Innocence
Children, the innocents of world, are dominating sexual assault news. According to a USA Today article, half of all victim calls to RAINN were from minors this month. Coronavirus has united children home from school with their abusers, who are bored and home from work. It has created a combustible situation in many at risk homes.
Australia – New South Wales
An investigation by the Guardian Australia found that Cletus O Connor, a school teacher, principal and school administrator in New South Wales, Australia had abused mostly indigenous pre-teen boys from the 1950s through the 1980s. Instead of disciplining O Connor or firing him, the government of New South Wales paid out millions of dollars to the victims.
Although the money kept the victims quiet, it allowed the abuse to continue unabated. O Connor died in 1995, but the pain he inflicted on his students remains to this day. And, almost as a slap in the face, the people who knew O Connor either refuse to believe that the abuse occurred or, what is potentially worse, accept it as fact and just don’t care. I call it the “nice guy” syndrome. People say, “I just don’t believe that.” It’s a reaction that saturates western cultural norms. We see it today even in the highest office in America. Australia and America are cultural siblings of the same “sweep it under the carpet” bargain with morality that our mother country, England, passed down to us. If it’s unpleasant, don’t talk about it. As a result, the people who knew O Connor, defend him – still – even though he’s been dead many years. For example the current mayor of the town where he taught, Gilgendra, New South Wales, said recently,
“A large number of teachers who served with him had nothing but respect for the man as an educator and a family man. I don’t know his victims, I know his family [and] I know of him as a well-respected educator.”
He [the mayor] accused the reporter of “raking [O Connor] through the mud” before hanging up on him.
The man you think of as “a nice guy’ may well be a monster to others, to people who are weaker, of another race or with less power.
Australia – Adass Jewish School
Another case stemming from Australia is that of Malka Leifer, a respected female principal at the Adass Jewish School in an ultraconservative neighborhood in Melbourne, Australia. Dassi Erlich, a student who, among others was abused by Leifer at age 15, didn’t understand or realize the importance of what had been done to her until after she was married (arranged) and after she had given birth to a child. Erlich didn’t behave normally when her child was born and her family put her in a mental institution. After talking to a therapist there, she was diagnosed with PTSD. The therapist contacted the school to advise them of the abuse and the school officials held a meeting to decide what to do. The school board voted that they thought it best for everyone involved to cover up the abuse. As a result, the school board spirited the pedophile, Malka Leifer, along with several of her children [She had 8 in total] to Israel in the middle of the night. The rest of her family joined her later.
Israel has been trying to extradite her back to Australia ever since.
A striking fact is that Erlich, the abused girl, actually had to go to a mental institution to figure out that what happened to her was wrong. She had been raised without any influences from the outside world, in other words, as an innocent, and the mental institution was her first opportunity to access radio, television, and most importantly books and computers. Erlich thrived in the new open environment literally gulping the world’s abundance for the first time. I can’t say that it’s wrong to keep girls pure and innocent in general. But how can girls cope with the many complications of life if they are unprepared. Erlich is an example of the phenomenon of over protection.
All this took time for Erlich to process. She had to come to grips with the abuse and finally put a name on it. Then she had to seek the aid of lawyers and ferret out Leifer, who was happily living in a West Bank community outside of Jerusalem with her family. The extradition process to bring Malka Leifer back to Australia to face the 75 charges pending against her began in 2014 and didn’t end until recently. On Tuesday, May 26, 2020, an Israeli judge declared Leifer fit to stand trial. She had been pleading insanity.
It’s was a long process. The abuse had taken place circa 2008 and it turned out that Erlich wasn’t the only girl who was abused. There were 15 others. There’s a lesson here. Dassi Erlich now says,
“I wanted to try to take the secrecy and the shame away from my story by telling it in my own voice. Maybe I can even inspire others,” she says with a smile. “I have found a new life and I love it.”
The newspaper, The Australian, gave a personal take on this story. It was my main source for this story but I also used The Guardian and The New York Times.
America has innocents too
The victims in this story are a bit bigger than the victims in Australia and a lot stronger but they share the same societal diseases – ignorance, innocence and secrecy. This story appeared in the New York Times and it too took a little while for the victims to figure it all out. For example, Chuck Christian, a former tight end at Michigan State, would almost rather die than submit to an intimate examination. His anxiety was the result of a fear instilled in him by a wayward sports doctor in college, and it almost caused his death. By the time he forced himself to go to a doctor, his prostate cancer had progressed to the point that he had only 3 years to live.
Later, in a conversation with a friend, he learned that Dr. Robert E. Anderson, the sports doctor at Michigan when he was there, was being investigated for assaulting students across several decades. Christian then remembered the painful rectal exams he received when he went for his physicals. At the time, he had accepted the exams because he wanted, more than anything else, to pass the physical and continue to play football.
To be clear, a rectal exam is not normally done as part of a sports checkup and Christian didn’t recall having them in previous physicals. Why did Dr. Anderson perform unnecessary and painful rectal exams on all the sport’s students? I can’t answer that but, if I had been a football player, I would not have questioned it either. We humans tend to just trust, not question authority. Doctors represent authority.
The problem with sports doctors enjoying their work is not limited to Michigan. The University of Ohio had a problem with Dr. Richard H. Strauss who abused at least 177 men in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. Dr. Strauss committed suicide in 2005.
Finally, we can’t forget Dr. Lawrence G. Nassar, famous for his abuse of the US gymnastics’ team.
As I have often said, It’s scary out there. Be careful.
Betsy De Vos – Title IX
Rapists have enjoyed the presumption of innocence since the beginning of the legal system in America. It is what protects them, coddles them and allows them to continue raping. The lawyers who defend rapists understand the presumption of innocence and the judges who preside over the cases understand too. It’s one of the basic flaws underlying our legal system. If the accused is to be presumed innocent, what does that make his accuser? She must be a liar.
Betsy DeVos is sister to the multi-billionaire Erik Prince, a man who made big money as a contractor in the Middle East with Blackwater. Blackwater employees earned between $600 and $1,000 a day and were responsible for a number of atrocities during the Iraq war. DeVos has no qualifications for the job of Secretary of Education that I can see other than the fact she is sister to Erik who is a friend of Trump.
It has been difficult to pin down what exactly is happening with Title IX but there are certain issues that stand out.
One is which standard of evidence is to be used in adjudicating Title IX cases?
Men’s rights groups wanted a number of changes. One change that was dear to their hearts was the use of “beyond a reasonable doubt” as a standard of proof. “Beyond a reasonable doubt” is the standard used in criminal prosecutions today. Very few rapists are found guilty under this standard. It’s an easy one to beat. The two lesser standards, “preponderance of evidence” or “clear and convincing evidence” have been approved by DeVos for use at schools.
Preponderance of evidence, in Britain called “balance of probabilities,” is the standard already used in family court. It means that there is a greater than 50% chance that the claim is true, clear and convincing. This standard is also the standard that has been approved by most colleges and universities.
Clear and convincing proof, the other standard approved by DeVos, means that the evidence presented by a party during the trial must be highly and substantially more probable to be true than not and the trier of fact must have a firm belief or conviction in its factuality.
I’m fairly happy that “beyond a reasonable doubt” isn’t going to be the standard of proof required. I had been worried that it would. Thank you for this favor.
Another Title IX problematical area is geographical in nature. There has been a good bit of discussion about how far physically or geographically the school’s authority extends. Does it include student organizations? Thankfully, yes, it includes those troublesome fraternities along with other student activities. It also includes field trips and conferences. It does not include off campus housing or anything overseas.
The third problem area is the definition. What exactly is sexual harassment? The new guidelines clear that up and some of the news is not so good. There is a narrowed definition.
“Sexual harassment” under Title IX is now more narrowly defined to include (1) quid pro quo; (2) “unwelcome conduct” of a sexual nature that a reasonable person would find “so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive” that it effectively denies someone equal access to an education program; or (3) sexual assault, dating violence, domestic violence or stalking.
The problem appears to be with the wording “so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive.” As Kristi Clemens, Dartmouth’s Title IX coordinator, explained “if somebody grabs your butt once” it would most likely not meet the “severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive” clause under the new rule. This is a problem. Also, who is to be considered a reasonable person?
One more deeply troubling area is that,
“the College will have to allow for a live cross examination as part of the investigation process into any Title IX claim. The cross examination would be attended by both the respondent and the complainant, and each party will have the opportunity to question the other. While either party may request to attend the hearing remotely by video calling from a separate location, many have criticized this measure for potentially retraumatizing survivors of sexual assault.
“Survivors could be questioned by their rapist’s family member or friends or fraternity brother in a live hearing,” said Diana Whitney ’95, a founding member of the organization Dartmouth Community against Gender Harassment and Sexual Violence. “[The guidelines show] no understanding of the process of trauma. And it seems like it’s setting it up to retraumatize student victims and protect their perpetrators.”
A live cross exam will scare victims away.
Lastly, coaches are no longer mandated reporters. Why not? Personally I think because the overpaid coaches don’t like it and it has tended to get all those poor football players in trouble. Betsy DeVos is making this exception because well – boys will be boys.
The above report was taken from The Fire.org, The Hartford Courant, the Feminist Majority Foundation, Teen Vogue Magazine, Ms Magazine, and finally the New York Times. The number of references is tribute to my degree of confusion.
Think about the three “crimes” most often perpetrated in a school environment: plagiarism, substance abuse and sexual assault. Of these, sexual assault is the crime most likely to cause the victim a lifetime of pain but sexual assault is also the most difficult to prove. All of which means don’t plagiarize in college, that is unless you are Vice-president Biden. He got away with it. And don’t drink excessively in college, that is unless you are Chief Justice Brett Kavanaugh. But sexual assault? It’s still pretty much okay to still do that.