There is no nice way of saying it," Mrs. Engelman said. "Our community protects molesters. Other than that, we are wonderful."
My reaction to the first-linked story should be obvious, even accounting for my fear of lapsing into anti-semitism, but, to quote Frank Castle, many men have to die.
The first linked story provides additional data in support of my hypothesis that "Ultra-Orthodox/Fundamentalist X = batshit crazy" for all possible values of X.
As with the Catholics, I'm sure that the issues with the Ultra-Orthodox are the fault of liberals.
And Ultra-Orthodox plus geographic isolation equals Amish.
They seem to be sailing close to, but not over, the line into felony witness intimidation. Which shows me that the line is wrongly drawn: fear of physical injury (see penal law section 215.15(1)) isn't the only way to 'compel' a witness to shut up.
Some of the incidents described look to me to fit clearly into the misdemeanor tampering section.
It'd be interesting to figure out the structural similarities between the relevant Orthodox community and Penn State football -- see if the similar behavior comes from similar causes.
6: Ultra-Orthodox plus very extreme geographic isolation equals Star Trek spec script never filmed because Kirk needs to see some skin.
No. Kirk was hetero, despite what the slash fiction says.
8: Loyalty to the group being far more important than the good of any individual member seems to me to explain all of these 'circle the wagons' approaches to child molestation.
Were there ever any children on the Shatner*-era Star Trek? I'm not an obsessive nerd of the sort that could cite script and page. Nonetheless, I am certain that James Tiberius would not allow the Prime Directive to interfere with his obligation to protect the most vulnerable.
* May he live forever.
13: Yes, a whole planet full of children.
14: "And the Children Shall Lead" I presume?
Speaking of nervewracking children, I put up a Mother's Day card from Sally on the flickr group. I'm fond of my children, but they are impertinent and disrespectful.
12: Except that strong in-group loyalty is pretty common and it should be getting more and more apparent that cover-ups of that kind don't help the group even if you ignore the pain of the abused.
19: You'll be fine unless they become telepathic.
Crusty peasant bread I get, but LB wears crusty peasant clothes?
20. No, if you're a member of that sort of pathological in-group, you've convinced yourself a priori that its reputation outside itself is irrelevant. The cohesion of the group is the priority, and if anything a shared knowledge of something like shielding a child rapist will strengthen that, because it's not something you can share with outsiders.
20: Choosing to cover up is pretty common, too. Shortsightedness about the long term consequences of one's actions is a fairly human thing. I can imagine being in that situation and thinking you might be able to get away with the cover up - the Catholic Church managed to do so for decades, and Penn State's covering up was also a long term thing before it became public.
I think you're right about things changing, though. The more often these things come to light the more the calculus of group protection shifts in favor of quick disclosure.
23: I have no knowledge of any Orthodox Jewish organization, but I'm 100% certain that Joe Paterno and the Penn State administration are concerned with outside reputation to a far greater extent than anything else. The entire football program makes sense only as PR. Some of that PR is internally focused, but not even close to all of it.
22: I knitted myself a sweater with a sort of peasant-blouse kind of neckline. What with the breadbaking as well, it's become my 'crusty peasant shirt'.
Like I said, they're badly brought up.
You serve them whey that smells like dog vomit? I wouldn't like to eat that, either.
Perhaps it's a case of hyperbolic discounting or some such - the value to the institution's reputation by covering the crime up in the short term is weighted very highly compared to the damage caused by both the initial crime and the cover-up becoming public in the long term.
Plus even if it occurs to someone that covering up is penny wise and pound foolish, nobody wants to actually make that tough decision - everyone will defer such a decision to their superiors.
27: Other whey scents attract spiders.
It smelled like lemon. Which, unfortunately, is also what the carpet cleaning fluid smells like, leading to the association with dog vomit. If the dog's actual vomit was gently lemon-scented, I'd think I'd died and gone to heaven.
25. I have no knowledge of College Football (although it seems like a fairly pathological phenomenon from here). But the Catholic church are still trying to protect their child abusers, long after the whole world has been aware of what's going on. I can't see any concern for public opinion in anything Timothy Dolan says.
3: When I moved to New York from places with not so many Jews, I thought "ok, they're super-religious and I am enthusiastically secular but wow, hey, New York is full of my people!" It did not take long before I realized they are no more my people than batshit backwoods snake-handling pentecostals.
I can imagine being in that situation and thinking you might be able to get away with the cover up - the Catholic Church managed to do so for decades
I suspect that this understates the length of the Catholic coverup by an order of magnitude.
What I fail to understand is not the acquiescence of the many in such coverups or even the hypocritical post-exposure defenses, but the recurrent failure of even a single otherwise-ordinary functionary to resign in disgust and expose his or her masters' crimes. If I learned that my firm/church/health club/alumni association had systematically abused children and equally systematically obstructed justice, threatened witnesses and justified itself on utterly specious grounds, I'd ... well, I don't know, but I'd do something rather than nothing.
It smelled like lemon.
I think Sally's at the age where you could get past her aversions by dousing her food with Axe Body Spray.
Timothy Dolan
This reminds me, I keep hearing him referred to on the radio as "Timothy Cardinal Dolan" instead of "Cardinal Timothy Dolan". Is that the standard placement of the title? Because it sounds completely weird to me (e.g., David General Petraeus, Barack President Obama, etc.).
but I'd do something rather than nothing.
Probably you would, but a lot of people, as per the link in the OP, would think about the fact that none of their friends would speak to them any more, and that the organisations which structured their lives would reject them, and would decide that discretion was the better part of valour.
37.2: Yep -- isn't that odd? (Things you learn as the secretary for the theology department of a Catholic college.)
37.2 I don't know, but it doesn't strike me as odd, because that's the "correct" way of referring to a British lord, if you use his first name at all.
38: I just wish "a lot of" weren't so often demonstrated to be "almost all."
38: kind of the moral equivalent of working for Enron and having your pension fund invested in Enron shares.
36: well, I don't know, but I'd do something rather than nothing
Well, that's just the thing, isn't it? I mean, nobody wakes up every morning and says to themself "I could blow the whistle on the gross malfeasance and/or corruption in this organization that I'm part of, but I'm too lazy and have bad values, so I won't." Rather, they put the bad stuff out of their mind as much as possible, and drink too much, or work out this tension in some other way, because it's not possible to be psychologically healthy and engage in that kind of cover-up. Also, they have rationalizations and excuses and ways to minimize what they see: "Oh, everybody does it, that's just the way the world works" or "I shouldn't assume that this was as bad as it seemed, there's probably a good explanation for it" or "But in America, they lynch Negroes".
I've been in some organizations where I saw corruption. Most of my rationalizations were along the lines of "I don't have enough power to blow the whistle and make it stick" or "It's not really MY responsibility, someone who knows more about it should say something" etc. etc. [Note: Of course, I have not covered up child sexual abuse, that would be seriously fucked up. I'm talking more about unethical business dealings.]
I'm talking more about unethical business dealings.
Who isn't these days?
I think there are probably more whistleblowers than you're thinking. The frontpage-multidecade scandals are the ones where no one cracked until the story was huge. If someone does the right thing immediately, it's a prosecution but not a nine-days-wonder. People cover stories like this up too much, but it's not almost everyone, and it's not always.
37, 39, 40: My mother, as a teenager, thought that it was a marvelous coincidence that Terence Cook's parents had given him the middle name 'Cardinal', given that he became one in later life.
46: He's no Major Major Major Major, though.
but the recurrent failure of even a single otherwise-ordinary functionary to resign in disgust and expose his or her masters' crimes.
Colin Powell seems to genuinely not get why people are pissed off at him.
47: I never did finish that book. It just started to feel like too much of the same thing.
would think about the fact that none of their friends would speak to them any more
What friends? I couldn't imagine myself being in their company without constantly thinking to myself "You're covering for child molesters, child molesters! FFS" It would be excruciating.
47: "I have named the boy Caleb in accordance with your wishes."
49: It gets great towards the end. Many of the earlier jokes are set-ups for a dramatic payoff.
My mother, as a teenager, thought that it was a marvelous coincidence that Terence Cook's parents had given him the middle name 'Cardinal', given that he became one in later life.
I give you the former Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, Lord Judge. (Formerly Mr Justice Judge.)
50. But again, you're not in that territory to start with. If you've never known anything else since childhood, or you're in a cult mentality or both, then yes, they are your friends - even if only because everyone else is by definition the enemy.
48: Maybe he feels that, given that he had already participated in the My Lai cover-up, people should have expected him to hew to the same ethical standard throughout his career.
Sargent Shriver ruined his chance by serving in the Navy, as an officer to boot.
If he'd been a non-commissioned chaplain, that would have been perfect. ("Make sure none of these men goes into battle unshriven!" "Yessir!")
I wonder how child molestors were dealt with historically? Is this an old problem, or did the community have tools for punishment that they don't now? Surely the prohibition on going to the secular authorities is predicated on the religious authorities having powerful means of punishment.
It just started to feel like too much of the same thing.
I read that the book was rejected by publishers as a one-joke comedy. I'm compelled to agree, but I think it's a great joke.
Similarly, Colbert has milked his one joke a lot longer than I thought was possible.
I wonder how child molestors were dealt with historically?
I'm sorry? Dealt with?
Yeah, my guess is mostly molestation was dealt with through interpersonal violence if anyone who cared had the physical and social resources to manage it, but otherwise it was open season on vulnerable victims.
53: I give you the well-named judge, Learned Hand
Looks like it's better in some parts than others:
In Crown Heights, where the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement has its headquarters, there has been more significant change. In July 2011, a religious court declared that the traditional prohibition against mesirah did not apply in cases with evidence of abuse. "One is forbidden to remain silent in such situations," said the ruling, signed by two of the court's three judges.
Since then, five molesting cases have been brought from the neighborhood -- "as many sexual abuse-related arrests and reports as there had been in the past 20 years," said Eliyahu Federman, a lawyer who helps victims in Crown Heights, citing public information.
It would probably depend on the era as to the exact response, but I think the idea that the age of the victim created a special category is a relatively new one. I'd think that both parties being punished for fornication was a possibility at certain times.
And in more recent times they just made sure the molesters wore condoms:
http://bloodandtreasure.typepad.com/blood_treasure/2004/09/tales_from_the_.html
I was looking up Abelard to see if maybe that wasn't applicable because of Héloïse's age. Probably not, but I did notice that they named their son Astrolabe. This probably would have been the target of jokes made by people too caring to make castrated-father references.
67. Somebody pointed out that in Abelard and Heloise's day astrolabes were totally cool state of the art research apparatus, and that it's the equivalent of calling your kid Spirit or Opportunity or something like that.
And in keeping with the B thread here, my father had a sergeant under his command by the last name of Savage. He said the name fit him well.
68: more like calling your kid Telescope, Photospectrometer, or maybe Large Hadron Collider.
70. These are geekier than Mars rovers?
"and that it's the equivalent of calling your kid Spirit iPad or Opportunity MacBook Air or something like that"
FTFY.
Probably the strategy of assaulting the extremely marginalized and/or disabled is a long-standing one among child rapists. Those priests were all packed off Native American reservations or schools for the cognitively disabled for a reason.
pwned by 70, also not "state of the art research apparatus" I know.
71: I was unaware that the dominant usage of those terms referred to the Mars rovers.
Even if that's the case, though (in which case I've misunderstood a lot of references to "spirit" and "opportunity"), "astrolabe" is not a proper noun, so it's not like those examples.
Then again, maybe the LHC was named after the great physicist, Large Hadron.
named after the great physicist, Large Hadron
Certainly. He was notoriously short sighted - kept walking into stuff.
Astrolabe's sisters were Astrobabe and Astrolube.
And his daughters Sextant and Octant.
it's the equivalent of calling your kid Spirit or Opportunity or something like that.
My daddy left home when I was three, etc.
I did not learn until just recently that "large" modified "collider" and not "hadron."
I did not learn until just recently that "large" modified "collider" and not "hadron."
OTOH, the Large Hadrosaur Collider...
The initially proposed name "Bigass Hadron Collider" was ultimately put aside.
The dyslexic part of my brain is evidently stuck in middle school, as I'm always having to remind myself that it's really not called the "Large Hardon Collider."
(I always have to suppress a Beavis-and-Butthead-type chuckle every time I read about the damn thing.)
No, thank you. Very kind of you to offer, though.
Holy crap -- the follow-up piece in the Times about the Brooklyn District Attorney who ought to be prosecuting these cases is not in any way confidence inspiring.
Then again, maybe the LHC was named after the great physicist, Large Hadron.
I believe it was named after Portland-area musician/professional sex symbol Susan Storm Large.
Workers who cannot be paid remunerated to remain inside cardboard boxes.
90: why is it bad to have elected prosecutors? That's why.
The Polish newspaper I read runs a story once every couple months on a situation where a village parish priest is accused of multiple sexual molestation cases and the village unifies behind the priest and shuns (or worse) he accusers and their families. The most recent iteration came on Saturday. Lots of scary quotes from the locals, who argue that the priest doesn't like a child molester and in any case the accusers are probably 'homos' and thus it isn't molestation since that's what 'they' want. When girls are the accusers the argument is similar, with 'sluts' substituted for 'homos'.
At least the community is shunning this rabbi who molested a girl. Oh, wait. Did I say "shunning"? I meant "funding".