Johnny Cash, Prison Reform, and Christianity
Johnny Cash recorded Folsom Prison Blues, and the dead-eyed, wanton line about shooting a man in Reno, just to watch him die, some 12 years before I entered the world. But like many I was chilled by it, even when barely old enough to understand it. Cash was thereafter and forever associated with the outlaw archetype; many believed he either committed that crime or one nearly as vicious. He spent no time in prison and never committed murder, but apparently once joked that, while he had absolutely made up the line about Reno, he had done it without much trouble.The myth around Cash as an outlaw also brought prisoners to him, mostly in the form of letters from men around the country who believed that he spoke for them, and that perhaps he could be a voice for a group that decidedly had none, particularly when modern ideas of prison reform were still years away. Unpaid, he not only played concerts in correctional facilities for 30 years, but also pushed for humane conditions and meaningful reforms as far as the White House.I’m no Biblical scholar, but his efforts were Christian in every sense of the word as I have come to know it. I’ve never been a fan of the supposedly rhetorical “What Would Jesus Do?” as I think Jesus was more often unknowable than knowable in terms of what he did or why. But I think it’s more or less obvious that he would have answered the pleas of despised and caged people in a similar way.I spent most of my career attempting to put people in prison, usually men, and usually for offenses involving violent and sexual crime. There should have been little concern on my part for those I sent to correctional systems, a relatively decent if imperfect one in New York and a sadly far worse one in Virginia.But as I’ve written before, the abuse of incarcerated persons is something that frankly frightens and disgusts me as much as the underlying crimes- whatever they are- that make prisons necessary in the first place. When we allow the destruction of order, dignity and decency in caring for people we cage, we forfeit our rights to do so.We also seed our own destruction just as surely, for as a society we are correctly judged by how we treat not only the weakest but also the most dispossessed and yes- despised- among us.I am not naive to the potential for depravity or manipulation by many who find themselves in correctional facilities. Most are there because they belong there, and some are truly frightening and harmful people, however they became that way. Regardless, we owe them a safe and healthful, if stripped down and monastic, environment. Worse, from time to time, investigators and prosecutors get it tragically wrong- every decent law enforcement official’s worst nightmare- and we land innocent people in those environments as well. We cannot tolerate punishment that isn’t legal and preceded by due process; it mocks our authority to do so and it risks far too much.There are practical as well as moral and legal reasons for treating incarcerated persons humanely. Among them is the reality that most will be released; if their time is made brutal by abuse and mistreatment, we cannot expect them to be released with any inclination to live better lives.I don’t think Cash was focused on the practicalities of better treatment for prisoners, though. I don’t think Jesus, whoever he was, would have been either. Christianity, as weakly as I may understand it, is to me mostly about giving and sacrificing for those on the margins, away from the table, and deeply shaded from the light of admiration, comfort and companionship.Much to the chagrin, particularly in recent times, of those who see the necessity for a morality play in terms of structuring charity and alms, the reasons for why a person is damned or forgotten really don’t matter. It’s about giving to those people even when it’s deemed foolish; indeed, even when it might be foolish. It's a challenge I often fail to meet. But not one to which I will be willfully blind.
1979. For Frankie
A guy I grew up with passed away today. We had drifted apart years ago, but social media reconnected us a few years back and it was fun to see that he had grown up to be a kind, fun-loving, knock-around blue collar guy with a passion for the Redskins and the people he loved. He also had a sense of humor, about the cancer that eventually took his life as much as anything.He wasn't the first person from my childhood who has died. He wasn't the closest to me. But when I met him in 1979, and we were 11, he just seemed immortal. It wasn't because he was a star athlete or scholar; he was just a kid in a small town with a Goody comb in his back pocket and a sly grin on a handsome young face. But he was self-possessed in a way I wouldn't be for decades, and he seemed confident, satisfied, and positive. I hope that never wore off.I was, in the infantile ways I could wage it, at war with the world and myself when I was 11; the reasons are varied and unimportant here, for now. He wasn't particularly sympathetic to me at first- at that age I was anything but sympathetic to most of my peers. But then a pretty girl with an impossibly thick West Virginia accent and a golden heart brought us together and helped him understand me. I think he eventually did, and he treated me better than most through the terrible years of middle school.He's gone now. And so is 1979 and the tortured kid I was then. But I miss him more than I expected. And just maybe, I miss a few of those hazy, big-car driven, instant-photo colored days as well.
A near-miss in a school shooting in Georgia is not a "blessed" event
"It's a blessed day, all of our children are safe," Dekalb County, Georgia School Superintendent Michael Thurmond said at a news conference after no children were injured or killed despite a 19 year-old shooter with an AK-47 firing rounds in one of his elementary schools. "This was a highly professional response on the ground by DeKalb County employees assisted by law enforcement."Thurmond's second quote is spot-on. His first is not.I mean absolutely no disrespect to Thurmond, who was probably just making an understandable and relieved pronouncement about a decent outcome that could have been a massacre. But no day is "blessed" that includes a teenager making it into an elementary school with an assault rifle.Instead it means, as usual, none of us are really safe- just lucky. This time. The question is what, if anything, we'll do about it.
10 Years in Iraq: The Fragrance of Flowers. The Horror of War. The Burden of Doing Justice in its Wake
Note to readers: The post below was one I wrote not in anticipation of the 10th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, but an anniversary of the atrocities at Al-Mahmudiyah. I've since realized the post is more appropriate for publication at a significant anniversary of the invasion. The reason is simple: The atrocities at Mahmudiyah are as intrinsic and foreseeable an aspect of war as any that can be imagined. The designers of the war must never be allowed to escape that.“Abeer” translates in Arabic to “the fragrance of flowers” and was the name given to the 14 year-old girl ruthlessly raped and murdered, along with her parents and six year-old sister, on March 12, 2006, near the town of Al-Mahmudiyah, Iraq. The murderers were a group of American soldiers, stationed at a nearby checkpoint in an especially brutal time after the American invasion three years previous.Of the many honorable men and women I met serving as a civilian in the Army JAG Corps, the one I came to know the best was among the first and most involved prosecutors in the Al-Mahmudiyah massacre. It wasn’t enough that he endured a difficult and dangerous deployment as part of the 101st Airborne Division. He was also saddled with bringing, of all things, the weight of that crime home with him as he handled the case near Fort Campbell, Kentucky. He did this while readjusting to stateside and family life as a husband and father. He’ll acknowledge that burden if it’s pointed out. But he will never, ever complain about it. First, because by God’s grace, his own family is intact and healthy, and he was able to hold them when he returned. Second, because seeking justice for Abeer and her family was an honor he accepted with humility and a deep sense of duty that I found typical in the Army JAG Corps. He sought justice for his Army and his country. But I suspect most of all he sought justice for for Abeer, and the details he came to know of her life and the unspeakable circumstances of her death.The details are public, if you want them. I can tell you that nightmares are all you’re likely to get for mining them, and I say this as a trained absorber of such things.The Army JAG Corps ignored several things I encouraged them to address while I served as a consultant. In a time where soldier suicides are spiking in particular, perhaps the most puzzling to me was refusing (to my knowledge and based on their responses to me at the time) to even look into proactive assistance for JAG prosecutors and defenders who must absorb, if not horrors like Mahmudiyah on a daily basis, then things like increasingly detailed and technologically advanced videos of children used in pornography or worse.And then there is war, the ones we’ve been waging now on the backs of a volunteer military and its valiant but exhausted support bulwark for nearly 12 years. Among myriad other things, war requires the prosecution and defense of combatants accused of atrocities and horrors more regularly than many grasp.I blame Mahmudiyah solely on the men who conceived and carried it out. They represent nothing but themselves; not the US Army, not the stress of combat (which the vast majority of soldiers endure without resorting to murder and rape) and not even the war itself. Regardless, the men and women who must address legally what military conflict inevitably produces must be cared for during that process. Of its many poisons, war vomits things like Mahmudiyah regularly. It did so at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, at My Lai,Quan Ngai, in Kandahar, Afghanistan. It has done so in every war and under every flag unfurled since the beginning of combat.The architects of the 2003 Iraq War, just as the drum-beaters for Vietnam, may argue with scholarly confidence that they were right, or with grave regret that they were wrong. But none may claim a lack of foreseeability for one single thing that occurred or will occur as a result of their decisions. No act, no matter how shocking, how damning, how soul-crushing and freakishly inhuman, is unforeseeable the moment war is engaged.Similarly, the stress of sorting out, in courts of military justice, the details of anything war yields is also foreseeable and addressable. It’s not enough to own, no matter how deeply, what war really is. We must also support appropriately those who must seek justice in its wake.
Virginia, Blood and Soil
Through five European dominated centuries, Virginia soil has been stained red time and time again. The Civil War alone drew so much blood- along the turnpikes and rivers, in the killing fields and tree lines- it's a wonder it wasn't coughed up by the tired, stomped-on ground tasked with absorbing it.Within eight days of each other this month, the blood of two men, both police officers, again stained Virginia ground in two places quite familiar with its presence. One occurred in Alexandria, the contested and then occupied port city just south of Washington, and one in Dinwiddie County, southeast of Petersburg and cross-hatched within the brutal conquest of Richmond and then the Confederacy.One man lost his life at the scene. The other, thankfully, clings to life.I know Peter Laboy, the officer shot in Alexandria on a traffic stop who, as of this writing, thankfully survives and improves. We were rookies at exactly the same time in early 1997, him of the Alexandria Police Department and me as an Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney. As I learned to prosecute Driving While Intoxicated cases, Peter was learning to write them up; I would spend time with him on nights I was riding along with the evening and midnight divisions in search of drunk drivers. He was kind, boyish and soft-spoken in those days, not yet possessed of the confidence I imagine he has now as a veteran of the city's elite motor unit.I did not know Junius Walker, the Master Trooper and 35 year-veteran of the Virginia State Police who was shot and killed when he stopped to assist a motorist along I-85. He seems like a fine man and exactly the kind of cop who made me truly enjoy the interaction I had with police officers and state troopers over the years. I do know well the desolate, wooded stretch of road he was killed along, and I doubt I will travel it again without thinking of him. By God's design we all return to the earth, bones and flesh to dust again. But a somber salute should be offered to these two men who most recently gave early to the earth precious blood in service to their Commonwealth. May that already hallowed ground not be burdened again with the red stain of violence for a long, long time.
Mark Hasse, Lay At Rest, And With Honor
In the courtyard of the National Advocacy Center, the premier US training facility for prosecutors in Columbia, South Carolina, there is a monument to prosecuting attorneys who have been killed in relation to their official duties. A section of it is shown above, including the name of Sean Healy, a bright, rookie ADA in the Bronx, New York who was gunned down senselessly in August of 1990 near the same office I worked in on E. 161st Street.Fallen prosecutors constitue an honored and thankfully small group. Like judges, they aren't frequently targeted by the defendants they interact with in court. Most criminals consider the justice process a cost of doing business. Over the years I encountered men I prosecuted, whether successfully or not, in the communities where I lived and worked, sometimes months or years after the fact. The vast majority were polite and cordial, some actually friendly. Where they were concerned, it wasn't personal. And they were right; even in my work where facts can be horrific and emotions run high, it wasn't.I got one death threat in over ten years as a trial attorney that I thought was credible. It arose out of a misdemeanor domestic violence case I tried that was from my perspective unremarkable. I'm sure it had little to do with me as the prosecutor and more to do with the wandering focus of the defendant who threatened a few times to kill me, once on a DC street where I somehow crossed his path on the way to a hockey game with a friend. For a while I ignored it, until one day at a post-trial hearing where he stared at me until he caught my eye, then drew his index finger over his throat and pointed at me. At that point I told Randy Sengel, the Commonwealth's Attorney for the City of Alexandria, Virginia where I was then a junior ACA. Randy is a deeply respected, honorable public servant and brilliant man, but perhaps known most for his sphinx-like reticence and un-rattled, deadpan approach to just about everything. When I gave him the details, he told me it was rare but that it happened, and that I should call a detective nicknamed Scotty and make a report.But Scotty was a homicide detective, I pointed out."Yeah," Randy said with a shrug. "If someone threatens your life, that's what you do."I made the report, Detective Scott did his job, the guy eventually turned his focus elsewhere, and I'm still here. Mark Hasse, a veteran and apparently well-respected assistant district attorney from near Dallas, Texas, is not. Hasse was gunned down, execution style, outside of his office last week, very possibly in relation to his duties as a felony ADA. Investigators are searching desperately for answers, but eight days later they appear to remain elusive. He will be laid to rest tomorrow. Hasse appears to have been a valued prosecutor and a well-liked figure in both the courtroom and the community. If his service was cut short by murderers out to silence him and and thwart the process he sought to uphold, that act is indeed "an attack on our criminal justice system" as a Texas judge referred to it. Targeting those in the system, whether police, prosecutors, judges, defense attorneys or jurors, is the final assault on the rule of law.Of course, front line responders like police officers remain in far more danger. I drove extensively through Southern California this past week and was sobered to see how many highways are dedicated to members of the California Highway Patrol who died in the line. For now, at least, most of us in the system who practice law are far safer in our duties. Still, if Hasse was killed in the name of blurring the line between civil society and what lies beneath, then everyone- within Kaufman, Texas and far beyond- should be gravely concerned.
Chris Brown Is Making Choices He Can Fully Control, And They're Getting Worse
I’ve noted before in this space that I lack the enviable crystal ball. But I’ll go out on a limb anyway: Chris Brown doesn’t have “anger management” issues in the way they are usually imagined. Most intimate partner abusers don’t. Indeed, they manage their anger extremely well. They incorporate it into their daily routines as a necessary adjunct of controlling, bullying and humiliating others as it suits them. It’s a wager on my part, but frankly one I’m willing to bet very big on: Chris Brown doesn’t hit people or intimidate them because he can’t help himself. He does it because it pleases and amuses him at the time he chooses to do it. Throwing chairs through windows (where the hell were the LA DA’s office or the probation officer in April of 2012 with a motion to revoke then, by the way?) might be more indicative of rage; the tantrum of a toddler who is unhappy with being to forced to acknowledge his actions. But even an act like that- absent compelling evidence to the contrary- is something that Brown chose to do, not one that he was willed otherwise to do. As I learned in 15 years of dealing with intimate partner violence, both sexual and physical, an “inability to maintain control” of one’s emotions is usually not the issue with domestic abusers. Instead, most use the tools of physical and emotional violence as keenly as a surgeon does a scalpel. And yet most court systems in the US and beyond continue to seek solutions to family violence under this “management” model, viewing the abuser as a somehow diseased and mostly helpless creature, trapped tragically in the claws of a relentless compulsion to beat and control weaker people around him who don’t react in ways that immediately satisfy him (or her, in same-sex relationships in particular). And worse, the management model often if unwittingly assumes some “partial responsibility” on the part of the victims who had the bad luck to land within the abuser’s sphere of influence and/or arms-reach. It’s a family problem, after all. Sure. Except that it isn’t. It’s an abuser’s problem. The family is usually relatively powerless and legally, socially paralyzed. Their only “problem” is what's being visited on them. Violence toward them is not of their making. Ever. The lie is that many if not most domestic disputes involve either or both 1) struggling perpetrators dealing with their “own issues,” and 2) at least “partially culpable” victims of threats, fists or worse. This might have fooled me as well had I not been bullied as a kid and tortured by older boys who I witnessed turn their predilections off switch-like were I lucky enough to have a supportive adult walk into the room. It might have made sense to me had I not been involved in the lives of hundreds of women, children and some men- both personally and professionally- who spent years in fear of perhaps emotionally damaged but still fully sentient and controlled beings who made the conscious choice to act cruelly and violently because it was what they wanted to do at the time. I’m not claiming that Brown is not an emotionally limited individual (for whatever reasons) or that nothing can be done to assist him in becoming a less violent man. I simply believe that, from what I can gather, Chris Brown is less a helpless pawn of anger and more an impulsive, likely manipulative, abusive individual who may not respond to anything but punishment in terms of behavior modification. And I can say with absolute certainly that Rihanna, whatever other character flaws or foibles she has borne up untill now, was utterly blameless with regard to what Brown did to her, in a car, with club-like fists and his teeth, in March of 2009. He was rightfully convicted of a serious felony, and he should be punished now with incarceration for not honoring the conditions of the remarkably lenient sentence he received for doing so. He continues to make choices, and they continue to get worse. It’s time to honor the law and limit them further.
Thank You, Edward I. Koch
I'm 45 and I've been in love twice. Once with a woman and once with a city. I fell in love with the woman at 42. I fell in love with the city around fourth grade. It is the city of my birth, but federal employment removed my father and mother, both native New Yorkers, to the Washington, DC suburbs before my third birthday. Instead of navigating New York the way cousins and friends did through the hard years of the 70's and 80's, I loved it from afar, coveting visits and planning the eventual triumphant return as a Grown-Up that would be my destiny.The problem was that fourth grade, the year my heart opened and I knew love for the first time, was 1977. Haunted by a serial killer and crippled by a blackout, '77 was the year that, by most reasonable measurements, the object of my affections was declared dead.It wasn’t just the crime stats and socio-economic shifts of the 70’s that told me so. It was also the mantra I heard incessantly through conversation aimed both at me and above my head, either in my father’s house or at the houses of my relatives back in the 212. My ubiquitous childhood memories are of the spicy smell of tomato sauce in the kitchens, the mustiness of wood paneling in basement rec-rooms, and the god-awful, never-gonna-turn-it-around, descent into white-flight, urban blight, talk of the Death of the City. The past was great. The present was awful. The future looked worse. All that I loved about the city, I was told with the occasional wagging finger, had the depth and breadth of a yellowing photograph of smiling relatives dressed in black beside an impossibly large and equally black car. All that was good about it, I was told, was no longer. Best to look toward the cities that had a future. Boise. Charlotte. Anywhere in California. New York was gone, the leader of a band of lesser rust-belt cities like it, marching toward the graveyard in a funeral dirge.A giant of a mayor named Fiorello H. LaGuardia signed the birth certificates of my mother and father, one of whom was born to a man whose "usual occupation" was that of fruit peddler. They arrived in dark times, but to a great city. Mine was signed by John V. Lindsey. Lindsey called being mayor of New York "the second toughest job in America" and then seemed to demonstrate that difficulty by presiding over a slide that looked more like free fall by the time he dumped what was left into the lap of Abe Beame in 1973.But then there was Ed Koch, seizing control over the spiral in the winter of 1978, that frigid and dark reflection of the steaming, violent summer that preceded it. Koch loved New York unashamedly and unabashedly. His cheers for the city were louder in my ears than the head-shaking disparagement, the insistence on the superiority of the Sun Belt, and the cynical drone of disco. He made it okay for me to remain secretly in love, and I love him still for it.Mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg have reaped most of the credit for the relative Disneyland that is the New York City to which I have finally returned. Their initiatives, the work of visionaries like William Bratton, the relentless draw of New York come hell or high water, and host of other factors have quieted the dirges.Neither Koch nor his successors have been miracle workers; Intractable problems remain in the city I love, and I count among my proudest accomplishments the tiny role I was able to play battling crime in its poorest, still toughest borough. That brief, two-year stint as a Bronx ADA and New York City employee pales in comparison to the efforts of hundreds of colleagues and millions of fellow New Yorkers who continue to work, officially or unofficially, to make the city's heart beat as strong as ever.Still, I was grateful for the chance to do my part, and I remain eternally grateful to the man who gave me the secret inspiration as a child in love to do so. God bless and keep you, Your Honor.
Alleged Gang Rape by Lloyd Irvin Students In D.C. Raises Questions About His Past
On New Year's Eve, two men who train at the Lloyd Irvin Martial Arts School outside of Washington DC, allegedly lured an intoxicated fellow mixed-martial arts (MMA) student from a DC club into the parking lot of a church and repeatedly, brutally raped her. The two have been in custody since and are making initial appearances in federal court this month. Irvin is himself an extremely well known and successful instructor in the MMA world, and posted an appropriate statement on the arrests a few days ago.What has others in the MMA world concerned, though, is the (still unconfirmed) possibility that Irvin himself was charged with rape in 1989 and acquitted, if he is the same person, because a jury believed he was impotent and unable to complete a sexual act. At least one popular MMA website has posted its argument as to why Irvin is very likely the same person charged while a 20 year-old college junior. What concerns them is less that Irvin may have been charged with rape more than 20 years ago. Rather, their concern is how Irvin might be deflecting attention from his own past and seeking to manipulate search engines by marketing self-defense rape seminars by purchasing a LloydIrvinRape.com domain name.Irvin has not affirmed or denied whether he is the same person charged back then. Even if he was, it doesn't mean he can't run a successful business now and even one including self-defense seminars. But as some of his observers and followers have pointed out, he should be clear on whether his own past might affect how he can deal with both the horrific crime allegedly perpetrated by his own students (on a fellow student) and his contributions to rape prevention going forward.
"Guns Don't Kill People, People Kill People." Just Exceedingly More Often With Guns
An enlightening and chilling graphic from the Washington Post.Homicide and suicide are accomplished far more often with the use of a firearm than anything else. For anyone possessing the common sense to see clearly how meaningless the "people kill people" mantra is, this makes perfect sense. Firearms facilitate violent death by making it easier, quicker, more likely, and more cleanly distanced.
Next: Armed Guards For Firefighters. Then a Permanent State of Combat for Everyone
Another town, this one in upstate New York, has seen Christmas shattered as another waste of humanity guns down responding firefighters with apparently the same Bushmaster rifle as that used in Newtown, Connecticut earlier this bloody month. The killer's motive, plainly expressed in a typewritten note left behind, appears to have been his own amusement. And of course, since he was armed to the teeth, he was able to indulge it thoroughly.Clenched-fist rage at the shooter is both understandable and a waste of time, just as it has been with almost every pathetic monstrosity whose final act of cowardice- suicide- has put justice out of reach since Columbine and long before.What, then, will be Wayne LaPierre and the NRA's solution now? Armed guards for firefighters and first responders? I suppose we'll soon need them for postal carriers, UPS drivers and so on ad infinitum. Indeed, the answer is to become a permanently hyper-vigilant society resembling more a forward operating base than a civilized nation. The standard will be unrelenting preparedness for combat at all times, whether at Sunday dinner, a little league ball game or an errand as simple as picking up a Christmas tree.There will no longer be any such thing as too careful. And if a populace armed to the teeth experiences accidental or panicked discharges, explosive ends to otherwise non-deadly arguments, bystander manslaughter, increased suicides or any other of the unintended consequences of killing tools in the wildly inconsistent hands of would be heroes, we'll have to shrug and insist that only people, and not armed people, are responsible for bodies, lives and futures torn to pieces by firearms.If nothing else, this will certainly spike gun sales, so perhaps the NRA and its supporting industry have a method to their madness after all. If they can convince the rest of us to indulge it, they'll have the powder keg of a country they clearly covet. The rest of us can at least claim our "freedom" as we prepare, as always, to duck, crouch, fire, and die. Or scream. Or weep.
A Breach of the Thin Blue Line: Honor, Sacrifice, and Laying In State in Topeka, Kansas
I've worked with cops for 15 years, and I've always enjoyed it. It's probably part of what made me comfortable in my role as a prosecutor, but I've always liked the confident but measured swagger of a good cop; the plucky air of moral superiority. The best ones know they're "the good guys" and have fun with it while at the same time doing the job right.And it's a damn tough job to do right.I have high expectations for cops and very little tolerance for bad ones. Unfair, maybe, given the stress and demands associated with the job, but it's because I've been blessed, in two jurisdictions and a host of training environments over the years, with very decent ones who deal with the pressure and the misery and don't succumb to hatred or a temptation to cut corners.The deaths by ambush-style gunfire of David Gogian, 50 (a long-serving officer) and Jeff Atherly, 29 (a relative rookie) while attending to a simple vehicle investigation this past Sunday was overshadowed by the nightmarish events in Newtown, Connecticut. But they are nevertheless renewed and dark reminders to every man or woman in law enforcement who puts on a uniform each day: "You started this shift on your feet. God, luck, reflexes and circumstance will determine whether you end it on your feet."Indeed. The alternative is a hospital bed or a medical examiner's slab. For Gogian and Atherly, death gave chase and would not be thwarted. The perverse instincts and poisoned decisions of some miserable killer with the right tool made all the difference, not only in the lives of Gogian and Atherly, but in the lives of their families, loved ones and colleagues. This holiday season will be as dark and empty as a tomb for those who loved and depended on these men.My silent prayer is that the two rest in the arms of angels, and that their families find comfort in knowing how much they valued the community they died for.
After Newtown: Why I Won't Join a Prayer Chain
I have one nephew, a four year-old boy who is the most precious thing in my life. He is my baby sister's child, and my parents' only grandchild. He is the hope of my family going forward.Two days before the evil unleashed on Newtown, I attended a Christmas pageant at his Catholic elementary school. It was an adorable rendition of gospel readings by older children and songs from the younger ones. There was a stage in a large, airy gymnasium where the children held hands and sang. They were led to the stage by their teachers, in unsteady columns, through the rows of chairs packed with beaming parents holding cell phones and cameras.As I usually am at events like that, I was uneasy, and I hated it. Whether it's a generally over-active imagination or a career in the business I chose, all I could think of, from the moment I filed in and found my parents and sister, through the introduction of the children and the singing was "Dear God, this place is defenseless. What if some disgruntled spouse comes in here and..."But I banished those thoughts as well as I could, because while their subject reality was technically possible, it seemed silly and paranoid to dwell on it. And really, I eventually reasoned, how likely is it that I'll actually hear shots ring out? That I'll see wide-eyed little children being blown apart, shot through tiny chests, faces and flailing arms and legs? Screaming in terror and agony even while falling short of contemplating what's happening to them?Scary, I reasoned. And technically possible. But not at all likely. So I watched, and enjoyed, and it didn't happen. It usually doesn't, after all. Until it does. And literally 48 hours later, it did.The impact of the events of December 14, 2012 will be a long time fully manifesting. For the parents of the dead, the numbing horror-walk of the grief process is darkly blossoming among the unavoidable sounds and sights of the holiday season in a garish red and green ritual of torture. Newtown is most likely permanently wounded, its simple New England name forever lashed to terror and sorrow. One of its four elementary schools was transformed into a hideous necropolis. And now a long winter will set in, claiming more victims in divorce, suicide, breakdowns and despair.Indeed, the miserable creature who was Adam Lanza left this life by his own hand a monster, transformed from the status of a pathetic, feckless adolescent. His reasons, if they exist, may or may not emerge.But what is crystal clear is what made his transformation possible.Lanza's mother, a suburban woman in a deeply low-crime, secure and well protected area, was nevertheless a collector "for protection" of military grade firearms capable of dealing death on a massive and efficient scale. Those weapons found their way into the hands of her murderous offspring and the rest now haunts this holiday season for everyone within and far beyond Newtown.Cries for better attention to mental illness are appropriate and sorely needed. But so is the access that would-be monsters have to the tools of bone shattering, flesh wasting, machine-like human elimination. I have lost my patience for the pubescent logic of "guns don't kill people, people kill people" and the redneck paranoia of "we must guard against government tyranny." I will no longer tolerate these arguments as anything other than the foolish and dangerous nonsense they are.Neither will I join prayer-chains on social media sites, or share elaborate graphics of 26 tea lights in the shape of a heart, or images of the young, smiling dead in the bosom of Jesus. It's not that I think these things are necessarily bad. It's that I am wary of their presumed ability to make any of this less sickening and intolerable. It's that I'm suspicious of these gestures placating the creators and disseminators into a self-satisfied, faith-fuled sense that "all was done that could be done."It's because, after a year stained red by monsters abetted by an industry and political machine that snuffs out common sense as blithely as life, I am simply tired of seeing them.
The 11 Year-Old "Spider" in Texas, Luring Her Rapists
So she was described by a defense attorney in the trial of one of the roughly 20 men charged with gang rape against an 11 year-old girl in Liberty, Texas in 2010. Describing her as having lured the attackers on cross-examination, the lawyer in question, Steve Taylor, proved he's not only a child victim blamer but also a terrible cross-examiner. Let the lawyer jokes continue; it's richly deserved.Media note: The article linked above from the Houston Chronicle says, in a photo caption, that the defendants in the case are charged with "having sex" with an 11 year-old girl. That isn't possible in Texas or any U.S. state. The act is rape, not sex. The Chron should know better.
Hell is for Children: Jersey Bridgeman and Unfathomable Evil
Last year, she was chained to a dresser- in order to keep her from seeking out food at night- by her father and stepmother. Both are serving gratifyingly (and unusually) long prison sentences for that child torture. Now she's been apparently murdered by a neighbor.I have not abandoned faith. I have, however, abandoned faith's nostrum that "everything happens for a reason."May this child rest peacefully in the arms of angels. If there be no angels, than at least in stillness, stripped of memory.
Accusations Against Elmo Creator Kevin Clash: Hard to Face, But Less Hard to Believe
The suspicion, backlash and contempt that's been unleashed against both of the men who have accused Sesame Street's Kevin Clash did not surprise me. Nor did the compounding of baseless gossip-column nonsense against Sheldon Stephens- Clash's first victim- when he reaffirmed his allegations against Clash around November 18th, a day or two before the second victim came forward on November 20th.For most, the blind defense of Mr. Clash and the knee-jerk rejection of the claims of the young men he is alleged to have sexually abused are a result of ignorance. Simply put, most people don't understand the dynamics behind the sexual abuse of adolescents. Given that the subject of the complaints is a celebrity, and one whose inspiring personal story and universally loved character are involved, the rejection of the victims as money-hungry celebrity hunters just gets more tempting.But ignorance shouldn't stand unchallenged, regardless of an Internet onslaught that seeks to bury the truth in an avalanche of self-perpetuating nonsense. A few points worth mentioning:-The first victim to come forward (Stephens, whose name I only print because it's in the public sphere) announced his allegation on November 12th. A $125,000 settlement appears to have followed between Clash and Stephens, the result of which was conditioned on an official recantation of Stephens' allegation, so that he acknowledged only a sexual relationship when Stephens was at least 18. He then, around November 19th, reaffirmed that Clash had abused him as a minor. The Internet has since roiled with accusations of Stephens as a "flip-flopper" and someone who "can't make up his mind" about what happened to him.In fact, recantation and reaffirmation are extremely common in child sexual abuse cases. Studies I've seen put the rate of recantation around 25% (my personal experience reflected a higher rate even into adulthood). Of the many reasons for recanting valid allegations, unwanted attention and a backlash for accusing a famous and beloved figure are two that should be easy to understand. Of those who do recant, about half eventually reaffirm once the initial shock and backlash can be digested. Stephens was offered a settlement to take back the actionable facts, but has since reaffirmed and wants to undo it.-Stephens has a criminal record, another fact leveled against him as the story develops. But adolescents and young adults with the kinds of tough upbringings, emotional difficulties and other stressors that often lead them into criminality are exactly the kinds of victims predators look for and find. Kids or young adults who commit crimes suffer credibility deficits; they are less likely to be believed. Even if Clash wasn't specifically looking for a troubled kid easy to victimize, he was most likely to find someone like that on the chat rooms he was apparently visiting in search of younger sexual partners.-Neither of Clash's victims ever went to the police, another "gotcha" moment for those who don't want to believe them. But a very small percentage of victims- in both child and adult cases- ever tell authorities, let alone close in time to the abuse. In theory and apparently in cyber-space, "calling the cops" is as natural as ringing a fire alarm. In reality, doing so is remarkably daunting and frightening. Many victims figure they're powerless regardless of what they allege. Some don't even know if they've been legally victimized. Many blame themselves and feel they have no right to press charges. Most are terrified of everything that the criminal justice system is for almost everyone- a process both intimidating and unknown. And when sex is involved, particularly with older children who will both feel and be seen as more blameworthy for their "participation" in their victimization, the urge to tell authorities usually shuts down.I can't say with certainty that Clash is legally responsible for anything. But we know that he at least acknowledges a sexual relationship with a much younger individual, and that another young man has come forward with similar allegations. I have no desire to see Clash unjustly accused or punished. But neither should those accusing him suffer unjustly because of ignorance and cynicism.
Predators as Coaches: MaleSurvivor.Org Takes Them On
MaleSurvivor, an advocacy group focusing on the sexual victimization of boys and men, scored a big hit this week with a great conference in New York and a well-reported piece in the New York Times on how boys involved with sports are often victimized by coaches and mentors within athletic environments. These athletic institutions- formal and informal- attract, feed and support predators. The boys who are preyed upon suffer greatly as a result.
"Systematic" Sexual Abuse at Lackland Air Force Base: Report to Be Released
Unfortunately the scandals surrounding top commanders are overshadowing it, but this report on unchecked, systematic and wide-spread sexual abuse of women at Lackland AFB needs to be widely publicized and recognized. Female warriors are being ill-served and stalked by predators in an already stressful, life and death environment. This is intolerable, immoral, and unconscionable. Forget the 3 and 4 start generals and their dalliances. Concentrate on this.
Keyon Dooling, PTSD, and Recovering from a Nightmare Past
A great piece in Yahoo! sports on the former Celtics star. Dooling lived with his abuse buried deep within his psyche for decades. Not everyone responds the same way, but he was almost emotionally destroyed by. Kudos to him and blessings to his family- he seems to have overcome, and with the added courage and poise to join survivors as a spokesperson against child sexual abuse.
Mentally Challenged Woman Raped on LA Bus: Bystanders Present and Surveillance Camera Don't Prevent It
The shocking rape of a mentally challenged woman on a Los Angeles bus late last week- despite the presence of passengers, a driver and a surveillance camera- should underscore how predators can sexually abuse victims in the most unlikely of circumstances. Particularly for individuals with disabilities, the risk of sexual abuse or attack is shockingly high. Sadly, most families don't have the resources to be as vigilant as they need to be. The rest of us as potential intervening bystanders must be attentive.