Vertigo

“I’m at a place called vertigo.  It’s everything I wish I didn’t know.” –U2It happens when we’ve drunk too much; in this culture we call it bed-spins.  We plant a foot on the floor and sometimes it subsides.  It happens on boats; we call it seasickness and we concentrate on the horizon, a fixed point that anchors us. It happens to pilots and it kills them; my childhood friend Pete flies jets for a living and explains in chilling detail how, in his world, it is a deadly perversion of the normally reliable signals our body’s navigation system sends to our brain.  So we believe we’re flying on a level course when in reality we are aimed at the ground like a bullet.  It is our senses, confused.  Lying.It’s vertigo. When it hits us, for whatever reason, we grab for something that is, or promises to be, steady, solid and unmoving.  Stability is the thing that delivers us from vertigo.  When the sensation is physical, we can sometimes exercise it or keep it at bay.But vertigo is more than physical.  In a broad sense it can be emotional, and it is one of the many demonic gifts that child sex victims receive as they attempt to navigate a world in which everything their natural development taught them to rely on is suddenly a lie.  A signal telling them that up is down.  That danger is comfort.  That anger is insight. That sadness, abuse and loneliness are what they deserve.  And so they grab for things that promise stability.  But in the dark ether of a damaged soul the columns and posts that present themselves are sometimes false and wavering.  Intoxicants, anger, isolation and self-blame are sweetly tempting as solid, steadying things.  But they are poison.So vertigo is masked, but not eliminated.  The course continues to veer with no warning as to what lies ahead. The key to stopping it for real is to find the true horizon to fix upon, a solid floor to stand on so that reality can be reckoned, ghosts banished and the lying whispers silenced.  It is a journey sometimes of years, and it requires insight, grueling work, and unparalleled courage.That courage is at the solid center of an hour-long documentary produced by Kathy Barbini and Simon Weinberg of Big Voice Pictures.  The film is called Boys and Men Healing, and it is a rare and nakedly honest view of the journey three men in particular have taken to address the horrors visited upon them by older offending males. Female child sex abuse, just as damaging and even more common, has been widely studied, resulting in needed insights.  Male child sex abuse, however, remains more shrouded in secrecy as boys tend to under-report more than girls.  Estimates of the prevalence of male child sexual abuse hover conservatively at about 1 in 6 boys, but even that is probably very conservative.  For this reason in particular, Boys and Men Healing is deeply valuable and eagerly welcomed.I spoke with Simon about the video and was struck instantly by his warmth and kindness (he exudes these like a balm even by phone), but also the fierce passion he shares with his wife and partner, Kathy, on this issue.  The three male survivors the documentary focuses on are diverse in their backgrounds but strikingly common in their struggles and their eventual triumph over the abuse they endured.  One of them, David Lisak, is among the foremost and prolific researchers in my business, a man I greatly admire personally and professionally.  To see him sharing his own story of struggle and recovery was profoundly touching.It’s everything I wish I didn’t know.  But I do understand the stability these decent and extraordinary men have searched for over the long years.  They have now, in some measure at least, achieved freedom from the dizzying fog of vertigo.  They have fought with the hearts of lions for the simple relief of being grounded.  They've striven heroically for something most of us happily take for granted- a sweet, unaltered sense of up and down, right and wrong, dark and light.  It shouldn’t be that difficult.  But it is.Given the numbers as they are, it is likely that within minutes of me posting this, another boy will be introduced to sexual exploitation at the hands of, most likely, a trusted older male.  At some point, maybe as the reality of what is happening sets in, or maybe months or years after, he’ll know the imbalance, the instability, the dark, deep wrongness of something spinning within him.  He’ll have 1000 different names for what it is he’s feeling; perhaps as specific as a fear of intimacy, perhaps as broad as quiet hopelessness or itching rage.  Those around him may simply shake their heads and call him a disappointment, a problem, a failure.  If it succeeds in killing him, it won’t be listed on any death certificate, although it will surely underlie the stated cause, be it suicide, alcoholic hepatitis, drug overdose, etc.Or, with mercy, he’ll come to know it for what it is, and then be able to expiate it through grace, effort and perhaps the angelic support of loved ones.For now, it’s vertigo.  Hold on.

Prisoner Sex Abuse: Still Common, Still Wrong

“I said there is no justice as they led me out the door.  He said this isn’t a court of justice, son.  This is a court of law.”  -Billy Bragg, “Rotting on Remand”Alexandria, Virginia.  1998.  He was a pizza delivery guy, maybe 20 but built emotionally and physically like 16.  His victim was a six year-old Spanish girl who was excited about her pizza, and walked out of her apartment and into the building’s lobby to await it.  When he saw her, barefoot in a light cotton print dress, something disordered and dark in him stirred.  She asked if the pizza was for her family.  He nodded and smiled.  But then he set it down, took her by the hand, and led her down a short set of stairs to the laundry room.  There, against a washing machine, he penetrated her vagina with a finger until she screamed.  He let her go and fled.APD caught him very quickly.  A hulking, athletic, but kind-faced, easy-going sex crimes detective named Mark Purcell questioned him, and obtained a fair confession.  Mark used no unfair or bullying tactics- the suspect was sick and sad, and confessed without much prodding that he had stuck his finger in the little girl.  He just couldn’t help it.  Mark didn’t ask him why.  He had been around enough to know the answer wasn’t usually satisfying anyway.The case fell to me and he pleaded guilty.  His family, religiously Muslim and from overseas, was mortified at his behavior and terrified for his future.  Virginia employs sentencing guidelines, and when penetration occurs (as opposed to ‘just’ fondling or touching), they go up from months to years.  He had no criminal record, but his guidelines came out to around nine years.  Nine years in a correctional system that has attracted the attention of human rights groups over the years is no joke, and sex offenders go in at a high level of security.  That means they become part of a population of extremely violent and hardened people.  And then it’s prey or become prey.  In his case the outcome was obvious.I argued for what the guidelines called for; that was my job.  His attorney argued for less and got less, to the tune of about three years.  The defendant and his family were as quiet as stones as he was led through the rear door of the courtroom and off to a fate that neither me, the judge, nor even his own attorney really knew.  The sentence was lousy by prosecution standards.  Even for a first time offender (as far as we knew), a digital penetration offense against a helpless child barely six years-old was a heinous crime.  I closed my file and left the courtroom.  Another attorney I knew pulled me aside.“Don’t worry, Rog.  He’ll get his downstate.  Believe me, I’ve seen it.  That guy’ll be worth a pack of smokes before the month is out. I wouldn’t wanna be him.  And he deserves it.”I shrugged. I didn’t want to be rude.  The attorney was a decent guy who had young kids of his own.  Most people are a lot less charitable than he was to the fate of sex offenders in prison.But Billy Bragg's judge was right.For those who don’t know, Bragg is a British musician with a leftist bent who wasn’t singing about the fate of sex offenders when he wrote that song in the mid 80’s. But the sentiment is valid, even when twisted to my point.  We don’t practice in courts of justice.  We practice in courts of law.  The law is what separates us from the state of nature we’ve fought so hard to rise above as human beings.  The law isn’t God by a long shot, but it’s a gift He gave to a flawed, passionate, vengeful creation- man- whom He knew would need it in its noble blindness and gloriously bland and balanced predictability. The law is a temple to our better nature and a shelter from our coarser side.  It’s an ideal we’ll never reach, but to abrogate it for the sake of what some deem “poetic justice” is simply immoral, not to mention stupendously shortsighted.  Poetic justice is fine- oddly satisfying, actually- when it’s meted out by the weight of circumstances.  But legal justice is that itching sense of vengeance- not always a bad thing- tempered by due process and a set of rules all must obey, despite grief, despite rage, despite righteous indignation.I’ve surprised many with the stance I’ve taken on this issue over the years, particularly with the brutality I’ve seen defendants dish out to the very least culpable and most defenseless victims imaginable.  But I’ve fought tooth and nail for relatively helpless victims my entire professional life and I’ll do it until I keel over.  I also have no issue with relatively monastic conditions in corrections; I won’t be found fighting for cable and video game consoles for the convicted.  Get them up, get them working, get them wanting very much not to return.  But a clean, safe environment is what we owe those among us we have the audacity to cage after due process- probably the most profound thing we do as a society other than executing capital murderers.  I’ve served efforts under PREA (Prison Rape Elimination Act) for exactly this reason.  But despite the efforts of PREA since its passage in 2003, the stats regarding sexual abuse in custody, as noted in a new report released late last month, are still harrowing.A society can be judged in large part by how it treats its most despised and menacing members.  That’s what the law is for- to protect us all, not just the favored or the powerful.  It’s time we followed it beyond the courtroom and through the doors that slam locked behind those of us who violate it, but are no more subject to it than we who hold the keys.

Where Are the Good Guys?

Politically, for a variety of reasons, I’m a Democrat.  I’m to the right of them on some criminal justice issues in particular, but basically the middle-left is where I live.  What I've noticed from fellow Democrats over the years is more than just a sense that our policies better serve a greater number of Americans, particularly ones who are struggling, dispossessed, or outside the mainstream.  Rather, I've sensed a conviction that Democrats really are the “good guys,” the ones truly looking out for the weaker among us, the underdog and the excluded.  Our political excesses might be foolish or overprotective, but they aren’t cruel or callous as GOP excesses can be.  While I recognize the self-serving nature of this rhetoric and fully understand its limits, I do think there’s a point to the claim; hence my choice in American political affiliation.Interestingly, I don’t usually see the same kind of virtuous confidence- this sense of helping their fellow man in need- in Republicans, at least outside the religious context.  Politics is this town’s industry, and I trade views regularly with Republicans. They are smart, good-hearted people for the most part and very charitable personally.  I also find them not happy with but more tolerant of the suffering and inequality that freer economic dynamism brings about; they believe in equality of opportunity, not outcome.  They don’t like unfair prejudice, but they also distrust liberal fixes like “political correctness.”  They’re not the party of the dispossessed- they’re the party of prosperity, and those not afraid to chase after it with hard work and perseverance.  So be it.  My party is supposed to be the one that stands up for those who can’t stand up for themselves.  Call that patronizing or call it noble; it’s what I’ve heard for years and to an extent it’s what I believe.So why have so many Democrats and other liberals literally laughed off the accusations of sexual assault made against Al Gore by not one but three massage therapists, most notably the one in Oregon?I want to be clear: I have no idea if the allegations are true.  I’ve speculated more forcefully about the guilt of others in this space because I had more to go on.  I’m aware that the National Enquirer, a tabloid, broke the story.  I understand the lack of physical evidence and the decision not to pursue the Portland case.  I understand why her concomitant civil case has raised eyebrows.  I understand that some of what she alleged seems objectively bizarre.  I’m a prosecutor at heart, but not a zealot.  So I understand the concerns of those who doubt or seriously question Gore’s guilt.What I don’t understand are some of the remarkably cruel and foolish comments coming from people on this issue, and particularly from people normally associated with the left.  A blogger named Tom Scocca from Slate.com brought this up poignantly late in June when he listed a few choice comments about the Oregon masseuse from readers of TPM, or Talking Points Memo, the left-leaning blog on news and politics.   It goes way beyond TPM, though; hundreds of similar ones followed the first Huffington Post article on the subject.  Many insinuate that she’s a sleazebag out to shake down Gore for money.  Because, you know, that happens constantly to rich and powerful men.  Never mind that, as my friend Jaclyn Friedman noted in a great piece a couple of weeks ago, the vast majority of wealthy, playboy types never experience a sexual assault accusation; Tiger Woods and Eliot Spitzer, whatever else they’ve done and been accused of, haven’t been accused of anything non-consensual.But in furtherance of this paranoia (some have suggested the accusations are a conservative plot) and in apparent support of a liberal they greatly admire, too many on the left are furthering time honored rape myths: If the complaint were valid, she would have 1) run screaming from the room immediately upon escaping his advances, 2) swiftly summoned law enforcement and related facts clearly and chronologically, 3) never considered seeking to drop charges despite immense and complex pressure most of us couldn’t imagine, and 4) presented herself from the start as a self-possessed, well adjusted, near-perfect member of the middle class or better.  And of course (as Scocca highlights) there are those who insist, with a breathtaking combination of stupidity and viciousness, that a superstar like Al Gore would never have the need or desire to sexually assault some old hag massage therapist in the first place.These are the good guys?  These are who make up the party of tolerance, compassion and inclusivity?  Maybe that’s only true for some of them until someone in that category accuses a powerful liberal icon of a terrible act. To be fair I've seen blowback from liberals and feminists in particular against this nonsense.  But I'm seeing too much of it to begin with from people who claim to be better and more open-minded.Again, I don’t know if the allegations are true.  There isn’t a lot to go on from an evidentiary standpoint in the Oregon case, and the burden of proof is an unrelenting master for the prosecutor.  So be it.  But from a common sense standpoint, if there are three women from Tokyo to the US maintaining similar allegations, it’s at least fair to ask how often lightning strikes.  In any event, using this serious accusation as a font for jokes is deeply cruel.  Dismissing it with baseless assertions about "what real victims do" is foolish.And the sentiment of “it’s gotta be false because she’s too old and ugly and he’s too cool?”  Such verbal venom is exactly the reason a survivor friend of mine once told me that most women don’t report sexual assault because they’re too damn smart to do so.

Irreplaceable

I’ll call her Lucinda.  She was 13, a little undersized for her age, and pretty with small, neat features and olive skin.  Her English, like her Spanish, was flawless; she had grown up speaking both every day of her life.  She was from a part of the South Bronx I knew only by precinct.  I had been through her neighborhood, but generally at high speed and in a police car.  She wore jeans that she’d marked up with a ballpoint pen, “Spanglish” messages to and from friends that defined her life and announced the things she held dear and cared about.  They were things that I was a lifetime and more from understanding.Lucinda’s uncle had been molesting her for about three years.  She had vomited this simple, awful fact to her mother one night when the thought of spending hours alone with him loomed close and her ability to mask the panic at the thought of it faltered.  Thankfully, her mother had done the right thing.  She had called their precinct.  A thorough SVU detective had taken a report, and she had sworn out a complaint.  Through the labyrinth of Bronx due process the complaint had traveled, eventually landing on my desk.It was in this way that Lucinda and I were brought together.  I greeted her mother, a small, tough but kind looking woman, in Spanish as we stood in the waiting area of the Child Abuse and Sex Unit.  She was gracious despite my accent and occasional grammatical errors.  Then I led Lucinda alone back to my office. Her eyes were black, and moved restlessly around the room as I asked her to sit down.  When they met mine, they were oddly blank.   I was used to that.  I maintained eye contact with her, striking a careful balance I had struggled to achieve over the years.  You don’t want to bore with your eyes, especially when you’re my size.  On the other hand, you don’t want to seem unfocused or uncaring.“Lucinda,” I said.  “Thanks for being here.”  The blank eyes shifted to something more inquisitive.  It had never occurred to her that she had any choice in the matter.  They settled back to blank, and she shrugged.  She looked at the floor.  I waited a few seconds.  Sometimes they just start talking.  But Lucinda didn’t.  I thought for a long moment and fished out a line I’d used many times before.“Do you know why you’re here?”The change was instantaneous.  The look in her eyes melted- I know of no other way to describe it- from blank to two holes of pain her face.  It was more than the eyes, actually.  Her entire face seemed to shift and contort.  She was being crushed by fear, guilt, revulsion and pain.  She nodded.“Okay,” I said carefully, and at low volume.  I considered myself as I always do in professional situations with most women and children.  I am tall, white, and heavy.  My voice resonates naturally like a bass drum, a blessing in some courtrooms but a curse in other venues.  Why someone like Lucinda would give me the benefit of any doubt is beyond me, but sometimes childhood is the prosecutor’s best weapon in child abuse cases.  Sometimes they give us the testimony we ask for because they don’t yet have the wherewithal to refuse us.  Sometimes they’re just willing to take leaps with us because (thank God) they haven’t yet been taught by experience not to dare.“Do you think you can tell me about what’s been going on with your uncle?” I asked softly.  She shrugged, and seemed to cave in further.  It was as if I was asking if she’d consider slamming her hand in a car door for my amusement.  “Just wait a few minutes,” I said.  “It’s okay.  I’m going to look at the file. You can look at it too, if you want later.”There was a small, cheap radio on my desk, playing at low volume.  On that day in early 2007, it was playing “Irreplaceable” by Beyonce.  As I fell silent the music floated over between us.  Lucinda glanced at the radio.  Her head bobbed slowly as she recognized the song- the tune is catchy as hell.  In a few seconds, she began to mouth the words.  I let a minute or so pass.“You know when this comes on in the clubs,” I said, again at low volume, “the girls all go like this.”  I lifted my white-shirt covered arm over my head and pointed awkwardly to the left.  She looked at me quizzically for a long moment.  Then she smiled.  And then, later, she told me.

October, Again and Again

When I consider the people in my life who have been victimized by sexual abuse or exploitation - mostly women but some men, I’ve lost count.  Forget about my professional life, which by choice has been an odyssey of human horror.  The sheer amount of sexual abuse I continue to encounter among people I work with, date, get to know, or re-connect with, is staggering.  There is no other word for it.Through the magic of Facebook, I’ve re-connected with dozens of people I grew up with in Northern Virginia, suburban kids whose upbringing was similar to my own in terms of demographics and social status.  I relocated back to Washington, DC last year, so I’ve been able to make a couple of informal reunions.   They’ve been warm and gratifying; thankfully, most of the kids I came of age with have found happiness and success in various ways, many of them in or close to Sterling Park, the development we called home.  But the dark side of these reconnections has raised its head also.  Mostly because they know what I do for a living, several of them have revealed to me how they, their children or someone else precious in their life were sexually abused or exploited at some point over the long years.  Some of it dates back to the 1970’s and our childhood.  Some of it is as recent as this year.  I shouldn’t be amazed anymore.  But I am.For the sexual abuse they endured in childhood, most never told anyone.  This is remarkably typical.  We- those of us charged with doing something about it- find out about child sex abuse in various ways.  Mostly the disclosure is accidental, meaning the child will confide in a friend who then reveals the abuse to a teacher or a parent.  Some victims appear abnormally sexualized at very young ages, prompting the investigation.  Rarely, someone will actually walk in on the abuse while it’s happening.  But purposeful disclosure of child sex abuse, meaning a child with the wherewithal to speak up for herself and seek help, is rare. Most victims find creative ways of blaming themselves, placing the responsibility for both the abuse and ending it- on their own shoulders.  If they do tell, it is often met with disbelief, denial, and a sweeping of the issue under the rug.  Things are improving, but it’s still a terribly difficult thing for a non-offending parent, usually a mother, to digest the fact that a trusted man in her life is sexually abusing her children.  Particularly when the abuser is her husband and the biological father of the child (a surprisingly common scenario), accepting the reality and acting appropriately is just a bridge too far.Sexual victimization- and the accompanying self-blame- hardly ends in childhood.  At every stage and in every area of my life I’ve encountered women who have been raped- although many of them either don’t characterize it that way, or at very least don’t understand that they could.  This is because many of them were victimized after passing out from drinking while in the company of the person who committed the rape.  Unfortunately but typically, they don’t see themselves as rape victims.  They see themselves as blame-worthy participants, guilty for having drunk too much and engaging in risky behavior.  Even women I know who were sober victims of an acquaintance or a boyfriend blame themselves for “getting him too riled up,” or making bad choices about where to sleep. They will tell me in the same breath that they’ve never quite gotten over what happened, but that they have only themselves to blame for bad decisions or what they think was “miscommunication,” and so they have little to complain about.I try to be careful in these situations; it’s not my place to define another person’s experience or to insist that a woman is a victim when she doesn’t see herself as one.  But then I hear them talk about how they’re still suffering so many years later.  Or how they’re fine now, but college was never quite the same afterward.  Or simply that the first smell of chimney smoke in late October brings the memory rushing back, and it takes a day or two to feel themselves again.These experiences, and their aftermath, they believe almost uniformly is their fault.  It is not.  These crimes, they believe almost uniformly, were the work of an otherwise decent guy who just went too far.  Because he was also drunk, or because she “led him on.”  They are incorrect.  Most rape is serial rape, and most men who rape, either through the use of their body weight, alcohol or a combination of the two, will do so again and again.  They won’t hide in bushes, wear a mask or wield knives; there’s no need.  Instead they’ll orchestrate a scenario and set a trap.  Then they’ll play hard on the ancient myths and timeless guilt that wither the resolve of their victims to do anything but sit Sphinx-like until the misery passes.  For most, it does pass, at least in large measure.  And life goes on.But then October returns, the smoke drifts, and the haunting resumes.  Again.

Arizona's Immigration Law: Unintended Consequences and Victimization

From a recent article I wrote  for Dissent Magazine:

Arizona's controversial anti-immigrant legislation went into effect July 1, and whether you approve of it or not, you can be sure that it makes many criminals happy.Professional predators often seek out individuals who won’t be believed if they dare to report crimes: those with mental health issues, disabilities, economic difficulties, or other actual or perceived characteristics that isolate or disenfranchise them. But few targets are more tempting to a predator than a person who simply won’t report at all. Hence, immigrant populations are great places to hunt.

Read the rest of the article at Dissent.

A Sword, Not a Shield

I am often asked by women (or people who love them) if carrying a handgun is a good deterrent to rape or other violent crime in certain circumstances.  Say, an unavoidable nightly walk through a bad area as part of a commute to a class or a job.  Or, as seems to happen with increasing frequency, a potentially life-threatening situation involving a stalker or a disgruntled ex.  Women who are finally leaving abusive situations are at greatest risk.Some who ask are gun enthusiasts who know me as a partisan Democrat and generally liberal guy, and expect me to react negatively so they can challenge my view.  Some detest guns and are hoping I’ll placate them and confirm their belief that guns are worthless or worse when it comes to self-protection.  I know a few police officers that feel exactly that way.  The truth is, not surprisingly, somewhere in the middle, and so is my opinion on the matter.  Would I dissuade my sisters or any other capable female I know from owning and carrying a handgun in certain situations?  No.  But I also know that both of my sisters understand well the difference between what a gun is and what it’s not.  A gun is a sword, not a shield.  Failing to fully internalize and deeply appreciate that distinction is the difference between being able to use a gun to save yourself or a loved one, and simply adding to the menace.“The Shootist” is a magnificent film about a dying man who is part of a dying breed in the dying wild west of 1901.  John Wayne’s timing- dying himself when he made it- couldn’t have been more poignant.  I saw it with one of my oldest friends, Bob Bennett, who has taught me many things over the long years, not the least of which is the true nature of a firearm.  With the movie as a backdrop, it was Bob who taught me when we were kids that a gun was not a thing to be hated.  Or loved.  It was simply a tool.  But what he stressed was that, in order to use a gun to protect oneself, it wasn’t enough to understand how to maintain, safely store, aim and shoot the thing.  It took willingness.  Wayne’s character evaluates his success as a killer by noting that some men flinch or bat an eye before they shoot- and that he didn’t.When a woman on a dark street decides to draw a handgun from a purse to defend herself against a would-be attacker, the split second timing might not be as crucial, but the dead-eyed willingness to kill is.  And keep in mind- I’m using a woman as an example here only because women often feel more physically vulnerable for obvious reasons.  The dynamics associated with the use of guns apply equally to men, and on balance I think women are probably tougher when push comes to shove.To maintain any gun safely and properly is a heavy enough burden for anyone worthy of gun ownership.  That was Bob’s first lesson.  But to squeeze the trigger and kill- not stop, not hurt, not scare, but kill- requires a willingness not everyone has.  Some have staved off harm by drawing and pointing guns at would-be attackers for sure.  But to rely on brandishing with no intent to fire is worse than folly.   It invites an attacker to use your gun first against you and then in other crimes.  And for what it’s worth, people in real life don’t die like they sometimes do in television and movies, and even justified killers don’t just walk away after a few questions from sympathetic detectives.  We’ve been coarsened to a large degree by CGI and illicit video uploads, so many feel as if the mystery has been taken out of violent death.  But while movies and bootleg videos might seem to reduce the shock of seeing a bullet strike a human body, video does zero to prepare a killer- even a completely justified one- for the emotional, legal, financial and social life changes that soon take place and never fully subside.So my advice is different from what many who know me would assume.  Want a gun for personal protection?  Do as Bob would do:  Own- don’t just learn, damn it, but own- how difficult it is to maintain one properly in your home and on your person.  If you’re comfortable with that considerable burden given your circumstances (kids, neighbors, the security of your car, home, etc), then shop wisely with someone who knows you and knows guns.  Then attend a NRA safety course and whatever else you need to supplement it.  Then take a long, unvarnished look in the mirror and ask yourself if you mean it when you tell your instructors that yes, you won’t ever draw unless you’re ready to shoot and yes, you understand that guns are for killing and not for wounding.If you can handle all of that, and your circumstances truly merit the need for a handgun, then Godspeed and I pray you never have to use it.  If you do, aim as you’ve been taught and have practiced and be ready for what comes next.  If you’ve done everything correctly, it’s a far kinder fate than what the bastard you shot down had in mind for you.  But it won’t be a cakewalk.

Accuser: Simply The Wrong Word

When the story of former NFL star Lawrence Taylor broke a couple of months ago, I was angry but not surprised to find the victim in the case- a child used in prostitution by a Bronx pimp- referred to as “Taylor’s Accuser.”  Really?  Even when we’re talking about a child, beaten into submission and presented to a huge, rich, middle-aged man like a snack from a serving tray, we’re going to insist that she be labeled an “accuser?”It’s become an endemic part of the sleepless news cycle.  “Accuser” is how the media now commonly refers to the person who has made a complaint of sexual assault, regardless of the circumstances.  It’s replaced the antiquated legal term “prosecutrix,” the feminine term that was used in criminal justice particularly in the realm of rape.  On its face, it’s hard to argue with the designation of “accuser.”  Unlike prosecutrix, it is sex neutral and seems less paternalistic.  And it’s technically correct.  The person who makes a complaint of sexual assault against another is, by definition, accusing that person.  So what’s wrong with it?The issue is the weight, and connotations, of “accuser.”  The word has a storied history in our culture, and it’s not pretty.  Puritanical, early America was stained by episodes of religious hysteria, exacerbated by superstition and fueled by the misery and uncertainty of 17^th century colonial life.  Witch trials predated the Puritans by centuries in Europe, but the Salem witch trials in Massachusetts bored their way deep into the American psyche.  The story, of course, involved accusations of witchcraft on the part of village women, many of whom began to accuse each other in order to divert the suspicion that had been cast onto them, or to gain some other advantage as the hysteria continued.  The motives of the accusing women varied, but all had one thing in common:  Their accusations were largely or completely false.  Made famous first by author Nathaniel Hawthorne (Hawthorne was a descendant of witch trial Judge Hathorne and so ashamed that he added a letter to his last name), the story was picked up in the 1950’s by the playwright Arthur Miller in “The Crucible.”  Miller’s adaptation of the story was driven by the hysteria of the McCarthy era in which accusations of Communism, also usually false, were dispensed recklessly, destroying careers and lives.The accusing women of Salem weren’t just incorrect, either.  According to lore at least, by and large their finger-pointing, high-pitched accusations were fanciful, destructive and cruel.  They tormented the innocent and shamed themselves, playing on the fears of a hapless and vulnerable community.  They were accusers; they were not victims, certainly not in the way they claimed.  It is this legacy that lingers when the word “accuser” is used in the context of a sexual violence case.  At very least, labeling someone an “accuser” conjures doubt in the accusation.  At worst, it subtly but clearly connotes ulterior motives, mental illness, or evil intent.Supporters of the designation claim that using the term “victim” for a person who has made a report of sexual violence is presumptuous and possibly unfair in the case of a mistaken or false accusation.  American criminal justice is based on a presumption of innocence, after all.   Defense attorneys around the country have been successful in recent years in preventing DA’s and witnesses from using the term “victim” in court to describe the prosecution’s main witness prior to a conviction of the defendant.Part of what drives these arguments is the fact that most sex cases (either adult or child) are not “whodunnit” cases.  The question usually isn’t who committed the act; the great majority of the time the perpetrator is known to the victim.  The question is whether the act was committed at all, or if the “accuser” is wrong, malevolent, mentally ill, under pressure to lie, or some combination of all of these.  The problem with this analysis, though, is that it assumes some sort of roughly equal balance between “real” cases and false reports.  False accusations do occur, but the idea that most or even many charges of sexual violence are false is grossly misleading.  Thorough and methodological research puts the rate of false reports for sexual assault no higher than that of other crimes at the highest.  Nevertheless, when it comes to accusations of sexual violence, ancient myths suggest that rape allegations need to be looked at with a more suspect eye than other cases.  This is despite the fact that other crimes, like car theft or insurance fraud, offer much greater incentives to falsely report and are probably reported that way at higher rates.My suggestion for a compromise is the word “complainant.”  It’s a little legalistic, but easily understood and technically every bit as correct as “accuser.”  But without the punishing baggage of history and myth.  Unfortunately, too many of the purveyors of the term “accuser” employ it for exactly that reason.  So-called “Men’s Rights” groups, “false rape” websites and other like-minded sources want there to be a veneer of doubt over the idea that women, children and some men are sexually abused and assaulted in rates that are frankly alarming.  As for the media, I sense the term has gained traction at least in part because it suggests the kind of knockdown, high-stakes dispute that sells papers.  The idea of an “accuser” evokes courtroom theater, pointed fingers, surprise twists and hidden agendas.This is as tragic as it is unfair; the very act of standing up for oneself as a survivor of sexual violence and starting the terribly slow and uncertain wheels of justice is by itself a cathartic and deeply impressive profile in courage.  Those who perpetrate the myths fear this, and so prefer to cast “accusers” as hysterical or worse.  The media seems unimpressed with the sometimes desperate and always difficult act of coming forward, apparently seeing it as too mundane with out some provocative term to hang on the survivor.  They’re wrong.  The evil that underlies the acts is mundane; all evil is at bottom.  But the journey toward survival and the quest for justice is anything but.  It’s sad that it’s still not enough.

Thanks, Detective Perez

I don't know if art imitates life or the other way around, but one of the most gratifying things I discovered when I took a job as an ADA in New York City was how NYPD detectives do, in fact, walk, talk, drive and generally act like what pop culture would suggest.  I found a great combination of that bravado, competence and integrity in a Bronx Special Victims Detective named Freddie Perez when I arrived there in the fall of 2005.I met Freddie about a month into the job as a Child Abuse and Sex ADA, during my first miserable day in the miserable environment that was the "complaint room," or the dank, garishly lit, filthy office area where crimes were written up by prosecutors on duty for the day or evening.  He was around 30 at the time, a young man to have a detective's shield.  I knew of him; his build, his smile and his edgy charm made him a big hit with the women in my office, and he had a reputation as a hard worker.  The case Freddie brought me was a brutal attempted rape.  The victim was a teenage, coffee colored girl who had been attacked while short-cutting through an alley near her apartment after a waitress shift.  The young woman, I'll call her Carla, had been pistol whipped, spit on and forced to strip by her attacker, who thankfully fled when a neighbor turned on a backyard light and scared him off.Freddie caught the case and eventually a suspect, and brought Carla to the complaint room, where all victims in the Bronx must go in person to sign the official charging documents.  Because I was in sex crimes, the case fell to me.  He brought Carla into the cubicle where I was, and she sat down across from me.  She was a lovely young woman, delicate and childlike even with a couple of tattoos and some funky jewelry.  Her mother and her boyfriend waited outside while she recited what had happened to her, and I translated it into the legalese of the complaint.  At times during her account of the events she broke down, and I paused to give her time to collect herself.  I kept my speech slightly slow, and I spoke in low tones, the way I had been taught and had always done with victims of violent crime.  Freddie’s manner with her was a little different.  It was shocking at first, but then gratifying as I saw that it was working beautifully.“Carla, for Chrissake!” he said, smiling, when she choked on a word and started to cry at one point.  “What did I say?  No more cryin!’ This guy’s got work to do!”  Her short sobs were immediately mixed with giggles and she slapped at him.“Shut up! I’m allowed to cry some!”“No, no- you had your chance.  This is all business.  C’mon.”  With banter like that, we got through Carla’s account and wrote the complaint up.  By the end of the process it was obvious he had developed a rapport with her over several days and knew how best to make her comfortable.  He sent her out to the waiting room briefly as I prepared the complaint for the two of them to sign.  Carla did not know the name of the person who had assaulted her.  She had only picked him out of a line-up, which he had appeared in because she had first picked him out from a computer photo program used by NYPD which served as kind of a hi-tech mug book.  Once she was gone, I congratulated Freddie on how well he'd worked with the victim, and also on the great collar.  His smile disappeared."Rog, he's not the guy.""Freddie, what the f__?"  He shrugged."I'm telling you, it's not him.  I had to arrest him- she picked him out of a line-up.  We went in through the front door, pulled him outta bed.  I took one look at him.  He's not the guy.""But he was in the area that night, right?" I asked, looking over the reports I had."Yeah.  And he didn't have much of an alibi, even though he's married.  But I'm telling you, man.  He's not the guy.  Whoever did this is an animal.  This guy's not that.  I hate it for her, but I think she just picked out the wrong guy.""Alright," I said.  "Whoever did it spit all over her and there's probably DNA. We'll figure it out."A day or two later I got a call from the defendant's attorney.  He'd been practicing for over 20 years, he assured me.  He didn't believe all of his clients were innocent.  In fact, he didn't believe almost any of them were innocent.  But this guy, he believed- hell, he knew- was innocent.  Could we at least expedite the DNA and make sure the guy wasn't getting completely brutalized at Rikers?  Yes to both, I said.  I didn't say anything about what Freddie had told me; there was nothing concrete yet to reveal except a detective's intuition.  But because of his doubts in particular, I agreed to check on the guy at Rikers and see how fast I could get the DNA back.  When it returned, he was cleared and released.  Carla was devastated, understandably, about getting an innocent man arrested and still not knowing who had attacked her, but Freddie worked with her through that as well.  The real perp was eventually caught in another state with a string of similar crimes.Despite what common sense might suggest, studies show that even well seasoned detectives aren't any better at detecting deception- with very good liars- than college students.  Psychopaths in particular can lie to almost anyone successfully.  Regardless, instincts are incredibly important in detective work, and Freddie's were almost always dead on.  The uncanny knack he had for just recognizing something wrong, off, or unexpected in a case saved us a lot of time, and some unnecessary misery for guys who didn't belong in jail in the first place because of a tragic but honest mistake.  Combined with the genuine respect and compassion he showed for the victims we worked with, whatever their circumstances, he was a gem.  One of the last cases he worked was a nightmarish one with a dear friend of mine still at the Bronx DA's office, and involved a child sex abuse victim the same age as his oldest daughter.  Both Freddie and Danielle Pascale, the ADA, worked tirelessly on the case and with the victim, and obtained a conviction and a well deserved decades long sentence.  It was a tough case for Freddie in particular, but he held his own and did his job.Freddie's career was cut short because of an injury, and I was honored to celebrate with him and another terrific SVU detective at their retirement party earlier this month.  Freddie loved being a cop, but he's excited about starting on his new life, raising his daughters and moving on to whatever lies ahead.  I'm happy for him, but I'm sad for the venerable NYPD and the community he served.  Thanks, Detective.  And Godspeed.

Arizona's new immigration bill: crime victims beware

Come with me.  Down here.  Close your eyes for a moment and imagine that you’re a predator, choosing victims.  You want a family you can ingratiate yourself to, eventually molesting their children and emptying their bank account, or at least their coffee can.  You want to sell fake insurance to an old woman, an empty computer tower to a school kid.  You want to stalk and tackle a young woman walking home from a waitress shift.  Whom do you choose?If you’re doing it right, you’ll look for someone who probably won’t be believed or taken seriously if they dare to report whatever crime you’re planning against them; perhaps a person with perceived mental health issues, a disability, a reputation as a liar, or anyone on the fringe or disenfranchised.  But if you’re really slick, you’ll go for someone who won’t say a damn thing in the first place- someone who won’t report.   That’s already the case with people who fear reporting crime because of government backlash against them.  For all the fear-mongering about the terrible things undocumented aliens do to US citizens (read: brown threatening white), the facts are most of them are here desperate to work and desirous of nothing but a very low profile.  Because of that, they often keep quiet about crime and abuse within their own communities and whatever is forced upon them from without.  It’s an age-old phenomenon, and it’s about to get a whole lot worse in Arizona.I love Arizona.  I’ve traveled every corner of this magnificent state and have found wonderful people, breath taking scenery and a diversity in nature that is all but unparalleled.  I also lived in what the Mexicans call the Frontera, that is Northern Sonora where I learned the language and found a second family through a close childhood friend who now lives outside of Phoenix.  I know the frustration on both sides of the border, and I can understand the deep-seated feeling by many Arizonans that the Federal government can’t or won’t provide the necessary border security that might make laws like SB 1070 less tempting.  Regardless, the law is Constitutionally repugnant, mean-spirited, begging of abuse, and it stigmatizes and threatens further the Hispanic ethnic group, many of whom are citizens and legal aliens.  These people might now feel panic nudging them when they realize they’ve forgotten their wallets and are on the street facing a police inquiry because of “reasonable suspicion.”I don’t have room for a full criticism of the law; there’s no shortage of that out there anyway.  What concerns me immediately is the further chilling effect this law will have on an already frightened and disenfranchised population when it comes to crime.  I’ve studied the text of the law closely and I’m aware that police officers are not supposed to inquire about citizenship when it might impede or obstruct an investigation.  I’ve worked with police officers for years and find the vast majority to be decent and conscientious, and I don’t fear police abuse, while it’s certainly possible, as much as others on my side of the political spectrum.  Regardless, the message anyone will hear who is undocumented or could be mistaken for undocumented wherever cops are concerned is “back away and keep quiet.”  Predators will act accordingly and target even more victims of (or near) these suspected groups.Take, for instance, the 3.6 million people of Maricopa County who, if they are arrested, are held in the custody of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, among the most despicable people to bear responsibility for the custody of other human beings in recent American memory.  Arpaio would be a perverse but harmless clown were he a consultant somewhere peddling his sick views to municipalities.  Instead he is among the most important law enforcement officials in the state, and he is to law enforcement what Joe McCarthy was to patriotism.  Arpaio’s jail system has been sued multiple times for human rights abuses; he is under an almost continuous state of investigation for mistreatment and mysterious, violent deaths that take place in his jails.  His facilities are legendary for their lack of decent food and medical care, regardless of the fact that most of his inmates are awaiting trial and have been convicted of nothing.  Arpaio brags about how harshly he treats his inmates and relishes in publicly humiliating them.  This is all in the name of justice and deterrence, apparently, convincing his inmates that time in jail isn’t much fun.  No sir, it’s not.  It’s also not legally appropriate to punish someone who hasn’t been convicted of a crime.  That would include arrested persons who are in the US legally but unable to overcome the remarkably totalitarian presumption of guilt if they forget their “papers” on the street some day.  How long does it take to verify one’s legal status, or process them for deportation, while one languishes in Arpaio’s jail?  We don’t know.  What we do know is that most people will do or avoid doing almost anything to escape a sentence like that.  But that’s exactly what they have to look forward to under this law in Arizona’s largest county.  No conviction necessary.So imagine an elderly undocumented man, brought to the US with family, wanting to tell someone about the auto mechanic who fleeced his son-in-law for a car that still won’t start.  Imagine a 16 year-old undocumented girl, desperate to tell someone about the classmate who is stalking her, or the family member who is molesting her.  Imagine an undocumented mother of a toddler, holding her child with trembling hands as she wonders what to do to comfort her after a worker at daycare has beaten and burned her for giggling at nap time.  Imagine these people as victims, and not as human beings.  If you’re still thinking like a predator, you’re smiling ear to ear.

An Open Letter to the DA in the Ben Roethlisberger Case

Hon. Fred D. Bright, District Attorney, Ocmulgee Judicial District, State of GeorgiaDear Mr. Bright:Ben Roethlisberger raped a 20 year-old college student in your jurisdiction.He committed a violent felony which you and you alone were responsible for pursuing.  You are the elected District Attorney who was called upon to summon the vigilance, resources, legal theory, competence and simple courage to bring this man to justice.  Justice, as you correctly stated, is your proper goal rather than a conviction.  Instead of pursuing justice, however, you ran from it.  In both substance and delivery, your decision not to pursue charges against this rapist is one of the clearest examples of prosecutorial incompetence I’ve witnessed in years.Normally I would withhold judgment on a charging decision in a case I wasn’t directly involved in.  I’m aware that your rape statute is challenging.  I’m not familiar with your jury pool, your legal culture or the limits of your resources.  So while the decision looked timid and feckless to me, I was willing to extend the benefit of the doubt.And then I heard you speak.The news conference, where you laid out your reasons for not pursuing this case, to the extent that it accurately reflected your analysis, should stand as a training tool in how not to evaluate a sexual assault case.  You note “quite candidly” that it was the victim’s friends who initially sought out a police officer to make a report.  What’s your point?  That she was clearly not victimized because she didn’t have the wherewithal to seek out a cop herself, just seconds after being raped by a professional football player twice her size?You note the victim’s statements changed over the night in question.  Are you really surprised, given that she was intoxicated, confused, frightened and in shock over the period of time in which they were taken?  What about the now resigned police sergeant who berated her for being drunk, spewed expletives about her and informed her and her friends that Roethlisberger had a lot of money, and that filing a police report against him would be futile?  Did you think that would promote cooperation and stability with your victim?  You note also the victim’s statement to medical professionals that night that she was “sort of raped” by a boy.   Therefore, in your mind apparently, she really wasn’t.  Because I guess it’s one shot, one kill in your jurisdiction.  If a woman, because of shock, fear, mistreatment, intoxication, confusion, the weight of circumstances, the attacker's celebrity and the psychological punch of being raped, can’t recite facts flawlessly within hours of the attack, she’s done for.  The case can’t be proven.I can’t say for certain whether you could have proven this case beyond a reasonable doubt and you can’t either.  I can say for certain that the standard you invoked for whether charges should be brought is utterly false, in addition to being misleading and needlessly defeatist.  The National District Attorneys Association, an organization I served for two years, promulgates Prosecution Standards which state that the prosecutor should file “only those charges which he reasonably believes can be substantiated by admissible evidence at trial.”  You had plenty.  You had motive, opportunity and zero delay in reporting the incident.  You had eye- witness testimony from her sorority sisters, panicking at the thought of their friend’s condition and circumstances, and being coldly stonewalled by “bodyguards” and the bar management.  You had physical findings consistent with sexual penetration.  You had the gift of a rare evidentiary rule that would have allowed you to use Roethlisberger’s 2008 sexual attack as part of your case in chief had you developed it.  You might have had the victim’s testimony had you chosen to establish a rapport with her from the beginning without judging her from a distance.  In order to develop a rapport and promote cooperation, a competent prosecutor will reach out to the victim of a sexual assault immediately.  Did you even speak to her before she was ensconced in legal protection of her own before April 2, nearly a month after the rape?Your responsibility includes a college town, Mr. Bright.  If this is how you react to the extremely common scenario of alcohol facilitated sexual assault, then I fear greatly for the people you’re sworn to protect.   I understand the victim’s eventual desire that the case be dropped, and I respect the fact that you took her wishes into consideration.  Regardless, my guess is that treating her and this case with more respect from the very beginning might have yielded a different outcome with regard to her willingness to cooperate.  Instead you pointed to her failings as a 20 year-old college student and perversely equated her behavior with Roethlisberger’s that night in some inappropriate scolding session you had no reason or authority to engage in.I don’t believe you dropped this case in any sort of deference to a celebrity. I think you ran from it because you’re thoroughly unschooled on how to prosecute anything like it. Thus, you have failed this woman, the citizens of your jurisdiction, and the wider world beyond it.  You have allowed a repeat sex offender to escape, let loose to rape again, which he almost surely will, despite your admonitions to him to “grow up.”  Ben Roethlisberger is grown up, Mr. Bright.  He’s a grown up rapist, and he has permanently altered and forever scarred the life of more than one woman.  If he does so again and his next victim chooses to report him, I pray that her courage is this time equaled by that of the DA responsible for doing justice.Very Truly Yours,Roger A. Canaff, JD

Failed Adoptive Parent: Watch Your Language

The invective that’s being hurled at Torry Hansen for returning her adopted son to Russia is sad, but mostly richly deserved.  Cooler heads and kinder people than I am will reasonably resist a rush to judgment, of course.  Caring for a child who has been raised in an institution, in a remarkably different culture, can’t be easy for anyone.  And it could be that the boy, obviously through no fault of his own, has serious behavioral issues that simply overwhelmed this family, particularly the hapless Torry who apparently believes that “disannulled” is a word.  (And yes, I understand that I’m a lawyer and perhaps shouldn’t pick on people who aren’t when it comes to quasi-legal writing.  Regardless, she has an R.N. and access to a dictionary.  If she’s going to officially abandon a child to a bureaucratic office 6000 miles away with a letter, she should at least have someone proofread the damn thing.)Assuming the Hansen’s are being completely truthful (which the Russian government disputes) and the boy was exhibiting homicidal ideation and fire starting, the fact remains that he’s seven.  Without resorting to abusive practices, he’s relatively easy to control physically, and he needs to be monitored- pretty much constantly- anyway.  If the family was that exhausted by him, they had better have sought out every possible means of assistance before returning him like a pet who ended up damaging the carpet and exasperating the owners.Regardless, there is no excuse- none- for putting a child on a 10-hour transatlantic flight and having him scooped up by some guy on the other side, paid $200 to drop him off at a ministry headquarters. I could care less how many “safety references” the Hansen’s claimed they gathered with regard to this courier.  Canadian Press reports that he dropped the child off with his bags and the letter and promptly left.  Everyone involved, most certainly this child, is lucky he didn’t disappear outside of the airport like smoke.  Since a lawyer has now muzzled the family, we probably won’t know until an official inquest why Torry didn’t accompany the child back to Russia upon rejecting him.  My guess is her reasons will involve all sorts of feelings of helplessness and failure that mask the fact that she really just didn’t want to go.  Cost, and the uncertainty of how, exactly, the Russian government might react to her walking away from him surely gave her pause.  Especially cost.  So instead Nancy, the grandmother, accompanied him as far as Dulles.  United Airlines and the hired stranger in one of the developed world’s more dangerous cities had to suffice from there.What prompted me to write, though was less Torry Hansen’s grim and nihilistic response to this boy’s purported difficulties, and more her description of them.  In the letter she wrote to explain her abandonment, she stated that he is “violent and has severe psychopathic issues/behaviors.”  I don’t expect much from this person in terms of competent description anyway, but she is far, far out of bounds in using the term “psychopathic” in any context.  From my work in New York State with civil management/commitment proceedings, I have a fair amount of lay experience with psychopathy.  I have encountered, spoken with, and cross-examined psychopaths.  The diagnostic term describes a terrifying and still only partially understood condition afflicting career criminals, serial killers, and the most repugnant and dangerous people, criminal or not, among us. At this point anyway, it is reserved almost exclusively for adults, with expanding research suggesting that it can be applied to adolescents.  I’ve yet to see it applied to children as young as seven.  I understand she’s attempting to describe behaviors in the letter, but the word “issues” is broader than “behaviors.”  Certainly she’s at least suggesting the child is, in her mind at least, some sort of “budding psychopath,” another term that is tossed about far too much to describe troubled children.   It's obvious she used the word for shock value in an effort to underscore her faultlessness in abandoning him.  The media is pushing these same unfair buttons also, with shocking headlines that focus on the boy's "terrorizing" behavior, as noted in an excellent blog post by Martha Nichols.The Hansen family’s response to this child’s troubles, whatever they truly are, has been destructive, selfish and cruel.  It has further stoked existing tension between the two countries and threatened the entire process that has placed thousands of the over 700,000 children in Russia who are growing up without parents.  Adoption of Russian children by Americans has resulted in some well-publicized horrific failures, but most, according the National Council for Adoption, are  successful.  But this family’s abandonment of one of them confirms the suspicions of many Russians that Americans view adoption from their country with a mentality best described as something between boutique shopping and the fate of an empty coffee cup.

Holy Week and the Nonsense Continues

It continues from the Church and its defenders, desperately trying to alienate further multitudes.  And it continues from anti-Catholics and the anti-religious who want the institution brought to its knees, some justified because of personal betrayal but many out of sheer, gleeful contempt.Ross Douthat, a conservative columnist for the New York Times, blames the crisis, in part, on the sexual revolution of the 60’s and 70’s.  The insinuation is that some of the abuse, particularly long term abuse against post-pubescent boys by priests, is explainable by the (literally) “revolutionary” effects of that era.  Douthat, in a blog post, attempts to shore up his argument by citing the formidable John Jay study that I’ve referred to here previously.  Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, makes the oft-heard but no less despicable argument that homosexuality is to blame, since most of the boys abused were post-pubescent.  Donohue doesn’t even attempt to cite the John Jay study (which belies his central claim) or anything else.  He’s got his scapegoat and an army of the uninformed applauding his analysis.  Finally, many liberal Catholics and anti-Catholics continue to see the roots of the crisis in priestly celibacy, which has clearly “warped” so many of these priests and turned them, through repression and obsession with the forbidden, into predators.Nonsense, all of it.The Church has a problem with predators because predators have found in it a haven, period.  Whether these predators prefer boys or girls, pre-pubescent or adolescent, has nothing to do with society’s temperature on sexual expression or the sexual preference of the predators.  They prey where they can, like any hunter does.  Non sex-offender priests with homosexual urges, throughout the ages, have taken adult lovers within the priesthood or without.  Were they emboldened to do so more during the post Vatican II sexual revolution?  Probably.  Nevertheless, they did not and have not feasted on the emerging, volatile sexuality of adolescents by betraying their trust, destroying their faith, and using as a weapon the very thing the child was brought up to turn to in times of crisis and discomfort.  That’s what a predator does.  And what they have done over the centuries, let alone in the decade and a half of the sexual revolution, should never be dismissed or excused as free-love experimentation between otherwise “well meaning” or “normal” priests and minor children.  Well meaning priests, gay or straight, who struggle and fail with celibacy turn to adult lovers, period.  Priests who manipulate, con, groom and then molest even older adolescents are sex offenders, period.  The Church has more than its fair share not because she is manufacturing them but because she has proven to be the best and largest hunting ground of perhaps any institution known to man.If the current Pope or anyone else involved in the shame and tragedy of this cover-up can be forgiven at all, it’s perhaps because of three things:  The fear and distrust of outside, civil authority because of past persecution, an over-reliance on the power of psychotherapy and treatment to “cure” the problem, and the doctrine of reconciliation through confession that the Church values so highly.Let’s be clear:  None of these things excuses the ocean of evil and resultant misery.  Even the lofty and still appealing idea that a person can enter a confessional and come out clean and ready to do better does not excuse the reckless judgment calls the Church hierarchy made over the years, at the expense of her most vulnerable followers.  But these points, when fairly considered, provide a slightly less cynical view than that peddled by anti-religion enthusiasts like Christopher Hitchens (although he does make some fair points in a recent Slate article).  Still, the Pope is not, as Hitchens claims, a “mediocre Bavarian bureaucrat.”  He is in fact a remarkably intellectually disciplined and erudite man as was his predecessor.  But this makes his missteps and continued ignorance on this subject harder to accept, not easier.  I don’t fault the Church for not understanding sexual predators earlier.  Our understanding of them now is still emerging, and good research is only decades old, if that.   The Church has been victimized by predators also.  But now she is gambling with her future by looking for a scapegoat in homosexuality and refusing to come to terms with the countless victims whose lives these infiltrators have stained forever.This crisis has been the spiritual heartbreak of my lifetime.  Armed with the professional knowledge I’ve been blessed with from working with the finest minds in the business, and being utterly powerless to affect any change from the pew I kneel in, makes it that much worse.  And the nonsense continues.

Lawyers, Hallways and Elevators

The hand being offered to me was roughly the same color as mine.  It was well manicured and bordered by a crisp, white dress shirt at the wrist.  It belonged to a physician who had sexually molested his two daughters over a period of years.  This morning in 2003, in the long hallway of the felony criminal courtrooms in Alexandria, I had run into him and his lawyer on the way to court.  I knew much about the man, of course, from his victims and his wife.  A detective and I had spent months building the case against him; the one that was finally and mercifully ending in a guilty plea.  With no agreement as to sentencing, he would plea to the charges, and I would ask for prison time while his attorney asked for minimum jail time and treatment.  The attorney was a decent, honorable man I’d worked with on many cases.  We greeted each other cordially.  And then the defendant, the doctor who had methodically, sexually abused his own helpless children, altering the landscape of their lives forever, nodded in my direction and offered his hand.“Good morning,” he said plainly.  Our eyes met.  I glanced down at the offered hand.  I shook it.  “Good morning, doctor,” I said.  And then we went into the courtroom and argued his fate.That’s how it’s done, sometimes.  Prosecutors don’t often have direct contact with defendants.  Defense attorneys, some of whom are old friends of mine, deal with offenders face to face much more often and intensely then I do.  Nevertheless, probably the most common question I got asked as a child abuse and sex crimes DA was some variation of “how do you look at these guys and not want to strangle them?”  Most of the time I just shrug.  The fact is, when you come face to face with the kind of persons we all fear and guard against, the actual response is something akin to confusion.  They generally don’t seethe or laugh maniacally.  They don’t strain against shackles or spit venom.  Mundaneness is the usual face of evil.My two favorite stories about dealing directly with the men I’ve prosecuted both revolve around elevators.  The first came about because of a guy (I’ll call him Mr. Smith) who appeared in court one Friday morning in May of 2001 as a result of a direct indictment I’d filed against him in Alexandria.  Mr. Smith had raped his step-daughter many times over several years, resulting in her becoming pregnant at 15, the event that finally revealed the abuse.  For various legal reasons, I filed an indictment against him rather than seeking an arrest warrant.  He received word of the indictment, bonded out at the police station, and then dutifully appeared in court on the appointed day, not yet represented by a lawyer.  Don Haddock, the spry, folksy, impossibly southern chief judge, looked over the paperwork that Mr. Smith handed him when the case was called.“Mr. Canaff filed this indictment,” Judge Haddock said in his typical drawl.  “Go down to the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office on the third floor and ask for him.  Bring him up here.”  A few minutes later I beheld Mr. Smith.  His abuse of the child in his care had begun when she was less than 10.  He now stood at the receptionist’s desk, politely informing me that Judge Haddock had requested my presence upstairs.  I straightened my tie, put a suit jacket on, and walked with Mr. Smith back to the elevator.“Mr. Smith,” I said, “you understand who I am, correct?”“Yessir.  You’re the ACA.  You’re the one who indicted me.”“Basically, yeah.  The thing is, you don’t have to talk to me, and it’s probably better if you don’t.  You’re gonna need a lawyer.  Does that make sense?”  He nodded.“Okay.  Just follow me.  When we get in, the judge will see us and he’ll tell you what to do.”In retrospect, I’m honored. Judge Haddock didn’t suffer fools well and he could be hard and caustic.   But he was a good judge, and he wouldn’t have sent an unrepresented defendant facing a life sentence for rape to my office if he thought I’d try something underhanded with him, like “Hey, Mr. Smith- how ‘bout you tell me your side of the story while you’re here?”  He trusted to me to be professional and even-handed with this accused person, and I had been.Fast forward to last year.  I was at the New York state Attorney General’s office, trying civil management cases.  Long story short, that means focusing on guys with sex offense convictions who are about to be released from corrections or parole, and whom we can prove have a “mental abnormality” which would require them to spend time either in a mental hospital or on continued intensive parole.  The case I was working involved a 60 year-old man (we’ll call him Mr. Jones) who had committed two brutal home invasion rapes in the early 70’s followed by an attack on a woman he stabbed multiple times in an elevator. In 2009, after years in prison and a decade or so on parole, he was set to be released altogether and became a candidate for civil management. He remained on parole during the process, making court appearances as directed.One day we had a long, tedious court appearance involving pretrial matters in Manhattan.  At the end of the day, the judge set a new date and released us.  Jones’ attorney had other cases to deal with in the same building, and split off as we left the courtroom.  Mr. Jones and I reached the elevator bank alone, and he politely motioned me in first when it arrived.  As the door closed, it occurred to me that I was sharing an elevator with a man who 1) had stabbed a woman 26 times in an elevator not three miles from this one, and 2) was now being prosecuted by me for what could result in a life sentence, for all practical purposes, in a mental health facility.The elevator made its slow descent through the floors of the criminal courts building.  Mr. Jones looked over at me as we reached the first floor.“Long day,” he said, congenially.  I nodded. The doors opened.“It was,” I said.  “Keep in touch with your attorney, Mr. Jones.  See you next time.”  He held the door for me as we left the building onto Centre Street, and promptly disappeared into the stream of humanity that is lower Manhattan.That’s how it’s done, sometimes.

Let The Little Children Come To Me

"Jesus said, 'Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.'"  Matthew 19:14 (NIV).This lovely, simple sentiment is relevant to me again, after receiving it like a gift from my mother decades ago, because of the actions of my Church yet again.  The archdiocese of Denver is refusing to re-enroll two children in a Catholic elementary school in Boulder because their parents are lesbians.  The official position of the archdiocese is that, while God loves homosexuals and their children as much as He does anyone, the Church apparently cannot allow the children (!) of such persons to receive a Catholic education because marriage can only occur between a man and a woman.  People with a different understanding of marriage and family life, says the archbishop, "have other, excellent options for education and should see in them the better course for their children."  Indeed.  The kids are five and six.I’m not disrespectful of many of the rules and restrictions put in place by the Church as a part of Catholic life.  I understand the importance of the sacraments to the core of the faith, and I don’t fault the Church for guarding them.  But what sacrament is being challenged here?  What bedrock principle is being torn asunder by these little ones who want to go to school?   I wouldn’t ask the school to teach these kids differently.  Apparently their parents are, for now at least, comfortable with Catholic teaching.  The parents must deal with what the school may teach versus what their children will experience at home.  So be it.  I wouldn’t ask the Church to bend her view on marriage and family life to accommodate this family.What I could ask, as others appropriately have, is whether the archbishop has made all the parents at this school reveal their sexual habits to test them against Catholic doctrine.  But I don’t have to go there.  And incidentally, neither will they, because they'd end up with a terrifically small school population if they did ask and then treated the honest responders the same way they've treated this couple and their kids. Honestly- are we to believe that Jesus, for Whose Sacred Heart this school is named, would bar these two from attendance?I’m not a big fan of the popular and usually abbreviated “What Would Jesus Do?”  It’s not that I don’t think WWJD is a nice sentiment.  I just find the expression far too ambitious and outside the realm of understanding to just about any who would ponder it.  Even with the best intentions, I think most people who ask WWJD are really asking for some earthly doctrinal, pastoral, or pop-culture guidance rather than Jesus’ own.  I’m familiar with and respectful of the evangelical view that Jesus’ teachings, intentions, etc, are right there in the printed word.  God help me, but that’s not my view.  I personally believe that Jesus is divine; that’s where my lot is thrown as a Catholic.  But for the time He was flesh and walked among us, I also think He was a remarkably complex and sometimes difficult guy.  He did things that didn’t make sense to His disciples.  He was playing on such a higher level that, as far as I can tell, He had to be the Son of God just to put up with the weaknesses and fallibility of the group of working guys He chose to tour with- not to mention the lot of us who have followed those original 12 over the centuries.  So WWJD, while a much better sentiment than many that could replace it, is not one I find a lot of comfort in.Sometimes, though, it seems pretty clear.“Let the little children come to me.”  So said the Man, on the Judean coast tending to a large crowd, when his well-meaning but befuddled disciples rebuked the kids who rushed to him.  Jesus would have none of it.  In my mind, He opened his arms, laughed kindly, and let himself get overrun like he was walking in the door after a long day to His own kids and an over-excited Yellow Lab.  If I’m right, He let the unimaginable power He possessed flow gently to them in protection and healing.If I’m wrong, He was an incorrectly messianic, but otherwise compelling philosopher and moralist who drew crowds and comforted them, sometimes by embracing their children.  Either way, He didn’t ask about the sexual habits, or anything else, of their parents when He did so.  My guess?  He had bigger things to think about.

Blind Still to the Clarity of Rape

Like millions, I’ve become a big fan of “Mad Men,” AMC’s stylish, brooding and sexy drama series focused on Kennedy-era New York City and its anti-hero Don Draper, the ad man with the bizarrely complicated and purposefully unexamined life.  The treatment of women and minorities (Jews, African-Americans and homosexuals most prominently) provide a tragic and illuminating undercurrent for the entire series.  Many of its brilliant plotlines focus on the struggles of these individuals to reconcile their circumstances with the hyper white-male dominated world they navigate.Given this important backdrop, I was happy to see the show focus on sexual assault as well, particularly intimate partner sexual violence.  The players are the head of the secretarial pool, Joan Holloway (played brilliantly by Christina Hendricks) and her fiancé, a handsome, young doctor who rapes her in an office while visiting her workplace before a dinner date.  I was then promptly disheartened, although not surprised, by viewer reactions, many of whom put quotes around the word ‘rape’ when discussing the scene online, as if what happened to Joan was somehow unclear or arguable.  It was neither.In fact, the scene is extremely well done and remarkably realistic, based on my experience with survivors of this most prevalent kind of sexual assault.  Joan’s fiancé wants to see one of the ad men’s offices and have her make him a drink.  She reluctantly agrees and leads him to the small bar.  Once there, he gropes her from behind, innocently enough at first for a betrothed couple, but she reminds him that its not her office and they can’t get physical.  He continues to grope her, not taking ‘no’ for an answer, and then grabs her forcefully when she turns to him, pushing her against the bar table.  Bottles shake and Joan’s eyes grow wide.  It’s at this moment she realizes she’s no longer in control of her body.  He turns her, his arms grasping hers, and pushes her to the floor while she protests.  He quickly overpowers her, forces her arms away from her body, spreads her legs, works himself out of his pants and rapes her.  With his right hand he turns her face away from him and she stares silently at a couch and a coffee table in her line of sight.  The next scene is of him waiting outside the office for her, presumably as she’s straightening her clothing and composing herself again.  She emerges and they leave together.I sometimes show this scene when teaching sex assault dynamics to cops and prosecutors.  Just about all of them readily recognize what they see as rape, and can pinpoint the moment at which Joan’s choices and physical security evaporate.  The general public, however, seems to be behind the curve.  As Hendricks herself reports in a New York magazine article from last fall, many viewers (blogging on the show or commenting on it online) either didn’t see this incident as rape (not “real” rape, anyway), or were dubious about Joan’s reaction to it.  Many also seemed to believe that, because she didn’t cry out and was willing to continue on with their evening, whatever her fiancé did to her, it was obviously something less than rape.  This is particularly disturbing to me because what is depicted is unequivocally a sexual attack.  During it, what Joan’s character experiences is every bit as brutal, terrifying and life-altering as any other form of sexual assault.  It’s also far, far more common than the “guy-in-the-bushes” stranger rape that too many people believe is the only kind worth seriously addressing.  Her reactions to being raped, both during and after, aren’t evidence of a less serious crime; they simply bespeak her reasonable reaction to the assault given the shock of it, and also given her options, in 1962, for dealing with it.  They also demonstrate the steely strength of the character, for better or for worse, in composing herself so completely and continuing on with her night, and whatever lies beyond it.  This isn’t to say that Joan didn’t have choices after she was raped.  She makes the choice to remain in the relationship, and to maintain the façade of a happy engagement with an enviable catch.  Feminist friends of mine would correctly remind me that the point isn’t to relieve her of any responsibility for those choices, as long as they are understood in the context of her reality.  Rather, what desperately needs to be clear is that the choices she makes and the context in which she makes them don’t speak to the gravity of what he does to her.  She was raped.  Forcibly.  The fact that the rapist is someone she’s been intimate with before doesn’t make it less traumatic; if anything it’s more so because of the betrayal of trust involved and the pure shock and terror of such a thing done by a loved one and in a mundane, presumably safe place like one’s own offices.It’s now nearly 50 years later.  For an American woman in Joan’s position, the options are less bleak and the path forward more hopeful, but not nearly enough.  Sexual assault by men against the women they share a life with is still rampant, and rarely successfully prosecuted or even reported.  It’s remarkable how recently we’ve begun to attempt to deal with intimate partner sexual assault; in large part it’s been a welcome outgrowth of the valiant effort to deal with domestic violence.  But in many ways sexual violence is the final frontier.  Violence is one thing.  Sex, the most private, compromising, titillating and repressed aspect of human interaction, is another.  Because of our discomfort with the subject, the mysteries our own bodies present us with, and 1000 other cultural implications, we tend to paint gray actions by men (and some women, particularly in same-sex relationships) that are very clearly black and white.Witness, then, how millions still confuse an utterly clear-cut example of a violent, vicious act with something vaguely unwanted or unpleasant.   A tiff between lovers best left between them.  An event for which a bouquet of roses appropriately makes amends.  It’s been a long 50 years.

Equal Opportunity in Adoption: Necessary, Proper and Desperately Needed

“No person eligible to adopt under this statute may adopt if that person is homosexual.”So states, in oddly plain and blunt legislative language, the law of the State of Florida.   Last month, a Miami-Dade judge declared the law “unconstitutional on its face” and unrelated to the best interests of the child.  She appointed custody of an infant (removed from home almost immediately) to a family member who is a lesbian in a committed relationship.  Florida’s Department of Child and Family Services filed its appeal last week.  The state’s argument and the spirit of the 1977 law boil down to the idea that adoptive parenting by homosexuals is so obviously harmful to children that prohibiting it is “rationally related” to a legitimate state aim.  The idea is that heterosexuals are, by definition, better parents.  This claim, wherever it asserts itself, is more than baseless and bigoted toward homosexuals.  It is tragically shortsighted and remarkably cruel to the roughly 100,000 American children (about 7% of them in Florida) waiting to be adopted out of the foster care system.Several gay friends of mine refer to straight people as “breeders.”  And indeed, breed we do.  Heterosexuals, generally by definition, produce millions of children each year.  And a disturbing percentage of us rip our own children apart like dogs with a chew toy.  In two very different cities where I served as an ADA, I encountered fathers who sexually abused their children over years, beginning before the children were in first grade.  I saw mothers who literally starved their children to death, or pimped them out for drugs, rent or just extra cash.  I saw toddlers pressed against heating grates by one or both parents as if in a waffle iron.  I saw fathers who shook infants to blindness and epilepsy, their ribs snapping like dry twigs in the process.  In one particularly brutal shaken baby case I prosecuted in the Bronx in 2006, the mother sided with the offending father (a drug dealer) and refused to cooperate with me even while her son languished in a NICU on the edge of death.  The people who did these things came from a broad diversity of racial, ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds and circumstances.  In fact, there were only two things common to every one of the most brutal physical and sexual abuse cases I worked on:1.  The children involved, if they survived, needed new homes and new parents.2.  The biological parents, whether perpetrators or accomplices, were all heterosexual.I’m not claiming that homosexual parents, adoptive or biological, can’t or don’t abuse their children.  I’m just saying I’ve never seen it.  Not in nearly 15 years.  The point is not that homosexuals are perfect.  The point is that they’re human, and when they are successful, compassionate, loving and stable adults who want to improve the life of a child without a home, they should be considered as adoptive parents.Opponents of homosexual adoption often try to point to non-religious, “objective factors” to support their arguments.  They never get far.  No reputable scientific evidence supports a single claim that homosexual parents will be less successful or even that they will somehow foster a homosexual lifestyle on the part of their children.  One of the last legislative pushes to prove that homosexuals are naturally disordered and dangerous as parents came from a particularly despicable Virginia legislator in 2004 (to my eternal shame, he represented my hometown of Sterling Park for seven years). The bill he finally got passed in the House of Delegates would have required social workers to investigate whether perspective adoptive parents were homosexual.  The rationale, that homosexuality was related to increased levels of child molestation among other things, was based largely on junk science spewed by a single discredited and religiously biased sociologist.  The bill, and the sociologist, were eventually routed in the Virginia senate, thanks in good measure to courageous Republicans who called this effort out for the rank bigotry that it was.Although Biblical views of homosexuality (and similar non-Judeo-Christian religious tenets) are the primary force behind laws like Florida’s and efforts like Virginia’s, I won’t engage in a wholesale bashing of these religious views.  There’s enough of that going on, and bigotry against religious people is as bad as bigotry toward anyone.  To hold strict religious views is a private and sometimes difficult choice, and I know many decent Christians (among other religious) who struggle to reconcile the doctrines of their faith with their common experience as compassionate people.  I draw the line, though, when positions based solely on religious doctrine become law in a pluralistic society.  And I draw it in red when children- discarded, debased or destroyed by the supposedly “sexually healthy” people who created them, are languishing in a far too often chaotic, uncertain and flawed foster care system.

Angel Band Project: Nudging Me When I Needed It Most

There’s a fairly young but now well-used expression that goes “Let go and let God.”  For the last several weeks in particular, although it goes quite a bit farther back than that, I’ve been struggling with something that feels like the inverse:  “Let God, or let go.”  In other words, I feel like I’m nearing a “two roads diverged” choice in terms of my spirituality.   The choice is about how I’ll view God, and God’s love.  On one hand, I can accept a personally involved, loving God (as Christians should) and continue to try to make sense of the world He created within that framework.  On the other, I can let go and give in to long-held Deist tendencies that tell me that God is there, magnificent and basically benevolent, but that He loves us in a way we can’t- and aren’t supposed- to understand.  That even from within Catholicism, the prism I still view God through, I’ll come to believe that His presence in our lives- this one, anyway- isn’t what I was brought up to think.  I’m hardly the first person to struggle with this question.  Untold millions have viewed and suffered human horror that dwarfs my imagination; my life is charmed by comparison in every conceivable way.  Yet many have come down still on the side of traditional notions of Judeo-Christian worship.  I don’t know where I’ll end up, but despite the tonnage of horror I do see, I’ll admit there are times when God seems to remind me, if subtly, that things aren’t as clear as I’d like to think.  The Angel Band Project is one of them.The Crime.In July of 2009, Teresa Butz was 39, engaged to her female partner, active in charitable causes in the Seattle area, and a deeply loved daughter, sister, friend and member of her community.  As the two slept, a young man entered their home through a window with a knife.  He raped and began stabbing both repeatedly until Teresa decided to fight back.  She saved her partner’s life and lost her own.  The crime was one of the worst local police had seen in years.   This one act, spurred on by whatever unholy combination of drugs, instability and pure, undiluted evil, altered forever the life of one of these decent women and ended that of her soul mate in a paroxysm of blood and terror.  We in the system have ways of dealing with these things, sometimes involving alcohol, cigarettes, or 100 other forms of self-medication.   I usually get by with a few stiff drinks and can normally avoid the ontological angst.  But stories like this one, thankfully rare but still being made, are the building blocks of the dark doubt in my mind that there is rhyme or reason to anything in the world as we see it.The Project. Teresa’s story has an angelic twist, though, something that despite the horror and sadness surrounding her death, scatters the darkness and bubbles up fountain-like with something hopeful.  Something beautiful.  Something almost ordered.  Teresa’s partner, you see, is a conservatory trained vocalist.  Her brother is a Tony award winning musician and actor.  At Teresa’s funeral and memorial service, the singing and music experienced there inspired a project, which is Angel Band.  It involves these two and others who loved Teresa, hitting different studios around the country and recording a tribute collection of songs in her honor.  What I’ve heard so far is sometimes melodic and haunting, sometimes rock and roll heavy, but always captivating.  It’s a work still in progress, easy to follow either on Facebook or the band’s web page.   The proceeds will go to support a group I work with and admire greatly called The Voices and Faces Project.  Voices and Faces is a documentary project that specializes in memorializing- either through audio or video- the accounts of survivors of sexual violence.  Some are women in old age who for decades had never uttered a word of what they suffered.  Some were violated in war, some in marriage, some in childhood.  Their accounts put a deeply human face on sexual violence, something desperately needed in order to take one more step toward ending it altogether.  It is, yet again, a matter of light, even a spark, penetrating and then destroying darkness.I guess it’s the power of that light that, through both of these projects, threatens in benign fury the neat and unhappy picture of the world I have.  But light is just a symbol.  The real, beautiful, bountiful thing is order.  Order suggests a Creator.  Order suggests a destination as well as a journey, however tortured or smooth.  Order suggests a reason for a beating heart.  A reason for giving a damn at the end of another day.  This isn’t to suggest that the chasm created by Teresa’s death will be at all filled by the great gesture of Angel Band.  But it helps to see darkness- blind, random and cacophonous- scattered by light so wonderfully clear and guiding.Upon the assassination of John Lennon, Elton John noted in song “it’s funny how one insect can damage so much grain.”  Thanks to the acts of one particular insect, I’ll never know Teresa Butz.  I’ll never experience her warmth, her kindness, her spirit.  But thanks to the courage, love, and resolve of these remarkable people, I am blessed with a profound sense of what they saw in her, and more importantly, what just might lie beneath the surface- ordered, sane, and loving- of a far too broken and random looking world.

Cessarina, January 2006

Cessarina is not her real name, and January 25 isn't her birth date exactly, but the age is the same.  She was a Dominican girl whose child sex abuse case I handled in the Bronx in January of 2006.  The case, and the girl, came to me in the usual way.  We called new cases "white folders" in the Bronx; each was one of the thousands of 11x17 heavy paper files that were generated in response the bad things that happened on the streets below us every year.  Assuming they were reported to NYPD.Cessie's was just one of them, generated in the florescent-lit, linoleum floored hell scape of the Complaint Room, the dirty office space in the courthouse on 161st street where cases were drawn up and charged by ADA's on rotating shifts.   An 11 year-old girl at the time of the report, she had been continuously molested by her mother's boyfriend over the course of about two years.  Like many children, Cessie kept the abuse to herself until she simply couldn't anymore.  Something broke when she saw that her younger sister- approaching eight- was probably moving into the attraction zone of the man who was molesting her.  It has never failed to amaze me how the instincts of a female child, completely unschooled in the pathology of a sex offender, can be so viciously keen in connecting the dots so many others miss.  Cessie knew her little sister was probably in danger.  The weight of it all become too much.  Cessie told her mother that the stepfather, Ramon, was abusing her.  The mother, thankfully, followed up and brought Cessie to the 46 Precinct and filed a report.  Then to the Complaint Room, to sign the charging document under the cruel lights in a dusty cubicle amid the cacophony of suffering crime victims, bored ADA's and tired cops. The stepfather was arrested the next morning, and held on a bond he could not make.Under New York law, if a defendant is in custody, the government must present the case to a grand jury within five days or the defendant is "cut" or released.  Cassie's case was set for a grand jury appearance on the fifth day out, and I met her that morning.  She arrived at my office to be prepped for her grand jury testimony in a jean jacket and a pink top.  She was pretty, polite and quiet, a kid without much guile or much to say outside of what I asked her.  But there was a steeliness to Cessarina.  Her hair was tightly pulled back into a pony tail, and her eyes were coal black.   The curving brow that ran above them reminded me spookily of a milder Frida Kahlo.  Her posture, especially for a budding adolescent, was impeccable.  She sat perfectly still and straight, her small, beige hands folded daintily in her lap.  She was quietly- perhaps desperately- proud.  And self-possessed.  I didn't spend a lot of time building rapport with Cessie, although that's what a child sex prosecutor is supposed to do.  It didn't look like she needed or wanted that.  Instead I got mostly to the point."Cessie, do you know why you're here?""Yes.  Because my stepfather has been touching me.  In a bad way.""Yes, that's right.  And it's my job to help you tell what happened to a group of people today- they're called the grand jury.  They decide if the case should go on to another court.  Does that make sense?""Yes."She was a dream witness.  So much better than most adults I've dealt with.  We went over the facts I needed to elicit that day, and then I walked with her and her mother across the street to the building that housed the grand jury.  Her mother had the look of a flood victim; dazed and exhausted.  She was polite but didn't seem truly engaged.  When the three of us arrived at the grand jury area, I had them wait on the wooden benches in the witness room while I jockeyed for position in the one of the grand jury panels.  We finally got our courtroom.The grand jury chambers in the Bronx resemble large, dirty, college classrooms.  The grand jurors repose there in rows behind desks with newspapers, donuts, dime novels and stained coffee mugs, waiting to hear their next case.  I went in first, gave them a snapshot of the case, and then officially put it on the record.  Cessie was my only witness.  I called her into the chamber.  She looked out on the faces of 28 of her fellow Bronx citizens and then looked at me impassively.  What now? I asked her to have a seat in the witness chair, a rickety, red plastic thing, and she complied.  She was sworn in and asked kindly by the court reporter to keep her voice up so that everyone could hear her.The first questions asked of almost every child witness is how old they are.  Their age is usually an element of the crime, so we get it out first.  As closely as I can remember it, this is how it went."Cesserina," I said, "can you tell the members of the grand jury how old you are?""Twelve," she answered plainly.  I should have picked up on it, but I didn't.  The reports all said 11.  The answer seemed reasonable, so I pressed on."And what is your date of birth, Cessarina?"Again, plainly, she answered "January 25, 1994."  She sat in the lousy chair the same way she had sat in my office; eyes front, posture perfect, chin just a little lifted.  Now, something in me woke up.   It was January 25, 2006.  I looked at the file, seeing the date of birth.  Reading it for the first time.  How the hell did I miss this? "Cesserina," I said slowly, "you were born on this day in 1994?"  The ghost of a grin crept to her small face.  She nodded.  A few of the grand jurors woke up, and leaned forward."H-happy birthday," I said, almost too quietly for the court reporter to hear.  Cessie looked back at me, the grin now gone, but a peaceful sort of contentedness in its place."Thanks," she said brightly."Okay then," I said, "let's get this over with."I don't know how many times Cessarina's birth date was recorded during the process between the 46 PCT and my office.  I don't know why no one flagged it.  We all heard her, although I guess none of us listened to her- not about something as simple and profound as her birthday, anyway.  Cessarina had appeared before a grand jury, to explain how a man more than three times her age was touching her in unholy places on a regular basis while she turned to the wall and concentrated on cracks there to make the moment pass.On her 12th birthday.Her mother knew.  But we never discussed it.  The day Cessie had to testify to the worst moments of her life was the day marking her birth, period.  And so here she was.  No one was bitter.  No one was indignant.  Least of all Cessie.The man who molested Cessarina pleaded, eventually, to what we called a 'split,' or an 18 month split with 10 years probation.  18 months was the time he'd serve.  10 years was post-confinement supervision, plus sex offender registration. It was, unfortunately, a typical sentence for an intra-family sex offense in the Bronx with a child.  We were not in Provo, Utah.  We were in the Bronx, where the mill of crime and punishment turned everything into fungible grist, needing processing, often as bland and seamless as on any assembly line.I don't think of the man much- the man who molested Cessie.  He was typical and mundane and nothing out of the ordinary for a predator.  God only knows what trouble he's found since his short turn in corrections, brought about because of his near destruction of Cessarina.  But I think of Cessarina fairly often.  I think of her lifted chin, arrow-straight posture and modest, folded hands.  I think of her on her birthday, and I offer up a silent prayer that the birthdays she's known since have been kinder.