Cory Mashburn and parents
It appears that the state of Oregon has gone officially insane.
According to the Oregonian, Cory Mashburn and Ryan Cornelison, both 13, face the prospect of 10 years in juvenile detention and a lifetime on the sex offender registry because….they ran down the school hallway and smacked the butts of some of the female students they ran by.
The district attorney involved, a man named Bradley Berry, said his office “aggressively” pursues sex crimes that involve children.”
O-kay. Well, we certainly all want that. But…
The documents also show that the boys face 10 misdemeanor charges — five sex abuse counts, five harassment counts — reduced from initial charges of felony sex abuse. The boys are scheduled to go on trial Aug. 20.
(Move over Mike Nifong and David McDade, your shared crown for worst prosecutor of the decade is truly in danger.)
Brad, honey, those kinds of charges aren’t an overreaction, they’re psychotic.
For the record, it turns out that some of the girls also engaged in butt smacking.
A leading expert called the case a “travesty of justice” that is part of a growing trend in which children as young as 8 are being labeled sexual predators in juvenile court, where documents and proceedings are often secret.
Another thing, not surprisingly the parents of these kids are being ruined by the legal expenses.
This is giving me a headache.
I’m going back to my deadline. But I hope you’ll read the article, and also watch this video interview with the two boys.
Jaysus. This story would give anyone a headache.
I don’t have time to look it up, but there was a first or second grade boy who recently was suspended along with the threat of being listed as a sex offender because he kissed a girl in the school. I don’t know the final outcome of all of that, but BECAUSE OF THE LIBERALS who are so eaten up with political correctness over unwelcomed sexual advances, the future of the human species is now in jeopardy.
All I can say is I am glad we are finally catching would be priests before they can take up the cloth and cost the Catholic Church untold millions and despoil more 13 year old innocent hind quarters.
However, I am surprised that top secret CIA pre-cognitive technology ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_viewing – See Remote Viewing) has been incorporated into the arsenal of a common everyday prosecutor in Oregon.
How else could prosecutor Bradley Berry know that an every day teenage spank on the fanny would be a pre-cursor to dark and evil deeds in the future and be compelled to take action in this TIME to prevent the future from happening?
There are a lot of football and baseball players who need to be listed as sex offenders because they pat each other on their rears after a good play.
If this is the case, 90% of U.S men would now be registered sex offenders. The left over 10% would just claim being gay, so the case would be dropped.
All of the above is a joke, but I’m going to be serious here. 88% of REAL molesters are never reported, and some would like treatment to learn self-restraint.
Catch 22: Therapists legally must report them, and they face jail plus a lifetime on the registry as social outcasts. Given those conditions, how many will seek therapy? Nearly zero.
YOU CAN HELP TO CHANGE THIS SENSELESS LAW. Please go to http://www.therapy-key.com, and send in your petitions if you like.
Every signature counts!
Thank you,
Betty Schneider
Director, Therapy Key
Ms. Schneider, I’m going to have to think about what you said. I have mixed emotions, and I wonder what G.M. Roper, who comments here and works in the mental health field, would think. BTW, your link is wrong because it has a comma after the .com. Anyone should be able to figure that out, though.
Ms. Schneider, having worked with a few offenders in the past, I think you are likely wrong. If a therapist knows of a crime to be committed (child abuse is the exception here – see discussion below), he has the right and the obligation to talk the patient out of it, and, if he deems it reasonable that he cannot, he has under what is often called “the Tarasoff decision” a Duty to Warn. Not all states have codified a Duty to warn.
If a patient has reported a crime from the past, and it is not deemed likely that the crime would be repeated, and if the therapist is protected by confidentiality laws, there is no duty to report.
More on the Tarasoff decision here: http://www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/envrnmnt/css/cs3lk1.htm
In the ethics for counselors class that I teach from time to time, I lean heavily on Tarasoff and tell my students that if I felt someone was in danger, it did not matter if Tarasoff was codified or not, I would make the report. However, if I didn’t feel there was an imminent danger, I would resist being impelled to report.
Sadly, the Texas Supreme court has ruled that there is no duty to warn: http://www.psychiatrictimes.com/p991232a.html
But they can kiss my foot. If I know someone is about to be harmed, and I cannot disuade the patient, I’m reporting it.
Years ago, here in Texas a psychotherapist reported child abuse to Child Protective Services and cps stupidly released the name of the reporter to the perpetrator. The perpetrator sued the psychologist, but lost (legal obligation to report child abuse – the exception to what I’m talking about above) and the psychotherapist sued CPS and won. CPS said that even though they agreed that most reporters could remain anonymous, therapists, docs, teachers etc are required by law to report child abuse and thus did not require anonymity. In his decision on the case, the judge said “Anonymous reporting means anonymous reporting” or words to that effect. Good for him.
I might also add, that if a “molester” did in fact report to me that he had molested a child, but refuses to give me additional information, what do I report. I’m not being flippant, but how do you report a crime if the only evidence of a crime is that the client told you he (or she) did something to someone, somewhere but you have no other information. If you did report, the police could conceivably keep the person under surveillance until he did something actionable, but if he never did, then the police and courts are absolutely impotent to do anything about it. If he never did, but found out about the surveillance then he legally, in Texas at least, could sue the therapist for breech of confidentiality since there is no duty to warn. Sigh, in this case, it is the therapist in the catch 22 position. And that is the reason that for me, making sure another child/person is NOT harmed by my client is the higher moral ground.
The way this whole discussion has turned into one about real sex offenders is just scary to me, as the mother of a son soon to be in that age group. It’s hard enough to raise a boy these days, with girls being so empowered — and knowing how to play up their cute/helpless side, even when they’re the same size or bigger than the boy — that the boy is almost always blamed in any school situation.
Combine that with the wealth and sense of entitlement wealthy families have and pass onto their kids, and every incident along what used to be the normal passage to adulthood is fraught with potential lawsuits and reports to social services — and it really starts in Kindergarten.
These are the perils of the “upper class” private school world, or choose a public school where violence and genuine harassment and intimidation are the norm. No sanity anywhere.
Hi Betty, nice web site and thanks for commenting on this serious subject.
I would be interested in knowing how many takers there are who would sign up for your program based on the conditions you outline below.
It seems very rigid and I would think that very few would sign up for this.
Great stuff, guys. Betty and GM, thanks for weighing in on this very complicated issue of reporting. Please keep up the discussion. We’ll all learn from it.
Maggie, I know what you mean. A kid in my kid’s elementary school in Topanga Canyon got accused of sexual harassment. It’s been so long ago that I can’t quite remember the details. I think he tried to kiss a little girl or some such thing. Maybe even something less than that. Whatever it was, it was quite harmless. They were, at the time, 4th graders, for chrissake. Fortunately, everyone eventually came to their senses, but the way it was handled in the beginning by the school principal was…..creepy.
I am coming forward to confess that I kissed a girl when we were in the second grade. What’s worse is that some other boys and I teased the girls when they played on the jungle gym wearing dresses and we could see their underwear. The trauma that this has produced in our lives is literally immeasurable. Where do I turn myself in?
Woody, turn yourself in to Mike Nifong. I’ve called him and he is waiting for you.
… he legally, in Texas at least, could sue the therapist for breech of confidentiality since there is no duty to warn.
Wow, GM. I was so taken aback I had to check that out. James Michener and Molly Ivins were right. Texas is truly different.
you can say a lot about these ridiculous cases but one thing that comes thru loud and clear is this: there is a significant fraction of the public that truly fears our kids. If they did not DA’swould see no benefit in filing such cases. He might be wrong about thepublic reaction to a particular case but when you look at the draconian laws passed easily by the public in CA via the initiative process it becomes clear that this fear is present and palpable.
Well, in my elementary school days, I had a girl chase me, jump on top of me, and slob herself silly all over my cute face. I LOVED IT!!! Aside from having some serious problems even at that age, I wonder if she ever registered as a sex offender or did she just become a niehborhood hood rat….. Now here is a case where you can clearly see the issues that must have been going on at home.
LOTS, Molly (God rest her soul) was dead wrong, there are many states that have not codified Tarasoff. The ghost of Tatianna Tarasoff lingers ever over these states.
I tell students and attendees to my occasional CEU classes that the ethical principle overcomes the legal principle in my way of thinking. If a therapist stands by while someone else is harmed, that is unconcionable to my way of thinking. On the other hand, an ethical therapist MUST weigh confidentiality (which IS encoded into law) into the mix. Thus, if a patient says “I’m gonna slap him silly” I’m not calling that in. If the patient says “I’m gonna kill him” and it is not just a rhetorical angry statement with no history or inclination to back it up, I’m not gonna call it in. If, however, the patient says “I’m gonna kill him and there is even a smidgen of possibility that it could happen, I’m picking up the phone.
It is a very fine line with many very dangerous twists and turns along the way.
By the way, your statement ” I had to check that out” deserves the following: “If I say it, you can bank on it in ALL matters of fact. In matters of opinion, feel free to question. In the words of my old drill sergeant, “I are sometimes mistook, but I are never wrong!” 🙂
By the way, though there is NO DOUBT that Prosinjit Podder did in fact murder Tatianna Tarasoff, he did not “pay” for the crime. He was eventually allowed to return to India and was not incarcerated.
http://www.whittedclearylaw.com/CM/Publications/publications13.asp
http://www.wcsap.org/advocacy/PDF/ConnectionsFallWinter07.pdf
Here California coding of Tarasoff has been expanded http://www.apa.org/monitor/julaug05/jn.html
(REPOSTED SO THE HTML SCRUBBER WOULDN’T ERASE MY LINKS
I hope these boys grow up to change the laws. This is outrageous that a judge would even let this go to a court. What happened to this country. The judge, school and certainly the mother of the girls were downright cruel, mean and wicked for even going this far.
What a way to ruin many lives with this stupid charge. I hope those girls whack others on the butt, they will have to drag their parents into court and suffer such financial loss you will learn what you have done to these boys.
This is such appalling reactions!
i went to this school qhen that happened. those boys were my best friends. everyone overreacted. you should have been there. i was bawling along with the the other students.