Catholic Church Still Doesn’t Get It: Blame the Victims

It is simply impossible to imagine how someone feels after they have been raped or abused, unless you’ve been there yourself. But we hear from many victims of the shame and isolation they have felt. In the case of abuses by the Catholic Church, one organization victims have turned to is the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP). SNAP offers support services to victims, providing guidance and pointers to both support groups and therapists. They have also has filed a lawsuit against the Catholic Church for human rights violations, and have assisted victims in their legal pursuits.

One would think that the Church would have learned from their earlier attempts to excuse their behavior. Instead, The New York Times reports that the Catholic Church is fighting SNAP, having subpoenaed all manner of records from this organization, as part of their legal defense. Attacking a victim’s support organization itself demonstrates the continued denial of their own misdeeds under which the Church labors. The attack has taken the form of a costly legal battle with an organization that has almost no resources.

As if to prove the point, Mr. William Donahue of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights made the statement that, “SNAP is a menace to the Catholic Church.”

Wrong.

Again.

Such statements as the one above are a menace to the Catholic Church. The sooner these people realize that their harboring and shuffling of sick priests was aiding and abetting of criminals, the sooner they make restitution to abused individuals, the sooner, they can demonstrate they have learned from their mistakes.

The Catholic Church has been its own worst enemy, and apparently continues to be so. How can people put their faith in a group of such people who first and foremost are out for themselves and not for justice of their flock? SNAP should be a resource the Church uses to weed out bad priests. Victims should be counseled, and not harassed or embarrassed.

To be sure, this is not about God. It’s about the failure of men.

How bad do your lawyers have to be for you to get a new trial… in a death penalty case?

The New York Times reports a ridiculous case that was heard by the Supreme Court, which seems to come right out of the movie Brazil, in which a combination of events leads to a defendant in a capital murder case losing his rights to appeal in the state of Alabama. According to the article, a court had sent its ruling to two associates at a firm in New York who had work on behalf of defendant Cory Maples. The problems started when the associates left. The firm then returned the judgment to the court marked “returned to sender”. The court clerk received the envelope and did nothing. The local counsel of record also failed to follow up with the appeal. Eventually, the window that defendants have to file appeals elapsed, at which point the prosecutor seemingly gloated directly to Mr. Maples.

The only good news in this case is that the Supreme Court is now hearing it, and at least in oral arguments they seem to have been as incensed at the callous treatment of a defendant as one would hope they should be.

So now my questions, and I have many:

Why is it that this case had to get to the Supreme Court in the first place? Is administrative incompetence grounds for rushing to kill someone?
Does the current state of law and societal view towards prosecutorial discretion need correction? Here, in a case where the prosecutor clearly could have weighed in to prevent a travesty, he instead seemingly chose to gloat. Doesn’t that argue for stronger judicial oversight?
Should there be sanctions against the local lawyer who failed to at all follow up in a death penalty case?
In this case, how broadly should the Court rule? They could simply state that the confluence of events led to a perverse situation that requires redress, and narrowly rule, or they could require that states shoulder at least some burden to see that defendants are receiving fair treatment. What would that look like?
If this is what happens in death penalty cases, what sort of miscarriages of justice are taking place in other cases, and how do we know?

What do you think?

Dear Norwegian Families, we are crying with you

As if On Queue: Google accounts attacked from China

The BBC reports today how China is rejecting Google’s statement that attacks on its users originated from China. It’s very fair for China to call into question from whence attacks originate. The best Google can really authoritatively say is that they saw attacks coming from a particular set of IP addresses that happen to be registered to a network that resides in a particular location, in this case Jinan.

However, the attacks targeted individuals said to be Chinese dissidents or adversaries. In this case, as the BBC writes, while it is very difficult to state with assurance that the attacks were made by the Chinese government, the technique used, spear phishing, leads one to believe that this attack was in fact paid for, in some way, by a government. Spear phishing involves learning about a particular individual, and then crafting a message that that person would think came from someone they knew, and convincing that person to view an attachment that itself contains a virus. That virus must be relatively unknown, or virus checkers will pick it up. The cost of spear phishing is high, and the monetary pay-off tends to be low. Therefore, it is a good fit for an intelligence organization.

In addition, as I wrote not long ago, Cambridge University investigated a break-in of the Office of His Holiness, The Dalai Lama. Those attacks also seemed to originate from China, they were also targeted against an adversary, and worst of all, China apparently acted upon the information stolen by applying diplomatic pressure against those countries who invited the Dalai Lama.

At the very least, China bears some culpability for allowing the attack. Here we have a government that does not believe in the free flow of information, and so they are known for monitoring everything. How, then, did this attack escape their notice?

CNN: Lawymakers rethinking (their) security

CNN reports that in the aftermath of the Tucson shooting, House and Senate leaders are considering additional security for their members. That’s all fine and dandy, but my simple question is this:

What about the rest of us?

This guy went in and legally bought a 9mm Glock with ammo, even though his friends and schools knew he was a little nutty. All of the dead people weren’t in Congress. They were collateral damage. What about them? The first person who says that a nine year old should be defending herself from a Glock gets a Bronx Cheer.