Re: Moral delima
I will probably regret this post, but there's a dangerous degree of hysteria surrounding terms like "child sexual abuse" and "child molester" and "paedophile", which deprives the accused and the offenders of the consideration we give to people with less excuse for calculated crimes like major corporate thefts. And worse crimes against children.<br /><br />I'm certainly going to regret revealing that I'm a lawyer (ooh, aah, lawyers are total *&^%s) who's spent some of the past 30 odd years working both sides of the fence in child and adult sexual abuse claims and cases in criminal, civil and family law courts. The past 16 years I've spent in that worst of all liberal cess pits, legal aid, where we represent the useless, worthless, hopeless and penniless who should be shunted off the face of the planet because they are a drain on its resources second only to legal aid lawyers and other civil libertarians.<br /><br />I've accepted hostility from my own staff and friends and family members who are against even the accused, not the offender, I'm representing in child sexual abuse cases. <br /><br />I've dealt with members of the victim's family I felt like kicking senseless who supported offenders they knew were offending (it's feminist heresy to recognise that some wives sacrifice their daughters to their husbands because it relieves them of sexual activity which they don't wish to engage in, sometimes because of their own scarifying experiences as victims of sexual assault). <br /><br />I've represented victims of sexual assault who in some of the most satisfying moments of my career have hugged me after we've won their trial and I've felt their and their grateful parents' tears running down my neck, while I'm suppressing my own. <br /><br />I've spent more nights than I want to remember going to bed at 2 a.m. preparing a case and waking up at 3.30 a.m. to do some of my best work lying in bed until daylight before going to court. <br /><br />I've acted for blokes who've clearly been baselessly accused of incest by vengeful wives. I've acted for blokes who say that's the case and I'm not sure. I've acted for blokes who I have little doubt probably did what they were accused of. I've acted for some loathesome blokes who've clearly done it and have no compunction about denying it. I've acted for blokes who were found guilty in criminal or family law cases, and I've never felt that one of those findings was wrong, unlike some others in those jurisdictions. I've acted for blokes who admitted the offences from the first interview with me and the police and I've done the best I could to present the good about them to the court, including relying upon letters like the one sought in the OP.<br /><br />I've also acted for women who were clearly fitting up a bloke with terrible allegations about his alleged offences against their children; women who might have been; women who probably weren't but who had problems in being believed; and women I was sure were telling the truth but probably couldn't prove their allegations. Generally, but by no means always, they get a more sympathetic hearing if there's anything in their favour than the blokes do with as much in their favour.<br /><br />The one thing that is constant in my conduct of all these cases, on both sides of the fence, is that my client is entitled to have their case put before the court to the best of my ability. As is my opponent's client. <br /><br />If I, or my opponent, refuse to do that because we don't like the client or think they have a lousy case we are exercising the role of the judge without having heard all of the other evidence relevant to the case. <br /><br />A person may be condemned for want of submissions to counter the adverse submissions which will be made by the prosecution with all the resources of the state behind it, while my poor bloody client has me or some other under-resourced individual and nobody else to challenge the power of the state.<br /><br />Until you've dealt with the radical feminist lesbian separatist drones in child protection departments who take child female victims of incest home and introduce them to a new form of abuse when they're vulnerable, you're not in a position to evaluate the bile they pour out in their government funded and sanctioned propaganda about the evils of child sexual abuse.<br /><br />Men are invariably the evil b@stards who must be dealt with, notwithstanding the fact that almost all infant children will be killed by their mothers and the remainder by stepfathers or the latest boyfriend. <br /><br />Even if the poor bloody kid has been tortured for years by these thugs, who themselves are usually very sad and badly damaged people, while child protection stood on the sidelines doing sweet F.A., which is their specialty, these offenders do not attract the outrage of some other sad poor mug who has had a ten second grope in a twelve year old's, girl or boy, crutch. Which, if it was not for the feminist / child sex abuse industry that proclaims this is the worst offence a child can suffer, the kid would probably forget and get over fairly quickly. <br /><br />And no, I'm not condoning it or trivialising it, but given a choice between being a 12 y.o kid living with a 10 second grope on the crutch and a 3 or 5 or even 12 y.o kid under child protection "supervision" who is locked in cupboards for days at a time; fed slop from a dog bowl days apart; routinely burned with cigarettes by mum and her latest boyfriend known to you as "Dad" and belted if you don't call the drunken speed freak thug "Dad"; broken bones from beatings months ago not treated or even recorded until the coroner's inquest on your sad bruised little body; urine burns on your crutch and compacted faeces in your gluteal furrow and surrounds; maggots in your untreated open wounds: and you die from suffocation after being left hogtied and unattended: which kid do you reckon has suffered the greatest abuse and which one deserves the greatest protection?<br /><br />Women abuse children just as badly as men, but usually they don't do it in an overtly sexual fashion so they escape the hysteria that attaches to male sexual offenders. The physical abuse case I outlined in the previous paragraph is a composite of a few cases, but mainly one, where the mother was the prime offender. As often happens in non-sexual abuse cases.<br /><br />But these women get their letters in support to the court, as I believe they should, while the ten second groper is relegated to the death row category undeserving of human consideration because he's a paedophile.<br /><br />Is that fair, when people who do far worse to children don't excite the same outrage and harsh attitudes?
