Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
September 9th, 2016
Civil lawyers sent potential victims to therapy to help unearth memories. As Howard Janet, a civil lawyer for an alleged Sandusky victim, explained in a CNN interview, victims could “create a bit of a Chinese wall in their minds. They bury these events that were so painful to them deep in their subconscious.”
But that’s not all. The well-known sodomy-in-the-shower story is fictional. When Mike McQueary went into the locker room in 2001, he briefly heard slapping sounds in the shower that he interpreted as sexual. As McQueary later put it, “Visualizations come to your head.”
Read the article by Mark Pendergrast in The Crime Report.
Posted in Innocents, Sex Panic | Comments Off on Why Jerry Sandusky May Be Innocent
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
September 5th, 2016
“In 2005, I came upon the story of Father Gordon MacRae in a series of articles by Pulitzer-Prize winning writer, Dorothy Rabinowitz in The Wall Street Journal. This was my first inkling that the case against this Catholic priest, that I and most others thought to be fairly and justly adjudicated, was in fact deeply flawed.
“As I looked more closely, and probed more deeply, it became apparent to me that this priest is a victim of a zealous sex crimes detective, a set of political agendas, and the greed of men pretending to be victims to ride a wave of media coverage of Catholic scandal to commit fraud.”
Read the post by Ryan A. MacDonald in his blog, “A Ram in the Thicket.”
Posted in Innocents, Sex Panic | Comments Off on The Father Gordon J. MacRae Story: Injustice in New Hampshire
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
September 5th, 2016
Photo: Gabrielle Lurie/AFP/Getty Images
“The United States imprisons a higher proportion of its population than any other developed country. The American incarceration rate is roughly 3.5 times as high as the median rate in Europe, according to a 2013 report from the European Council of Annual Penal Statistics. This is not because Americans commit more crimes — victimization rates in the United States are comparable to those in Western Europe. Nor is our outsize prison population solely the product of our drug war. As the Marshall Project notes, 54 percent of the 1.3 million Americans in state prisons are there for violent crimes. Even if we freed every nonviolent offender in an American prison, we would still jail a far higher percentage of our residents than do our European peers.”
Read the article by Eric Levitz in New York magazine.
Posted in Prisons, Sex Panic | Comments Off on Expanding Incarceration Is Not the Best Way to Fight Rape Culture
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
August 14th, 2016
“There was never a day I just never stopped fighting or looked for strength from God. I never gave up,” Elizabeth said. “I had three friends incarcerated with me and my family, and that was my strength to say I’m not giving up and the truth will one day come forward.”
Then, she struck up a friendship with a pen pal in the Yukon Territory [Darrell Otto], with a man who believed in her innocence. Soon, an organization called the National Center for Reason and Justice had picked up the case, and reporters were paying attention to the story.
Listen to the program about this case on Latino USA.
Posted in Innocents, Sex Panic | Comments Off on Unheard but Unafraid: The Story of the San Antonio 4
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
August 11th, 2016
“Making a mild criticism of sex offender registries looked like it could have hurt a Massachusetts judge in her bid to serve on the state’s Supreme Judicial Court. But on Wednesday the Governor’s Council, an eight-member elected body responsible for approving judicial nominees, voted unanimously in favor of Superior Court Judge Kimberly Budd’s nomination to serve as an associate justice.”
Read the article by Elizabeth Nolan Brown in Reason.
Posted in Sex Panic | Comments Off on Judge Critical of Sex Offender Registry Confirmed to Massachusetts High Court
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
August 5th, 2016
“Parents, it’s time to panic: Kids who venture outside to play Pokémon Go are going to end up in the clutches of sex offenders, unless we do something pointless, political and pathetic.
“We must fearmonger!”
Read the article by NCRJ Director Emily Horowitz in the New York Post.
Posted in Sex Panic | Comments Off on Don’t Believe the fearmongering about perverts using Pokemon Go
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
August 2nd, 2016
What’s the most common age of sex-offenders?
It’s not a trick question, but unless you follow this stuff closely you’ll almost certainly answer wrong.
In fact, most people are shocked to learn that the most common age of people charged with a sex offense isn’t a creepy 39, or 51.
It’s 14.
Read the article by Lenore Skenazy in the New York Post.
Posted in Sex Panic | Comments Off on Bogus “Sex Offender” Labels are Ruining Lives
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
July 18th, 2016
“The Turner case exemplifies a problematic pattern in American policymaking. The case, similar to other sensationalized instances of leniency for sexual assault, has animated calls for harsher punishments, mandatory minimums and removing judicial discretion. All of these law-and-order responses, coming particularly from the left, continue a tradition in the United States of channeling efforts to address sexual violence into demands for punishment. Far from being progressive, however, this strategy contributes to the expansion of the carceral state, which is ineffective at reducing crime, incapable of healing victims, and devastating for those caught in its web. A more substantively progressive and feminist strategy for addressing these issues is needed in order to draw the connection between sexual violence and material inequality.”
Read the article by Sarah Cate in Common Dreams.
Posted in Sex Panic | Comments Off on Beyond Panic and Punishment: Brock Turner and the Left Response to Sexual Violence
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
July 18th, 2016
Joseph’s lawyer, Paula Brown, is updating Joseph’s clemency petition. This petition will go first to the Parole Board, and then to Governor John R. Kasich.
Paula is collecting support letters to file with the clemency petition.
Here are some posts to this blog about Joseph’s case:
https://bobchatelle.net/category/smithallen
Many of you have developed a personal relationship with Joseph over the years.
It is not necessary to argue for Joseph’s innocence in these letters. The accompanying petition will make the case for innocence strongly.
What will be most helpful are testimonies about Joseph’s character.
Send your letters to:
Paula Brown
KRAVITZ, BROWN & DORTCH, LLC
65 East State Street, Suite 200
Columbus OH 43215-4277
With your letter enclose a note giving Paula your contact information.
Thank you for your concern about my good friend Joseph.
-Bob Chatelle
Posted in Innocents, Sex Panic, Smith/Allen | Comments Off on Clemency for Joseph Allen
Friends of Justice is a personal blog. Here I speak only for myself.
July 16th, 2016
“So-called Romeo offenders, convicted of sex with an underage girlfriend or boyfriend, exist side by side with rapists. There is no consideration as to whether a molestation occurred within a family — and thus, experts say, is statistically unlikely to reoccur outside it — or was committed by a predator snatching an unknown child off the street.
“Across the country, even offenders whose risk approaches zero can remain on the list.”
Read the article by Eric Dexheimer in the Austin American-Statesman.
Posted in Sex Panic | Comments Off on Program to corral ballooning sex offender registry failing
