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Archive for March, 2009

Judges Accused of Jailing Kids for Cash

Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=7178686&page=1

Penn. Judges Get Kickbacks for Placing Youths in Privately Owned Jails

An unprecedented case of judicial corruption is unfolding in Pennsylvania. Several hundred families have filed a class-action lawsuit against two former judges who have pleaded guilty to taking bribes in return for placing youths in privately owned jails. Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan are said to have received $2.6 million for ensuring juvenile suspects were jailed in prisons operated by the companies PA Child Care and a sister company, Western PA Child Care. Some of the youths were jailed over the objections of their probation officers. An estimated 5,000 juveniles have been sentenced by Ciavarella since the scheme started in 2002. http://www.democracynow.org/2009/2/17/penn_judges_plead_guilty_to_taking

At this point it’s hard to say whether either of the two judges are in fact sociopathic.  However it is a sociopathic characteristic to see others as pawns to be manipulated in one’s own interest.  Blighting or destroying young lives would be of no concern, at all, to sociopathic judges.  Sociopaths see us as cows to be milked, with no concern for our lives, let alone our emotions.

Obviously, not all evil, corrupt individuals are sociopathic.  However I believe sociopaths set the bar — whether we’re talking of wilding teens, Abu Ghraib torturers, criminal speculators or corrupt judges.  I do not believe one can understand evil and corruption without a knowledge of sociopathy (this is one of the main reasons I write this blog).  Non-sociopathic corrupt individuals still have a conscience, that acts as a drag on their actions similar to friction.  The example of the conscienceless sociopath is of great use to them and to a certain extent frees them from that drag in my opinion.

I would say that sociopathy is the wind in the sails of corruption, crime and evil.  (I have to apologize to my loyal readers who read every post, I will be repeating succinct but communicative phrases that I write or borrow, again and again.  It seems I have a number of accidental visitors with no real interest in sociopathy — if I can send them away with a phrase or two that sticks in their mind that would be good.  Of course it’s not like there are legions of such loyal readers, in fact, next time you are all in town, maybe I’ll take everyone to lunch.)

Back to judicial and judicial system misconduct I would encourage every accused individual to insist on a jury trial if possible (I don’t know if this applies to juvenile court).  This may be more important than legal representation.  Too often lawyers enter into the process of assembly line injustice, automatically plea bargaining, even if their client is innocent.

Last but not least, the jury pool should be educated to the possibilities of jury or grand jury nullification.  Juries, in effect, are the law, they don’t necessarily have to follow it.

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Fritzl, of course, is the Austrian accused of imprisoning his daughter in a cellar and fathering a family with her (three of the children also imprisoned, three raised in the aboveground household), BBC. All incest fathers are vampire fathers, they truly are draining the child’s lifeforce, but this is absolutely the most extreme case in my memory.

The question here is whether Fritzl is a sociopath.  Roughly what I do is check facts and behavior against an informal checklist and then attempt to flesh out the individual and understand his motivations.  For those interested there are well-thought out formal checklists for sociopathy.   The linked Mask of Sanity lays out a checklist in Section III, Clinical Profile, pgs 337 – 366, or see the Table of Contents.  Robert Hare, author of Without Conscience, has a formal diagnostic one, which can be used informally by anybody, in my opinion — not to diagnose, but in an attempt to understand behavior.  This seems to be a reasonable overview: PCL Overview. His own site is www.hare.org.

Fritzl certainly appears to be a sociopath.  There is no internal prohibition against incest for sociopathic fathers at all. Non-sociopathic incest fathers need to overcome their conscience and a very severe prohibition against such acts.  For sociopathic incest fathers it is merely childhood sexplay, as is all their sex.  They are absolutely, totally unaware of any “soul effect” on the daughter (or often, the son).  The sociopathic sense of entitlement is absolute — check.  Urge to dominate — check.  Lying ability — check.  Telling his wife the imprisoned daughter had run away and joined a cult.  Explaining three foundlings to the authorities and his wife (the three infants he brought up from the cellar).  This ability to lie while appearing totally sincere, with complete eye contact with the target to be duped is one of the key sociopathic abilities.  Self confidence — check.  Arrogance — check.  Optimism — check.  No remorse or guilt — check.

I understand he’s been complaining that his wife hasn’t visited him.  Sociopaths don’t understand the “beyond the pale” aspect of their extreme behavior.  For them it’s not beyond the pale, it’s not extreme.  Presumably they believe all of us are capable of the same behavior or would behave the same if we thought we could get away with it.  So now he’s hurt and perplexed that his wife doesn’t visit.

It’s reported that the possibility that he also molested his 19 year old daughter/grand-daughter, Kerstin, is also being investigated.  (It was the hospitalization of Kerstin that exposed the whole situation.)  It would be shocking if he hadn’t.

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Rabbi Israel Weingarten cross-examines daughter at molest trial

A rabbi charged with molesting his daughter subjected her to hours of cringe-worthy cross-examination Tuesday in Brooklyn Federal Court.

Israel Weingarten, 59, who chose to represent himself against charges that could send him to prison for 20 years, rambled on all afternoon as his daughter looked away, wiped tears and struggled to understand what he was asking.

“Do I have to answer?” the now-27-year-old asked Judge John Gleeson in a trembling voice before gathering the strength to shoot back when asked why she didn’t complain sooner.

“My feeling of your molesting me was at most fear and blackmail and years of torture,” she said, eyes widening as she wiped tears off her cheeks. “Fear because you hurt me because I told my mother. Didn’t I get hit enough?”

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/03/03/2009-03-03_rabbi_israel_weingarten_crossexamines_da.html

http://www.nydailynews.com/topics/Israel+Weingarten

Father Charged With Murder, Rape, Incest Arraigned

Cass County prosecutors on Friday announced charges against a man for allegedly raping his teenage daughter and killing at least one of the babies.

Danial M. Rinehart, 47, was charged with one count of second-degree murder, endangering the welfare of a child, statutory rape, two counts of incest and two counts of abandonment of a corpse.

Authorities allege Rineha More..rt fathered four children with his then 13-year-old daughter. The girl is now 19. Only one of the girl’s children is alive — a 3-year-old who is now in custody of the state.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=113_1232832702

Possible sociopathic elements of the above stories

Depravity of both crimes and/or situation, though to sociopaths incest is the equivalent of the sex games of childhood, though with dominance and orgasms added.

Rabbi Weingarten representing himself.  Their ego seems to drive them to testify or even represent themselves in court and it seems they can’t imagine losing.  I would say their optimism is often pathological.

A strangeness in reasoning.  After his wife testifies of her discovery of the incest, Weingarten “complained to Judge John Gleeson that the translator misunderstood Faige’s answer about his father’s ailing health at the time of the alleged sexual abuse.  Gleeson was incredulous. “And you think that was the important part?” he shot back.”  http://www.nydailynews.com/news/ny_crime/2009/03/05/2009-03-05_exwife_rabbi_israel_weingarten_halfnude_.html It seems that since the crime is of no real significance to them, they can’t sort out what’s truly significant or not.

Israel Weingarten is a rabbi.  The clergy, of all faiths, are an excellent hideout for those who excel at being wolves among sheep.

Danial Rinehart seemed to live as a drifter and freeloader.  His mother:  “Dolores Rinehart described her son as a drifter.  “They’ve been on the run. Dan’s run from Social Security — Dan’s run from everything,” she said. “He didn’t want to work.””

Reflections on incest

Incest varies from rape to seduction, usually closer to seduction.  It is after all using the human body to be close to another that one wants very much to be close to and using the body in ways that it is designed to be close to another.  In a way, the young women in these cases are better off due to the crude and obvious criminal nature of their fathers’ actions — the evil of the vampire father is obvious and the element of self betrayal is nearly absent.  The element of self betrayal and the horribly conflicted emotions are what cause such psychic damage in incest situations, in my opinion.  A father who portrays the seduction of his daughter(s) as being “one of those wrong things that people just do” can be even more damaging to a daughter’s psyche than an incest closer to rape.

The focus on preventing incest must rest on appealing to the fathers, in my opinion.  No daughter can resist a father so inclined, the situation is too close to the normal and healthy “family romance” or so I’ve heard from incest victims and reports from incest group therapy.  Furthermore, incest is not going to occur in a healthy family with a healthy marriage so relying on the mother to protect the daughters is problematical.  For example, an abused wife who cannot protect herself certainly cannot protect the daughter.  Or a woman in a long marriage to a sociopath has had her own personality degraded.  Or the incest occurs at the same point where the wife feels she may be losing her sexual allure.  If the father’s sexual charge from the incest rebounds in the marriage the wife may be even more reluctant to peer behind closed doors.  The “club-over-the-head” to prevent incest by both sociopathic and nonsociopathic fathers must be the fear of discovery and subsequent destruction of reputation of the fathers in my opinion.  Cases such as these should receive prominent coverage.

[March 13 edit] Father too close to daughter is one of the searches that found this post.  Basically I’d say believe the hairs at the back of your neck.  If a situation feels wrong, say the observed physical contact, it probably is.  A family is such an inviolable unit that it is very hard for an outsider to have much influence and a “doting parent” is considered fine and acceptable.

Assuming the search was written by a mother I’d suggest paying a lot of attention to nonverbal cues.  For example, before normal accompanied errands or ferrying the child back and forth from activities (particularly at night), do the child and the father show a heightened state of excitedness?  If you insert yourself in such a trip is there a sudden change in mood or sudden irritability?  The same question if you arrange for the child and father never to be alone?  Does the father become and stay angry?

If the situation is as you fear, do not enter into a situation of “living with craziness,” which is sadly too easy to allow to happen.  Both of the mothers in the above news stories did, though fortunately Faige Weingarten is supporting her daughter now.  A child only knows that they are entitled to their emotions if an adult mirrors them (read Alice Miller, http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_gw_3_12?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=alice+miller+prisoners+of+childhood&sprefix=alice+miller&sprefix=alice+miller&sprefix=alice+miller&sprefix=alice+miller).  The father has to be brought to justice to protect the child, even though this will mean destroying the facade of the  family (the family is actually already destroyed by the father’s actions).  Failure to do so will leave the child prey to evil manipulations throughout the child’s life.

Incest children (boys also, but most comments here are geared toward girls) grow up with an inability to judge trustworthiness in their relationships — both male and female relationships.  They’ll be taken advantage of over and over again, often by fake female friends.  Girls will sometimes go into prostitution — ‘Nothing wrong with my Dad.  See it’s just like shaking hands,’ and they will effectively Lucia di Lammermoor themselves (drive themselves insane by having sex against the wishes of the soul, effectively taking part in their own rape).  Or an incest victim/participant may go narcissistic — making the calculation that ‘If I didn’t have any emotions, I wouldn’t feel the shame’ and accept only the will and mind as being of the self, emotions then being split off as a manipulation from outside.

(Narcissism is a huge topic I should explore further.  In brief, rigid narcissism is frequently confused with sociopathy.  Both live in a universe of one, are incredibly selfish, have no concern for others’ feelings and can end relationships/marriages as though turning a page in a book.  However, narcissists actually have deep emotions and a soul, they just deny them — sociopaths have neither.  Narcissism is a deep psychological choice, sociopathy is genetically determined.)

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