#and she also like. oversaw his rehabilitation. for years | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

djjarins · 3 years

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hurts like heaven (divorced! frankie x lawyer! reader)

divorced! frankie x lawyer! reader, silver linings playbook! au

rating: teen (I guess), no explicit content except for drug use

warnings: depictions and descriptions of drug use (if this makes you uncomfortable you may want to skip this one), mentions of divorce and custody battles, mention of time spent in an inpatient behavioral health setting

word count: 3.9k (WHOOPS i got excited)

a/n: I am so excited for my first frankie oneshot!! thank you so much to @hailmary-yramliah for this request, I hope you like it!! here is my masterlist, and if you have any requests you can send me an ask! also credit to @hunterschafer for the beautiful frankie gif!!

"Mr. Morales, after a thorough review of the details of this case, including but not limited to testimonies of your close friends and NA sponsor, revision of your record, and speaking with the judge who oversaw the suspension of your pilot's license, I have come to the conclusion that you are currently unfit to have full custody of your daughter. I am hereby granting full custody of Eleanor Luciana Morales to her biological mother."

The minute Francisco Morales hears the words of the family court judge before him ruling in favor of his now ex-wife, he nearly passes out.

The former Delta Force soldier vaguely heard the protests of Pope, who is the only person sitting within the rows of seats on the side of the courtroom where he currently resides. He doesn't register his lawyer uttering a half-assed apology or even the cheers from his ex-wife and her family on the other side of the room.

All he hears is white noise as the judge bangs the gavel to settle the room, explaining that Ava now will have primary and sole custody and that Frankie will only be allowed supervised visits with a social worker, and that Ava can take her daughter home today.

Their daughter.

Frankie knows he isn't perfect - fuck, he is far from it but this just seems like a sick joke.

As soon as his license was officially stripped from him, he knew his marriage was over. The tension had started almost a year earlier when Ava suspected Frankie of using, to which he vehemently denied.

Of course, it was true, but how was he supposed to explain and admit to the love of his life that he needed the cocaine flowing through his body in order to feel anything anymore.

Things began to crumble soon after the initial suspicion by Ava.

The best way Frankie thought to deal with this problem was to put some space between himself and his wife. He didn't want her to see him when he was strung out and begging for one last hit - God forbid his daughter see him like that.

In a way, Frankie was grateful that Ellie was still an infant, and that she would have no memory of the fights he had with her mother over his addiction.

He began staying out late at bars and other places downtown where he knew he could meet his dealer and get more of his fix, trying to keep it as far away from his home as possible.

After a few drinks and a successful meeting with his dealer, he would make his way home where he eventually came down, the immediate rush of guilt and sorrow filling his heart as he would return home and see the bedroom door was locked, indicating he had to crash on the couch.

It was when he stepped through the threshold of his small cottage that he felt the shame bubble up from deep inside him, knowing that he couldn't just snuggle up next to his wife and pretend things were fine, or even cradle his daughter in his arms and rock her to sleep, as on these nights Ava made sure to keep Ellie in the bedroom with her.

Those were the nights that haunted him the most.

Breaking Ava's heart was something long in the past - and he knew she wouldn't be able to just forgive him for what he put her through. She was always the one to give people the benefit of the doubt - something he used to tease her about but now feels scorned by. She was the one who stood by him when he admitted he had a problem - giving him support and resources for healing all while lending a helping hand.

She knew he wouldn't try to harm their relationship on purpose.

But when his use began to impede more on their relationship, Ava put her foot down. She was getting tired of the cycle of hurt that came with each band of withdrawal and promises of this being the "last" time, only to see her husband relapse again and again. She tried her hardest to continue supporting him, her high school sweetheart, but she had reached her limit. She started spending more time with her parents, leaving Ellie in their care for most days so she didn't have to see her father stumble through the door after a night out.

Two weeks later she served him with the divorce papers.

Frankie knows that he fucked up, be he never meant to harm Ava or Ellie along the way, especially his baby daughter, whose brown eyes were almost carbon copies of his own. He can't even stomach the idea of Eleanor growing up without her father in her life - she is his whole world, and since the day she was born he promised her that he would always be there for her.

But now, his heart aches knowing he is going home to a semi-furnished one-bedroom apartment, no wife or daughter waiting up for him like when he returned from missions or deployment.

Francisco Morales was not one to take the easy way out.

He clutches his patient belongings bag tighly in his right hand as he walks out of the lobby of the inpatient rehabilitation center, scanning the outside pickup area for a familiar truck. After looking around for a moment a truck horn beep startles him, turning to see a familiar mop of black hair peeking out of his truck.

Chuckling to himself, Frankie jogs over to the passenger side and hops in, feeling Pope immediately wrap him tightly in a hug. "I missed you Cat," he murmurs into the pilot's shoulder, giving him a comforting pat on the back before releasing the brown-haired man from his arms.

"I missed you too Santi," Frankie sighs, placing his bag down on the floor at his feet, "I don't know how much longer I could stay there without seeing a familiar face."

Santi lets out a low laugh as he starts up the truck and pulls out of the patient drop-off area before turning onto the main road. The two sit in silence for a few moments as Frankie stretches out his limbs, turning his head to look out the window as they drive down through the city.

The black haired man knows better than to pry and quiz the pilot about his 2 month stay at the local inpatient rehabilitation center. After the fallout of the trial, things got rough really fast. Santi knew deep down there was a chance of relapse, even with Frankie left the courtroom promising that this would never happen again - but it was all too much.

At 3:11 am Santi got a call from Frankie.

By 6:30 the pair were at the very same doors that Frankie had just emerged, with Santi comfortingly rubbing his hand up and down the brunette's back and they waited to check him in and head over to intake.

But Santi doesn't pry.

He just drums a tune on the steering wheel as he continues driving down the main stretch of road in the city. He watches out of the corner of his eye as they get to a red light as Frankie fixes his hair, running his fingers through the brown fringe across his forehead and he lets out a chuckle.

"What's so funny Pope? I don't wanna look like I'm fresh out of the hospital." He huffs, looking over his hair again before closing the mirror.

To say Frankie was nervous was an understatement. He had been out of the hospital for less than ten minutes and he was already on his way to meet a new lawyer. His new lawyer.

The previous week Frankie received a call from Santi during his afternoon rec time. At first he couldn't make out what the other man was saying, he remembers huffing out something the lines of "are you fucking drunk?" but made sure to keep quiet as he knew some people in the rec area didn't take too kindly to brash language.

He then remembers the hearty chuckle on the other end. "No I'm not fucking drunk 'fish, I'm excited! I just ran into one of my old college buddies-"

"Do you mean fuck buddies?" Frankie teases, letting out a quiet laugh as he hears a scoff on the other end of the line.

"No you idiot! I didn't sleep with every girl I knew back then, I know it's hard to believe," Frankie lets out a loud laugh, "I ran into an old friend of mine who went to law school, and let's just say she owes me a favor and she agreed to take on your case! Fish? Frankie?"

The pilot drops the phone as soon as the words are processed.

He has another chance. Another chance to see Ava and his baby girl. A chance to get them both back into his life for good this time, now that he has detoxed and spent his time working on his coping strategies.

They could be back in his arms once again.

"Mr. Morales? Mr. Garcia? She's ready for you."

"It's go time." Santi nods, standing up out of his seat and motioning for the pilot to follow him.

The pair make their way down the white and bright hallways of the law offices, walking past several cubicles full of lawyers and other workers chatting away before coming to an office with a glass door at the end of the hallway.

Frankie nervously plays with his fingers as Santi knocks on the door, hearing a soft "come in" from the otherside.

He follows the black haired man into the office and freezes in his tracks when he sees you get up from your desk and rush to pull Santi into a hug. He tries to keep his eyes from widening like a cartoon character but he can't help it - Santi didn't mention how gorgeous you are.

He listens to you both talk for a few moments before you reach your hand out and introduce yourself, a light smile playing at your lips. Frankie nods and takes your smaller hand in his before watching you go back to your desk. You open your laptop and pull out the file your assistant gathered on the details of the previous case.

"Mr. Mora-"

"You can call me Frankie," the pilot interjects, his cheeks turning red as you nod and take a mental note of that. "Frankie, do you want to start off at the start of your story for me? I always find it more beneficial to ask from the client's perspective about the details of the case, it makes a stronger case," you say, picking up a pen and looking at the brunette sitting across from you.

Frankie lets out a small cough and takes a soft breath in before laying his cards out on the table.

Santi stays quiet in the seat next to him, nodding along at the details of the story and offering a comforting hand on the back as one of his closest friends speaks about some of the darkest points in his life with you as if you have known him as long as you have known him.

It takes about 45 minutes of Frankie's explanations and your questioning to get all of the information you need for the initial meeting, making notes of the progress the pilot has made within the inpatient treatment center as well as Santi's testimony. You put your files away in the folder on your desk and stand up, making your way over to the two soldiers and giving them each a handshake, telling them both that you feel extremely confident in this case, and that you can't wait to help Frankie get his family back.

You can't miss the way he breaks out into a grin, probably one of the first genuine ones in a while, and you see Santi nod his head approvingly at you before giving you a quick "thanks" as the two begin to stand up and walk towards your door.

Before they leave you quickly call out to Frankie, who turns around quickly and his chocolate brown eyes lock with yours.

"What's your daughter's name?" You ask softly, watching as his posture relaxes at the mention of his pride and joy. He reaches into one of his back pockets of his jeans and pulls out a small photo from his wallet and hands it to you.

You look over the tiny photo - it must have been from the day she was born. Her big brown eyes are the same as her father's, a small smile on her face.

"Her name is Eleanor, Eleanor Luciana," he smiles, a small tear welling up in the corner of his right eye.

A smile plays at your lips as you see the absolute adoration in his eyes as he talks about her.

You know you have to win this case.

You spend the next 3 months prepping for the case.

You know this process is not an easy one, especially for Frankie. At first, he came to your office twice a week in the afternoon right after his NA meetings, most times with Santi in tow. It was awkward at first for sure - I mean it isn't fun working with a lawyer about the bad choices he had made or the fact of the matter that he feels like a piece of him has died since he has been away from his family.

Santi helped ease the tension.

When it got hard for Frankie to talk about some of the details of his drug use, or the fights he had with Ava, Santi was there to help ease the conversation and help Frankie get through it. It helped that the two knew each other like the back of their hands, with Santi being able to crack a joke at a moment's notice and bring the pilot back down to the ground.

It was when Santi brought up old memories of your time back in college that you heard real laughter from the brunette.

They weren't your proudest memories, but the way that Frankie laughed at you and Santi's old college stories brought a smile to your face and gave you a feeling of butterflies in your stomach that you didn't want to go away. You knew deep down you shouldn't feel those butterflies, especially when dealing with a client, but something about the pilot made your heart flutter.

But the minute you would feel the butterflies, like after Frankie gave you a compliment about your outfit, you would feel the guilt wash over you in waves. Frankie was a father, a former husband who was working with you in order to win back his ex. How could you feel this way about a man who was fighting through hell to get his family back.

You were just his lawyer.

Seeing him open up each time he came into your office was something that struck you deep down, knowing that being this vulnerable is something that he doesn't take lightly.

The two of you continue meeting twice a week after NA, with Frankie telling you about his feelings from his meeting and talking about his goals for this upcoming trial.

You continue preparing him with questions you know will be brought up by the family court judge, focusing on his plans for the future after his discharge from the inpatient center, focusing on the changes in behavior he has made of the past few months. His answers become more confident the harder you work, and you feel your heart start to swell as he talks about how excited he is to see his baby girl again.

But you also feel pain in your heart at the thought of the man before you leaving your life after this week.

It's the Friday night before the trial, a night you typically take off early on, but tonight is different.

Frankie was sitting here in your office earlier this week when he casually mentioned that he was getting his 6 month sober chip on Friday. Upon hearing this news you gasp and stand up from your desk, your feet carrying you over towards him before you could even register what you are doing - suddenly you realize that you have pulled him into your arms.

Frankie is shocked at first, a small "oof" escaping his lips as you held onto him, but he is grateful you cannot see the blush rising on his cheeks.

You quickly pull yourself back and subconsciously smoothing out your light green work pants before taking a step back. "I'm so proud of you 'Cat, that's so amazing!" You smile, brushing a piece of hair back behind your ear.

The pilot nods, a small smile playing at his lips.

"How about you come here on friday. You, me and Santi can have some pizza and a beer to celebrate," you suggest, watching as Frankie furrows his brow before letting out a chuckle.

"You don't ask all of your clients to have a pizza party in your office after hours do you?" He laughs, taking his hat off and fixing his brown locks before sliding it back on his head.

"I can't say that I do, but this is what Santi and I would do back in the day to celebrate, so why not celebrate this achievement before we get in the courtroom."

You chuckle, remembering the days spent in the shitty apartment Santi had off campus. "Alright I'm in." Frankie smiles, "I'll bring the beers."

That night the three of you sit on the floor of your office like kids and chuckle at old stories, both from college and from the boy's times spent overseas. You watch as Frankie laughs at something Santi says and you feel the pain in your heart return, knowing that in a few short days your client would be back to his old life, and you would be stuck here back in the real world at your job. You know it's wrong, but these past months have been different than any other case you have taken on.

You know Frankie is going to be able to go back to his family after all of this - he is stronger than when this whole ordeal started and he has the support to prevent another relapse.

Hell, you are proud of him outside of work, knowing this process wasn't easy - but the idea of this man walking out of your life brings you sadness. Knowing he won't be in your office twice a week for hours, cracking jokes and talking about nothing in particular towards the end.

Sometimes you wonder what things would be like if you met under other circumstances. Maybe you two would have a shot - walking hand in hand at the local farmer's market, singing karaoke at the bar with Santi, Benny and Will, or even going on a flight with him.

You even opened up to him, telling him things even Santi doesn't know. But you need to remember why you are here - to win this for your client.

"Mr. Morales, after going over the details of this case, I see the dedication you have made towards your rehabilitation and future. I have talked with the treatment team at Maple Grove rehabilitation as well as your NA sponsor, and based on all of the information I have gathered is that you are fit to have custody of your daughter. You will now have shared custody of Eleanor Luciana Morales."

Before you can properly process the words of the judge, you feel two strong arms wrap around your torso and lift you in the air. You feel a blush come over your cheeks as you hear Frankie saying "thank you" over and over again as he sets you back down on the ground.

You both simultaneously pull back and hide your blushes as you thank the judge for his discretion and you faintly hear the bang of the gavel in the background as the court is dismissed.

You don't miss the way Ava storms out of the courtroom with her family and you have to stop yourself from rolling your eyes. Santi walks over to the two of you and pulls you both into a hug, rubbing a hand comfortingly up and down your back and thanking you for everything you did.

You nod as Santi pulls back and turns to his brother in arms, chatting about something you can't quite hear as you begin to pack up your white briefcase, pausing when you see a photo of Ellie on the table.

Since the beginning of the trial Frankie felt the nerves wash over him as this suddenly felt so real. You had suggested that he bring in a picture of Eleanor to place on the table so that whenever he became nervous, he could look down and see who he was doing this all for. Seeing the photo now brings tears to the corners of your eyes and you close up your briefcase - turning around to see that Santi has left the courtroom, just leaving you and Frankie.

"I just wanted to say thank you, for everything," he says softly, nervously scratching at the hair at the nape of his neck.

You nod curtly, trying to ignore the sore feeling in your throat - a telltale sign that you were about to cry.

Frankie tilts his head in confusion and walks closer, reaching out and grabbing your smaller hands in his. "I mean it - you have helped me through this whole process, and you are the reason I get to see Eleanor again, and for that I cannot thank you enough."

His words cut through you like knives - you knew this was coming. Your job is over, and it's time for him to move on.

"All in a day's work," you chuckle quietly, having to look down at your shoes to avoid letting the tears fall.

You suddenly feel softy fingers tilt your head up. Blinking through your lashes you see the pilot looking at you with only adoration in his eyes. You lock onto his chocolate orbs and nod slightly as he moves closer, softly crashing your lips against his.

You feel his strong arms wrap around your waist, pulling him flush against his chest in a soft yet comforting way. You find yourself getting lost in the moment, one of your hands tangling in his hair as he pushes a strand of hair behind your ear.

A moment later you both pull away, leaning your forehead against his as he lets out a small chuckle.

"I've been wanting to do that forever," he smiles, locking eyes with you once again, "I had to wait until I wasn't your client anymore, I didn't want to make it awkward or unethical."

You smile at his confession, brushing a piece of his brunette locks out of his eyes.

"Well now that you are no longer my client, would you like to go grab a beer?" You ask, looking at the way his eyes light up at your question.

"I would love that."

He watches as you grab your briefcase and wraps an arm around your waist as the two of you head for the courtroom doors.

He feels his heart swell in his chest knowing he not only has Eleanor back in his life, but now he has you too.

taglist: @hailmary-yramliah @babyprim @shadowolf993 @jasterslegacy @collectorofexperiences

#frankie catfish morales #frankie morales #frankie morales x reader #frankie catfish Morales x reader #triple frontier #pedro pascal characters #my writing

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silvergeek · 3 years

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Debunking Misinformation About Kamala Harris

Most of the misinformation regarding Harris is valid information that leaves out the bigger picture, context, and details. They're snapshots rather than the full movie reel, if you catch my drift. I've read that she has been over-targeted because she is an easy target. People (all people - because racism is systemic and it embeds itself deep) have strong, implicit bias against Black people and against women ("misogynoir" they call this). Plus, many folks will *more willingly* eat up negative information without fact checking. The slew of widely believed misinformation about Kamala Harris - even from progressives all of diverse backgrounds - is due in part to strong, implicit racial and gender bias. In other words, it's real easy to get rumors going about women using fractions of truths. People will believe them. People are less likely to fact check them (especially as thoroughly as I just did). This is because of bias. Even PROGRESSIVE folks are guilty of this.

Not long ago, I posted a meme defending Kamala Harris to racist and sexist bias. It was loved and hated - pretty divisive, which is unsurprising for something as simplistic as a meme. I apologize. For all of those tumblr accounts that reblogged the meme with flagrant misinformation about the VP elect... I am going to rectify what I did with thorough, sourced information.

Also check out this twitter: https://twitter.com/blackwomenviews

Debunking Information:

Claim: Kamala pushed a law that forces schools to turn undocumented students over to ICE

The Real: Kamala Harris has consistently been a supporter of sanctuary status and a champion for immigrant rights. The false claim arises from a change in how undocumented youth arrested for felonies were reported to ICE. Kamala Harris was not responsible for nor did she push for then Mayor Gavin Newsom’s 2008 unilateral decision to modify his policy to include reporting undocumented youth charged with felonies to ICE. Previously the policy only applied to undocumented adults. Newsom changed the policy in response to reporting that San Francisco had been footing the bill and illegally flying Honduran youth accused of dealing drugs back to their home country as well as sending them to other parts of the state. The statement that writers have taken out of context to inaccurately use as evidence Harris pushed for a change was a statement in response to the scandal over the illegal flights. Harris stated, “While detained juveniles are under the custody and control of the juvenile probation office and the court every city agency needs to work together to balance our obligations under federal law and the sanctuary ordinance to solve crimes and put the offenders behind bars.” The statement was made prior to Newsom’s policy change and from the contemporaneous reporting it is clear that the policy was not a collaborative change.

(Ref: https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/ILLEGALS-CALLED-COURT-S-PROBLEM-3206302.php)

A fact checker wrongly accused Kamala Harris of being untruthful when she said that the change by Newsom had unintended consequences, but in fact the elected Public Defender Jeff Adachi made a similarly statement that the policy resulted in unintended effects when discussing it a year after it was implemented. Adachi stated “When this policy was put into place, the intent was to deal with what was then identified as a specific problem with Honduran youth,” Adachi said. “But we’re seeing this policy affecting youth who have lived most of their lives in San Francisco, are in school and make a mistake.”

Claim: There are multiple variations of the false claims levied at Kamala Harris over the Kevin Cooper case such as: withheld DNA evidence to keep a man on death row; denied DNA testing to exonerate a man on death row; kept a man on death row despite DNA testing that exonerated him.

The Real: Kamala Harris played no role whatsoever in the Kevin Cooper case for several reasons: 1) Convicted of four murder counts in 1983, Cooper had exhausted all of his court appeals in November 2009 which was prior to Harris taking office as AG; 2) Cooper’s only recourse left was clemency which is solely within the Governor’s powers. (Ref: https://miro.medium.com/.../1*IWka2R0J2hUcUR70rh6iBw.jpeg)

Governor Schwarzenegger first denied Cooper clemency in 2004 then again in 2010. Cooper requested clemency from Governor Brown in 2016 which was not granted. Governor Brown issued an order for new DNA testing in December 2018 shortly before leaving office. Governor Newsom expanded the testing in February 2019. Testing is still ongoing so claims that Cooper has already been exonerated and was held in prison despite of it are false.

Claim: There are many smears and distortions about Kamala Harris’ anti-truancy record including: false claims about laughing about putting parents in jail if their kids missed school; locking up parents; targeting poor families and people of color.

The Real: Truancy has been a prosecutable offense in California since 1977. Kamala Harris made the decision to tackle the elementary school truancy crisis in San Francisco after discovering that 94% of homicide victims were high school drop outs. Tackling truancy was not about punishing or prosecuting parents (which was a rarely used last resort), it was about providing parents resources needed to get their children in school.Kamala Harris did not lock parents up. A widely circulated HuffPost Editorial painting Harris as a truancy zealot contains many distortions about her record on this issue. The most egregious distortion is using a woman by the name of Cheree Peoples as a horror story of Harris’ doing when her case was a result of a local Orange County program. More details debunking the article can be found here. Kamala Harris achieved success in lowering truancy in San Francisco by 20% during her tenure. As AG, Harris created the Bureau of Children’s Justice which formed private/public partnerships to increase resources available to educators and parents to reduce truancy. (Ref: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1181175579837632513.html)

Claim: There are various versions of the false claims that Kamala Harris: blocked the release of prisoners; kept prisoners locked up for cheap prison labor; kept prisoners locked up for slave labor; refused to address prison overcrowding; kept prisoners locked up to fight fires for cheap.

The Real: The false claim arises around one specific court filing by one of the 1,000 attorneys (Patrick McKinney) working for the CA DOJ . The role of the CA AG office is to represent various state agencies in litigation and in this case the state agency was the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The court rejected McKinney’s filing on behalf of the CDCR, therefore prisoners were not in fact kept locked up despite earning 2 for 1 good time credits. Kamala Harris was not involved in the court filing nor aware of the filing prior to a news report. With over 20,000 cases per year in the Civil Law division alone (resulting in exponentially more court filings) it would not have been customary for the Attorney General to be involved in a case that only required the expertise of a mid level Deputy AG III that was several levels of management below the Harris’ level. (Ref: https://www.calhr.ca.gov/state-hr.../pages/5730.aspx)

Claim: Oversaw a state prosecutor falsifying a confession to get a life sentence and then destroyed the evidence.

The Real: This claim is in reference to wrongdoing by Deputy District Attorney Robert Murray of Kern County. The Attorney General oversees 4,500 employees including over 1,000 lawyers, but the AG does not supervise local District Attorneys and their deputies. In 2013, prior to trial during plea discussions, ADA Murray admitted to falsifying a translated transcript in the case of Efrain Velasco Palacios who faced 5 counts of lewd and lascivious acts against the 10 year old daughter of his live-in girlfriend. Palacios was facing 8 years for the 5 counts and was not charged with a crime that faced a life sentence. Superior Court Judge Staley threw the case out due to Murray’s misconduct and Palacios’ attorney being removed from the case for allegedly saying his client did not have a viable defense. The judge’s decision was appealed, arguing that Palacios could still get a fair trial with a new counsel. The judge’s decision was upheld on appeal. In 2015, Efrain Velasco Palacios plead no contest to lew or lascivious acts and unlawful intercourse with a 13 year old girl and was sentenced to 4 years in prison.

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A quote that is backed by sources above and further sources down below:

"On the DNA case. This wasn't a case of Kamala actively trying to suppress the evidence. I believe the defendant was asking for the DNA evidence to be reexamined years later using newer, more reliable, methods. Problem was there was some bureaucratic rule that wouldn't allow it in the DNA department or something like that.

The jist of it as it applied to Kamala was there was a department within the CA DOJ that was denying the testing, and to my knowledge it was never directly raised with her till after she was out of office. She has since called for him to be given access to the testing, and I thiiink he got it. But like I said I'll try to get more detail tomorrow.On jailing black men disproportionately and coming down hard on cannabis, these are examples of folks taking statistics for the entire California criminal justice system and placing blame solely on Kamala.

Yes, black men made up a disproportionate share of prisoners in California during Kamala's tenure as AG. That was the case before she was AG and that is still the case today. It's terrible, but it's not really fair to put the effects of the entire system on Kamala. AG's don't have sole authority when it comes to law enforcement. Kamala made efforts to curb this; through reentry programs, not enforcing the 3-strikes laws, being the first AG in the county to require her officers wear body cameras and take implicit bias trading, etc.

The problem is she only had authority over the California Department of Justice. The bulk of prosecutions and incarcerations happen at the local level, with city and county DA's and police. She could not direct them to take the same steps she was taking, all she could do was try to set an example. But the law being what it was, those DAs and police had the authority to be as stringent as the law allowed (which was very very stringent). But if you look at the statistics in the areas Kamala had authority over (and again I'll try to find citations tomorrow) you'll see that she actually reduced incarcerations.

The same goes for marijuana incarcerations. People point to the 19k marijuana convictions that occured while she was AG as evidence she was a avid warrior in the War on Drugs. But that is the statistic for the entire state, and the bulk of those convictions were at the local level. And even still, over all Marijuana convictions across the state fell every year she was in office to eventually there being only like 900ish across the entire state in her last year. She obviously doesn't get all the credit for that decline, but it's another example of people manipulating statistics to fit their narratives."

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Examples of things she did to improve the criminal justice system as DA & AG California:

Kamala Harris announces police anti-bias training program

California’s attorney general announced a statewide training program aimed at getting police officers to avoid having built-in biases compromise their ability to enforce laws fairly and with appropriate force.

The announcement Friday came as Kamala Harris outlined the results of a 90-day review by her agency that sought to find ways to strengthen the trust between police and the public following recent slayings of unarmed civilians by officers in cities across the country.

Harris also said that under a pilot program, of Justice Department special agents would be outfitted with on-body cameras similar to those worn by officers of some local forces in.

Source: https://www.mercurynews.com/205/04/17/california-kamala-harris-announces-police-anti-bias-training-program/

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continued: SAN FRANCISCO / D.A. won't pursue death in cop slaying / Harris fulfills campaign pledge with decision.

San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris said Tuesday she will not seek the death penalty against a man accused of killing a San Francisco police officer over the weekend, a decision that legal experts say is rare if not unprecedented in California.

The death penalty was restored in California in 1978, but The Chronicle's review found only limited documentation about the outcome of cases before 1987.

Focusing on 90 cases since 1987, the newspaper found that prosecutors sought the death penalty in nearly every case in which a suspect was arrested.

source: https://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/SAN-FRANCISCO-D-A-won-t-pursue-death-in-cop-2767716.php

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ALTERNATIVE SENTENCING GAINING ACCEPTANCE

Back on Track, a San Francisco program for first-time young adult drug offenders, involves job training, apprenticeships in the building trades, G.E.D. preparation, money-management skills, child care and other features. Because failure to complete the program means the defendant goes right to jail, the recidivism rate has been less than 10 percent. Back on Track costs $5,000 per year per participant, a significant reduction from the average cost to incarcerate someone, which can run anywhere from $20,000 to $40,000 or more.

source: https://psmag.com/news/alternative-sentencing-gaining-acceptance-23551

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She also helped spread this program:

L.A. County Jail launches program to keep inmates from coming back.

source: https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-antirecidivism-jail-20150311-story.html

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She was the only AG to investigate big banks for their role in the mortgage crisis.

Without her the national mortgage settlement would be watered down promises rather than the guarantee it was.

source: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/business/how-kamala-harris-finessed-a-foreclosure-deal-for-california.html

In 2012, Harris helped win a massive, $25 billion settlement with Wells Fargo and other financial institutions for foreclosure abuses:

"As the fraud was being uncovered, many of the AGs were yelling 'Settle, settle, settle.' They just wanted to get their hands on the money," said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who during the negotiations was setting up the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for the Obama administration. Warren has endorsed Harris for U.S. Senate and has appeared in one of the attorney general's campaign ads. "[Harris] was the one who said 'No, we have to do better, and we have to investigate more. Too many families have been destroyed by the crisis and the illegal activity of these banks.'"

In 2012, Harris also helped push through a bill in the California Legislature that offered homeowners some of the strongest protections in the nation against aggressive foreclosure tactics by banks, which was credited in part for a plunge in foreclosures in the state. The measure also gave private citizens the right to sue financial institutions if they violated the law.

Shortly after taking office, Harris created a mortgage fraud task force that not only assisted with the mortgage settlement, but also went after financial firms that targeted homeowners facing foreclosure. The task force also took legal action against the banks and financial ratings firms for the massive losses that California's two giant public pension systems, the California Public Employees' Retirement System and California State Teachers' Retirement System, sustained after unknowingly investing in securities that included risky subprime mortgages.

Harris' office collected $921 million in mortgage-backed securities settlements with JPMorgan Chase & Co., Citigroup, Inc., Bank of America Corp., Standard & Poor's and Goldman Sachs.

Troncoso, who led the mortgage fraud strike force, said building a criminal case against bankers involved in the foreclosures that led to the national mortgage settlement would have been "extremely difficult." Harris acknowledges as much.

"I too, like most Americans, am frustrated. Clearly crimes occurred and people should go to jail," Harris said. "But we went where the evidence took us."

source: https://outline.com/8cPJ2j

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As DA filed an amici curiae brief in support of DC's handgun ban in DC v Heller.

source: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-dc-circuit/1713643.html

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As AG she made clerks begin issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples immediately after prop 8 was overturned.

source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J93691asilw

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Talked about defunding, i.e. shrinking budgets and reallocation of funds, the police all the way back in 2006.

source: https://mobile.twitter.com/adamjsmithga/status/1269761430322139136?s=21

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She has introduced bills to (1)provide a tax credit of up to $6,000 for lower and middle income individuals and families and (2)tax credits for renters. (3)Vox did an analysis of the candidates' anti-poverty bills and Kamala's LIFT Act and Rent relief act have the potential to lift the most people out of poverty, 9.6 million and 7.8 million respectively.

multiple sources:

(1)https://www.bustle.com/p/what-is-the-lift-the-middle-class-act-kamala-harris-has-a-bold-tax-reform-proposal-12606048

(2)https://nlihc.org/resource/senator-harris-introduces-rent-relief-act

(3)https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/1/30/18183769/democrat-poverty-plans-2020-presidential-kamala-harris-booker-gillibrand

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She supports raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour.

source: https://www.harris.senate.gov/news/press-releases/senator-harris-joins-colleagues-in-support-of-15-minimum-wage-bill

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She has also introduced bills to address (1)bail reform and start (2)body camera programs at CBP and ICE.

Two sources:

(1)https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/rand-paul-kamala-harris-team-reform-bail-practices-n794031

(2)https://www.thebeatdc.com/blog/2018/10/3/kamala-harris-wants-to-establish-body-worn-camera-programs-at-cbp-and-ice

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She supported the FIRST STEP Act, as a first step, but she said would like there to be more prohibitions on private prisons in the FIRST STEP ACT.

"All of the Act’s sentencing reforms should be applied retroactively, and the Act should further expand application of earned good time credits, place more prohibitions on private prisons which profit from the incarceration of individuals, and further limit the use of electronic monitoring," Harris added.

source: https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/421719-harris-announces-support-for-white-house-backed-criminal-justice-bill

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She has also supported banning private prisons.

source: https://m.facebook.com/KamalaHarris/posts/10154833054297923

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She co-sponsored Booker's bill legalize marijuana.

Here is an old summary of that "tooth and nail" quote:

So when the judge in question says the AG office "fought tooth and nail" to sustain the false testimony in question, he was referring to the actions of the office under the prior attorney general. Which the judge says in the immediately preceding the quote in the same sentence! "Your office, now under a prior Attorney General, but your office, fought tooth and nail to keep the 1998 sentencing transcript away from the Court of Appeal." Timestamp 32:01. So the quote specifically about Kamala's predecessor but has been used to smear her.

source: https://thehill.com/regulation/legislation/387101-kamala-harris-backs-booker-bill-to-legalize-marijuana

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On the DNA case:

Kevin Cooper: I won't go deep into the facts on this one because they aren't really the point and because I did a terrible job at brevity with the last case. I'll just note that the origin of this case is 1983. Now, the person you're quoting here doesn't seem to have their facts straight. They don't even align with what is in the sources cited. The NYT article referenced (which isn't even the one cited, here - sourced below - is the actual one) does call her out but does not assert that she "refused" to grant DNA testing. Here's what the article actually says with regard to Kamala:

Kamala Harris, who was state attorney general and is now a U.S. senator, was unhelpful.

That attorney general's office was in possession of the evidence and could have conducted the test. It didn't. And in the NYT article cited in the quote Kamala said she regretted that it did not happen and that her office should have done it. You may not care what she has to say, but she owned up to it. And then she went a step further and she called on the governor to allow the testing to proceed. Not the other way around, as your quote states.

source: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/17/opinion/sunday/kevin-cooper-death-row-innocent.html

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And here is an article debunking a meme about her disproportionately incarcerating black men for marijuana possession. It also debunks some particularly racist and sexist stuff that was out there, so if you don't want to have to wade through that bullshit here is the section on marijuana and convictions:

“IMPRISONED 2,000 BLACK PEOPLE WHILE CALIFORNIA AG” – NO EVIDENCE

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) shared state level statistics of incarcerations by offense with Reuters via email (it is important to note their statistics are for state prisons and exclude data from county jails). The admissions for marijuana and hashish related offenses for the years 2014, 2015 and 2016 was 581 (page 37 in report also visible here ). Their 2013 data is unavailable, while 2011-2012 data shared with Reuters indicated 921 offenders in 2011 and 505 for 2012 for these drug categories. This adds to a total of 2,007 offenses for the years 2011, 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2016. This drug offender data was not, however, categorized by race. (Calculations by Politifact reached similar numbers in 2019, here )

Mercury News noted that most of the marijuana cases in the state were not prosecuted by the AG, but by county districts attorneys, so the total number for the state is likely a lot higher than the CDCR data. As San Francisco’s DA, the paper says, Harris oversaw “1,956 misdemeanor and felony convictions for marijuana possession, cultivation, or sale”, some of which did not conclude in jail time (here).

In California, the possession of over 28.5 grams of marijuana and possession with the intention of distributing the drug are considered misdemeanors (here). Kamala Harris is listed as AG in the California Department of Justice (DOJ) data reports from 2010 to 2015 (DOJ reports for 2016 data onward fall under Xavier Becerra, Harris’ successor as AG). California DOJ statistics for 2015 show the number of Black people arrested (not imprisoned) with misdemeanors relating to marijuana offenses was 656 (table 34, page 42 here ), in 2014 it was 717 (table 34, page 42 here ), in 2013 it was 768 (table 34, page 42 here ), for 2012 it was 1,069 (table 34, page 42 here ), for 2011 it was 981 (table 34, page 42 here ) and for 2010 it was 8,985 (table 34, page 42 here ). This totals to 24,211 arrests for marijuana related misdemeanors (the substantial drop from 2010 is likely a result of legislation changes.

see source https://www.cjcj.org/news/5542

In short, both California DOJ and CDCR reports show that marijuana related arrests and state level incarcerations for Black people during Harris’s time as AG (the closest data to what Reuters assumed the claims are implying) were not reflective of the 2,000 figure stated in these claims.

source: https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-factcheck-kamalaharris-five-claims/fact-check-misleading-meme-featuring-five-claims-about-kamala-harris-idUSKBN25H2F2

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If you're interested in how she handled Marijuana convictions when she was DA and had a more direct role in those cases, and her record generally as DA, here is a piece by Niki Solis who was a public defender when Kamala was DA. (And if you know anything about local court politics, you know DA's and Public defenders often do not exactly see eye to eye).

source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2020/08/10/kamala-harris-progressive-pioneer-san-francisco-da-column/3334668001/

Marijuana sales cases were routinely reduced to misdemeanors. And marijuana possession cases were not even on the court’s docket. They were simply not charged. Unless there was a large grow case, or a unique circumstance, this was the reform-minded approach then-DA Harris’ office took. The accusations about marijuana prosecutions being harsh during her tenure are absurd. The reality was quite the opposite.

Other quotes from Solis:

“Sen. Harris’ progressive approach did not end with marijuana prosecutions or lack thereof. She co-founded the Coalition to End the Exploitation of Kids. She then spearheaded a task force combating the human trafficking of girls. Upon her invitation, I went to the task force meetings to speak on behalf of one of my juvenile clients. My client, a beautiful teenage girl, had aspirations of joining the military. She was selling her body to earn money when her life was cut short; she was found dead in a San Francisco dumpster. Harris and I talked about my client and the exploitation of young girls happening on a constant basis. Unlike her predecessors, she did something about it. She stopped prosecuting young girls for prostitution — acknowledging that they were victims who needed treatment for trauma and not criminals who needed to be incarcerated.

For those who have heard contrary arguments about Harris’ past work as a prosecutor, rest assured that you are hearing this from someone whose life’s work has been dedicated to the cause of equality and justice. I am the chair of the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office Racial Justice Committee and have scratched and clawed for some semblance of justice in our courts for well over two decades. I grappled with this idea of defending a former prosecutor for a long time, but Harris is more than that. I have to acknowledge the truth and say what I feel is right to set the record straight. Should Joe Biden decide not to select Kamala Harris as a running mate, her track record as San Francisco district attorney should certainly not be one of the reasons.”

9 notes · View notes

simplyshelbs16xoxo · 5 years

Text

‘Repeating History’ Chapter 4: Miss Me?

FFN | Ao3 | Buy Me a Coffee?

2016

“They were both forensics students.” Molly couldn’t begin to count the number of times she had stated this particular fact out loud as she sat on the curb of the sidewalk.

“Molly.” Sherlock crouched down beside her, balancing on his toes. “Are you alright?” His tone was soft, comforting. He knew she wasn’t, but figured it was the right thing to say anyways.

“I’m…I don’t know. I just think that—“

“It could’ve been you?” Sherlock asked. He saw her nod in defeat.

She sighed. “I hate feeling so weak around you.”

Sherlock sat himself down on the ground beside her, his eyes boring into hers. “You are a lot of things, Molly, but weak is not one of them.” He heard the hitch in her breath as he wrapped his arms around her. “You are the strongest woman I know. These young women were like you at one time, and though it gave you a shock, you’re still going to perform the autopsies.”

The small, nervous laugh that Molly let out told Sherlock he wasn’t doing an awful job at comforting her. “The last time I had a shock like this was when Moriarty’s face popped up on the telly.”

“Perhaps I should find you a shock blanket, then,” Sherlock suggested. He tried to pull away to find one, but Molly kept his arms around her.

“You’re my shock blanket.” It was a strange, simple thing to say, but to Sherlock, it somehow seemed—dare he say it—romantic. Yes, that’s the word. He wished to kiss her, but knew it wasn’t what she wanted right now. And that was fine. Sherlock knew he would wait for her the rest of his life if he had to.

“Victim’s name is Gabrielle Lennox. Twenty-six years old. Victim appears to have died by strangulation. Her liver has been removed. Judging by the seamless incisions made by the murderer, they are well-trained medically.” She paused to take in the information. Lucille’s lungs had been removed, and Gabrielle’s liver. She also noted that the other girl, named Bethany Atkinson, was missing her kidneys. The murderer was collecting organs.

Molly felt as if she were being watched after having come upon this realisation, but knew it was probably paranoia. Or it was Sherlock again, always scaring the bejeezus out of her. It had been a long evening already, and after the two autopsies, it had quickly faded into night. Her mind kept drifting back to how good it felt to have Sherlock’s arms around her. She missed him so much. All she had wanted to do was kiss him. So why, she wondered, did I ever feel like I needed a break? Maybe all she needed was for them to take the time to get to know each other all over again. Perhaps they should do the dating thing instead of jumping right into a serious relationship.

The hair on the back of her neck prickled as she felt the strange sensation again. She could swear someone was watching her sew up a corpse. With a deep breath, she looked up toward the windows that oversaw the morgue, but saw nothing. Turning her head toward the small window in the door, a shadow crossed over it. Molly was sure she was just seeing things, but still picked up a scalpel as she crossed the room toward the door and opened it.

“Hello?” she called out into the seemingly empty hallways. “Sherlock, this isn’t funny!” Her voice betrayed the false bravery she wore on her face. Her heart was pounding in her chest when she closed the door tightly. Molly slid her phone out of her pants pocket, and brought up her contacts, dialing the one person she knew would still be awake.

“Where are you??” Molly demanded as soon as the recipient picked up on their end.

“Molly? What’s wrong?” Sherlock sounded worried. It hadn’t been him trying to scare her.

“There’s someone here.” Her voice came out as a strangled whisper.

“Are you—“

“Sherlock, I’m sure of it,” Molly insisted. “Whoever it is, they’re trying to frighten me, and it’s working so much I’m afraid to leave the morgue on my own.” She exhaled a shaky breath. “Look, I’m sorry, it’s probably nothing.”

“No, you were right to call, Molly,” Sherlock assured her. “I’ll be there as fast as I can. Just hold tight. Don’t leave the morgue.”

Sherlock couldn’t get the riddle out of his head. Someone was watching Molly. Part of the riddle was solved. “I’m not the prey,” he pondered aloud. “But my heart will be torn asunder.”

I’ll burn the heart…out of you.

Emotional context, Sherlock, it destroys you every time.

Molly, he realised, was who the serial killer was truly after.

Time went by slowly, and every little sound that echoed throughout the hall had Molly crouched beneath one of the autopsy tables, scalpel in hand. Minutes felt like hours, and the sudden sound of footsteps jolted her. She slipped out from beneath the table and braced herself, hoping that it was Sherlock. The door opened slowly, revealing the detective, and Molly let out a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank God. Did you see anyone lurkin’ about?”

“I—no, I didn’t.” He closed the space between them in a few long strides. “Are you alright?”

Molly nodded, setting down the scalpel. “Yes, I’m fine.” There was a pregnant pause, both unsure of what to say at this point. “Thank you. For coming, that is.” Her heart leapt in her throat when Sherlock cradled her face in his hand.

“I’d never let anything happen to you,” he told her softly. Sherlock was conflicted. He didn’t want to do anything that would cross the line, but damn it all, he pulled her into a tight embrace, happy she was safe.

Molly lifted her head to look up at him, admiring his eyes, full of nothing but genuine love for her. Sod it all. She reached up on her toes, and pressed her lips to his in a slow, tantalizing kiss, her fingers tangling in his curls.

“Mmmm,” Sherlock moaned against her mouth, not wanting to ever let it end. Good God, he thought, this woman will be the death of me. But not for one second did he object to her affections. If this was how he would die, he’d do it gladly. When she pulled herself away, he tried not to look so disappointed, but there was no hiding from Molly. She could always see right through him.

“I don’t want a break from you,” she confessed.

Sherlock’s heart fluttered in his chest. “Then what do you want, Molly?” he asked. “I want to make this work.”

“I want to be with you, but we need to slow things down a bit,” Molly replied. “We’ll work on this case together, but I need you to promise me you’ll focus on healing after we’ve solved it. I’m worried about you.” She placed her hand over his heart. “I want us to find our footing; to not jump head first into things. We’ve all been through one hell of an emotional wringer these past few months.”

“I think we can do that,” he spoke softly. He wanted to tell her not to worry, that he had been taking care of himself these past few weeks. “I’ve been to a rehabilitation center.” The surprise on her face encouraged him to go on. “It’s the first time I’ve gone for myself rather than because someone else wanted me to.” Molly’s mouth was slightly agape, knowing this was the first real progress Sherlock had ever made in this area. “I am an addict.” His admission was astounding.

“I am so proud of you, Sherlock,” Molly told him with a smile. “You should be proud of yourself too. Why do you look so sad?”

“It’s what Donovan said to me earlier.” He noticed that Molly was about to object to listening to anything that came out of Sally’s mouth, but he beat her to the punch. “I know I shouldn’t listen to her; I never cared before, but she had me afraid that you realised I wasn’t good enough for you. You haven’t told me you loved me since the phone call, so of course I’m not. Good enough, that is, but—“

“That’s not true,” Molly interrupted. “You think I deserve better than you, but Sherlock, I’ve only ever wanted the best version of you.” She leaned up on her toes to press a kiss to his cheek. Her heart beat rapidly as he swooped in to kiss her, one hand cradling her head, and the other on the small of her back, pressing her so very close to him. All she could do was tug on the lapels of his coat and give herself over to the sensations she was feeling. “I’m so. Sorry,” she managed to tell him in between breaths.

He paused to look at her with furrowed brows. “For what, darling?” Sherlock didn’t give her much time to answer, as it wasn’t long before he kissed her lips again, quickly averting his focus to the inviting warmth of her neck.

“For not,” she breathed heavily, “picking up the phone the first time.” Molly angled her head to the side so he could access more of her skin. “Mmmm!” Sherlock retreated looking proud of himself for eliciting such a reaction from her.

“Are these impromptu snog sessions in your place of work going to be a frequent occurrence?” He flashed such a gorgeous smile that it triggered the butterflies in her stomach.

Though she knew he was joking, Molly couldn’t help but give a serious answer. “We’ll see.”

Despite wanting to take things slow, Molly had asked Sherlock to stay with her just for the rest of the night, having been shaken up over what had happened earlier. Molly tossed and turned like the sea. Words—a riddle—floated in her head. Sherlock had only just begun to doze off when she started mumbling words.

“Ire side Sherrinford,” she spoke in her sleep. Sherlock sat straight up and turned on the bedside lamp, listening carefully. “Don’t forget Rei en bach.”

“Molly, wake up,” he urged, gently shaking her small form. “What is that you’re saying?” Sherlock swore he heard the words ‘Sherrinford’ and ‘Reichenbach.’ He conceded that it would be impossible to wake her in such a deep sleep, so he sat quietly in an attempt to make out any other words from her lips.

It wasn’t long he had to wait, as Molly shot straight up in bed turned to her nightstand, and dug out a pen and scrap paper. She scribbled on it furiously, unaware of her surroundings until the last word was written. Groaning from her sleepiness, Molly looked down at the words that flowed from her. Sherlock had moved beside her, peering at them over her shoulder. He smoothed her hair back as they read the words aloud together.

“To whomever it may concern, I reside in Sherrinford. Having problems with ol’ Jack? Don’t forget about Reichenbach. If it is answers you want discovered, I suggest visiting your dear, old brother.”

Molly eyed it curiously. “I kept hearing that in my dream like a broken record.” She touched a finger to the paper. “I was in bed—not my own—and I had been wearing only a chemise in the Victorian times. The note was left in the bed. I think I was in the upstairs room in your flat on Baker Street, only it couldn’t be your flat, unless it was your flat, which would mean we had past lives, and that’s just impossible…right?”

Staring at the strange combination of words, Sherlock only had one answer. “I don’t know. And I don’t like not knowing.”

1894

She hadn’t a clue why she was still here. It was no longer unsafe for her to walk the streets of London. Molly stood from the bed, and decided to leave. One way or another she would get to Sherrinford.

“Miss Hooper.” Sherlock’s voice washed over her. She refused to open the door. Nope. He was going to have to deal with her silence. “Molly,” he pleaded. Damn him.

She swung open the door. “What?”

“I would like to apologise for my behaviour,” he told her. “In trying to protect you, I angered you, and for that, I am sorry.”

Molly couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “So let me get this straight,” she began. “The man who just last night proclaimed I meant nothing to him is trying to protect me?”

Sherlock’s face paled considerably. “You heard that.” He ran a hand through his hair, a few curls rejecting the Macassar oil he frequently used to make his hair lie flat. “I did not mean what I said. I do care for you, Miss Hooper. I should hate to see any danger befall you. Sherrinford is a dangerous place, and James Moriarty is not the kind of man you should want to grace with your presence, especially if he is pulling the strings of our murderer.”

Though she now knew the truth, Molly was adamant about tagging along. “I understand, Mister Holmes, I do—“

“But you still want to come along,” he finished. “I cannot stop you, but I will not promise I won’t be an insufferable protector. Can you at least handle that?”

“Yes,” she smiled. “I think I could.” He cared for her. To know such a thing made her understand his behaviours toward her so much more.

“Very well, then.” He took her hand in his. “Shall we embark on this adventure?”

It was the storm of the century with thunder so loud, it shook the Earth, and the lightening crashed around them. It was not ideal weather to travel by ship, but it did not deter Sherlock and Molly from visiting Moriarty in Sherrinford. They were below deck, staying out of the storm, and Sherlock was pacing around the small room. Molly was sitting in a chair in the corner of the room, cattycornered from the bed. “I don’t see what all the pacing’s about, Mister Holmes. Are you not weary from it yet?”

“No,” he snapped. “I am going over hundreds of scenarios of how this meeting will go, and each time, it ends all wrong.”

Molly caught his wrist before he could pace to the other side of the room again. “You don’t know how any of it will happen; you are not a clairvoyant.” She placed her other hand atop of his, her fingers softly stroking his palm. “I know you are worried about me, I understand, but it’s no use driving yourself out of your mind because of it. We will not know until we know. We will have to play it by ear.”

Sherlock sighed. “I suppose you’re right. I need to distract myself.”

“What do you propose?” Molly asked. “Tell me what you need.”

“You.” He noticed that his answer caught her off guard, but not as much as when he pulled her up off the chair, interlaced his fingers with hers, and placed his other hand on her waist. Lowering his lips to her ear, he whispered softly to her, “Dance with me, Miss Hooper.”

The light in her eyes was unmistakable. “How will we dance with no music?” Sherlock did not answer her, but instead lead her into a Viennese waltz whilst he hummed a melody she had not yet heard. She followed his lead, light on her feet, as was he. “I am pleasantly surprised, Mister Holmes,” she remarked. “I did not take you for the dancing kind.”

“I hope I can continue to surprise you, Miss Hooper,” he smiled as he twirled her around, being careful as to not send her too far out. They continued on despite the tight quarters they were confined in. Sherlock’s heart pounded in his chest upon noticing the adoring smile on Molly’s face. He spun her out once more, and drew her in close enough for their bodies to touch.

Looking up into the cerulean eyes of the detective, Molly found it was where he kept his emotions. His eyes held the intensity of a brewing storm, not unlike the one outside. “Surprise me again, Mister Holmes,” she requested breathily. The desire so plainly written on his face told her things were about to change. She waited with bated breath, holding his gaze with her own until, at last, his lips swept across hers lightly.

He lifted his head, silently asking permission with his eyes, and when she nodded her consent, his lips were on hers again with an unbridled passion, walking her back into the wall, his hands caressing her. She deepened their kisses, her tongue now dancing with his, gentle, but demanding. Sherlock groaned softly, low in his throat, her name escaping his lips. The ship rocked to one side, sending them across the room, stumbling until they both hit the bed.

“Are you alright?” Sherlock asked, clearly out of breath.

“I’m,” she breathed heavily, “fine, thanks to you.” He had caught her in his arms. Taking advantage of sitting on his lap, Molly brushed her lips across his, her fingers tugging gently on the curls he simply could not tame. She could not read how he was feeling, for the man even mastered the art of hiding the truth in his eyes. Sherlock Holmes did not look at her for the remaining period of time it took to arrive at Sherrinford.

The storm had cleared, though the sky was still dark and threatening. Sherrinford had the look of a medieval prison, draining any thoughts of happiness upon approaching its entrance. “Once more unto the breach,” Sherlock murmured softly.

“Shakespeare?” Molly blurted out in question. He spared her a glance of admiration, but did not allow himself to linger. Despite the pain she felt at his callousness, she followed behind him into the unknown nightmares they were sure to walk straight into.

The guard pointed down a dark hall, telling them, “Come this way.” The scent of decay and agonizing screams were unsettling, but not as much as when arms shot out through the bars of the cells, attempting to grab a hold of them. Molly jumped away to her left to avoid being touched, effectively bumping into Sherlock.

“Miss Hooper, please watch where you are going,” Sherlock huffed in annoyance. Feeling as if he had regretted his actions, Molly wished she could take back what had happened on the ship. She longed to forget what his lips tasted like, felt like. As they moved forward through the dark, dank hall, she berated herself for lingering too long on such thoughts. There was a serial killer out there who had murdered her best friend. She would not allow anything to get in the way of her finding justice for Meena.

At last, they approached a large, padlocked steel door with bars over a small window. Molly stepped forward to take a closer look, but Sherlock grasped her wrist with cat-like reflexes. “Mister Holmes, I would appreciate it if you would let go of me this instant.” Her voice came out acidic, much harsher than she originally meant, but the message came across as he let his hand fall back to his side. If he was going to be cold, then so was she.

A soft, chilling voice spoke from within the cell. “Let them in.”

Author’s Note: 'You're my shock blanket' is now my new favorite Sherlolly form of ILY...but will Molly ever say those three little words again? That nice little snog session on this ship? Yeah, there is an alternate scene that goes further that I had written, but I felt it was too much too soon, but it does exist. Sherlock and Molly's break only lasted a couple of weeks, but it was enough for Molly to figure out that she just wanted to slow down rather than come to a full stop; Her mind is battling her heart.

#sherlolly #sherlolly halloween 2019 #sherlolly halloween at 221b #repeating history #my fanfiction

8 notes · View notes

pathcrier · 6 years

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After the events of Trespasser, Rhona took up varric's offer in Kirkwall as comtesse. She oversaw business at the Docks, went to every meeting in place of Varric-regarding the nobles and diplomats just so Varric can be spared. Along with that, her and Cullen started a rehabilitation center for former templars. Rhona offered a position to Bethany as a healer, to give her a chance for work outside of the circle.

Rhona and Cullen had 3 children together. their oldest daughter, Mira, took after much of her father, with the addition of her mother's copper coils. She was determined and a very serious child. She had to be, it's the job as an older sister. She was 3 when Rhona gave birth to twins- Anais and Branson. Anais had inherited magical abilities from her mother, which a younger Cullen may not have taken kindly too. Yet she was the light of his life, they did practically everything together. They were often seen strolling the markets, the tiny child with eager eyes propped proudly upon his shoulders as they looked at the sweets. She had her mother's spritely spirit.. but took after her father with the blonde curls. Branson took more after Rhona's brother, Asher. He was snarky and snide and could weasel his way out of trouble (which he often caused) just by smiling. But they loved him with every essence of their being.

Rhona decided to teach Anais herself how to control her magic and resist the temptation of demons. She needn't go through a harrowing, she was taught that her magic is a gift and that no one can ever take that away. Yet she shouldn't let it be her defining feature. She didn't get special treatment, nor did she get locked away for being a mage.

Rhona had named Varric acting guarding, if anything were to happen to herself or Cullen. The children had taken a particular interest in the dwarf, they were always completely blown away by Varric's stories, which were in no short supply. Varric also helped teach all three of them how to read and write. Delaney and Fenris also help out quite a bit with watching the children when Cullen and Rhona are away on business. I think they particularly enjoy being at the Hawke estate because of their mabari, Bax. That, and there's no designated bedtime. Delaney is that cool aunt everyone wished they had. It's not like they're untrained as parents, Delaney and Fenris actually had a daughter, a year or two older than Mira, named after Leandra, who is their whole world.

And of course Asher always finds the time to visit and bring back souvenirs from Tevinter, he never misses the chance to spoil his nieces and nephew. Rhona and Dorian had made it a nightly habit to call from their communication crystals to talk with Rhona and the kids, to say their goodnights- and to just hear stories about the marvels of Minrathous. Eventually Asher and Dorian adopt a tiny elven girl, rescuing her from a potential life of slavery. They name her Hope, and she may not be their child by blood, but man does she take after her father's sass and snark.

#amanda drabbles #dragon age #post-trespasser #the trevelyans #rhona trevelyan #asher trevelyan #dorian pavus #cullen rutherford #varric tethras #delaney hawke #fenris

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fantasmainvestigations-blog · 7 years

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Investigation # 3: Glore Psychiatric Museum

Location: 3406 Frederick Ave., St. Joseph, MO 64506

Background via Theresa’s Haunted History of the Tri-State:

The year 1872 was a year of growth for westward expansion. Due to a boost in both population increase, as well as traffic from points east coming West, the need for an additional psychiatric facility became a concern for the state legislature of Missouri. The location for the hospital was chosen as St. Joseph, and a sum of $200,000 was approved to begin construction. The new hospital, the State Lunatic Asylum No. 2, opened its doors in 1874 to 25 patients, bed space available for an additional 250 patients. George C. Cattlett was the first superintendent of the facility, and oversaw the burial of the first two deaths on December 12, 1874. Because the ground was frozen, one hole was dug for both patients in what would later become the severely neglected asylum cemetery. In the 1960s, it was more cost efficient to simply push over the tombstones and mow on top of them, as opposed to mowing around. Out of over 2000 estimated burials, only a few hundred stones remain, many of those marked with nothing more than a number, as it was a common practice for travelers west to simply drop off unwanted family members, never to return for them. In any event, in 1879, the facility burned to the ground, but was quickly rebuilt. In 1903, it was given the more politically correct name of State Hospital No. 2, and in 1952, the name was once again changed to St. Joseph Hospital. It was around this time when a young professional came to work in the state's psychiatric program, and who would later become a director of the hospital. The man was George Glore. By 1967, Glore had opened his collection of historical artifacts pertaining to the study of mental health to other professionals and the public. The small museum, known as the Glore Psychiatric Musuem, was housed directly in the asylum. During this time, the hospital began gaining a reputation for being haunted...basic run of the mill type activity. Staff would see images in their periphery, mainly in the museum area, and feelings of being watched/not alone were prevalent. One patient in particular was known for her interaction with the spirits...she would often write poems and songs, and create artwork based on her impressions of the paranormal activity she witnessed in the building. By 1994, the state legislature again approved funding for a new, downsized and modern building for the psychiatric facility, located across the street. Ground was broken that year, and formally opened in 1997 under the name of Northwest Missouri Psychiatric Rehabilitation Center. The former building, which housed the museum and the hospital, was taken over by the Missouri Department of Corrections and turned into the Western Reception Diagnostic and Correctional Center. Today, it holds slightly under 600 criminal offenders who are in treatment for substance abuse. The Glore Psychiatric Museum was moved into another building on site. Its current home was built in the 1960s and served as both an admitting building and health clinic for hospital patients. It was also where the hospital morgue and autopsy rooms were housed. For whatever reason, it appears as if the paranormal activity associated with the original hospital followed the museum to its new location. The Missouri Department of Corrections reports no activity in their occupied space, but the museum, as well as the rest of the building is ripe with paranormal phenomenon. Almost naturally, the morgue area is claimed to be the most haunted. The apparition of a man is seen often near the elevators running and screaming "Get Out!" A woman is heard whispering, and people have heard their names called when no one else is around. Moaning and whimpering sounds are common, as are the feelings of not being alone. George Glore, who remained curator of the museum until his retirement in 1996 has also claimed to have witnessed much of this activity, and can only offer possible explanations for the many reports that have come to his attention. The museum is still open today, and operates under the St. Joseph Musuem, Inc. network. It is listed as one of the Top 50 Most Unique Museums. In addition to ghosts, it offers a variety of medical treatment devices from over the years, collections of objects pulled from a patient's stomach, and much much more!

First Impressions of the place: There were multiple buildings with multiple connections. On the outside it looked like a slightly older hospital building, but in the inside it was set up almost like a middle school with large hallways.

Eliminating the paranormal aspects, the building was quite scary with the torture or “psychiatric evaluation” replicas.

Activity: We picked up quite a few EVPs and even reported rocks being thrown in the tunnel area that was once used to transport patients from building to building. One incident that was not captured on video was when Vicky and Xander got on top of the hospital bed and felt a nurse running her hands through their hair. See videos from our investigation below:

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#paranormal #paranormainvestigatiors #paranormalevidence #evp #electronic voice phenomenon #ghosts #ghostinvestigation #ghosthunters #fantasmainvestigations #glore psychiatric #haunted hospital #ghost adventures #zak bagans

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itsfinancethings · 4 years

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Everything about Derek Chauvin’s case — from his long list of previous conduct complaints to the 44-year-old police officer’s brutal calm as he pressed his knee to George Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes until he died— spoke to the decades of failure to address the systemic problems plaguing his employer, the Minneapolis Police Department.

Floyd’s death under the knee of the white MPD officer on May 25 has reignited furor over the persistence of police brutality against people of color in the United States. As Americans gathered to protest in more than 70 cities, they raged against the same tepid solutions proposed by local and national leaders that have fallen far short in the past: opening investigations, firing police officers, and simply promising more reforms.

Nowhere is that pattern clearer than in Minneapolis. More than half a dozen government investigations and reports reviewed by TIME show that the same reforms were recommended time and again over the past two decades in the MPD to increase accountability, curb use-of-force violations and build up community trust — with seemingly little implementation. “People in this community have been very concerned about the Minneapolis Police Department for a long, long time,” says Hans Lee, a pastor at Minneapolis’ Calvary Lutheran Church. “It was a tinderbox.”

Floyd’s killing has refocused attention on both the local factors that led to Minneapolis’ poor record and the ways that President Donald Trump’s Justice Department has made it more difficult at the federal level to rehabilitate police departments accused of systemic abuses. In the wake of Floyd’s death, Trump has not addressed issues of racism and injustice in the country, instead focusing his ire on ensuing protests. His Administration has rolled back a series of reforms that former President Barack Obama instituted to facilitate Justice Department intervention in problematic police forces like the MPD.

“The Department of Justice has clearly indicated that it is not in the businesses of holding agencies responsible for police misconduct,” says Kanya Bennett, the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) senior legislative council leading the organization’s federal work on police use of force. “Agencies like the Minneapolis Police Department, which is the center of attention given the police killing of George Floyd — you know, there should have been DOJ intervention there a long time ago.”

‘A few bad apples’

For black residents of Minneapolis, who make up one-fifth of the city’s population, the outrage over Floyd’s killing followed a sickeningly familiar pattern. Every minute caught on camera leading up to his death seemed to echo previous police abuses in the area. There was Christopher Burns, a 44-year old black man who was killed in front of his children when MPD officers put him in a choke hold in 2002. There was David Smith, a 28-year old mentally ill black man who was killed when an MPD officer pinned him down with his knee for four minutes in 2010. There was 24-year old Jamar Clark, shot by MPD officers who responded to a paramedic call in 2015. There was Philando Castile, a beloved cafeteria worker shot by police in front of his girlfriend and her four-year-old child in 2016.

The day after Floyd’s death, Chauvin was fired from the Minneapolis Police Department and has since been charged with second-degree murder. The other three officers on the scene at the time have been charged with aiding and abetting. In Washington, the Justice Department has initiated a civil rights investigation into Floyd’s killing. Vanita Gupta, who led the Department’s Civil Rights Division under President Barack Obama, is among a group of civil rights advocates and lawmakers who are calling for the DOJ to also open what’s known as a “pattern-or-practice” investigation into the MPD, which would focus on rooting out broader issues in the Department beyond Chauvin’s actions. “It’s a really important tool because individual criminal prosecution is insufficient to addressing long standing systemic problems that can exist in police departments,” says Gupta, who now heads The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights in Washington D.C.

The Justice Department isn’t ruling out opening a pattern-or-practice investigation in Minneapolis, DOJ officials tell TIME. But they are not rushing in either. The case against the individual officer should play out first while the Justice Department evaluates if it should open the broader investigation, one DOJ official says, speaking on condition of anonymity. “The way that you can ensure the public views your decision-making as credible is if you make methodical and complete decisions,” the official says, adding that it is “premature” to “reflexively” jump to calling for a pattern-or-practice investigation before the underlying criminal conduct at issue has been addressed.

While DOJ weighs whether to go further, some senior members of the Administration have said they do not believe there are systemic problems to investigate. On May 31, National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien told CNN he doesn’t “think there’s systemic racism” in law enforcement in the country. “There’s a few bad apples that are giving law enforcement a terrible name,” he added. When asked if Trump shares O’Brien’s view, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said at a press briefing on June 1 that Trump “fundamentally rejects” the idea that the actions of Chauvin and the other Minneapolis officers at the scene are representative of the police force as a whole.

Over the past three years, Trump’s Administration has loosened the reins on local police departments, rolling back many of the major police reform measures that Obama championed to improve police accountability. Jeff Sessions, Trump’s first attorney general and a criminal justice hardliner, ended an Obama-era restriction on transferring military equipment to police, which was put in place after the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., when police arrived at protests in armored vehicles and military-grade gear. Sessions then restored what is known as the 1033 Program, allowing the Pentagon to resume sending surplus military gear including armored vehicles, weapons and riot gear to state and local police forces.

Sessions also reviewed the consent decrees the Obama Administration had formed with more than a dozen police forces accused of abuses around the country, and fought to withdraw from agreements in Baltimore and Chicago. Sessions then made consent decrees — court-ordered agreements to reform local police departments accused of abuses and civil-rights violations— more difficult to obtain going forward, issuing new rules that raised the bar for when they can be used. Those new processes, which are still in place, require a higher level of sign-off within the Department for the agreements to go into effect and also put a sunset date on the deals, instead of allowing them to remain in place indefinitely until improvements are made, as they did under Obama, among other measures.

William Barr’s tenure as Trump’s second attorney general, which began in 2019 after the President fired Sessions, has been defined more by the fallout of former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation than by national criminal justice reforms. But he is of a similar mindset to Sessions on police reform in many ways. “If communities don’t give [police] that support and respect, they might find themselves without the police protection they need,” Barr warned in a speech in December. Earlier this year, Barr convened a national commission to study issues in law enforcement, but all of its members come from law enforcement, which critics say ignores important civil rights and civil liberties perspectives.

When asked on June 1 what the Trump Administration is doing to work on the issue of police violence, McEnany said it was “an important question, for sure,” but the only specifics she mentioned were the civil rights investigations into the deaths of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed black man who was shot and killed while out jogging in February. “He recognizes injustices where they are,” McEnany said of Trump.

Obama himself has said that most police and criminal justice reforms must ultimately be made at the state and local levels. But while his administration worked to address what it could at the federal level, says, Bennett of the ACLU, “this Administration has decided that it needs to offer another narrative.” That narrative is “pro blue lives,” she says, and “seeks to dismantle any of the progress that was made previously at the federal level with respect to local and state police accountability.”

‘Put the handcuffs on the criminals’

That pro-blue view has won Trump support from plenty of cops — including in Minneapolis. In October, Minneapolis Police Union president Bob Kroll came to a Trump rally wearing a “Cops for Trump” shirt. “The Obama Administration and the handcuffing and oppression of police was despicable,” Kroll said onstage. “The first thing President Trump did when he took office was turn that around… letting the cops do their job, put the handcuffs on the criminals instead of us.”

Long before Floyd was killed, the MPD was aware its practices were dangerous and often led to tragic outcomes. The Justice Department’s Community Relations Service oversaw a federal mediation process between the police department and community leaders in 2003, which resulted in signing a “memorandum of agreement” laying out several corrective actions. According to a copy of the document reviewed by TIME, it noted that the “MPD agrees that a choke hold constitutes deadly force. MPD will maintain its policy that prohibits the use of the choke hold except in circumstances in which the use of deadly force is authorized which is essentially life and death situations.”

While other metropolitan police departments across the country have since restricted the controversial practice of neck restraints for suspects, it was that very maneuver that killed Floyd 17 years later. Police officers and use-of-force experts say the MPD stands out for the permissive language of its use-of-force guidance, which notes it can be used “on a subject who is exhibiting active aggression” or “active resistance.” That guidance has not been updated since 2012, according to the MPD website. Since 2015, MPD officers have rendered people unconscious with neck restraints at least 44 times, according to an analysis of police records by NBC News.

Accountability measures within the police force have also been notoriously difficult to implement. Since joining the force in 2001, Chauvin had 17 conduct complaints filed against him, all but two of which were “closed with no discipline,” according to city records. Another of the officers who was present at the scene when Floyd was killed, Tou Thao, had at least six complaints filed against him, none of which resulted in discipline. Their cases are not uncommon in the department. A 2015 report by the U.S. Justice Department found that only 21% of conduct complaints in the MPD were ever even investigated, with almost half dismissed outright and the rest resulting in “coaching,” a program which allows officers to receive a refresher on department policy instead of a suspension. The report said the program was full of “inconsistencies and confusion.”

Several attempts to establish an effective police review board also seem to have failed. The Civilian Police Review Authority, a body created by the city council in 1990, was shuttered in 2012 after it “fell apart amid complaints from its members that their rulings on police misconduct cases were routinely ignored by the police chief,” according to media reports at the time. It was replaced by the Office of Police Conduct Review, which has also been accused of ignoring most complaints filed. According to city records, only 13 out of nearly 1,200 complaints processed between October 2012 and September 2015 resulted in disciplinary measures. Most times, the police officer in question was just sent for “coaching.”

“The statistics on discipline speak for themselves,” Dave Bicking, a board member of Communities United Against Police Brutality, a Twin Cities advocacy group, wrote in an email to the Minneapolis City Council in April 2018. “From complaints by the public, the harshest discipline we are aware of is a 40-hour suspension. Is this level of accountability acceptable to you?” In the data he attached showing complaints against officers without discipline, Chauvin’s name appeared eight times.

Other parts of Minnesota’s state government have also shown little appetite for supporting reform. The state has one of the lowest police license revocation rates in the country: A 2017 investigation by the Star Tribune found that over the past two decades, several hundred officers across the state had been convicted of serious crimes, such as assault, without ever facing discipline by the state licensing body. The state legislature, too, has resisted police reforms. In February, a working group led by State Attorney General Keith Ellison released 28 recommendations including new training standards and independent investigations into the use of deadly force in the MPD. But many require the approval of the state legislature, which has failed to pass even one of more than a dozen police reform bills proposed since 2015.

“After Castile, we were hopeful the legislature would take some action to address these broad, systemic issues,” Nelson says. “But then things calm down. There’s not enough political will to hold the police accountable. It’s very difficult to change the direction of a ship.”

With nationwide protests extending into a second week, it’s clear that many Americans still want to try. They hope the tragedy of Floyd’s death may finally lead to long overdue reforms in Minneapolis and around the country— even in systems that so far have not been receptive to significant change. “This is an instance where there’s a strong focus on the need to hold Officer Chauvin and the other three officers accountable for the terrible acts, for killing Mr. Floyd,” says Gupta. But, she adds, there’s “also the need for a real reckoning.”

— With additional reporting by Jasmine Aguilera

#IFTTT #Blogger

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bigyack-com · 4 years

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Deborah A. Batts, First Openly Gay Federal Judge, Dies at 72

Deborah A. Batts, the first openly gay judge to sit on the federal bench, who presided over prominent cases involving political corruption, terrorism and the Central Park Five civil case, died on Monday at her home in Manhattan. She was 72. Her wife, Dr. Gwen Zornberg, said she died unexpectedly of complications after knee replacement surgery.Judge Batts served for a quarter-century on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. After her nomination in 1994 by President Bill Clinton, it took 17 years before a second openly gay judge, J. Paul Oetken, was appointed to the federal bench.She was also the first African-American faculty member at Fordham Law School, where she continued to teach even after she became a judge.She was a federal prosecutor in New York in the 1980s and early ’90s, when Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the New York Democrat, suggested that she fill out an application to become a federal judge.Her application languished through the presidency of George H.W. Bush. The administration thought that while she was “very nice,” she said in 2011, “my view of what a federal judge should be” was not their view.After Mr. Clinton nominated her, however, she sailed onto the bench. The American Bar Association rated her “unanimously qualified.” Her sexual orientation, about which she was open, was not an issue, and the Senate confirmed her on a voice vote. She was sworn in on June 23, 1994, during Gay Pride Week.“It was like hiring Jackie Robinson, putting him on the field and no one saying anything about it,” Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals told the American Bar Association Journal in 1994.Among the high-profile cases Judge Batts presided over was the decade-long civil litigation involving the Central Park Five, the youths who were wrongly convicted in the 1989 beating and rape of a female jogger in Central Park.In 2007, Judge Batts rejected New York City’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit by the Central Park defendants. In 2014, the city settled, agreeing to pay the men almost $41 million.In 2010, Judge Batts sentenced Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, a reputed former top adviser to Osama bin Laden, to life in prison after he pleaded guilty to stabbing a federal jail guard while he awaited trial on terrorism charges.Judge Batts also oversaw a civil suit against former Gov. Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey, who was accused of misleading the public when she was administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency about the risk of toxic air pollution after the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center. Judge Batts found that Mrs. Whitman had made statements that were so misleading, they were “conscience-shocking.” An appeals court, however, dismissed the suit in 2008.Judge Batts was set to preside over the embezzlement trial of Michael Avenatti, the lawyer who is accused of swindling $300,000 from his client, the pornographic film star Stormy Daniels, while he was representing her in her suit against President Trump. (Mr. Avenatti has pleaded not guilty.)One of Judge Batts’s closest friends, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, recalled on Tuesday that they had both been recommended on the same day for judgeships in the Southern District.“From that day forward, we became sisters,” Justice Sotomayor said in a statement to The New York Times. “Most importantly, she lived her life openly and earnestly, with fortitude and conviction.”In May, during a recorded panel discussion held in Manhattan to commemorate Judge Batts’s 25 years on the bench, she appeared with three other openly gay federal judges. The three — Judge Oetken, Alison J. Nathan and Pamela K. Chen — said she had been an inspiration.Judge Batts “literally broke down the closet door and allowed the rest of us to walk through it,” Judge Chen said.Judge Batts, after hearing them speak, remarked, “There was this lone wolf sitting up here in the Southern District of New York, and I can’t tell you — I can’t tell you how happy I was when I got company.”Deborah Anne Batts was born in Philadelphia on April 13, 1947. Her father, Dr. James A. Batts Jr., who was a decorated combat surgeon in World War II, was an obstetrician and gynecologist and the director of maternal and infant-care services for the city of Philadelphia. Her mother, Ruth V. (Silas) Batts, was a nurse and then a homemaker, raising four girls.Deborah and her twin sister, Diane, graduated at the top of their class from the elite Philadelphia High School for Girls in 1965.From there, Deborah went to Radcliffe, where she majored in government and was president of the student government organization. She graduated in 1969. She said that the tumult of that decade, with the Vietnam War and the assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, made her want to pursue social justice and inspired her to study law.At Harvard Law School, she served on the editorial board of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review. After graduating in 1972, she clerked for Judge Lawrence W. Pierce, a longtime federal judge in New York.In 1973, she joined the prestigious New York law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore in the litigation department. Six years later, she became a federal prosecutor.At Fordham, where she joined the faculty in 1984, she was a mentor to legions of law students in her more than three decades of teaching.As a judge in the Southern District, she worked closely with a mentoring program that seeks to increase diversity among lawyers appointed for indigent defendants, said Anthony L. Ricco, one of the directors.“Judge Batts passed the baton,” Mr. Ricco said in an interview. “She made sure that in her position as a judge, she created opportunities for people coming behind her.”Judge Batts had grown up believing she was heterosexual, Dr. Zornberg, her wife, said in an interview. She married a man and had children, but they divorced. “It was an evolution for her,” Dr. Zornberg said. “She evolved, and society evolved.”By the time Senator Moynihan suggested that she apply for a judgeship, she was open about her sexuality.“Debbie was always very clear and straightforward about who she was,” Dr. Zornberg said. “She was who she was with complete integrity.”Judge Batts married Dr. Zornberg in 2011. In addition to her, Judge Batts is survived by her children, Alexandra S. McCown and James Ellison McCown; two grandsons; and her sisters, Mercedes Ellington, Diane Batts Morrow and Denise I. Batts.Despite her busy schedule, Judge Batts made time to help former prisoners, working evenings as part of a Southern District program called RISE aimed at reducing recidivism among at-risk offenders.On a recent Saturday, as Judge Batts was recovering in a Manhattan rehabilitation center after her knee surgery, a fellow judge, Denise Cote, visited and found her in bed, finishing a letter of recommendation for a former inmate who was seeking housing.Judge Cote said in an interview that it was typical of Judge Batts that even in these circumstances, she was helping someone else.“She had decided that the landlord needed to know he was reliable and responsible even though he was in prison recently,” Judge Cote said.Judge Colleen McMahon, the Southern District’s chief judge, said the attention that Judge Batts paid to former inmates was among her greatest contributions.“Judge Batts’s devotion to these individuals and to their rehabilitation earned their loyalty and trust,” she said in a statement. “Deborah Batts was a trailblazer in every respect.” Read the full article

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rolandfontana · 5 years

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New York’s Raise the Age Overhaul Wins Early Praise

Nearly a year after New York Governor Andrew Cuomo signed Raise the Age legislation moving 16- and 17-year-olds out of the adult justice system, state government officials and youth advocates say conditions are significantly improving for teens in trouble with the law.

In a report released earlier this month, members of the Governor’s Raise the Age Implementation Task Force declared that the law had been “successfully implemented,” citing six months of data showing large declines in youth arrests, arraignments, detention, and sentencing.

“The Raise the Age law has transformed the youth justice system in New York by reducing the involvement of young people in the justice system, increasing opportunities for diversion and intervention to promote successful outcomes, as well as providing age-appropriate facilities,” said Janine Kava, director of public information for New York’s Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS).

DCJS oversaw the reform’s county-by-county rollout alongside the state’s Office of Children and Family Services (OCFS).

Under the new law, since last October 1, 16-year-olds facing misdemeanor charges have been processed in family court, which emphasize rehabilitation for youth, and keep youth court records sealed. Data collected from October to March shows that 82 percent of 16-year-olds facing felony charges were also sent to family court.

According to youth justice advocates, that statistic alone suggests the law is working.

“That is really encouraging,” said Naomi Post, executive director of the New York chapter of the Children’s Defense Fund and a member of the task force. “I’m feeling cautiously optimistic that the goals we set are being met.”

Sixteen-year-olds arrested on felony charges are still arraigned in adult criminal courts, but by specially trained judges in new courtrooms called the Youth Part. Most nonviolent felonies are automatically moved to family court within weeks, unless prosecutors convince Youth Part judges to keep the case.

About 94 percent of non-violent felony cases and 73 percent of violent felony cases ended up in family court over the law’s first six months. Post says her organization wanted 100 percent of teens’ cases moved to family court, but is pleased with how many felony defendants are making it out of the Youth Part.

Removals are not the only metric where advocates see evidence of progress.

Arrests of 16-year-olds declined from October to March, accelerating a trend that began in 2010. No 16-year-olds were detained in adult prisons or jails after October 1, and 72 percent of 16-year-olds arrested on felony charges were released at arraignment, some under supervision.

Commissioners of DCJS and OCFS, Michael Green and Sheila Poole, co-chaired the 15-member task force, which also included law enforcement and advocates. The law required them to deliver last week’s report to the state’s top-two legislative leaders.

NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo signs Raise the Age legislation in the spring of 2017, alongside Akeem Browder, the brother of former Riker’s detainee Kalief Browder, whose 2015 suicide caused international outcry about the danger of holding youth in adult jails. Photo courtesy Chronicle of Social Change

A spokesperson for Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie said his office is reviewing the report. Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins’ office did not reply to requests for comment.

David M. Hoovler, the district attorney for Orange County and president of the state’s District Attorney Association, said the state should model other recent criminal justice reforms after the Raise the Age rollout.

“The law’s first year is being touted as a success and this is no doubt because of the availability of services and resources designed to redirect and rehabilitate offenders through programming, supervision and support,” he said in an e-mailed statement.

“I urge our lawmakers to look at the careful planning, scrutiny and investment that is still being committed to Raise the Age and see if we can apply some of those concepts to the implementation of discovery and bail reform.”

Some Upstate Counties Resist

While the task force report presents a rosy picture of the law’s first six months, preliminary data revealed differences between New York City and the rest of the state. Outside New York City, youth accused of violent felonies are remaining in the more punitive adult criminal court’s Youth Part at a higher rate than their counterparts in the city.

About 78 percent of 16-year-olds charged with violent felonies in New York City had their cases move to family court, compared to 64 percent in the rest of the state. (The handling of non-violent felony cases did not vary between the city and the rest of the state.)

Similarly, about 78 percent of New York City 16-year-olds were released upon arraignment in the Youth Part, compared to 64 percent in the rest of the state.

William Leahy, director of the state’s Office of Indigent Legal Services and a Raise the Age task force member, said he brought up these issues to the group, and hopes the state will address disparities in how cases are handled.

“The quality of justice should not depend on where a case happens to take place.”

“The quality of justice should not depend on where their case happens to take place,” Leahy said, adding that reducing statewide inequities was a goal his task force colleagues seemed to share.

Teen suspects outside New York City have also been impacted by the availability of detention spaces compliant with new regulations created with Raise the Age.

In Onondaga County, sheriff’s deputies and Syracuse police officers refused to leave the room while Youth Part defendants met with their attorneys, citing department policy and the lack of an interview room compliant with Raise the Age supervision requirements, according to court documents.

Legal Aid Services of Central New York filed a lawsuit on the teens’ behalf, and a judge issued a preliminary injunction in August requiring the county to provide a private interview room.

Some teens around the state are being detained pre-trial far from their families and lawyers. About a third of 16-year-olds sent to detention outside New York City were sent more than a county away, with some sent hours from home. In 55 counties, there is no “specialized secure detention facility” certified to hold teens with higher-level criminal cases in the Youth Part.

Monica Mahaffey, assistant commissioner for communications at OCFS, said out-of-county placements were already routine for younger teens who were sent to detention while their cases were processed in family court. Further, she said the early months of Raise the Age extended a decade-long decline in the use of detention, demonstrating that community-based alternatives to detention are working.

Still, Mahaffey said state and local agencies are looking into ways to mitigate the consequences of detaining teens far from home.

“Moving forward, some counties are considering an expansion of bed capacity or construction of a new facility, based upon need. The state is also exploring the use of video interface to connect youth to their families when they are placed further from home,” Mahaffey said.

Advocates have previously told The Chronicle they hope the state focuses on increasing community-based programming for youth instead of creating more detention space.

The Next Phase

Despite perceived early success for Raise the Age, stakeholders are bracing themselves for 17-year-olds to follow 16-years-olds into the juvenile justice system starting in October.

“With the 17-year-olds, it’s not just one extra year, it’s one year older as well. It’s like having that second child if you’re a parent,” said Leahy,

“It’s more than twice as hard.”

Meridith Sopher, a vice president at the New York City nonprofit Sheltering Arms, which runs non-secure detention facilities, among other family services, said supporting 17-year-olds returning to the community will bring new challenges.

“The biggest adjustment will be for youth who come to us and get discharged to live independently instead of living with family members,” she said. “How do we ensure that they continue to get the same kind of support in aftercare?”

Counties are responsible for making sure those services will be available for the 17-year-olds – alongside expanded alternatives to detention, and youth-specific detention. But the state funds much of that work.

Stephen Acquario, executive director of the New York Association of Counties, has been assisting county governments adapting to Raise the Age. He said the counties expect to secure reimbursement funds allocated in the state budget for Raise the Age.

“We look forward to continuing to work with the governor, state agencies, and the state legislature to ensure proper implementation of the law, and full funding of RTA-related county costs is part of the 2019-20 state budget,” Acquario said.

In an e-mailed statement, he added that “by all accounts, we believe implementation has been a smooth process up to this point.”

The Raise the Age Implementation Task Force is scheduled to deliver a second report next August, covering the law’s first year and the first six months of phase two.

“The challenge will be to sustain progress towards more humane treatment of kids, because with my decades of public defense, I know there’s always a backlash,” said Leahy of the state’s indigent defense support office.

“It’s hard to keep going through the challenges, which you can’t script. They will surface.”

This is a slightly edited version of a story published this week in the Chronicle of Social Change, as part of a John Jay/Tow Juvenile Justice Reporting Fellowship project, under the direction of editor Michael Fitzgerald. To see the full version and other stories in the series, please click here.

New York’s Raise the Age Overhaul Wins Early Praise syndicated from https://immigrationattorneyto.wordpress.com/

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thewebofslime · 5 years

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Ex-NXIVM member Jennifer Kobelt says she participated in a study that involved her watching images of graphic violence while hooked up to an EEG machine that tracked her brain's electrical activity. (Kaitlin Straker ) NXIVM calls itself a humanitarian community. Experts and critics call it a cult. Uncover: Escaping NXIVM is a CBC investigative podcast series that explores the group, its leader and the experiences of those who left. Listen to the podcast at cbc.ca/uncover or on iTunes Turn it off! I can't watch this! Why the f--k are you showing me this? Those are the words Jennifer Kobelt remembers screaming as she sat in front of a television in a dark, empty former Italian restaurant near Albany, N.Y., wearing a sensor-filled cap, as she watched the horrific gang rape scene from the 1988 Jodie Foster film The Accused. She said there was a camera in front of her, recording her facial expressions, and a machine behind her, which she assumed was tracking her brainwaves. This scene Kobelt says she found herself in may seem similar to one from another film, Stanley Kubrick's ultraviolent 1971 classic, A Clockwork Orange. Only Kobelt wasn't a sadistic rapist being forced to undergo a new form of violence-aversion therapy in a dystopian Britain. She was an actor from Vancouver and member of a self-help training organization called NXIVM, who had agreed to help her friend and fellow member, Dr. Brandon Porter, with one of his research studies. In the 1971 film A Clockwork Orange, the main character, a violent rapist named Alex, undergoes a violence-aversion therapy that includes being exposed to images of brutality. (Warner Brothers/YouTube) She didn't ask many questions before agreeing to participate in the study. She just assumed it had something to do with unlocking human potential and making the world a better place — NXIVM's stated mission. The experiment took place in August 2016, she said, nearly two years before NXIVM founder and guru Keith Raniere and key members of his inner circle would be accused of running what prosecutors in New York describe as an "organized criminal enterprise." Authorities allege a secret women's empowerment sorority linked to NXIVM was actually set up to recruit sex "slaves" for Raniere, whose initials were branded on the women's pelvises during an initiation ceremony. Those accused have pleaded not guilty to all the charges, which include allegations of extortion, money laundering, sex trafficking and forced labour conspiracy. Watch: Everything you need to know about NXIVM in under four minutes What is NXIVM? WATCH 00:00 03:53 Understanding NXIVM, the alleged sex cult led by Keith Raniere and whose members included Smallville actress Allison Mack. Josh Bloch discusses the group's rise and fall. 3:53 Porter faces a hearing before New York's State Board for Professional Medical Conduct for his alleged role in conducting the experiment Kobelt underwent, described in documents as the "fright study." None of Kobelt's allegations, or those in the board's documents, have been proven in an administrative hearing. 'What's going on for you, Jenn?' The scene from The Accused left Kobelt crying, shaking and rocking back and forth in her chair, but the worst was yet to come, she said. "What's going on for you, Jenn?" Kobelt said Porter asked her. Escaping NXIVM: How a B.C. actor joined a self-help group and ended up in a suspected sex cult She said she couldn't stop crying for what seemed like 15 minutes. She doesn't remember much about the next few scenes she was shown, other than they were "probably happy clips." Then Porter said he had one more clip to show her, but was nervous to do so because of her "intense reactions," Kobelt said. Kobelt said she had also been shown another violent scene from American History X, where a white supremacist, played by Edward Norton, kills a black man by stomping his face into a curb. Stunned, she burst out crying. Kobelt says she was also shown a scene from the film American History X, where a racist young man, played by actor Edward Norton, kills a black man by stomping his face into the curb. (New Line Cinema/YouTube) Still she didn't want to quit the study before seeing the last clip — her NXIVM training wouldn't have it. She started telling herself: "I'm not going to be shown to be weak. I'm not going to be weaker than every other woman you have had in here. I am a strong woman. I have character. I have discipline. "I don't remember if I actually said this to him or not, but I'm pretty sure I said, 'Just f--king do it.'" 'In shock' Only this wasn't a clip from another Hollywood film; it looked like "real footage," Kobelt said. A group of men, many with bandanas over their mouths and guns in their hands, were shown in what looked to be a cornfield, with four women on their knees, she said. Several of the women were topless. Listen to the podcast at cbc.ca/uncover or on iTunes One of the men started speaking in Spanish. "I can't understand what he is saying," Kobelt recalled, describing the final clip. "I have no idea what is going on. I just see these four women on their knees. I think their arms are behind their backs." The man in the video eventually stopped speaking and four of the men positioned themselves behind the women. Each then grabbed the woman in front of him by the hair, pulling her head back and chopping it off with a machete, Kobelt said. (The professional conduct board's document outlining the allegations describes this clip as an "actual video of the horrific and brutal murders and dismemberment of four women.") Escaping NXIVM: How Keith Raniere went from gifted child to self-help guru to accused sex-cult leader ESCAPING NXIVMThe public and private turmoil of escaping a suspected sex cult Kobelt said she was in shock, with tears and snot dripping down her face, when Porter asked her once again: "What's going on for you?" He then suggested Kobelt should have an exploration of meaning, or EM, to find out why she had such extreme reactions to some of the clips, she said. In the world of NXIVM, an EM is a process where a disciple digs deep into their psyche, with the help of a coach, to get at the root of an emotional reaction in an attempt to resolve the underlying issue. At that moment, it sounded like a ridiculous idea to Kobelt. She said she remembered thinking: "I don't know if this is something I want to resolve. I don't know if I ever want to be OK with gang rape. Or, you know, murder by machete." Listen to a bonus episode of Uncover: Escaping NXIVM. Kobelt describes her experience in the so-called fright study Uncover S1 E8 Bonus: The Fright Experiments LISTEN 00:00 21:26 Jennifer Kobelt - Sarah Edmondson's former assistant in NXIVM - tells her story of joining NXIVM at a moment of crisis in her life and being involved in the group's so-called "fright study." 21:26 But another voice came into her head, she said, once again reminding her of the NXIVM lessons she'd spent years learning. Like that she has faulty programming and limiting thoughts that have been building up since childhood and hold her back. And that she should accept feedback. "Jenn, you're fighting. Stop fighting. Just take the feedback," Kobelt said she told herself. "If you're fighting it, it's probably true." She went back to the house where she was staying, had a shower and then texted her NXIVM coach: "Hey, I really need an exploration of meaning." Doctor resigns Porter faces numerous charges before the professional conduct board over several of the studies he oversaw, including the so-called fright study. The allegations include 16 violations of state and federal law, as well as violations of medical guidelines, including moral unfitness, gross negligence and gross incompetence. He is defending himself against the allegations, none of which has been proven. His medical licence is still active, but he resigned from his practice at St. Peter's Hospital in Albany. CBC tried to reach Porter repeatedly but did not get a response. Kobelt says she left NXIVM about a year after participating in the study. (Jennifer Kobelt) While Kobelt said she doesn't know the ultimate purpose of the fright study, a patent filed by Raniere in 2007 may offer a clue. Titled "Determination of Whether a Luciferian Can Be Rehabilitated," it outlines nearly the exact same study as the one Kobelt described. In NXIVM lingo, a Luciferian is someone who takes pleasure in other people's pain. It's not clear how the study would rehabilitate such a person. Documents filed in advance of Porter's conduct hearing say the fright study took place over a five-year period. A spokesperson with the state board declined to say how many people participated in the study, but CBC has learned that other participants will be testifying against Porter. 'A lot of deprogramming' It wasn't until Kobelt left NXIVM a year later — after she learned about the secret group and the branding of women — that she began to really take stock of what happened. That process included filing a complaint against Porter with the New York Department of Health in August 2017. The 28-year-old says she's trying to move on. She's engaged and runs a marketing business with her fiancé, who is also a former NXIVM member. NXIVM founder Keith Raniere is awaiting trial on charges that include sex trafficking, forced labour, wire fraud conspiracy and conspiracy to commit identity theft. (Cathy Pinsky/Pinsky Studios) But she is still haunted by the horrific images she watched during the fright study, she said. And she continues to grapple with the impact of the teachings that kept her planted in that chair, looking at the screen rather than running for the door. She often second-guesses herself in situations, she said, and wonders whether she's listening to her own conscience or NXIVM instructions that may still be ingrained in her mind. "I wish I had a wonderful success story that could just be like, 'Oh yeah, everything is peaches and rainbows now,'" she said. "But I don't. It's still a lot of deprogramming work left to do." Read the other features in the Escaping NXIVM series:

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magicwebsitesnet · 6 years

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Nature Pope Accepts Wuerl’s Resignation as Washington Archbishop, but Calls Him a Model Bishop

Nature Pope Accepts Wuerl’s Resignation as Washington Archbishop, but Calls Him a Model Bishop Nature Pope Accepts Wuerl’s Resignation as Washington Archbishop, but Calls Him a Model Bishop http://www.nature-business.com/nature-pope-accepts-wuerls-resignation-as-washington-archbishop-but-calls-him-a-model-bishop/

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Cardinal Donald Wuerl’s departure would have been surprising just months ago.CreditCreditKevin Wolf/Associated Press

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis on Friday accepted the resignation of Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington, a moment many victims of clerical sexual abuse had hoped would demonstrate his commitment to holding accountable bishops who have mismanaged cases of sexual misconduct.

But instead of making an example of Cardinal Wuerl, who was named in a recent Pennsylvania grand jury report that accused church leaders of covering up abuse, Francis held him up as a model for the future unity of the Roman Catholic Church. The pope cited Cardinal Wuerl’s “nobility” and announced that the 77-year-old prelate would stay on as the archdiocese’s caretaker until the appointment of his successor.

In an interview, Cardinal Wuerl said that he would continue to live in Washington and that he expected to keep his position in Vatican offices that exert great influence, including one that advises the pope on the appointment of bishops.

Cardinal Wuerl had a reputation as a reformer before the Pennsylvania grand jury report in August detailed widespread clerical abuse over many decades. The report included accounts of Cardinal Wuerl’s poor handling of accusations against priests when he was the bishop of Pittsburgh, mentioning his name more than 200 times.

The report said Cardinal Wuerl had relied on the advice of psychologists to permit priests accused of sexually abusing children to remain in the ministry.

The Archdiocese of Washington on Friday released a letter from Francis, saying that Cardinal Wuerl had sufficient evidence to “justify” his actions as a bishop and to “distinguish between what it means to cover up crimes or not to deal with problems, and to commit some mistakes.”

“However,” Francis’ letter added, “your nobility has led you not to choose this way of defense. Of this, I am proud and thank you.”

By making it clear he thought Cardinal Wuerl had served the church well, Francis sent yet another mixed message to abuse survivors on an issue that has troubled his papacy and threatened his legacy.

Francis became pope in 2013, appointing a commission to advise him on safeguarding children, creating a tribunal to try negligent bishops and speaking of a “zero tolerance” policy for offending priests.

But critics say the pope has delivered more talk than action. Francis seemed to reveal a blind spot on the issue this year by initially defending Chilean bishops against accusations that they had covered up abuse. He later listened to the survivors, said he believed them and started removing bishops.

The erosion of Cardinal Wuerl’s standing was compounded by his association with his predecessor as archbishop of Washington, Theodore E. McCarrick. He recently stepped down from the College of Cardinals over accusations that he had molested an altar boy decades ago and coerced seminary students to share his bed.

In an extraordinary letter released in August, the Vatican’s former ambassador to the United States, Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, accused Francis of covering up inappropriate behavior by Cardinal McCarrick and called on the pope to resign.

In the weeks since, Francis has alluded to Archbishop Viganò’s letter, to which he has said he will not respond, by speaking of the devil’s role in trying to divide the church. He seemed to do so again in Friday’s letter, warning against the “sterile division sown by the father of lies who, trying to hurt the shepherd, wants nothing more than that the sheep be dispersed.”

Francis saw Cardinal Wuerl as that shepherd, a force for unity. The cardinal’s Sept. 21 request that the pontiff accept his resignation reflected his dedication to “procure the good of the people entrusted to your care.” Francis wrote.

Cardinal Wuerl called the pope’s letter a “very, very beautiful” recognition of his effort to put his flock before himself, but added that the pope, in choosing his replacement, would select a bishop who began serving after the American church adopted new guidelines in 2002 to prevent and punish abuse.

He said he was “stepping aside to allow for new leadership that doesn’t have this baggage.”

Cardinal Wuerl had previously offered his resignation at age 75, as is customary in the church, but he was allowed to stay on in Washington, where he had served since 2006. In accepting his resignation now, Francis asked that Cardinal Wuerl remain as the apostolic administrator of the archdiocese.

Cardinal Wuerl, who is considered a moderate and a supporter of Francis’ style of papacy, spoke in the interview about the constructive role he hoped to play at the annual meeting of American bishops in Baltimore in No. “We are going to each be asked to speak our mind on what we think needs to be done,” he said.

And as a member of the Congregation for Bishops, Cardinal Wuerl will still shape the American church for decades to come by helping to pick its bishops.

That situation — of resigning under a cloud while maintaining Vatican power and status — recalls what happened to former Cardinal Bernard F. Law of Boston. After resigning in disgrace as archbishop in 2002, Cardinal Law kept his position on the Congregation for Bishops for a while, then lived out his years in Rome, where he was warmly welcomed at Vatican ceremonies and given an important basilica in Rome as his titular church.

The allegations against Cardinal Wuerl are complicated, and they pale in comparison with the cover-up by Cardinal Law, who moved abusive priests from to parish, rather than dismissing them, enabling the abuse to continue.

In the interview, Cardinal Wuerl bristled at the mention of Cardinal Law’s name. “I really can’t get into a comparison like that because I’m not certain at all that I can be faulted with reassigning over and over again priests who abused,” he said.

Asked what message it sent that Francis had kept him in power in Washington despite public outcry for accountability, he said, “Stepping aside as archbishop is an enormous and very painful step for me.”

Edward McFadden, a spokesman for Cardinal Wuerl, said that during the cardinal’s 12 years in Washington, “not a single priest of the Archdiocese of Washington has faced a credible claim, and there is not today a single priest in ministry in Washington who has faced a credible claim.” And during the cardinal’s 18 years as bishop of Pittsburgh, he said, “there were no cover-ups of claims of abuse.”

Cardinal Wuerl’s simultaneous resignation and rehabilitation by the pope is likely to enrage conservative Catholics who have been using the sexual abuse scandal to try to bring down prelates close to Francis. Cardinal Wuerl was known to be among those Francis consulted when choosing new bishops in the United States.

Cardinal Wuerl was first seen as a rising star in the Catholic hierarchy decades ago, when he appeared to risk his career to report an abuse case.

He arrived in Pittsburgh, a possible steppingstone to greater things, in 1988, just as the diocese had removed two priests accused of molesting altar boys. In his first months as bishop, after the priests were charged with more than 100 counts of abuse, he formed a review board at the diocese level. He also sought an extension to the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse cases in canon law.

In 1993, when John Paul II was pope, Bishop Wuerl traveled to Rome, where he successfully persuaded the Vatican to overturn a ruling reinstating an abusive priest.

But cases from that era ultimately forced him to resign.

Cardinal Wuerl initially tried to defend himself from charges in the Pennsylvania report, posting an online rebuttal on TheWuerlRecord.com that was quickly taken down after drawing criticism and ridicule. He gave an interview to a local television station, saying that the cases had occurred in the 1980s and 1990s, before the church had developed clear policies on clergy sexual abuse.

“I think I did everything that I possibly could,” Cardinal Wuerl said in the television interview.

But it soon became clear that he would become the biggest target of outrage over the Pennsylvania report.

“The grand jury report showed that Cardinal Wuerl oversaw and participated in the cover-up,” the Pennsylvania attorney general, Josh Shapiro, said in an interview. “It is well documented.”

Calls for Cardinal Wuerl to resign began almost immediately. In Washington, as the archdiocese celebrated the opening of school in late August with a special Mass, a group of teachers marked the occasion by protesting and calling for Cardinal Wuerl’s removal.

At a “listening session” held at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Washington, one parishioner after another said publicly that he should step down, said Becky Ianni, leader of the Washington-area chapter of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, who attended the session.

“Wuerl to this day has not accepted his responsibility. He called what he did ‘errors in judgment,’ and that really bothered me,” she said in an interview.

Cardinal Wuerl said in the interview with The Times that he would miss his role in planning the future of the archdiocese, and that in his new role as administrator, “You just keep everything in place.”

“If I can take the focus off of myself, my mistakes, and focus, and help us focus on survivors, healing, the future, then that’s why I’m doing this,” he said of his resignation. “One of the needed things today is transparency and accountability. We have to get that into the regular way in which the church does business, does ministry.”

Follow Jason Horowitz, Elizabeth Dias and Laurie Goodstein on Twitter: @jasondhorowitz, @elizabethjdias, and @lauriegnyt.

Jason Horowitz reported from Vatican City, Elizabeth Dias from Washington, and Laurie Goodstein from New York.

Read More | https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/12/world/europe/cardinal-wuerl-resigns.html |

Nature Pope Accepts Wuerl’s Resignation as Washington Archbishop, but Calls Him a Model Bishop, in 2018-10-12 12:47:27

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captainblogger100posts · 6 years