Jeffrey Anderson Achieves Legal Victory in Vatican Lawsuit

This is very good news indeed.


Jeffrey Anderson & Associates kicking legal butt.

Tags: Self-Help Art Depression

Sexual Abuse & the Roman Catholic Church = R.I.C.O.

Lawyer Jeffrey Anderson and his associates have filed multiple RICO lawsuits against the Roman Catholic Church.

RICO is the only just legal action I've imagined for this travesty against humanity.

Anderson put this video introduction to his firm and their ongoing defense of survivors of childhood sexual abuse up on his site, where you will also find .pdf's of various court documents and updates on the various lawsuits in progress.

What I'd love to see from Anderson is an overview of how the various RICO lawsuits are proceeding. In the meantime, I wish them luck.

Tags: Self-Help Art Depression

Mainstreaming Mental Illness :: Advocacy :: Discrimination :: Stigma

The Infinite Mind radio show - hosted by Dr. Peter Kramer - gathered a group of mental health professionals, consumers and activists whose thoughts collected here together speak eloquently to the state of the art of mental illness.

From the show notes:

Right now in the United States, tens of millions of Americans live as part of a minority group that is routinely denied jobs, housing and basic human rights. This group has no widely recognized leaders, no Martin Luther King, Susan B. Anthony or Cesar Chavez. For the 44 million Americans living with mental illness, change is coming through the efforts of unsung heroes and revolutionary, grass-roots approaches to transformation.

This segment explores the discrimination and stigma about mental illness that continues to marginalize people with mental illness and thwart making the best medical practices actual policy. They describe people with mental illness as a minority group that has yet to achieve its rights, comparing the struggle to the civil and human rights movements.

Mental health consumers. Employment opportunities not despite but because of mental illness. Mental illness and the law: self-determination with Psychiatric Advance Directives, a kind of 'living will'. Dignity. Empowerment. Peer support. Peer counseling. Lobbying government. A brief history of the grassroots movement for treatment change. Access to services. There remains states in which the mentally ill are not permitted to vote. Mental Illness = Physical Illness.

Hear for the first time in this radio broadcast about The Campaign for Mental Health Reform:

The Campaign for Mental Health Reform has been organized as the mental health community’s united voice on federal policy. Its goal is to make access, recovery, coherence, and quality in mental health services the hallmarks of our nation’s mental health system. It works directly with federal policymakers to make this a reality.

Enclosed for distribution to subscribers is the four-page .pdf of the Executive Summary, "Emergency Response: A Roadmap for Federal Action on America’s Mental Health Crisis". The action items are of special note, an easy browse to get a sense of where they want to go with this.

This collection of people have a lot to say about the cutting edge of living with mental illness.

Including this post in the 'Bibliography' category (see sidebar, right) since the radio show and .pdf constitute a collection of names and ideas for interviews and cogitation to which I shall return again and again.

[source]
[listen to the show in Real Player]
[Download the .PDF - Emergency Response: A Roadmap for Federal Action on America’s Mental Health Crisis]

Tags: Self-Help Art Depression

Coming Out as Survivor

Lawrence Lessig is a human being I admire; a person with whom I should one day like to have lunch; a thinker, lawyer, lecturer, activist, author and teacher @ Stanford

Legally and philosophically he presses his mind against the important issues of the day, among them Intellectual Property and the U.S. Congress.

And now I learn he's also one of us.

In the context of this videoblog, Lessig is introduced to you as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse who's come out of the closet. Bigtime.

At the time of the NY Magazine article (2005), Lessig's family didn't know.

At the time of the NY Magazine article, New Jersey charities were immune from lawsuits. Thanks to Lessig, not any more.


[NY Magazine article]
[Source - Lessig's Blog]
[New Jersey Enacts bill S540/A2512 into Law]

Tags: Self-Help Art Depression

2008 National Protest, Shatter the Silence of Sexual Victims

WHAT: National Protest
WHERE: Your Local Courthouse
WHEN: February 19 @ Noon

Folks are using motion pictures and distribution, tagging, social media to get their messages out.

Go to Paving The Way to see if your county is listed.

That's 'PAVE' -

Promoting Awareness, Victim Empowerment is a national, multi-chapter, grassroots nonprofit. PAVE uses education and action to shatter the silence of sexual and domestic violence. PAVE's work has been featured on CNN, Today Show, and in TIME.

PAVE says:

Sexual Violence Affects You!

1 in 3 women and 1 in 6 men will be sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. Every person knows a survivor, but the silence that surrounds these issues allow this public health crisis to continue! Over 80% of sex crimes go unreported...

Shatter the Silence of Sexual Violence!

Their flyer for Albany, NY is enclosed.

Silence kills.


Tags: Self-Help Art Depression

Movie :: "Sex Crimes and the Vatican" from the BBC

Formerly available on Google in its entirety, this documentary follows survivors and speaks to the Catholic Church's cover up. Here's the trailer.

Watching films like this exacerbates depression, but it puts me in touch with the sadness and anger in such a way that I can - with effort - feel and deal. Not such a bad thing.

Tags: Self-Help Art Depression

Movie :: "Deliver Us From Evil" :: Trailer

One of the first things I did when I learned of the scandal in the Catholic Church was to write an open letter to the Pope.

Can't wait to see this film.

Feeling a bit left out of the healing loop, what with all the Catholics providing activism & help for their own. Just because my abusers weren't priests.

The scandal actually brought my oldest friends and her Catholic community closer to the church. Good for them.

I wanted to see the Pope and all Catholics who knew about the coverups to crawl around on all fours begging forgiveness and alms for the survivors they hurt.

[Netflix]
[IMDB]

Tags: Self-Help Art Depression

What in the World to Do with Sex Offenders?

Have followed how the law deals with sex offenders for years. As you might imagine, I've lots of thoughts on the matter.

Two recent articles in the NY Times speak to a growing movement to securely retain convicted sex offenders under civil law "for treatment" rather than release them after their prison terms are completed. So far, nineteen states are doing it. The Supreme Court has affirmed the legality of such actions by the states.

The first piece explains how the mostly privatized institutions neither treat nor securely hold 'clients,' er 'inmates,' er, actually nobody knows for sure how to characterize these individuals.

The second raises doubts about the practice.

It costs on average $100,000 / year for each sex offender so detained. Regular prison inmates cost the state $26,000 per annum. As with prisons, this brand of detention is largely given over to private contractors, a practice I find disturbing since prison-based corporations lobby to increase prison populations in order to satisfy shareholders. Bad.

One sex offender,

"...may have sealed his own fate when he testified in 1994 that he could not 'control the urge' to molest when he got 'stressed out.' He said his mother, Violet, had wanted a girl when he was born and had dressed him as one when he was growing up.

“'I sure don’t want to hurt anybody again,' he told the court, but then conceded that he could not ensure the safety of children in his presence. 'The only way to guarantee that is to die,' he said."

Surgical or pharmacological castration doesn't appear to work.

In a nutshell, my argument is this:

1. Sexual preference / identification cannot be changed
2. The sex drive is a powerful force, right up there with survival instinct
   
3. Pedophilia ruins victims' lives
4. Ruined lives are expensive
   

CONCLUSION: Sexual predators must be put to death or removed for life from society, or our ideas about pedophilia radically changed.

Is there a place far enough removed from polite society in which to house sexual predators where they may live productive, relatively normal lives without contact with regular folks? A repository like Australia once was for Great Britain's criminals? Probably not.

Is pedophilia-as-proclivity as natural and expected as homosexuality or heterosexuality? Perhaps. Studies must be made. Is society ever likely to accept it as such? I don't think so.

But those are our choices. Without choosing, up to a quarter of our population will continue to have their lives indelibly changed for the worse at the hands of sexual predators.

The best we have yet to offer is a prison-based system of civil commitment at a prohibitive cost. The system must be modified so that these people may contribute to society and their upkeep. Moreover, this new system must be not only humane, but attractive enough to encourage as-yet-unconvicted predators to voluntarily sequester themselves.

My survivor self blames society as much as I blame the people who hurt me, for without the associated cultural shame, I shouldn't have suffered nearly so much. Were predators not scared shitless of the ramifications of discovery, perhaps they wouldn't feel a need to threaten or kill their victims.

So, what may our culture do to work toward eliminating victim shame? That's a subject for another post.

[Pedophile, from Wikipedia]
[Treatment]
[Bravehearts.org.au - Offering Solutions]

Tags: Self-Help Art Depression