The Story of Stan McGee: More Evidence that Children Are Expendable in America

Posted: May 6, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: child sexual abuse, children, Crime, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | 29 Comments

Stan McGee

Carl Stanley McGee (he goes by “Stan”), a top aide to Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, has been hired as interim director of the new Massachusetts Gambling Commission. Unfortunately for McGee and for the commission, McGee was charged with sexual assault on a 15-year-old boy in Florida four years ago. Although most people involved are claiming this no big deal, some–including the boy and his family–are raising objections.

BACKGROUND

McGee, who is originally from Alabama, was a Rhodes Scholar and holds a degree from Harvard Law School. Before being hired by Governor Patrick, McGee worked for the WilmerHale law firm.

In 2004 McGee was actively involved in the effort to keep gay marriage legal in Massachusetts.

In 2005, McGee and his partner John Finley IV married, and they even featured in the trendy and exclusive New York Times Vows column.
 An excerpt:

The affably preppy Mr. Finley, who is also the founder and the director of the Epiphany School, a private, tuition-free middle school in Boston for children of poor families, has a classic New England pedigree, which includes a degree from Harvard, where his grandfather was a master of Eliot House. His family, he said, was staunchly Republican “until the second Bush administration.”

The bespectacled Mr. McGee is a Harvard Law School graduate and a former Rhodes scholar who now works as a junior partner in the Boston offices of WilmerHale. He has a serious mien, a booming drawl and a shock of prematurely white hair. His passion for Democratic politics is rooted in the Deep South, and he has long been interested in the “pernicious connection” between church and state, he said.

“John had more of a sense of faith being a positive force,” Mr. McGee said. Yet, of the two, he says Mr. Finley “is more impetuous, more Gestalt, more big picture.” He added, “We’re more yin-yang, more complementary, than opposites. John’s all sugar and I’m all lemon zest.”

Apparently, McGee is quite the man about town. In 2007 he was named one of the Globe’s 25 most stylish Bostonians. In the accompanying interview, he described his style as

English traditional with an Alabama twist. I am not someone who is always chasing fads or trends. I spent a fair amount of time at Oxford on a Rhodes fellowship. My style wasn’t created there, but I think it was reinforced. Many would call it traditional, but it’s also subversive and ironic. You cannot wear pinstripe suits and have my hair color.

ALLEGED SEXUAL ASSAULT

From The Boston Globe, February 7, 2008:

A top official in the Patrick administration has been placed on unpaid leave because he was arrested in Florida and charged with sexually assaulting a 15-year-old male in a steam room at a $500-a-night Gulf Coast resort.

Carl Stanley McGee, 38, assistant secretary for policy and planning, is scheduled to be arraigned next week for sexual battery in Lee County, Fla. McGee helped draft Patrick’s casino bill, life sciences legislation, and his plan to bring broadband Internet service to the farthest reaches of the state.

According to police reports, McGee was arrested Dec. 28 and accused of performing oral sex on the 15-year-old, who was a guest at The Gasparilla Inn & Club, a 95-year-old hotel and championship golf course in Boca Grande. McGee was held overnight on a $300,000 bond.

The Globe reported that McGee’s co-workers were surprised to learn of the charges, because they had been told he was out sick during that time.

McGee’s mug shot

Here’s a little more detail about the alleged assault.

McGee…met the boy, who police said is between 12 and 16 years of age, in a bathroom at the resort a day earlier where they engaged in small talk, according to the police report.

The boy told police he ran into McGee again the next day in the resort’s steam room. McGee sat next to him, removed his towel, rubbed the boy’s back and shoulders and performed oral sex on him, according to the police report.

The boy’s father contacted police, who spotted McGee at the resort based on a description from the boy.

In March the Lee County prosecutor decided not to press charges even though the police investigator disagreed.

…[A] child abuse investigator asked by the Florida governor’s office to review the case told the Cape Cod Times Thursday he found the boy’s story credible. He urged prosecutors to reconsider criminal charges, he said.

“The child reported it immediately, he identified (McGee) from the backseat of a police car, and he gave a good statement to police,” Terry Thomas, a special agent with 27 years of experience investigating child abuse cases with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, said Thursday.

Then he reiterated something he wrote in his report: “I have seen cases successfully prosecuted with less evidence than this case.”

There was just one more little bump in the road before McGee could breathe a sigh of relief and return to his glamorous life and brilliant career.

When the prosecutor declined to move forward with charges, Boston attorney Wendy Murphy filed suit in 2009 against McGee on behalf of the boy and his family and the case was settled in a confidential agreement in 2011, she said Thursday.

Hmmmm…sounds McGee had to pay a few bucks to get out of his little scrape, doesn’t it? I wonder how his husband reacted to all this? I checked and they were still married as of this year.

CURRENT CONTROVERSY

Fast forward to May 2012. After the hiring was reported in the Globe, some people started asking questions. But the gaming commission wasn’t worried.

Stephen Crosby, gaming commission chairman, said commissioners reviewed the incident and were convinced it should not be a factor in whether to hire him.

“Two of us had looked into it quite a bit and everyone we talked to from the state attorney in Florida, to his employer at the time Dan O’Connell, to Gov. Deval Patrick — everyone came to the same conclusion that there was zero substance to these charges,” Crosby said. “Given that there is zero substance to the allegations, to hold that against him would be inappropriate. He’s a superstar. He’s very intelligent and a first-rate public servant.”

A superstar who likes to take advantage of underage boys. But so what, “there is zero substance to the allegations” even though Stan settled a civil suit by the boy’s family.

Today, the Globe reported that the gaming commission didn’t actually investigate the incident or contact Florida law enforcement or prosecutors. In fact the chairman of the commission felt really sorry for poor Stan and probably couldn’t imagine him doing such a thing.

The chairman of the state’s new gambling commission last week called Carl Stanley McGee’s record pristine, saying he had reviewed the 2007 sexual assault charges against McGee in Florida and found them warrantless and meritless.

‘‘He went through this horrendous experience of being accused of a sexual harassment charge several years ago in Florida,’’ chairman Stephen Crosby told his colleagues Tuesday, according to a transcript of the meeting posted on the agency’s website, before they voted to name McGee interim executive director.

But today, Crosby admitted to the Globe that he didn’t really bother to order an investigation, he simply relied on what he read in “news reports.”

‘‘I did not do any independent analysis of the state attorney’s work, nor do I believe that would be appropriate,” he wrote in an e-mail to the Globe Friday. ‘‘Stan is presumed to be innocent of the allegations.’’

The Globe reported last week that law enforcement officials in Florida had believed the alleged victim, who was 15 but looked younger, and had urged the local prosecutor to bring charges against McGee soon after the alleged attack. They described a teenager who was scared but credible, providing consistent accounts of the incident.

Crosby claimed he had been assured by the Patrick administration that the charges were “meritless,” but according to the Globe that would have been impossible because the Patrick administration never investigated the charges either.

The alleged victim in the case, now a 20-year-old college student, reacted angrily Wednesday after reading that McGee’s former boss — Daniel O’Connell, formerly secretary of housing and economic development in the Patrick administration — had called the allegations false when interviewed by the Globe about McGee’s selection. The family then released the results of a 2008 investigation by Florida child welfare officials recommending that McGee be prosecuted.

The state investigation was conducted after the family complained to the Florida governor’s office about the local prosecutor’s decision not to press charges. An investigator for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement subsequently recommended that the prosecutor reconsider the charge of sexual battery on a child under 16 and add a second charge of lewd and lascivious acts upon a child under 16.

But the prosecutor still refused to press charges, and the family filed suit and won a settlement from McGee with the help of Massachusetts victim rights attorney Wendy Murphy.

And that’s the whole sordid story so far. I decided to tell it in detail, because I think this is probably typical of what happens when a successful, powerful person is accused of an offense against a child. Why do Americans place so little value on the lives of children?

And so another child predator goes free. Raise your hand if you think this was the only time Stan took advantage of a young boy. Perhaps another victim will come forward after all the publicity.

Saturday Late Night Open Thread: Gateway Sexual Activity

Posted: April 14, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: birth control, children, fetus fetishists, open thread, Planned Parenthood, PLUB Pro-Life-Until-Birth, Reproductive Health, Surreality, U.S. Politics | Tags: , , , , , , | 19 Comments

Are the Arizona and Tennessee state legislatures competing to see which state can pass the most bizarre, backward, and ignorant laws? Yesterday Dakinikat wrote about the latest anti-abortion bill signed by Arizona Governor Jan Brewer that defines gestational age as beginning on the first day of a pregnant woman’s last period. Peggy Sue has written about Tennessee’s new anti-evolution law, which could lead to a modern-day reprise of the Scopes Monkey Trial.

For the moment, I think Tennessee is winning the competition for most stupid, insane legislation with State Bill 3310, which defines holding hands and kissing as “gateway sexual behaviors.” From the Nashville Tennessean:

The Tennessee Senate voted 28-1 to amend the state’s sex ed curriculum by adding warnings against “gateway sexual activity.” Senate Bill 3310 does not explicitly define what those activities are, but it comes in response to controversies in Nashville and Knox County schools over instruction given to high school students that mentioned alternatives to sexual intercourse.

“ ‘Abstinence’ means from all of these activities, and we want to promote that,” said state Sen. Jack Johnson, R-Franklin, the bill’s sponsor. “What we do want to communicate to the kids is that the best choice is abstinence.”

The Tennessee House is working on a companion bill that is also expected to pass. Just one state senator, Beverly Marrero (D-Memphis) voted against the bill, but not because she thinks abstinence education is a bad idea. She just thinks that focusing on telling kids “don’t do it” won’t reach the kids who are most “at risk.”

According to Nashville Public Radio,

The bill, SB 3310 Johnson/HB 3621 Gotto, replaces three paragraphs in the current state law with nine pages of new definitions and rules. The new proposal even defines the word “puberty.”

The bill was rewritten in the Senate to broaden some definitions of sexual activity. The new amendment reads much like the old bill, except it deletes the words “penis” and “vagina” from the definition of “sexual intercourse.”

The Senate also added a further amendment defining “risk avoidance.”
specifically designating the “risk avoidance” means “an approach that encourages the prevention of participation in risk behaviors as opposed to merely reducing the consequences of those risk behaviors.”

The reference is apparently aimed at the post-activity procedure called “morning-after pills.”

Basically, the bill defines any pre-coital activity among unmarried people as “gateway sexual activity.” That means holding hands and kissing would be verboten for high school and middle school kids. The bill also allows parents to sue teachers who don’t follow the curriculum rules exactly or if they “demonstrate” any gateway sexual activities. In effect, while the legislature claims teachers can talk about contraception, they can’t spell out for kids what it is or how to use it.

And yet, in Tennessee:

According to a 2009 Youth Risk Behavior Study, 61 percent of Memphis City high school students and 27 percent of middle school students have had sex. That’s higher than the national average.

Planned Parenthood said these numbers are why a new sex education bill promoting abstinence is not realistic.

Sigh….

Monday Evening News Update

Posted: April 9, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: U.S. Politics, Barack Obama, children | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 50 Comments

Good Evening!

I have some great Sky Dancing news! Minkoff Minx will be back posting again soon! She plans to do the Wednesday Morning Reads and will gradually work her way back to her previous schedule. I’m so happy you’re on the mend, Minx!

In addition, we have a new front pager, Ecocatwoman (AKA Connie from Orlando). If you haven’t read her first two posts yet, please check them out: Language Matters and Goodby Flipper?

It’s another slow news day in politics, but I’ve gathered a potpourri of links for you anyway.

First, I want to call your attention to an important post by Joseph Cannon at Cannonfire: Why is Progressive Insurance LYING about their spy devices?

You know about Progressive Insurance. That’s the company whose TV ads feature a lovely lady wearing a white uniform and blindingly red lipstick. The folks at Progressive are pushing a device called Snapshot which plugs into your car’s steering column and sends the company information about your driving habits. If you practice good habits, you get a substantial discount.

The question is: How much info are you sending to them? Are they tracking your location via GPS? Are they keeping track of how fast you go?

Progressive insists that they don’t collect location and speed info. In the video embedded above, you’ll see a Progressive commercial in which the lady with the stoplight lips assures you that the company doesn’t want to know where you go or how fast you get there. All they want to know is the amount of driving you do, how hard you hit the brakes, and what time of day you travel.

Please go read the whole thing. We truly have no privacy left. Along similar lines, apparently we can look forward to being spied on through our televisions next, according to The Daily Mail: Is your TV watching you? Samsung’s latest sets with built-in cameras spark concerns

Samsung’s latest breed of plasmas and HDTVs may allow hackers, or even the company itself, to see and hear you and your family, and collect extremely personal data.

The new models, which are closer than ever to personal computers, offer high-tech features that have previously been unavailable, including a built-in HD camera, microphone set and face and speech recognition software.

This software allows Samsung to recognise who is viewing the TV and personalises each person’s experience accordingly. The TV also listens and responds to specific voice commands.

This is Twilight Zone stuff!

Gary Merson, who runs website HD guru, said that because there is no way of disconnecting the camera and microphone, users cannot be 100 per cent sure that Samsung is not collecting data and passing it on to third parties.

Merson said: ‘What concerns us is the integration of both an active camera and microphone. A Samsung representative tells us you can deactivate the voice feature; however this is done via software, not a hard switch like the one you use to turn a room light on or off.

‘And unlike other TVs, which have cameras and microphones as add-on accessories connected by a single, easily removable USB cable, you can’t just unplug these sensors.

I’m never buying another TV as long as I live! I barely watch the thing anyway.

This morning Angela Corey, the special prosecutor (who began investigating the Trayvon Martin shooting after the states attorney in charge of Sanford, FL, Norman Wolfinger, had to recuse himself) announced that she will not be using a Grand Jury to determine whether to indict George Zimmerman or let him go free. The decision, and the consequences will be strictly on Corey. She didn’t indicate how much longer her investigation will take, so the only thing we know for sure right now is that Zimmerman won’t be charged with a capital offense. In Florida, that would require a Grand Jury.

According to The Miami Herald:

Benjamin Crump, an attorney for Trayvon’s parents, issued a statement after Corey’s decision Monday.
“We are not surprised by this announcement and, in fact, are hopeful that a decision will be reached very soon to arrest George Zimmerman and give Trayvon Martin’s family the simple justice they have been seeking all along,” Crump said.
Trayvon, 17, was shot and killed by Zimmerman on Feb. 26 while walking through a Sanford neighborhood where he was visiting. Sanford police opted not to arrest Zimmerman, who claimed self-defense. After public outcry, Gov. Rick Scott assigned Corey, the state attorney for Duval, Nassau and Clay counties, to take over the case on March 22.

Assuming Corey decides to charge Zimmerman, it may not be as easy for him to get off with a “stand your ground” defense as some commentators have claimed, according to a legal analysis published by Reuters.

Interviews with nearly a dozen veteran defense lawyers who have experience litigating Stand Your Ground cases suggest winning immunity could be quite difficult.

“Judges do not readily grant these (immunity) motions because they know they can pass it on to the jury,” said Carey Haughwout, the public defender for Palm Beach County….

The first hurdle will be a special evidentiary hearing in front of a judge, where Zimmerman will have the opportunity to argue that he deserves immunity. But to convince the judge, Zimmerman will have to present a “preponderance of evidence” that he acted in self defense, which under the law means he has to show he had “reasonable belief” that such force was necessary. That is a high bar, and difficult to prove, criminal defense attorneys said.

In cases where the facts are in dispute — and even if they don’t seem to be — the judge is likely to deny the Stand Your Ground immunity motion, said Ralph Behr, a Florida criminal defense attorney who has filed eight motions for immunity, all of which have been denied. More typically, a judge will choose to have the case go to trial, where the defendant must take his or her chance with a jury, just like other criminal defendants, he said.

I think that is all Trayvon’s family and their supporters want–a chance to see Zimmerman arrested and tried before a jury. Of course they also have the option of a civil suit, and that could mean that the homeowners’ association that allowed Zimmerman to run their neighborhood watch without doing a background check or requiring that he get training could be on the hook for millions of dollars.

I certainly hope that Angela Corey will factor into her decision the troubling racist history of the city of Sanford as well as the history of the Sanford Police Department’s failure to carefully investigate crimes against young black men.

Here’s a little Sanford history from WXEL public television:

The year before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier by becoming the first African American to play major league baseball, he fled the racist threats of townspeople in Sanford, Florida, where Trayvon Martin was shot 66 years later.

It was 1946 and Robinson arrived in this picturesque town in central Florida for spring training with a Brooklyn Dodgers farm team. He didn’t stay long.

Robinson was forced to leave Sanford twice, according to Chris Lamb, a professor at the College of Charleston in South Carolina, who wrote a graphic account of Robinson’s brush with 100 angry locals in a 2004 book.

According to the article, there was still plenty of “racial tension” in Sanford even before the shooting of Trayvon Martin, and the failure of local police to arrest Zimmerman has brought the simmering resentment to the surface.

Last month, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) held two town hall meetings in Sanford where hundreds of black residents turned out to voice their concern over police conduct….

NAACP officials compiled details at those meetings of at least six incidents involving alleged police misconduct that they plan to turn over to the Justice Department for possible investigation, an NAACP spokesman said.

HuffPo has a very good article on the racist bumbling Sanford Police Department. Check out this one example from a lengthy piece:

On the night of June 15, 2010, Ikeem Ruffin, 17, was shot and killed by a masked man during a robbery in an apartment complex in north Sanford. Ruffin had just left work and died wearing his McDonald’s uniform.

Police found 18-year-old Tarance Terrell Moore standing by the victim and calling for an ambulance, but the teen was already dead. The gun used in the killing was never recovered.

The next day, police charged Moore with robbery and murder in Ruffin’s death. He was denied bail and locked in Seminole County Jail awaiting trial.

More than a year later, Seminole County prosecutors dropped the murder charge, which carried a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole, in exchange for a guilty plea to a charge of robbery with a firearm. Moore was sentenced to nine years in prison….

“He was there, but he wasn’t my son’s killer,” Ruffin said of Moore. “They just wanted to pin it on him and forget about the killer.”

So the kid shoots someone and then stands there calling for an ambulance? How much sense does that make. But police never investigated further after arresting Moore.

I just have a couple more items for you. Did you hear about Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley calling President Obama “stupid” on Twitter?

David Axelrod responded: “Heads up, Sen. Grassley. I think a 6-year-old hijacked your account and is sending out foolish Tweets just to embarrass you!” But I like Charlie Pierce’s response better:

This is…funny because, you see, if there’s one thing that Chuck Grassley is noted for, it is that he is the most spectacular box of rocks, the most bulging bag of hammers, in the history of the World’s Greatest Deliberative Body. If brains were atom bombs, he couldn’t blow his nose. If his IQ was one point lower, they’d have to water him. As the great Dan Jenkins once put it in another context, if the man had a brain, he’d be out in the yard playing with it.

Don’t take it from me. Ask anyone. “Stupid” is not a word for this fella to be tossing around idly, even if he did spell it out fully.

Finally, a very scary situation for some British youngsters that turned out to have a happy ending: Toddler on Easter egg hunt stumbles on live GRENADE… which has to be blown up by bomb squad.

Police called in the bomb squad yesterday after a three-year-old boy was spotted standing on a live hand grenade during an Easter egg hunt.

The grenade, believed to be a relic from the Second World War, was found in a field next to a busy road.

Yikes!

The egg-shaped hand grenade was spotted by father-of-three Stuart Moffatt, 34, at the event organised by a pre-school group.

Mr Moffatt, an engineering consultant, was there with his wife Victoria, 35, and their children Nelly, five, Isla, two, and 11-month-old Freddie.

He said: ‘We were beginning to count up the eggs at the end of the hunt and I saw a boy of three standing on an object.

‘It was brown and about 4 inches high. It looked like an Easter egg, but it was a hand grenade.

‘I was shocked. The boy who was standing on it thought it was a rock.’

Thank goodness all the kids are okay!

Sooooo….what stories have you been following today?

Margaret Sanger: A Rebel With A Mighty Cause

Posted: February 6, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: birth control, black women's reproductive health, children, Civil Liberties, education, Feminists, health, Hillary Clinton, Human Rights, just because, Planned Parenthood, PLUB Pro-Life-Until-Birth, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , , , | 11 Comments

A Book Review; Review of a Life

Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of catching Jean Baker, history professor at Goucher College, featured on BookTV.  Baker discussed her book ‘Margaret Sanger: A Life of Passion,’ but more importantly connected the dots between the Right Wing’s attack on Sanger and the Pro-Choice, Family Planning movement.

A couple years ago while Glenn Beck hurled his diatribes, chalk boarding his twisted worldview on an unsuspecting public, he took Margaret Sanger to task.  Beck described Sanger as one of his ‘evil’ progressives, a woman dedicated to racism and the application of eugenics in America.

The attack startled me.  Why Sanger?  I knew she had spearheaded the whole idea of inexpensive, reliable contraception and that her family clinics and her own reputation had come under constant assault.  Anything and everything having to do with sexual behavior was taboo when Sanger began her work in the early, heady days of the 20th century. I also knew that Hillary Clinton had specifically mentioned Sanger as a personal hero.  At the time, I thought that was Beck’s aim—discredit Sanger, discredit Clinton.

Au contraire!

Though Hillary Clinton did, in fact, make it on the list of evil progressives [along with Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, FDR, even Lindsey Graham and John McCain], the attack on Margaret Sanger had and continues to have far broader implications.  This is particularly true in any discussion of birth control, abortion and/or family planning and in the midst of a concerted effort to push a fetal personhood amendment to the fore.

The recent dustup between the Komen Foundation and Planned Parenthood is a case in point.  Women’s healthcare has become politicized.  We as women are discussed in a myriad of parts—our uteruses, our vaginas, our breasts, our reproductive capabilities.  Too often, our autonomy as full-fledged human beings, adults capable of thought and decision-making about our own destiny is dismissed, made secondary to the considerations of others.  Sadly, today’s opposition to female self-determination is the same that Sanger faced throughout her lifetime: men, who were convinced they had the right to an opinion and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church and other religious institutions that felt and continue to feel perfectly justified to chime in, making moral declarations, complete with Biblical arguments and opinions.

Young 'Maggie'

Professor Baker claims [and makes a very good argument] that the attack on Sanger’s work is also directly related to the attacks now being waged—female autonomy, the ability for women to direct their own reproductive lives.  But Sanger had an especially hard road to travel, introducing her radical vision on the heels of the Victorian era.

Whatever’s old is new again!

While reading Baker’s new biography, I was startled by the similarity of the arguments, the pitfalls, the myriad of excuses to block any and all reasonable discussion when it comes to reproductive freedom.  That being said, it’s hard to contemplate a time when the very discussion of or writing about birth control was considered perverse, pornographic and could end in jail time.  Such was the case in the early 20th century.

Sanger’s efforts were so reviled by the status quo and Catholic Church that she was forced to leave the country for a brief stay in the UK or face arrest. She faced continuous harassment and was eventually arrested for her public, relentless stands. But ironically, this woman who had a spotty formal education, no training in public speaking would become by age fifty, one of the most influential women in the world.

Why?  Because she would not stop.  Because she was totally gripped by a single, burning idea–women were entitled to information [sexual or otherwise] and had a right to be empowered when it came to their own bodies.

Her background was fertile for dissent, her family a template for radical reaction.  Born Margaret [Maggie] Higgins in 1879 in Corning, NY., she was the sixth child of 11 surviving children.  Her mother, a devout Catholic, died at the age of 48, suffering with tuberculosis, the scourge of the 19th and early 20th centuries.

But here’s a factoid that Sanger’s critics rarely mention: her mother had eighteen pregnancies during her short life.

Eighteen!

Sanger’s father, a stone carver who royally ticked off the Church with his firebrand criticisms of Rome’s dictates, found it difficult to provide for his huge, ever-growing family.  The family was poor, shanty Irish poor, with too many mouths to feed and an increasingly sick mother, made all the worse by cramped, squalid surroundings.

Though her impossible dream had been medical school, Sanger went to New York City following her mother’s death.  There she trained as a nurse and midwife and spent several years attending patients on the Lower East Side.  The living conditions in the tenements were appalling—cramped, rat-infested, devoid of anything approaching basic hygiene.  She watched scores of young immigrant women die of pregnancy-related complications and botched abortions [many self-performed].  And she listened to scores of these women beg attending physicians [when available], pleading for help to prevent back-to-back pregnancies, birthing more children than they were able to feed or care for.  To no avail.   From that experience, that massive wave of human suffering, the idea of birth control and family planning was born.

Sanger took the remedy upon herself.  Because no one else dared.

A prolific self-taught writer, Sanger traveled across America and was invited around the world to speak to the issue of contraception, sex education and reproductive services.  Her work became the basis for health clinics dedicated to the health and education of women.  She was, in fact, the mother of Planned Parenthood.

Ahhhh.  No wonder she’s on the enemies’ list.

So what are the arguments against Sanger? Read the rest of this entry »

New Accuser Claims Jerry Sandusky Raped Him in Penn State Office in 2004

Posted: December 30, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: child sexual abuse, children | Tags: , , , | 6 Comments

Jerry Sandusky under arrest, Nov. 5, 2011

According to a just published Fox News story, a 19-year-old boy and his family have filed a civil suit against Jerry Sandusky, accused child sexual abuser and former Penn State football coach.

A teenager says he was raped by Jerry Sandusky inside his office in Penn State University’s football building in 2004 — two years after the ex-football coach was said to have had his campus keys taken away and was banned from bringing children into the building, the boy’s lawyer told FoxNews.com.

The now-19-year-old says Sandusky sodomized him when he was 12 years old and attending a summer camp program on the Penn State campus run by Second Mile, Sandusky’s charity organization. The accuser has initiated a civil suit against Sandusky, Second Mile and Penn State University.

The DA’s office is investigating according to the story, because the statute of limitations for this crime doesn’t run out until 12 years after the victims’ 18th birthday. Here’s the boy’s description of what happened to him at the age of 12, shortly after his mother died.

Sandusky targeted the boy during a question-and-answer session—part of the summer camp program and held inside the Penn State football building—that involved the coach quizzing the children on various topics. The camper with the correct answer received a prize, Schmidt said.

Near the end of the session, Schmidt said, Sandusky asked a trivia question relating to a quote from a U.S. president, and the boy was the only one who knew the answer.

“Sandusky said he was out of prizes but told him to follow him,” Schmidt said. “He gets him in a room. He’s on one side of the desk, the boy is on other. [Sandusky] proceeded to engage him in conversation — he had lost his mother, his mother died the year before, he had a very hard time, they were very close — they talked for a while about that. Then [Sandusky] pulled out a glass with alcohol in it and told him to drink it. Then he sodomized him.”

After the alleged assault, Schmidt said, Sandusky helped clean up the boy, gave him the two mementos and took him back outside to join the rest of the campers, passing him off to a counselor.

This was two years after Mike McQueary reported seeing Sandusky raping a young boy in the football building showers. Penn State Athletic Director Tim Curley (now on leave) claimed he had banned Sandusky from bringing children into the football building. But Sandusky’s attorney said that Curley and Sandusky never discussed such and ban, and Sandusky apparently still had keys and an office to use during Second Mile camps.

Currently Sandusky is out on $250,000 bail and is confined to his home and required to wear an electronic monitoring device.

Sandusky secured his release using $200,000 in real estate holdings and a $50,000 certified check provided by his wife, Dorothy, according to online court records. He will be subject to electronic monitoring under the terms of his release.

Is anyone checking to make sure Sandusky’s wife doesn’t invite some kids over to visit him? It is impossible for me to believe that this woman didn’t know her husband was going into his basement in the middle of the night to sexually abuse the boys who frequently stayed with them. And if she didn’t know then, she does now.

Jerry Sandusky needs to be held without bail until his trial. He is an constant and ongoing danger to children.

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