Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Another Episode of the Bumbling Monsignor On the Trail of A Predator Priest

On Tuesday, Assistant District Attorney Anthony Pomeranz took the witness stand and read another volume of Monsignor William J. Lynn's grand jury testimony into the record.

Pomeranz is growing into the role. He's got that deer-in-the-headlights look down pat, and he reads his lines with the carefree assurance of a man with a grant of immunity, which is what the monsignor must have thought he had when he appeared before the grand jury in 2002, and made one forehead-slapping admission after another.

The most recent volume of grand jury testimony was about the hapless monsignor's pursuit back in 2000 of a 27-year-old Lothario priest named Father Sylwester Wiejata.


Father Wiejata was having affairs with married women. To the jury, hearing the priest's heterosexual exploits must have been a welcome relief from the usual tales in Courtroom 304, where gay predator priests are usually stalking pre-pubescent altar boys. But sadly, Father Wiejata had another problem; not only did he love the moms, but he also couldn't keep his hands off the daughters.

On the witness stand Tuesday, DA Pomeranz, as Lynn, was trying to figure out how many parishioners had heard about Father Wiejata's latest affair with a married woman. "I just wanted to see how widespread this was," the monsignor told the grand jury.

So the monsignor sat down Father Wiejata in his office of the secretary for the clergy, and asked the priest how he ended up in bed with another married woman. "She really threw herself at him, and he gave in," was how Msgr. Lynn recorded the incident in the secret archive files. "At the time, I believed him," Lynn told the grand jury.

Father Wiejata was the parochial vicar at Our Lady of Calvary in Northeast Philadelphia from 1996 to 1999, when he had an affair with a married woman with kids. The archdiocese's solution was to ship Father Wiejata off to another parish, Assumption BVM in West Grove, where he promptly had an affair with another married woman with kids.

The priest was dispatched to St. John Vianney, the archdiocese clinic for sex-addicted priests. The therapists at St. John's decided Father Wiejata was "not currently able to carry out his ministerial responsibilities in a manner that's productive and safe."

Father Wiejata suffered a setback after eight months of in-patient therapy. One therapist had called Msgr. Lynn to say he had made the mistake of inviting Father Wiejata over for dinner. At the therapist's house, the monsignor told the grand jury, Father Wiejata asked the therapist's two daughters, both in their early twenties, if they would sit on his lap. He told one daughter he was having dreams about her.

Then, Msgr. Lynn told the grand jury about a phone call he received on Aug. 4, 2000, from another woman, who said she also was having an affair with Father Wiejata. "She wouldn't give her name," the monsignor told the grand jury. Msgr. Lynn, the eternal boy scout, also brought his notes with him to the grand jury, instead of say, burning them.

In the monsignor's notes, the grand jury prosecutor flagged the words "Pat Smith." Was the woman who called him named Pat Smith, the grand jury prosecutor wanted to know. In the courtroom, the part of the grand jury prosecutor was once again played by Assistant District Attorney Patrick Blessington, whose job is to sound incredulous while asking every question.

"It could be," was the monsignor's response.

But Msgr. Lynn said his cousin's name was also Pat Smith, and that he was planning  a party for her at the time, which might have been why he wrote her name in the middle of his notes about the woman who was having an affair with Father Wiejata.

Msgr. Lynn said he was suspicious of the woman who called him because, "she was claiming she knew his [Father Wiejata's] history. But then Pat Smith/the anonymous woman told Msgr. Lynn something else. While Father Wiejata was over her house, she went to the store, and when she came home, she found the padre kissing her 13-year-old daughter, and fondling her breasts.

The monsignor's suspicions, however, were further aroused because the woman who called him sounded more concerned about Father Wiejata than her daughter. "He needs help or he's going to hurt himself," the woman told Msgr. Lynn, according to his handwritten notes.

Msgr. Lynn told the grand jury he was upset. "I can't have this going on," he said. "I have to confront him again." That afternoon, Father Wiejata was back in the monsignor's office.

But was that Pat Smith on the phone, the grand jury prosecutor wanted to know.

"My recollection is I never got a name," Msgr. Lynn told the grand jury.

Did you know at that time that you were dealing with a crime, namely the molestation of a 13-year-old, the grand jury prosecutor asked.

"I have to say I wasn't thinking crime," Lynn told the grand jury. "I didn't have the name of the child ... I wasn't sure it was a credible call ... she was more concerned about the priest, rather than the daughter."

The grand jury prosecutor asked why Msgr. Lynn had never typed up his handwritten notes about the call from the mother who claimed her 13-year-old daughter had been molested by Father Wiejata.

"There's two of us" in the office of the secretary for clergy, Lynn told the grand jury. "I thought it [the call] was anonymous. I wouldn't have maybe even bothered to type it up."

Did you tell the mom to go to the police, the grand jury prosecutor asked.

"I don't remember," the monsignor testified. He said he was more concerned about the priest "who is acting out." Lynn said he wanted to "trick him," meaning Father Wiejata, into "being honest." So Lynn told the priest that the victim and her mother might go to the police.

"If we handle this appropriately," Lynn said he told Wiejata, "They [the victim and her mother] might not go."

"I was trying to him to cooperate with us," Lynn told the grand jury. "I was trying to paint a worst-case scenario."

One could argue that it was already a worst-case scenario -- another predator priest on the loose, and only the monsignor in pursuit.

Msgr. Lynn asked Father Wiejata if he kissed the 13-year-old girl on the lips.

"I don't know what to say," Father Wiejata responded, according to Lynn. "What if I say yes?" the priest said. Then Father Wiejata confessed it was true.

Msgr. Lynn tried to pressure Father Wiejata to go back into therapy, but the priest balked, Lynn told the grand jury. Instead, Father Wiejata suggested leaving the state. Lynn threatened to report the priest to the police.

Meanwhile, the mother of the 13-year-old called Msgr. Lynn back, but once again, he was unable to get a name.

Was her name Pat Smith, the grand jury prosecutor asked again. "I still maintain that it was an anonymous call," Msgr. Lynn told the grand jury, adding that he was "not required to go look for an anonymous girl."

Did Msgr. Lynn call Assumption BVM, and ask if they had a parishioner there named Pat Smith? No, the monsignor said. Did he call the police? No, the monsignor said. Did he do anything in an attempt to find "this little girl," the grand jury prosecutor asked.

No, the monsignor said. What he did do was agree to pick up the tab two weeks later for Father Wiejata to go on retreat in New York state.

Did it occur to you, the grand jury prosecutor wanted to know, that you're dealing with a predator priest who just confessed to molesting a 13-year old, and he talked openly about fleeing the jurisdiction, and you decide to pick up his expenses so he can go on a road trip to New York?

"I didn't think of it in that context," Lynn told the grand jury. "We paid for it after the fact. We didn't know it in advance."

Father Wiejata, who had been on administrative leave since 1999, was laicized by the Vatican in 2002, meaning he was stripped of his priestly rank and busted down to layman.

After the jury had left for the day, Thomas Bergstrom, a lawyer for Msgr. Lynn, asked that Judge M. Teresa Sarmina require the prosecution to tell the jury whether they had ever interviewed the 13-year-old girl that Father Wiejata had confessed to molesting back in 2000.

"It's not simply not fair to leave it hanging like that," Bergstrom told the judge. "The statute of limitations as of today has not run." He suggested that after accusing Lynn of doing nothing to find the 13-year-old victim, the district attorney had done the same.

In response, Blessington said that if the girl had been interviewed by the district attorney or the grand jury, the defense would know about it, because the prosecution is required to turn over all evidence. Blessington accused the defense lawyer of trying to "deflect blame" from his client.

"It's classic misdirection" to cover up "what lies he [Lynn] may have told the grand jury," Blessington said.

The judge told Bergstrom she wasn't going to grant his request. But she said that Bergstrom was not precluded from investigating what happened to the 13-year-old, and presenting that evidence in court. And if he turned up evidence that didn't help his side, the judge said, he wasn't required to tell the jury about it.

22 comments

  1. “I have to say I wasn't thinking crime"

    Catholic priests are the most heartless, gutless, cowardly, inhuman, arrogant losers in society. They have little to no social skills, and spend most of their lives hanging out with similar men, and certainly know nothing about children. The shame is that they don’t even know the only thing they are supposed to know – What Would Jesus Do, or what is the right thing to do.

    They never tell the truth if it’s important (and their faith is being tested), so Lynn had to try to "trick" the pedophile priest into "being honest".

    Instead, Catholic priests do what the most cowardly, low life pedophile punk in town would do if that punk had the power to get away with it. Then, all the other cowardly, low life punks hide them, support them, and defend them, and somehow they manage to convince their dwindling and dying congregation to follow them as they blatantly sin in the name of God.

    If God isn’t stupid, all these priests will be raped for eternity, and so will members of the Catholic congregation, and God will show them what it is like to live the life that these victims lived after literally being God’s best young children, raped by satan on earth, with help from satan’s many minions.

    ReplyDelete
  2. (Part 1 of 2)

    If I read today’s report correctly:

    In 1999 a then-priest, Fr. W., was removed from ministry in his parish.

    In 2000 Msgr. Lynn interviewed him.

    W was then sent to another parish (In the hope that this was a one-time mistake? What was Lynn’s thinking here?)

    W then repeats his behavior at the second assignment.

    W is sent to the Vianney Center (a fully accredited hospital and treatment facility, to read its site, and contains – if I infer correctly – a ‘secure’ unit).

    After some months W is invited by a therapist to dinner with the therapists’ family, where W makes greatly inappropriate comments to the daughters. (Clearly W is not going to be reliably therapized to the point where he can ever conduct ministry again.)

    Lynn receives a call from either an anonymous woman or a woman who has the same name as one of his relatives, ‘Pat Smith’. She reports that W had fondled her daughter; and that she is ‘familiar with his history’; and that she is concerned, she says (according to Lynn), for the priest, W. (As far as I can tell neither Lynn – who claims the call was anonymous although the name ‘Pat Smith’ was written down in his notes of the call – nor anybody else had or has checked to see if there is or was such a woman in that parish, if she did call, and what she said. Nor did she report W’s behavior to the police.)

    Lynn then confronts W. W – through a stratagem of Lynn’s – confesses.

    W is laicized by the Church in 2002. He had not been permitted to function in priestly ministry since he was sent to Vianney.

    The defense raised the point – almost de rigeur for an Officer of the Court – that the prosecution had not interviewed (or made any attempt to locate?) the then-13 year-old girl, daughter of the possible ‘Pat Smith’, who – at the very least – still had an actionable cause against W.

    In response to a direct defense question as to whether the prosecution indeed had tried to locate this young woman, the prosecution did not make direct Yes/No answer but simply asserted that if they had the defense would have known about it.

    The trial judge advised the defense that it was welcome to try and locate her if it wished, but that it did not have to share its discovery – if any be achieved – with the prosecution. (And yet the girl is clearly the victim of a crime, if the story of W molesting her is true; would not the prosecution be concerned about her, especially as regards the case at bar but also as simply and generally the victim of a crime? It’s not the judge’s role to tell the prosecution how to conduct its extra-courtroom business, but is the putative young woman not a matter of concern for the legal system?)

    Again, there is something decidedly odd in the handling of this case.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    2. You use your typical demonic defense - "Look over there at them instead of us; they didn't do anything either".

      Here's the difference, which is obvious to the rest of us. Monster Lynn could have gotten the name of the mother and the daughter. He talked to the mother on the phone, and could have grilled Fr W to get the name. In fact, the rest of us know he probably did have a name, and is probably lying, as he and his pedophile protecting priests always do.

      Lynn didn't give the prosecution a name, and its tough fo the prosecution to fight the Catholic church when they just won't give up the truth and Lying Lynn says he doesn't remember.

      Delete
    3. I do agree that law enforcement dropped the ball and should have investigated the matter when it became known to them. No question about it. I didn't even need your reiteration of the story to conclude that. Also, the mother may be criminally negligent too. I think she should be, anyway, as she was more worried about the priest than her molested daughter.

      It doesn't make Lynn less liable though.

      Many people dropped the ball here, as often seems to be the case when dealing with a priest sex addict. Priests are revered by a billion people around the world. I'm not at all sure why.

      Delete
  3. (Part 2 of 2)

    Lynn’s efforts are certainly less-than-robust when judged by today’s standards (this is all pre-2002 and the great watershed of that year). But again, in a historical case, isn’t this one of the built-in downfalls? There are retired police chiefs and prosecutors around the country today, who held office before the MADD campaign against drunk-drivers, who could easily be accused of being as feckless in their handling of drunk-driver cases (including perhaps those involving fatalities) as Lynn might well appear to be in his pre-2002 handling of W (although W did not ever again see public ministry after his ‘second chance’ assignment).

    The same, in this case, might be said of the parent ‘Pat Smith’/anonymous, who according to the testimony was concerned for W and not primarily for her daughter and who – although no investigation by the prosecution has established it one way or the other – might well never have gone to the police herself. (She didn’t consider the actual touching that damaging or important? She somehow didn’t feel that was the appropriate path to take? There are no answers to these questions at this point.)

    If the prosecution had chosen to bring a case from the ‘present’ then any diocesan official handling it as Lynn did a dozen years ago would surely provide genuine grist for the mill. But after half a decade since the Grand Jury Report of 2005, the case against these Defendants – and in its other odd matters of Charges brought and Charges changed and so on – is what the prosecution brings. And this case, neatly, pre-dates whatever reforms were effected – with demonstrable and substantive good results – since 2002.

    There are clearly elements that are very heavily invested in using this case – and using the legal process – for purposes other than the simple inquiry and adjudication of guilt or innocence. Hence the rage – however primitively or pseudo-professionally couched – at that cherished objective being interfered-with in any way.

    But I say that if this sort of thing is allowed to happen in this matter of clerical abuse, it can be allowed not far down the road to happen in any matter. The legal process will be (however dubiously and oddly) deployed in some other Cause, to the great and lasting damage and detriment of the primary and utterly fundamental purpose of justifying the deployment of the Sovereign coercive/police power through the most painstakingly careful determination of guilt or innocence of the accused.

    This trial cannot simply be the soap-opera playing-out of this or that interest’s preferred script of Good-vs-Evil, perhaps with the willing collaboration of some sworn officials thrown in to further toxify the whole thing.

    And, once again to state it for the readership: I will gladly engage ideas, but frankly I don’t care how many actual or posturing primitives come out of the woodwork. In support whereof, I advise readers to simply wait a while and read what goes up.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You're slow to learn. We don't care that your Catholic pedophile priests "rape fewer children than they used to". We don't care that Al Qaeda kills fewer people than they used to. We are going after both terrorist organizations, and will do whatever we can to put your criminals in jail, despite their huge riches an powerful lawyers.

      Delete
  4. Priests like Wiejata are just educated versions of step dads in trailer parks who use vulnerable moms to get to their daughters. My own perp, Father Thomas Barry Horne of Bartlett, Illinois, was doing my mom as a way to get to my sister and me.

    If only the victims could have been coddled pampered and tended to as much as the perpetrator priests. If only the Church had shown half as much concern for the kids being damaged by their priests.

    Thanks, Ralph Cipriano, for all the great work you are doing here.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So sorry to hear about what happened to you. Keep up the good fight. You are doing God's work.



      The difference between priests and the "step dad in trailer parks" is that the step dad is like the "lone gunman", and they are tough to catch.

      Catholic priests are the gutless gangsters of the child rape world. They deploy thousands and thousands of child rapists around the US alone (by their own admission in their own report), and then move them, lie about them, and protect them with all of the riches that their followers give them.

      This is why the FBI should and will eventually use RICO statutes to infiltrate the Catholic church rip the secret archives out of every diocese, and do a full inquisition on this despicable mafia.

      Delete
  5. "'She really threw herself at him, and he gave in," was how Msgr. Lynn recorded the incident in the secret archive files. 'At the time, I believed him," Lynn told the grand jury."

    I love how priests are powerless over any temptation. Brennan can't resist a 14 year old boy who wants to use his 1996 era super slow dial up connection to surf porn. (Despite the fact that most porn sites were paid/credit card only sites in '96, apparently Brennan must have had a time machine laptop with a high speed connection that assessed the free world of porn that didn't even exist until 2004). Wiejata is powerless to resist the charms of married women and their daughters. (It's like the old joke about the salesman who stops at the farmhouse and promises not to sleep with the farmer's wife and daughters). And the church just accepts these explanations as being true.

    In the alternative world that is the catholic church, young mothers and children are constantly seducing priests. DPierre's buddy MacRae made the same claim when he abused a 16 year old. Here is MacRae's story according to the WSJ:

    "Gordon MacRae required no clarifications. He was a priest who had failed twice to resist temptation, once, briefly, with a married woman who had declared her love and need for him -- a saga with elements of "The Thorn Birds" and, in larger part, farce. There was a one-night encounter, during his leave of absence from the parish, with Tony Bonacci, a highly intelligent 16-year male friend and a dependent of sorts. Tony had himself initiated the encounter -- never to be repeated, his entreaties notwithstanding -- he told Fr. MacRae's attorney. "

    Kay's got the whole act down right. Brennan groomed Bukowski's mom along with Mark. Wiejata groomed mom to get to the daughters. Pedophiles don't lurk in the corner of playgrounds in raincoats. The befriend lonely single mothers who are overwhelmed trying to work, raise kids, and keep their sanity. They think the priest is their special friend who really cares about them. It's pedophilia 101, and Lynn knew it by 2000 when he got the call from Patti.He had already shredded a memo of 34 similar stories.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Great and insightful points, kopride.

      People have lost perspective that back in 1996, most people didn't have easy access to porn. It was reserved for the really rich, and for Catholic priests. Then imagine the time that it takes to boot a machine, and wait for download of porn after putting in a credit card.

      Imagine being a grown man in the presence of a 14 year old child, and claiming that you were intellectually and emotionally taken over by that 14 year old child, and HAD to take all of this time to show him porn, because, after all, in your job as a Catholic priest, you had to do What Catholic Jesus Would Do, which is to show him porn, then sleep with him.

      Hey Brennan, satan is waitin....

      Delete
  6. There is no evidence that the DA's office didn't try to find the young girl. Perhaps they did and were unable to find her or her mother. If they don't have the correct name, which we really don't know, how could they find her?

    The point in the story is that, again, Lynn did nothing except try to cover the asses of his pedophile priests. Lynn obviously knew of his option to report this to the police, he used this ruse as a way to get Wiejata to confess.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That is exactly what struck me as well, Lynn knew of his option to inform police and it was enough of a threat to get Wiejata to confess.

      Delete
    2. Exactly, and back then, especially before 2002, Catholic parishioners would have been outraged if anyone claimed that a Catholic priest molested a 13 year old girl. Back then, only the Catholic church knew about the tens of thousands of pedophile priests in their army, but of course, Catholic priests certainly wouldn't do What Jesus Would Do and tell the truth about it.

      You now know that if Wiejata was a sex freak and a child molester, he had sex with other children. Not only that, but he confessed it to other priests, so they know.

      They could have refused absolution (the second part of John 20:23, which the Catholic church ignores), but they never do. Better than they let the children suffer, just like Catholic Jesus Would Do.

      However, the Catholic church still has their ignorant followers convinced that every victim is a liar, and the congregation never seeks the truth.

      Delete
  7. "To the jury, hearing the priest's heterosexual exploits must have been a welcome relief from the usual tales in courtroom 304, where gay predator priests are usually stalking pre-pubescent altar boys."

    Mr Cipriano, I believe this is a vast generalzation of people with the gift of gay sexual orientation. I do not believe that many of the male victims have suffered at the hands of gay clergy but rather at the hands of an underdeveloped psyco-sexual personna caused by the isolation of young men in formation for the priesthood.

    Perhaps some of the abusers were gay but I would believe strongly most would be classified heterosexual. Please don't allow your bias to deflect from the great reporting you do.

    thank you
    Fr Vince

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Fr. Vince:

      Bingo. The catholic priesthood has always been used by some very sexually and psychologically immature males to avoid dealing with the need to develop a mature adult psyschosexual personality. It runs the whole gamut, from a failure to deal with their own childhood sexual abuse, sexual orientation confusion, problems relating to their peers, severe sexual guilt and repression, abnormal sexual pathology, parental separation issues, poor sexual self esteem and feelings of sexual inadequacy. To many of these boys/young men, the priesthood and celibacy seemed like an easy escape from struggling with or overcoming these issues.

      And the seminaries failed to address any of these problems aside from the idea that prayer or adherence to orthodoxy was the answer. I also think that putting young horny males in a closed environment like a seminary does create more opportunity for homosexual experimentation than heterosexual. (The same is true for prison and men at sea) Before the era of HIV infection, homosexual experimentation carried far less risk of lasting scandal to the church than a priest or seminarian getting a girl pregnant. And what priests do or do not do in the seminary carries forward forever with them throughout their career as priests. It is difficult for a priest to call out another priest for sexual misconduct when that priest knows of the other priest's youthful indiscretions. It creates an unfortunate code of silence that persists through all levels of the hierarchy.

      I also think the economic growth of the US post WWII changed the demographics of the boys choosing the seminary. With financial aid and better economic options, the priesthood was no longer the only option to the very smart poor kid who didn't want to spend his future mining coal or working in a factory. Celibacy seemed like a relatively small price to pay for an education and prestige that the priesthood offered. The priests ordained during the Great Depression and before were CEO type individuals; they founded parishes in struggling neighborhoods, ran large schools, organized huge social agencies, managed massive building and capital projects, managed large parish budgets and payroll, were educated at the highest levels, traveled worldwide, and held real political capital. Many of them were truly impressive individuals as measured by any reasonable measures of success. When these type stopped entering the priesthood in large numbers, there was a huge leadership vacuum, and then a shortage of the rank and file led to selecting individuals who would have never made the grade in earlier ages. You got more of the sexually troubled and less of the very ambitious who entered the priesthood with the predictable results you see today.

      It is nice among the noise to see a priest acknowledge reality and not just blame it on gays or the "sixties."

      Delete
    2. Fr Vince,

      Who cares?

      We don't care about your reasons for raping children, or your excuses.

      We want the criminals in your molesting mafia put in jail. In jail, unlike the Catholic church, there is a true honor code. Pedophiles are the lowest form of life, and are treated viciously, unlike in the Catholic church, where they are protected like Christ would have protected children.

      Delete
  8. Yo Father Vince. Regarding men in collars stalking altar boys, it's a fair generalization of the majority of testimony that I've heard for the past six weeks. From the viewpoint of the grown men I've seen in the courtroom sobbing, I don't think it matters whether their abusers were celebrating the gift of gay orientation or acting out their psycho-sexual persona caused by the isolation of the priesthood. Don't think it matters much.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I have to admit, I am relieved when I hear of a priest involved with an adult, man or woman, single or married.

      And I did click on the blog linked to Fr. Vince's name after my post thanking him for his insight. Suffice it to say, that it is an unconventional view of male christian fellowship. It is not for the faint of heart.

      Delete
    2. Well Ralph I have to disdagree with you...the sensational is that gay priest are abusing altar boys but the fact remains that many abusers abused both male and female, plus the young smooth boy I am sure was a choice also of many heterosexual men.

      My point was that your statement was a judgment on all gay priest and I do not believe it fair..

      I do enjoy reading your reports...keep up your good work.
      Fr Vince

      Delete
    3. Fr Vince,

      Your comment about a "young smooth boy" is chilling.

      No one in their right mind would use or think of that phrase, yet you do so effortlessly. You are so disgusting, and it is just a part of your culture. I'm going to throw up, then come back and fight your freaks elsewhere.

      Delete
  9. (Part 2 of 2)

    This is not ‘historical research’ and inquiry in the full sense of the word. It can well be characterized as ‘advocacy history’ since the attorney is clearly advocating for a particular ‘take’ on the case.

    Genuine and full historical analysis requires a broad, deep and complete consideration of all the existing material and approaches, whether they lead to one’s preferred conclusions and one’s preferred narrative-framing or not.

    There has been a tendency generally to confuse the two ‘historicals’, even in the historical profession, but that doesn’t change the reality of the difference and the cogency of the distinction.

    I would note also that this conflation was precisely what drove the ‘management’ of ‘information’ in the run-up to the Iraq invasion (in which, curiously, lawyers in the Bush-Cheney administration played no small part). What should have been a full and free strategic assessment of all actual facts and factors, and of all possibilities of outcome, and of all possible consequences (desirable and otherwise). But that was not done, violating every principle of military strategic assessment in the service of ‘advocating’ a pre-determined outcome. The idea – alas – was ‘there is only one place to get to, and our way is the only way to get there’.

    Further, I think that this confusion has given many well-intentioned and zealous but not historically-trained persons the inaccurate impression that an ‘advocacy history’ is a genuine history. And it is not, and by its very nature cannot.

    And, of course, such ‘advocacy history’ serves what I believe to be many of the extraneous hydraulic pressures operative beyond, beneath, and all around the case at bar and all such similar cases.

    The confusion that the prosecution’s theory of the case – and its consequent ‘advocacy history’- constitutes the actual, genuine, and full history involved in the case is one that has been widely amplified and by many the distinction is for all practical purposes invisible. But it is there and it is very real.

    Lastly, a commenter usefully brought up the interesting point that adolescent males are attractive to older males even though the older males are married and parents. This is a reality that is not often remarked-upon in the human make-up. I recall a 1997 book – entitled “Our Guys”– that described a significant portion of a small-town’s ‘established’ men having their way (to include at least one rape) with male members of the local high-school’s teams in Glen Ridge, NY, in 1989.

    ReplyDelete

Thoughtful commentary welcome. Trolling, harassing, and defaming not welcome. Consistent with 47 U.S.C. 230, we have the right to delete without warning any comments we believe are obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.