolve? Or might it be to plant the idea that should he expire in prison, suicide is the explanation?

Strauss-Kahn Feared Being Set Up

I have highlighted the parts that seem, just a little too convenient, thus giving the story some legs.

What this case does for me, and it is purely a personal reflection, is to highlight just how quickly a person can disappear within the judicial system when so desired. It is with Julian Assange in mind that I say this, if America ever got its hands on Assange, he too would disappear, never to see the light of day again.

IMF chief 'feared political opponent would pay a woman more than $1m to allege rape'

Dominique Strauss-Kahn feared that one of his political opponents would pay a woman more than $1million to say he raped her, it emerged today.

The extraordinary revelation emerged in Paris as the International Monetary Fund head remained in a New York police cell accused of launching a sex attack on a hotel maid.

A writer in the French capital has also come forward to say that the 62-year-old attempted to rape her a decade ago.

But as Strauss-Kahn faced a 15-year prison sentence - which would signify the end of his ambition to become French president next year - conspiracy theories abounded.

Liberation, the left-wing daily newspaper, published details on off-the-record comments made by Strauss-Kahn as recently as April 28th.

Discussing his plans to challenge Nicolas Sarkozy as Socialist candidate for the presidency in 2012, he said he imagined ‘a woman who had been raped in a car park and who was offered between €500,000 and €1,000,000 to make up such a story.’

Because he was the clear favourite to beat Mr Sarkozy, Strauss-Kahn feared he would be subjected to a smear campaign by the President and his Interior Minister, Glaude Gueant.

Such theories were bolstered by the fact that the first person to break the news of Strauss-Kahn’s arrest was an activist in Mr Sarkozy’s UMP party – who apparently knew about the scandal before it happened.

Jonathan Pinet, a politics student, tweeted the news just before the New York Police Department made it public, although he said that he simply had a ‘friend’ working at the Sofitel where the attack was said to have happened.

The first person to re-tweet Mr Pinet was Arnaud Dassier, a spin doctor who had previously publicised details of multi-millionaire Strauss-Kahn’s luxurious lifestyle in a bid to dent his left wing credentials.

Strauss-Kahn could just as easily been set up by rivals inside the IMF, as well as by rivals within the French political establishment.

Michelle Sabban, a senior councillor for the greater Paris region and a Strauss-Kahn loyalist said: ‘I am convinced it is an international conspiracy.’

She added: ‘It's the IMF they wanted to decapitate, not so much the Socialist primary candidate.

‘It's not like him. Everyone knows that his weakness is seduction, women. That's how they got him.’

Even some of Strauss-Kahn’s rivals said they could not believe the news. ‘It is totally hallucinatory,’ said centrist Dominique Paille.

‘If it is true, this would be a historic moment, but in the negative sense, for French political life. I hope that everyone respects the presumption of innocence. I cannot manage to believe this affair.’

And Henri de Raincourt, minister for overseas co-operation in President Nicolas Sarkozy's government, added: ‘We cannot rule out the thought of a trap.’

Referring to recent allegations that Strauss-Kahn was chauffered around Paris in a Porsche and wore 20,000 plus suits, Mr De Raincourt added: ‘I note that this has happened just after the affair of the car and the suit in a short space of time.

‘I am not ruling anything out. If this turns out to have been a trap, let me tell you that it would not be to the credit of those who set it.’ the wail

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No Expectation of Justice
Does Sarkozy Like Seeing France Get Dragged Through the Mud?
By Mike Whitney

"American justice" is an oxymoron like "military intelligence" or "jumbo shrimp". The two words just don't fit together, in fact, they're polar opposites. The truth is, there is no expectation of justice in the United States today. Even the thought of it is laughable. Just look at the way the Dominique Strauss-Kahn matter has been handled. The former IMF chief "allegedly" tried to rape or force a maid at his fancy hotel to perform oral sex. As a result, he was arrested and thrown in jail.

Fine. But in America "what a man is accused of" is not supposed to matter. He's still entitled to a fair trial.

So, what are the chances that Strauss-Kahn will get a fair trial now that he's been blasted as a serial sex offender in about 3,000 articles and in all the televised news reports?

Not very good, I'd say.

Let me ask you: Why was DSK stripped of his suit and tie and paraded in handcuffs in front of the media after a sleepless night in the hoosegow? Were New York's finest trying to demonstrate their deep appreciation for the rule of law or did they think the overweight 62 year old was going to make a run-for-it?

And why is the media so quick to judge the man? Do they know something we don't know? Is there some reason why they trust the claims of an unidentified maid who no one has even talked to over Strauss-Kahn, or are they just following orders from on-high?

We all know that the media is an old hand at destroying people's lives and reputations. That's what they do and they're damn good at it. Have you talked to Bill Clinton recently? How about Scott Ritter, Michael Schiavo or Martha Stewart? The joke about the Bush administration was that, even though they were never tough on crime, at least they got Martha Stewart "off the streets". more