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Lorain Ohio’s legacy of cruelty and injustice

Monday, February 14th, 2011

While most people think the child sex abuse panic of the 80′s and 90s is behind us, there are still people suffering in prison because of it. The case of Nancy Smith and Joseph Allen of Lorain County, Ohio is a prime example of how lives were destroyed by ambitious prosecutors and incompetent judges incapable of delivering justice when accusations of child sex abuse were involved.

But what really sets up the Lorain, Ohio case as a crowning achievement of justice gone completely off the tracks is the fact that, after the sentence of these two was thrown out in 2009, they are now headed back to prison because the Ohio Supreme Court reversed that two year old decision last month.

Read the entire article and you will have a pretty clear picture of what was happening all over the country in the 80s and 90s but to see the same cruelty repeated twenty years later is a travesty. It’s incredible that current child sex abuse paranoia in this country isn’t met with more skepticism in the wake of the witch hunts that destroyed so many lives and families over those two decades.

When faced with any activity or proposal that is justified by claims of “protecting children”, the entire population of the U.S. suddenly gets gullible and stupid. And it’s for that very reason that nearly all moral crusades are presented in those terms. Sex offender registries are justified by the fear of pedophiles behind every tree and anti-prostitution groups try to convince the public that hundreds of thousands of children in the U.S. are being forced to be sex slaves. And it works. The media repeats it without a hint of skepticism, politicians exploit it to get headlines, and the public swallows it whole.

I guess I should stop referring to it as “the sex abuse panic of the 80s and 90s” because it didn’t end in the 90s. It’s still going as strong as ever.

Posted in Day Case Sex Abuse Cases, Ohio, Prosecutorial Misconduct | 1 Comment »

More victims of the sex 80s and 90s hysteria

Monday, February 14th, 2011

This case fits in perfectly with the day care sex abuse hysteria of the 1980s and 1990s. In 1994, four women were accused of molesting two young sisters ages 7 and 9, convicted, and sentenced to decades in prison, but on closer examination, these convictions are yet another monument to the lynch mob mentality typical of a public that imagines sex criminals hiding behind every tree.

The case was largely decided on the testimony of pediatrician and child advocate Nancy Kellogg who immediately suspected the case was a satanic abuse case after examining the victims when the accusations were made, two months after the incident occurred. By the mid 1990′s the impossible claims made during the satanic ritual abuse panic were already being discredited wholesale, but that didn’t stop Ms Kellogg from proceeding with this case.

Kellogg’s theory of Satanic ritual abuse was not directly presented to the jury, but the language of Prosecutor Philip Kazen certainly seemed to be tying the case to teh notoriety of the nationwide day care cases:

“We’re going to ask you,” Kazen told jurors, “to believe a 9-year-old little girl who was sacrificed on the altar of lust.”

Typical of other sex abuse cases or the era, teh case was aggressively prosecuted and guilty verdicts were reached despite the ample room for doubt. The first warning sign was the fact that pediatrician Kellogg was pushing the Satanic ritual abuse angle in spite of its having been discredited. Secondly, the children’s stories were perpetually changing. Physical medical evidence was hardly conclusive. The two girls had a history of making rape accusations.

Typical of innocent people, the four women rejected plea deals, opting to go to trial. There is little comment from the actors in the ordeal. Reviving this case won’t doing them any good.

Two advocacy groups, the Lubbock-based Innocence Project of Texas, or IPOT, and the National Center for Reason and Justice in New York, or NCRJ, have taken up the women’s case.

Let’s wish them luck. The child sex abuse witch hunts of the 80s and 90s are proof of the utter cruelty people are capable of when given an excuse. The fact that there are still victims of that crusade of languishing in prison is an example of the indiscriminate destruction that can be wrought under the mantra of “protecting children”.

Posted in Child Molestation, Day Case Sex Abuse Cases, Prosecutorial Misconduct, Texas | 2 Comments »

Cops caught fraternizing with the enemy

Thursday, February 10th, 2011

Several cops in Raleigh, NC are the subject of an internal affairs investigation for their involvement with a representative of the world’s oldest profession.

Internal affairs investigators used GPS tracking devices and hidden cameras to uncover the activity, which involved sex with a prostitute who frequents Bragg Street in downtown Raleigh, the sources said.

Speaking on the condition that they not be identified, the sources said the Raleigh Police Department’s Internal Affairs Unit raided the Southeast District Substation on Crosslink Road over the weekend and that several officers there were told to turn in their guns, badges and patrol cars.

Of course, the law that governs everyone else also applies to cops, right? Oops. I guess not:

Wake County District Attorney Colon Willoughby said his office is aware of the investigation and that criminal charges did not seem likely. He declined to say why or to discuss the matter further.

Well, these are probably just a bunch of young rookies who made a mistake, right? Oops. I guess not:

One of the names tied to the investigation, sources said, is Raleigh police Sgt. Rick Armstrong, who is the president of the Raleigh Police Protective Association, a professional association that represents the interests of police officers.

Armstrong, who also is a member of the state Law Enforcement Training and Standards Commission, said Tuesday that he could not speak about the matter, on the advice of the Raleigh Police Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau.

Well, surely some honest cops came forward and management acted quickly to put an immediate end to the activity just as they would if the culprits were ordinary citizens, right? Oops. I guess not:

In a statement Tuesday afternoon, Police Chief Harry Dolan did not address the specific allegations but acknowledged a “comprehensive” internal investigation into “improper conduct” stemming from a police officer’s complaint in late 2009.

Well, at a very minimum, an outraged city government must be demanding that the officers be publicly identified as is the case for anyone else caught with a prostitute and charged under the relevant criminal statutes making clear to the public that police are not above the laws they hold everyone else accountable to, right? Oops. I guess not:

Mayor Pro-Tem Mary-Ann Baldwin, who chairs the city’s Law and Public Safety Committee, said such incidents “reflect poorly” on the police department but that police officers generally do an excellent job.

“Anytime you have something like this you want a quick resolution and I would imagine our residents who would be impacted by this expect that,” she said.

So, after secretly studying the matter for over a year, now that it’s public they are suddenly in favor for a “quick resolution”. My guess is that, had it not been for the unidentified “sources”, the city would have been quite content if this story never saw the light of day.

So what happens now, Chief Dolan?

“When all the available facts are present, appropriate decisions will be made concerning any personnel action that should be taken pursuant to departmental policy in response to administrative violations.”

Ohhhhhh! I see. When ordinary people go to a hooker to get laid, it’s a crime against the public morals where they get their picture in the paper, pay big money for a lawyer, end up being fined and probably spend some time in jail, and (in some states) get their car seized. But when a cop does it, it’s an “administrative violation”.

Can we say “cover up”? Can we say “blue wall of silence”?

Posted in North Carolina, Police Misconduct, Politics, Prosecutorial Misconduct, Prostitution | 2 Comments »

Is Judd manipulating the law for fame and glory?

Sunday, December 26th, 2010

If you’ve been keeping up with this story, you know that Polk County, Florida, Sheriff Grady Judd had Colorado resident, Phillip Greaves, arrested last Monday for mailing a book called “The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-Lover’s Code of Conduct” to Florida cops.

It should be noted that Greaves is not accused of pedophilia or any other act of injuring a child. He simply wrote a book that discussed the topic.

And the man who had him arrested? Well here is what Sheriff Judd says about the case:

“This has nothing to do with free speech and everything to do with obscenity,” Judd said. “We had a law in Florida that applied. We only needed jurisdiction.”

So, not only is Sheriff Judd completely ignorant of the historical conflict between obscenity laws and free speech, he sees absolutely nothing wrong with enforcing Florida state laws on Colorado residents.

When it comes to egotistical idiocy, Judd is clearly off the charts. And, of course, who pays for that idiocy? Well, certainly not the idiot. Nope. Phillip Greaves must sit in jail waiting for court system to throw out the charges, which is a near inevitability. But Judd will be a hero because there is no such thing as being too hard on anyone accused of a crime against children. Innocence or guilt does not factor into the lynch mob mentality which is the force that modulates the public in cases like this.

Finally, as reported in AVN, in order to extradite Greaves, it was necessary to charge him with a felony, but his book apparently doesn’t violate any of the felony provisions of the law under which he was charged. In order to rise to the level of a felony, the book would have to include pictures of actual children.

This apparent manipulation by Florida law enforcement of its own statutes could undermine the case and lead to even bigger headaches for the County.

Judd in his rush to exploit the sensational story to his own ends might wind up being sued (which really only penalizes the taxpayers).

The story, said Walters, was a national one even before Judd stuck his nose into it, which he probably did for the very fact that it was national. But the national appeal of such a case could also provide Greaves with a legal defense team that he could never in his life afford. He will probably be forced to use a public defender at first, said Walters, but soon, he expects to see a team of top drawer First Amendment lawyers descend upon the state and offer Greaves their services.

As is often the case, the porn industry is at the forefront of the fight to defend the First Amendment from those who would gladly trample it to satisfy their own narrow moral or political agenda.

In the end, as I have often written, the First Amendment contains no exceptions for obscenity. The Supreme Court pulled obscenity exemption out of its collective ass. It’s like saying that the First Amendment protects free speech unless its really offensive to enough people, in which case we will pretend there is no First Amendment. The fact is, of course, the First Amendment is designed specifically to protect offensive speech.

Posted in Censorship, Colorado, Florida, Obscenity, Prosecutorial Misconduct, Rights of the Accused | 6 Comments »

Residual suffering from a past moral panic: recovered memories

Saturday, September 25th, 2010

“My Lie: A True Story of False Memory“ is a new book by Meredith Maran that describes how she was caught up in the recovered memory hysteria of the 80s and 90s. Recovered memory syndrome has now been almost universally disgraced as being a disease created by the cure. It was a widespread belief that children who are sexually abused commonly repress the memories of it, only to have them reemerge later in life. This hysteria paralleled another well known witch hunt of the era as criminal justice journalist Steve Weinberg reports:

As researchers like me are painfully aware and as Maran discusses in her memoir, a variation of recovered memory accusations played out in day care centers and similar preschool locales, where adults abetted children in revealing alleged sex abuse rings.

Hundreds of child care workers and others in cities across the nation – with Bakersfield as a prominent example – ended up in prison for supposedly abusing countless preschoolers in fantastical ways.

Social workers, police detectives, psychologists, psychiatrists, prosecutors, jurors and judges became complicit in the mass hysteria that led to the wrongful convictions.

It would be hard to find another phase in American history where mass hysteria marching under the flag of saving children laid waste so many innocent lives. Like so many crusades, the goal was to win at all costs. The ends justified the means. This site dedicates a page solely to that era and its cast of characters.

Since those days, exploiting people’s emotional compassion for children has become the preferred strategy to justify new legislation, restrictions on freedom, censorship, higher taxes, and greater regulation. Politicians invoke child danger scares to gain votes, news outlets capitalize on it to attract viewers, and nonprofit as well as governmental organizations pump it up it to justify more funding.

Saving children is big business.

Posted in Books, Child Molestation, Day Case Sex Abuse Cases, Hall of Shame, Paranoia, Prosecutorial Misconduct, Recovered Memory Syndrome | Comments Off

Daytona Beach: punishment before conviction

Wednesday, September 15th, 2010

Another case of punishing people arrested for soliciting prostitution before a person is convicted. According to WESH.com:

Daytona Beach police have begun sending letters to the homes of men arrested during prostitution stings.

Dozens of men have been arrested over the last several weeks, and they’ve made it no secret that prostitution is a pet peeve.

Of course, the reason for the letters is to shame those who are arrested.

The letter states that the suspect was arrested and contains information about sexually transmitted diseases. A spouse or girlfriend who discovers the letter could take serious action of their own.

It could be humiliating and embarrassing for the suspects, but police hope it’s a crime stopper.

Of course, it could be worse. At least they aren’t encouraging the media to publish the names of those arrested or seizing their cars. Nonetheless, it’s disturbing that cities hold due process in such low regard that they see nothing wrong in doing this. Given the tendency for encroachments like this to expand, one can only wonder where it will lead.

Innocent until proven guilty is no longer a guiding principle in the U.S.

Posted in Prosecutorial Misconduct, Prostitution, Rights of the Accused | 2 Comments »

U.S. Prosecutor crusades to falsely crucify a man for child porn

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010

Carlos Alfredo Simon-Timmerman was arrested for possession of child pornography. The only problem was that it wasn’t child pornography and any cop or prosecutor with a double-digit IQ should have known that. Unfortunately, anti-sex crusaders have never been known for their intellectual prowess.

The child porn that Simon-Timmerman had in his possession was a video called “Little Lupe the Innocent; Don’t Be Fooled By Her Baby Face.” The movie stared noted film actress Lupe Fuentes.

Despite the fact that it would have been a simple matter to verify the age of the porn star, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jenifer Yois Hernandez-Vega proceeded to prosecute Simon-Timmerman based solely on the fact that the star looks under age. Yep, that’s correct. Prosecutor Hernandez-Vega apparently thinks that a guess based on nothing more than appearance trumps the actual fact of her age.

Reading through the story, it’s patently clear that the prosecutor was not the slightest bit interested in justice or the innocence of her target. She was totally vested in a conviction despite any facts and enthusiastically embarked on a crusade to destroy the life of Carlos Alfredo Simon-Timmerman using her powers as an agent of the government.

Rather than issuing a subpoena to verify the age of Ms. Lupes, AUSA Jenifer Yois Hernandez-Vega demanded that the adult porn actress personally appear in court. Ms. Lupes had to fly from Venezula to testify in Puerto Rico.

After hearing testimony and examining her passport, the trial court ordered the prosecutor to dismiss the charges.

Anyone with even a hint of humility would have questioned whether they exceeded their authority and backed off in order to avoid embarrassing themselves and their office, but federal prosecutor Hernandez-Vega persisted far beyond the limits of credibility to the point of malicious harassment, if not an outright assault disguised as due process.

And the ending is the saddest part of the:

Although the innocent man spent two months in jail before being able to make bail, Jenifer Yois Hernandez-Vega will not even be given a reprimand. She’ll continue in her unethical ways, and there’s nothing anyone will do to stop her.

As long as the public blindly encourages an aggressive steamroller approach to law enforcement, where career building completely overshadows even the pretense of justice, this kind of behavior on the part of prosecutors will continue. The American public has gone from erring on the side of innocence to wholesale incarceration and “letting god sort them out”.

Welcome to the Sex Hysteria Hall of Shame, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jenifer Yois Hernandez-Vega.

Posted in Child Pornography, Law Enforcement Abuses, Police Misconduct, Prosecutorial Misconduct, Rights of the Accused | 1 Comment »

Nevada woman gets life sentence for lewdness

Friday, April 16th, 2010

Nope. You didn’t misread that. According to magicvalley.com:

A Twin Falls woman convicted of forcing a 13-year-old boy to touch her breasts was sentenced Monday to life in prison.

Michelle Lyn Taylor, 34, was convicted of lewdness with a minor under 14 in November after a week-long trial in Elko County, Nev., District Judge Mike Memeo’s courtroom.

Public defender Alina Kilpatrick says it all:

“She is getting a greater penalty for having a boy touch her breast than if she killed him,” she said.

The DA never offered a plea bargain.

After he sentenced her, [Judge] Memeo said he was bound by state statute to impose the life sentence, but said he isn’t sure why the prosecution chose to charge her under that statute.

The DA probably felt the penalty was justified. You know, to “protect children”.

I found this link on theagitatior.com.

Posted in Child Molestation, Nevada, Prosecutorial Misconduct | Comments Off

Man kills himself after cat sitters find his ‘porn’

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

From the New Hampshire Union Leader :

A mother and daughter taking care of a neighbor’s pet ended up finding disturbing images in a man’s apartment instead of the cat toy they were looking for, according to court reports.

Disturbing images? Disturbing to a mother and her 5-year-old daughter? That could mean anything from Playboy to snuff pictures.

After an investigation by Littleton police, Richard Swift, 71, of 507 Colonial Court was charged with five felony counts of possession of child pornography.

[...]

The five complaints on file at Littleton District Court graphically describe images of a girl who appears to be younger than 16.

Richard Swift, 71, was out on $10,000 personal recognizance under the conditions that he not have contact with children younger than 17 or go within 50 yards of any school or day care center, or use the Internet to view, download or transmit child pornography. He is now reported dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

A follow up story reports the following:

“These pictures ranged in nature of young girls posing in clothed in provocative ways from a Web site …,” Officer Chris Cote wrote in court papers. “I would estimate these girls to be in the range of 6 to 11 years old.”

There were other images of girls over the age of 18, as well, investigators reported.

Police seized the photographs, as well as two computers, video tapes and “some type of nudist brochure,” which depicted nude children.

Nice work, cops. None of the above describes illegal material and, just for the record, you can buy nudist style photography books that show nude children in many mainstream bookstores including amazon.com. How can that be, you ask? Because the word nude is not interchangeable with the word porn and anyone who doesn’t have the intellectual horsepower to distinguish between between the two shouldn’t be employed in the justice system.

For the record, the possession of child porn is not evidence that someone has ever abused a child. That fact is usually overlooked by the public in their haste to grab their pitchfork and noose and join the rest of the torch wielding mob, drooling at the prospect of stringing someone up (quick, before any facts emerge that might diminish their justification). If you think my characterization of the public is too harsh, you only need to read these comments to see how wiling people are to condemn a fellow citizen to death on a mere accusation.

I’d be willing to bet the “child porn” they confiscated will never see the light of day because if it doesn’t actually constitute the legal definition of child porn, they could be sued for false arrest. The justice system is exceptionally adept at covering up its misconduct.

Posted in Child Pornography, New Hampshire, Police Misconduct, Prosecutorial Misconduct | Comments Off

Australia tries to censor the internet worldwide

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

The Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission is apparently trying to suppress the human right of free expression by threatening to prosecute the operator of the U.S. based Encyclopedia Dramatica, Joseph Evers, under their racial hatred law.

According to ninemsn.com:

“This is an initial investigation into charging me, personally, with the violation of Australia’s Racial Discrimination Act,” Evers wrote.

Hate crime legislation is becoming common in western democracies as a way to outlaw particular kinds of expression as being too extreme to warrant free speech protection. In other words, hate speech, like obscenity, can be freely banned because most citizens don’t care enough about it to protest. Once the foot is in the door, the laws typically expand, becoming broader and broader.

As a bit of background, the Australian government has been very busy in the arena of filtering content from the internet that it deems illegal. This includes “child sexual abuse material; bestiality; sexual violence including rape; detailed instruction in crime, including suicide-related material; violence or drug use; and/or material that advocates the doing of a terrorist act.”

Its attempt to silence Encyclopedia Dramatica is a powerful indicator that Australia is willing to impose its draconian restrictions outside its own borders by prosecuting citizens of other countries under its own laws. For those of us in the U.S., this is like an international version of the fight currently being waged in federal courts over whether a single state can impose its local decency rules on the entire country.

The letter from the Australian Human Rights Commission to Joesph Evers says that, although the Dramatica server is in the U.S., the fact that the material is viewable by Australians means it is being published in Australia and therefore falls under their jurisdiction. A similar case is cited to backup their claim.

That is a pretty scary statement from a western democratic country. It certainly helps to dispel any belief that democracy is its own guarantor of freedom. I guess Australia doesn’t want Italy to be the only democratic country trying to force everyone to play by their rules.

Evers says:

Encyclopedia Dramatica will never be censored in any way.

Ummm… Well, it already is governed by American censorship, so that’s not exactly a true statement. For example, he would be in deep shit if they were to permit the publication of certain kinds of Japanese comics.

We will keep publishing this content and our Australian users will be able to view it up until the point that your God-forsaken government blocks it with their soon-to-be-implemented secret list of banned material. ACMA’s child pornography blacklist is only one half child pornography. The rest is religious and political speech.

His commentary as well as the letter from the Australian Human Rights Commission is available on the Encyclopedia Dramatica blog.

Posted in Australia, Censorship, Obscenity, Prosecutorial Misconduct, United States | Comments Off

Sex Hysteria!