Presumed Guilty by Martin Yant

Presumed Guilty: when innocent people are wrongly convicted, Martin Yant. Amherst NY: Prometheus Books, 1991. ebook, 197 pps.


I used to say, "The American justice system is the greatest in the world." Things happened and then I added a caveat, "except when it doesn't work." The recent actions of our increasingly paranoid government politicians and agencies has caused me to re-evaluate my thinking and belief system. I am not so sure anymore. I've witnessed far too much injustice to make any such statements anymore.

Presumed Guilty was a horrifying book. Case after case was presented of innocent people who went to prison [and some who went to the electric chair] because of liars. The liars were found among prosecutors, police, expert witnesses so-called, people seeking revenge, and other players in the judicial system. In the scramble to get tough on crime and get re-elected, suspects are arraigned on multiple charges in the hopes that at least one or two of them will stick.

sapphoq reviews says: I'm all for the guilty being made to pay for their crimes. I am against innocent people being forced to pay for the actions of others. Martin Yant has written an important book. He is not just another liberal whining about people in prison. Read this book. Your views may also change a bit as a result. I am happy that there are people and agencies devoted to helping the truly innocent men and women serving time to get out and get free-- hopefully before they are put to death. Highly recommended.

No Crueler Tyrannies by Dorothy Rabinowitz

No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times, Dorothy Rabinowitz. New York: Free Press, 2003.  e-book, 145 pps.

[N.B. This book is a series of  previously published articles from The Wall Street Journal.]


    Some folks may recall the allegations of sexual abuse at Fells Acre Day Care in Massachusetts in the 1980s. It was part of a general mass hysteria that turned children into victims of abuse at the hands of over-eager interviewers. The lives of the Amiraults were forever changed. Rabinowitz has four separate articles on the Amiraults in the book.

     Rabinowitz also covers Grant Snowden in Dade County, Florida. He was a police officer who was falsely accused of sexually abusing children who were being babysat in his home. Janet Reno was the state attorney then. She was gung ho for slamming alleged sexual abusers of children against the wall. Nursery schools were being closed regularly. Grant Snowden fell victim to an alleged expert in childhood sexual abuse who had interviewed the child "using dolls and 'let's pretend' games and, as the interview records showed, exhortations and explicit sexual suggestions." (page 40). 

     Then there was the mass hysteria and Satanic Panic that happened in Wenachee in Washington State. Parents allegedly raped children in their homes, orgies were happening in a church, and all sorts of things. Folks lost custody of their kids and were carted off to prison.

     The one case that Rabinowitz covered of an adult accusing another adult of sexual abuse was during a colonoscopy. A woman who was upset that the doctor would not support her lawsuit against a prior landlord [she claimed that she was having stomach pains from the stress of eviction and this messed up her life] then accused him of having oral sex with her during the procedure. She sued the doctor later on for a large sum of money.

sapphoq reviews says: To those who are genuine survivors of sexual abuse, please note that I do understand that there are some evil and demented people in this world. Anything that I write about those who falsely accuse others is not directed at you who-- like me-- have had to live through stuff that others haven't even had to think about. Much respect. Keep striving. There is light at the end of the tunnel.

     I don't particularly miss the 1980s as a decade. The cases described in No Crueler Tyrannies were aided forward by a host of ambitious prosecutors, prejudicial judges, supposedly expert child sexual abuse interviewers, and a willing public frenzy to feed off of sensational media reports. [Rabinowitz does not make it clear that there was a police officer who led the pack in the Wenachee accusations]. People went to prison for things they did not do. Even after acquittals [most re-trials on appeals are not won], it was difficult to impossible to get back the life that was had before.
     People in this decade [here I guess it is "usually men" although I have no evidence to back up my guess] continue to be falsely accused of sex crimes that they did not commit. I do feel a certain relief that it is no longer a parade of toddlers and preschoolers. But my relief is uneasy at best. Because innocent people continue to have their lives torn apart by those who false accuse them and then by copycat accusers who are then compelled to come forward. These things happen.
     Where is the justice when someone is forced to plea guilty to something he or she also did not do in order to avoid trial on trumped up charges by overly-ambitious state agencies anxious to prove that they are committed to the protection of people? Especially when there is a multitude of charges brought? Getting tough on crime is good for the headlines. Innocent people having to serve time in prison, endure premature career endings and unjust lawsuits where the standard of proof is lower than in a criminal case, and the cost of competent legal assistance are things that a public addicted to yellow journalism is not interested in.
     Sexual abuse and sexual assaults do happen. There is no doubt about that. But a system that is set up to automatically believe the accuser is a system that is faulty. Innocents are bound to be convicted by such a system before even seeing the inside of a courtroom.
     We need more sane voices like Dorothy Rabinowitz. No Crueler Tyrannies is highly recommended.

     

Terms of Enforcement by Steven S. Richmond

Terms of Enforcement:  Making Men Pay for What They've Done, Steven S. Richmond.  [self-published] Victoria BC: Trafford Publishing, 2002.  e-book, 174 pps.

http://pageonelit.com/interviews/SRichmond.html

Steven Richmond has written a book the likes of which I have never read before.  According to Terms of Enforcement, his second book, he went through a strenuous divorce from a vindictive woman who falsely accused him of being a perpetrator of domestic violence.  Although I cannot vouch for his M.S.W. or his qualifications as a psychotherapist [the web revealed a paltry singular interview with him], some of his message impressed me and some did not.  That he would wind up in a State Mental Facility left me to wonder exactly how that could have occurred.  That he was taken off of a psych drug suddenly had no explanation offered other than the sort "Doc was a big meanie poo-poo head."  Why he may have needed said psych drug in the first place is not told in this book.

What is told is how vindictive his now ex-wife was/is, how he unfortunately put his grown daughter in the middle of his marital woes, and how badly the system fails at protecting men who are the abused rather than the abusers.  And there is a psychotherapist who figures prominently in the pages of Terms of Enforcement-- a Doctor Morgan-- who practices some special kind of psychobabble that I've never heard of.  The way that the author describes paradoxical therapy is quite different from the few professional papers I could locate on it.

sapphoq reviews says:  Having not seen the police reports or court transcripts, I cannot comment on the truthfulness of the author.  That the author maintains almost zero presence on the web is also disconcerting.  Terms of Enforcement is itself a paradox:  On one hand the book argues quite strenuously that the legal system [as well as police departments] has and continues to fail men who have been falsely accused of abuse and on the other there is little evidence presented other than anecdotal or hearsay to support his thesis.  Terms of Enforcement is a book with a specific agenda.  As such, the reader must tread carefully.  I would have wished for a book with [links to] court documents and other official papers verifying the author's experiences and alleged area of expertise.

The last page of Terms of Enforcement lists an address in New Hampshire.  The New Hampshire licenses look-up website yields only one license for an individual named Steven S. Richmond--
https://nhlicenses.nh.gov/ -- a lapsed license for a real estate salesman.  The Nanziba site-- http://72.30.186.176 -- yields no person named Steven S. Richmond who practices "bioenergetics" which is an unproven "energy work" sort of thing: http://nanziba.com/whatisbioenerget.pdf 

While it is possible that Steven S. Richmond, author of Terms of Enforcement is an M.S.W. who has also taken a four weekend course in order to practice bioenergetics, I did not find enough evidence to verify this claim to my satisfaction.

Steven S. Richmond is welcome to contact me via the comments and provide a link to his M.S.W. licensure and current practice as a psychotherapist if any.

I am sympathetic to people-- men, women, and children-- who have been abused by the current System, falsely accused of things they haven't done, and/or wound up in the clutches of an abusive mental health "treatment" modality.  Terms of Enforcement reads like a book with a personal vendetta.  As such, I say, skip it.

sapphoq reviews books and more