Scandal in Lock Down Mode: Rick Perry and the Texas Youth Commission 1/3

by Nomad

Was he afraid?  Anyone who wasn’t was not paying attention. That was the point of this school: to teach the children of the village what was being done all around them to the children of Planet Earth. Just the Who, What, When and Where because the lone Why was too much to bear.

from the novel “Operation Wandering Soul” by Richard Powers

The Easiest of Prey

If children, as a group, make ideal targets for predatory abusers and exploiters, then incarcerated juveniles undoubtedly make the easiest of that targeted prey. Subject to manipulation and intimidation, with limited access to legal recourse or independent monitoring and underrepresented in the political system, these children are easily forgotten by the public. The pleas from juvenile inmates generally  goes unheard. The very real threat of retribution by the authorities is sufficient to prevent any victims from coming forward.

Sergeant Brian Burzynski

So, when incidents are reported- and followed up on by authorities- it is generally an exceptional case. 
In February of 2005, Texas Ranger Brian Burzynski received reports from a volunteer instructor at the West Texas School, a maximum security, all-male correctional facility in Pyote, Texas. One of many facilities scattered across the state, The West Texas school was built to house boys who had been in trouble with the law. The teacher who had contacted the Texas Ranger had had a crisis of conscience when several of his students had come forward with stories of sexual misconduct by the assistant superintendent. According to sources:

[The teacher] knew it would be futile to go to school authorities—his parents, also volunteers, had previously told the superintendent of their own suspicions, and were "brow beat" for making allegations without proof —so the next morning he called the Texas Rangers. A sergeant named Brian Burzynski made the ninety-minute drive from his office in Fort Stockton that afternoon. "I saw kids with fear in their eyes," he testified later, "kids who knew they were trapped in an institution where the system would not respond to their cries for help."

Initially, the Texas ranger was somewhat skeptical of the allegations. Burzynski would later explain that he knew as he headed out to investigate that there was a chance of false allegations because it was, after all, a prison, not a summer camp. But his prejudice faded after talking with several inmates; he was sure their stories were not made up — they were detailed, not vague, the stories were specific, not generalized.

For example, when a boy resisted one of the alleged abuser’s advances in 2004, he was shackled in an isolation cell for thirteen hours. Other employees had corroborated these statements. Instructors and employees noticed, for example, certain students being pulled out of class for no apparent reason and spending long periods alone with the principal. Inmates were also taken from the dorm rooms after hours despite regulations to the contrary. Even after being warned not to spend time alone with the juveniles in secluded areas, both of the staff members, School Principal John Paul Hernandez and assistant superintendent Ray Edward Brookins, continued their suspicious conduct. 

Many saw events that, while inappropriate or at least, questionable, were not conclusive in and of themselves. Circumstantial evidence was not proof. The isolation of the facility- in one of the most remote areas of Texas, as well as the fear of retribution- might explain why many saw things but reported little. In fact, as the Texas Ranger was soon to discover, if one chose to follow the chain of command, there was little hope of any immediate and direct action by the West Texas School administrators. The accused parties were also the ones in charge.

It was only when a thorough and independent investigation had been conducted that a pattern emerged. The Ranger’s investigation was the first wedge in breaking open what was going on in Pyote, Texas.

Texas Youth Commission Facilities

The West Texas School is an inaccurate, innoucuous name for the juvenile detention facility. True, it is a school but it is much more of a prison. The facility is part of a network of institutions that is under the control of the Texas Youth Commission (TYC). 

This agency is responsible for overseeing all youth correctional facilities in the state of Texas, that is, the care, custody and rehabilitation of the juvenile offenders who have been committed by the court. 

Here are some important facts and figures about the Texas Youth Commission. The ages of youth committed to TYC range from 10 to 17. The TYC can maintain custody of the youth until the age of twenty-one. With an annual budget of $251.6 million, TYC had, at that time 4,847 employees, 94 percent of whom worked outside of the central office in Austin. TYC had 4,805 youths in 15 TYC facilities, 9 TYC halfway houses, and 15 contract facilities. The facilities and halfway houses are located mostly in small, rural towns throughout Texas. Based on headcount, TYC had an average of 2,948 juvenile correctional officers (60.82 percent of all 4,847 TYC employees) and 350 case managers (7.22 percent of all 4,847 TYC employees) in fiscal year 2006. 
Surprisingly, perhaps, only 34 percent of those in juvenile detention are there for violent crimes. According to the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission, more than 20 percent of those in juvenile detention were confined for technical offenses such as violating probation, or for “status offenses” like missing curfews, truancy, or running away—often from violence and abuse at home. For the most part, these are not hardened criminals, and, sadly, most of them have already come from abusive situations before they arrived. 

As The Dallas Morning News’ Doug J. Swanson, who would later play a pivotal role in getting this story before the public reported on March 2, 2007:

About 60 percent of them come from low-income homes. More than half have families with criminal histories, and 36 percent had a childhood history of abuse or neglect. Some 80 percent have IQs below the mean score of 100."

Given these facts, one can see how explosive a charge of sexual misconduct might be and the amount of anxiety from agency administrators that exposure might create. Some people involved would soon be asking, “How bad will this storm be? Where will it lead and how far up will it go?”

A Lone Texas Ranger

Sergeant Brian Burzynski spent the next two months conducting a thorough investigation of the allegations, which included taking 44 witness statements, interviewing 74 prisoners and collected 354 pieces of physical evidence. By July 2005, he had identified 3 employees of the facility suspected of having sexual relations with the inmates. (Later, it would reduced to two.)

According to Languish.org,

When the TYC received Burzynski's findings, it launched its own investigation. The internal report this produced was deeply flawed. Investigators didn't interview or blame senior administrators in Austin, though many of them had seen the warning signs and explicit claims of abuse at Pyote. But agency officials saw how damning the story was. Neither their report nor Burzynski's was made public.

Burzynski then collected his findings and presented his conclusions to Ward County District Attorney Randall Reynolds in hopes of widening his investigation. While he waited for a response from the DA, Burzynski continued to gather evidence. For almost a year and a half, he waited, frustrated by the lack of action.

The Texas Ranger had this to say about his mounting frustrations- "In short, I had to file it with the local DA that I didn't want to in the beginning…He hasn't done anything with it and I am losing hope that he will before the statute of limitations expires."

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
with Vice President Cheney

Burzynski tried repeatedly to call the DA’s attention to the report about his investigation starting back in April of 2005. He also sent a memo to Assistant Attorney General William Tatum asking for the Attorney General’s help. After a two day wait, the Ranger sent a reminder to Tatum. Tatum, in a brief email, re-directed Burzynski back to the local district attorney.
Then Burzynski emailed Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton and U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. All denied that enough evidence to prosecute existed, when clearly Sgt. Burzynski had acquired a more than adequate supply of testimony and evidence. 

A few notes on the people above: 
A corporate lawyer for much of his career, Alberto Gonzales would be the subject of many controversies as President George W. Bush's Attorney General of the United States. Around the time of Burzynski's email, Gonzalez had just been appointed to the post. With the announcement of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day's retirement, his name was floated as a possible nomination. This undoubtedly would have meant a great deal of scrutiny by both sides of the political spectrum. 

Greg Abbott

AG Greg Abbott, during this time, was more interested in other things. In March of that year, he was busy successfully defending the right of the state of Texas to display the Ten Commandments in front of the state Capitol in Austin United States Supreme Court case known as Van Orden v. Perry. 
(Incidentally, Abbott has continued with this attention-seeking self-promotion in Rick Perry's administration. For example, in 2010, AG Greg Abbott asked a federal appeals court to toss out the Environmental Protection Agency's finding that greenhouse gases threaten the environment. To that his opponent, Barbara Ann Radnofsky, remarked that Abbott was picking fights more for the sake of his political career instead of Texans — ignoring legitimate problems and diverting limited state resources into "loser litigation.")
Johnny Sutton was Bush’s former criminal policy director in Texas when Bush was governor, Sutton had been villified in the right-wing press for prosecuting two Border Patrol agents for shooting a fleeing Mexican drug-runner and then trying to cover the incident up. In just another example of Texas justice under Bush, Governor Bush, in one of his last acts in Texas before heading to Washington, commuted the sentences.

Johnny Sutton

Let's continue with the story. Burzynski was dismayed by the July 28, 2005 letter from Bill Baumann, assistant U.S. attorney for West Texas  in Sutton's office. In it, he stated his reasons for declining to prosecute on the grounds that under 18 U.S.C. Section 242, the government would have to demonstrate that the boys subjected to sexual abuse sustained "bodily injury." Baumann wrote that, "As you know, our interviews of the victims revealed that none sustained 'bodily injury.'"
Baumann's letter continued, adding a definition of the phrase "bodily injury," as follows: "Federal courts have interpreted this phrase to include physical pain. None of the victims have claimed to have felt physical pain during the course of the sexual assaults which they described." 
According to an article in WorldNetDaily.com,

Baumann wrote: "In order for the government to be successful in a criminal prosecution, it would be essential for us to show that the victim was in fact victimized. Most of the victims were aware of the power that the school principal and assistant superintendent held over them, but none were able to describe retaliative acts committed by either the principal or assistant superintendent. Although it is apparent that many students were retained at West Texas State School long after their initial release date, it would be difficult to prove that either Mr. Brookins or Mr. Hernandez prevented their release."

Likewise, despite volumes of evidence and countless interviews, , the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division declined prosecution in a letter written to Lemuel "Chip" Harrison, the superintendent of the facility on Sept. 27, 2005, the Texas Youth Commission superintendent at the West Texas State School. In that letter, Justice Department section chief Albert Moskowitz wrote that "evidence does not establish a prosecutable violation of the federal criminal civil rights statutes." 

In short, between the officials at the government agencies, the local district attorney, and the national department of Justice, not one felt they could lift a finger to stop the sexual abuse of children and teenagers. Not one of them felt that it was their duty or had a twinge of conscience when it came to the rape of a minor by a member of the staff of a state-run facility.
Not until January of 2007- when rumors began to surface in the press- did Reynolds finally act, sending a letter to the attorney general requesting prosecutorial assistance.
Still it would take until April 10, 2007 before the Attorney General Alberto Gonzales obtained indictments.

Certainly a lot of people who were in a position to do something, did nothing. According to one source, Alfonso Royal, a budget and policy analyst who oversaw the Youth Commission among other agencies, had been informed of the Burzynski report as early as Oct. 30 or 31, 2006. Royal had been forwarded graphic investigative reports about sexual abuse about the facility and did nothing. 

Some journalists have speculated that Royal sat on the information because of the potential negative fallout and its damaging effect on Perry’s reelection campaign. In fact, The Houston Chronicle reported that Royal may well have known about the details of the case as early as June 2005. For his part, Royal pointed fingers back at the local DA, Reynolds, for failing to press the case. Against all the evidence to the contrary, Governor Perry would later claim to Texas Monthly editor Evan Smith: "We knew about this probably about the same time you did, when we read it" in The Dallas Morning News. 
 Others were not so easily convinced by Governor Perry’s denial of responsibility. Matt Angle of Lone Star Project, a political research and policy analysis project,

If you read the letters from Sutton's office or from DOJ, it's really amazing what abuse they describe and then downplay as not being serious...They describe systematic and widespread abuse of juveniles who were held in these facilities by the people who were administering these facilities, and they acknowledge this fully, yet they determine that the evidence is not sufficient to warrant federal prosecution... This case developed right in the middle of Governor Perry's 2006 re-election campaign...I would speculate that the political powers in Texas and Washington in the Republican Party were not interested in this sex scandal coming to light. Sutton and Gonzales let their political responsibilities outstrip their legal responsibilities, and as a result you had children who were in danger of sexual abuse and were left in that danger.

Alarm Bells

It would not have been the first time that Texas Youth Commission facilities had been under scrutiny. In 1999, at the Coke County Juvenile Justice Center in Bronte, in West Texas settled a lawsuit for $1.5 million after several female juvenile detainees claimed they had been sexually abused by a facility employee, who was a convicted sex offender at the time he was hired.

More recent events involving another TYC facility should have suggested a need for closer inspection. In 2004, a serious riot at the Texas Youth Commission’s (TYC) Evins Regional Juvenile Center in Edinburg, Texas, amounted a near full-state take-over by the inmates. The event was over in a few hours but the retaliation by guards was particularly violent, according to lawsuits filed against TYC. Claims of excessive and often cruel punishments suggested an absence of oversight and proper training.
In 2005, the families of three incarcerated prisoners in Evins filed a $4.5 million federal lawsuit, claiming guards caused severe injuries by using excessive force when disciplining the detainees. One of the detainees, Calvin Barefield, claims he was left blind in his right eye after guards "grinded his face across the concrete sidewalk," scraping off the entire right side of his face. The lawsuit also alleged that guards had not been properly trained on how to use handcuffs or when to recognize medical emergencies.
Take this example from the Texas Observer, reported back on June 15, 2006:

(An inmate) alleges guards cuffed him and left him outside for several hours. When the skin on one side of his body turned red with sunburn, guards turned him over so the other side burned as well. Sanchez says he was lying on an ant nest and was bitten hundreds of times, but guards refused to move him. Medical examiners found injuries on many other boys, but investigators were unable to discover definitively when and how the damage took place, and did not confirm abuse... Eventually, more than 80 allegations of abuse would be filed; 11 were confirmed by TYC investigators.

One caseworker, Nelina Garza, who had been at the center for seven years, attempted to report misconduct.

Garza.. claims to have reported abuse to Evins administrators repeatedly over that long week, but says they ignored her. "There was really nobody to report to," Garza says. "They all knew, and they didn't care." Desperate, Garza began calling the parents of her caseload boys, telling them about the abuse and asking them to file complaints with TYC, which many of them did. Garza also called Hidalgo County law enforcement and filed an abuse report with Child Protective Services. Then she called the FBI, the Texas Rangers, and the local news station. "I was panicking," she says. "I couldn't sleep at night. I had to make it stop."

In fact, in June 9 2006, less than a week before the news reports, the US Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division, had informed Governor Perry of a investigation of allegations of misconduct (not of a sexual nature) at another juvenile facility. The Evins Regional Juvenile Center had been cited for serious violations in the confinement and treatment of residents. 

According to the letter sent to Texas government official (including Perry), by Assistant Attorney General Wan J. Kim,

In conducting the investigation we are obliged to determine whether there are system violations of the Constution of the United States in the conditions at Evin. Our investigation will focus on the protection of juveniles from harm.

The final report offered many warnings to the governor and to agency officials.

Virtually every correctional officer we interviewed expressed concern about maintaining control of the facility. As detailed above, we have found that this facility suffers from inadequate staffing, and that many of the staff at Evins have not been adequately trained nor do they have much practical experience on-the-job.

Following the revelations at the West Texas School, a subsequent State Auditors report on the TYC laid bare what some had always known but had done nothing about. Among the many problems the auditors found, the inability to prevent sexual predators from being hired seems to be most shocking. The report noted that the commission performed only computerized criminal history background checks on prospective employees using name and date of birth, rather then performing fingerprint checks. In addition, the commission did not have policies in place to prohibit TYC or its contractors working with youth from hiring convicted felons or sex offenders. 

Also, TYC conducted criminal history background checks only when employees are initially hired. This created the risk that an employee could be arrested subsequently without TYC’s knowledge. TYC did not have policies that prohibited it or its contractors that work with youths from hiring convicted felons or sex offenders.

The natural question, then, is why would any government official or agency administrator be willing to gamble with the public trust in such a way, hoping beyond common sense and common decency that the emerging scandal might be suppressed or possibly smothered and buried absolutely? Admittedly, in terms of a scandal, it was unparalleled. Homosexuality, juveniles, intimidation, violence amounting to abuse and all within a government-owned institution. Few in the higher levels of state government wanted anything to do with it. It was a career-destroying type of scandal and everybody seemed to be trying to find a way to distance themselves from the problem.

In fact, the most obvious reason goes beyond mere political expediency. Had the news of the goings-on at the West Texas School reached the public at the time it was first reported, it most certainly would have called into question one of Governor Rick Perry’s proudest talking points, the corner stone of his political agenda. That is, Rick Perry’s free market solution to budgetary shortfalls : the privatization of the public responsibilities of government. 

The West Texas School was one of many Texas Youth Commission's privately-operated incarceration centers. In other words, an example of Rick Perry's heavily touted market solutions to all of the state's financial woes. (Please see correction below)
The fact that the plan wasn't working was the last thing Rick Perry and his administration wanted to talk about, especially not with the governor's re-election looming on the horizon.

__________________

(Correction: It has been pointed out that the West Texas School, the focus of this scandal, was not privately-operated. I thank the reader for correcting this error. For example, last September, Mother Jones wrote about Governor Perry's plan to privatize the Texas prison health care system in 2003.

"Under the banner of closing the state's $27 billion deficit last winter, Texas Gov. Rick Perry floated a proposal to privatize the state's prison health care network. Whether the plan would actually save the state any money was a matter of debate, but one thing was clear: The move would have been a boon for private-prison executives and lobbyists, including Perry's former chief of staff, who had donated generously to his 2010 reelection campaign. "

The private companies had already had a poor history of problems. We can assume that an investigation of that scandal would have opened the doors to a larger review and increased scrutiny of other facilities in the TYC and the Texas prison system in general, many of which were privately-operated. And indeed, as the Houston Chronicle reported in October 5, 2007 that is what happened later in the case of Coke County Juvenile Justice Center, privately run by the GEO Group.  I appreciate the comment from one of our readers, who called my attention to this error. )

__________________________________

In Part two of this investigation, we will be taking a closer look at dismal manner in which the investigation and prosecution of the West Texas School case was handled by the Perry administration.

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The Santorums and the Bully's Defense: Rick and Karen Play the Victim Card

by Nomad

Victimhood and the Messiah-Complex

I saw this interesting video clip at The Raw Story.
Here’s the background information to the clip. At  a question-and-answer event in South Carolina for mothers, “Moms Matter 2012″ Rick and Karen Santorum alleged that the gay community has been attempting to vilify her husband by portraying him as a gay-hating religious bigot.

Nothing could be further from the truth, Karen Santorum declared to the friendly audience. She took the microphone to defend her husband who meanwhile wore his best victim expression.

“As Rick’s wife, I have known him and loved him for 23 years,” she said. “I think it’s very sad what the gay activists have done out there. They vilify him. It is so wrong. He loves them. What he has simply said is marriage shouldn’t happen.”

It’s all very confused in Karen Santorum’s mind, it seems. She somehow managed to twist things around a great deal. Very conveniently.

“As far as hating, it’s very unfortunate that has happened. A lot of it is backyard bullying, where people will come up to us and they’ll say something. And we’ll ask them to give us an example, and they can’t even provide one example as to why they took the position they took.”

Santorum then told the audience that he was “doing what I’m called to do, which is to love everyone and accept everybody.” A revealing choice of words, even if the statement means a big fat zero in the light of all of the other things he has said. I found the phrase “what I am called to do” particularly compelling. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand by Whom he believes he has been called. 

It would not be the first time a politician has had what they call a Messiah-complex. As a matter of fact, it’s pretty much a standard psychoses of modern political leadership. Let’s see what it entails:

We all have a "messiah complex" dwelling deep within. But not everyone becomes completely possessed and grandiosely inflated by it. The desire to redeem and "save the world," when kept in check, can be a very positive force in life, motivating us to do good and to leave the world a better place--if only infinitesimally--than when we came into it.

Doesn’t sound so evil, now does it?

Many religions share this archetypal concept of Messiah, including Christianity, Judaism and Islam. Much like the archetypal notion of God, identifying oneself as God or Messiah is a disastrous form of ego-inflation. Such inflation is a grandiose narcissistic defense against profound feelings of inferiority and powerlessness. The wounded ego, with its debilitating, neurotic feelings of guilt, badness, shame, emptiness, unworthiness and helplessness falls prey to the equally neurotic (or psychotic) compensatory spiritual pride the ancient Greeks called hubris, providing self-righteous justification for evil deeds.

Ok, that makes me a bit woozy and perhaps that’s unfair. Santorum probably doesn’t deserve to join the ranks of Hitler, or Bin Laden or Charles Manson, Jim Jones or David Koresh. At least not yet.

The Bully's Defense

Still, try as I might, I personally find it hard to see Santorum as a victim of backyard bullying- or anything except his own outspoken reglio-egocentricity. (Take that, pretentious phrase hunters!) 

You see this type of thing a lot. After making outrageous remarks or doing something unacceptable, illegal or anti-social, it comes as shock to these people when they are eventually called upon to explain themselves or to accept responsibility for their actions. Undoubtedly, it's just not a comfortable feeling and so they apply the Bully's defense. Suddenly it's all about their OWN victimhood. This line of rationalization doesn't need to make sense, as long as it is portrayed convincingly enough to fool a few people. 

I didn't find it convincing when Sarah Palin tried to claim her victimhood after the Gifford shooting (and a hundred times before and since.) In another post, we saw how Clarence Thomas effectively used this method to thwart any opposition to his nomination to the Supreme Court. Herman Cain attempted it when alleged sexually harassed victims kept popping up like gophers. When it was discovered that his favorite hunting lodge used a racially divisive word (the n-word) as its name, Rick Perry blamed the media for the controversy.

Even the infamous Bernie Madoff, after masterminding a $65 billion Ponzi scheme, told reporters that he detested being called evil. Later in prison he reportedly said, “F--- my victims. I carried them for twenty years, and now I’m doing 150 years.” He carried them by looting their savings, of course.
According to a fascinating article in New York Magazine:

“It was a nightmare for me,” he told investigators, using the word over and over, as if he were the real victim. “

As Doug Mataconis, writing for the blog, Outside the Beltway, gives his take on this phenomena:

The mentality of victimization, not to mention a disdain for the “MSM.” as most of them refer to the media, is something that seems to run pretty strong in conservative circles these days. The entire movement seems to see itself as put-upon and subject to conspiracies coming from all sides, and when something bad happens to the likes of Sarah Palin it’s viewed as evidence of some conspiracy against her when in reality it’s usually just the media repeating exactly what she said.

They appear to be telling us that it's unfair when people react negatively to their remarks. And a lot of people appear to be persuaded by that kind of manipulation. 
I suppose it’s a variation on victim blaming which “occurs when the victim of a crime, an accident, or any type of abusive maltreatment are held entirely or partially responsible for the transgressions committed against them.” That phrase became familiar to us when it was used in courts to describe the ill-ltreatment of rape victims by defensive attorneys who sought to put the responsibility for the attack on the woman, instead of the actual alleged perpetrator.

It shouldn’t surprise anybody that this type of manipulation has become more and more common in the conservative camps. Just look at the history of the term. William Ryan coined the phrase in his 1971 book Blaming the Victim. In this book, Ryan describes victim blaming as an ideology used to justify racism and social injustice against black people in the United States. At the time it came out, his book was considered "a devastating critique of the mindset that causes us to blame the poor for their poverty and the powerless for their powerlessness" That’s pretty standard stuff among the true Right Wing Republicans, except now it's not black people, it's gay people.

Entitlement is My Authority

There’s another angle to Santorum’s use of the Bully's Defense. At the heart of it is a sense of unassailable entitlement. 
Being white, being rich, being outwardly religious, especially Christian, being married with children are all factors which, in the conservative mind, gives them the right and the moral authority not merely to decide how the rest of the population should live but also the right to claim that any questioning or reaction or objection is an attempt to “villify” them. It’s like saying “How dare you question my authority in this matter! Don't you know who I am and what I represent?”

In Santorum’s mind, he is entitled to make as many outrageous, often bigoted or inflammatory remarks as he likes, based on nothing more than this imaginary authority.
Take a look at this quote from his book, It Takes a Family. In a way, it's a key to understanding what Santorum is really all about.

“The elementary error of relativism becomes clear when we look at multiculturalism. Sometime in the 1980s, universities began to champion the importance of “diversity” as a central educational value.”

Multiculturalism, according to Santorum, is a late invention by the liberal academics that infested universities in the 1980s. Like his phony intellectual argument against separation of Church and State (which was based on a lie), here too Santorum uses a misstatement to confuse the history. He seems to be muddling the education of multiculturalism with the concept itself. 

It is true that multicultural education was a reflection of the new awareness brought about by the civil rights movements in the 1960s. Black minorities, women’s rights and gay liberation movements all demanded an equal voice and representation in society and that education was a suitable place to start. Take the women’s rights movement as an example:

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the women's rights movement joined this push for education reform. Women's rights groups challenged inequities in employment and educational opportunities as well as income, identifying education as a primary contributing factor in institutionalized and systemic sexism. Feminist scholars and other women activists, like groups of color before them, insisted on curricula more inclusive of their histories and experiences. They challenged the discrepancy low number of female administrators relative to the percentage of female teachers.

While the historical roots of multicultural education date from the civil rights movements of various historically oppressed groups, the concept of cultural diversity and tolerance for it has been an integral part of the American scene, nearly from its inception. It is a globally shared idea and is based on mutual respect and a keen sense of equality. It is one of the best things that the United States has to offer the world.

Apparently Santorum did not fully understand the phrase in The Declaration of Independence “all men are created equal.” It doesn’t say that Christian values (or even family values) make any citizen a higher rank or more privileged. It doesn’t attempt to distinguish family values from any other set of values. That, it may be assumed, was a matter not for governments, but for the Church. This historical document is all inclusive and not, therefore a matter for Santorum or a religious minority to debate. In their wisdom, our founding fathers realized that there should be no national religion and that the country would be large enough to tolerate diversity. The original immigrants came to the New World to escape from intolerance and many modern-day immigrants still come for that reason. 

Oh Lord, Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood

Rick Santorum would like us to believe that he has been misrepresented by vicious axe-grinding gay activists and that his opinions are not really an attack on the gay minority. He claims that this is only a legal-political discussion and no offense was meant. He claims:  

“The problem is that some see this political policy difference as a personal assault.”

That line of defense would, perhaps, be more credible had, in other interviews, Santorum not gone further than merely expressing his policy views on gay marriage. He is also on record as saying that he did not have a problem with homosexuals, but "a problem with homosexual acts.” That’s like saying “I have nothing against black people except when they do those negro things” or “I have nothing against Jews except when they behave excessively Jewish.” 

See how easy it is to misunderstand him?

If an openly gay politician, charged with representing all of his or her constituents, announced that he was not really against heterosexuality but only against heterosexual acts, who wouldn’t take it personally? What is Santorum actually saying anyway? Is homosexuality acceptable as long as it remains theoretical and not practically unexpressed. Although Marcus Bachmann, wife husband of the former candidate, Michele Bachmann, made nearly the same statement, it is hardly a political policy difference, as Rick Santorum claims. And it is hardly a reassuring way of thinking for a wannabe president of a diverse and tolerant society.

Whether it’s by design or by ignorance, Santorum also has made some fairly indefensible leaps in logic when speaking about homosexuality. Here is a comment he made back in April 2003 with regards to Catholic priests sexually abusing children:

“In this case, what we’re talking about, basically, is priests who were having sexual relations with post-pubescent men. We’re not talking about priests with 3-year-olds, or 5-year-olds. We’re talking about a basic homosexual relationship. Which, again, according to the world view sense is a perfectly fine relationship as long as it’s consensual between people. If you view the world that way, and you say that’s fine, you would assume that you would see more of it.”

Most people I know wouldn't define a basic homosexual relationship as a sex act with same-sex minors. And Santorum's remarks are factually incorrect. The BBC has this article about investigators probing some 300 cases of alleged sexual abuse by Roman Catholic clergy in a Belgium scandal:

Peter Adriaenssens said cases of abuse, mostly involving minors, had been found in nearly every diocese, and 13 alleged victims had committed suicide. Two-thirds of victims were boys but 100 girls also suffered, he said.  

In a wide-ranging report released by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. researchers found that sexual orientation, specifically gayness, was not the cause of child sexual abuse by priests. 

The investigators labeled the majority of abusing priests 'generalists,' or indiscriminate offenders," as opposed to offenders with exclusive sexual preferences. "Very few of them were driven by a pathological attraction to a type of child and instead what we see is priest abusers are very much like sex offenders in the general population and many of them regress to the abuse of minors in certain time periods,"  [Karen Terry, the lead investigator from John Jay College]  said. "What we also see is opportunities for them to abuse really played a critical role in who they chose to abuse."

Santorum's attempt to blame all adult homosexual relationships for the sexual abuse of children and minors by Catholic priests is beyond simple ignorance. It is a foul deception and an insult to the victims.  It's really a mystery why he feels it is his personal duty to drag the whole country into his personal crusade against gay citizens. If Santorum has been vilified by gay activists that he has only himself to blame. 

It is the price he must pay for trying to equate the molestation of children to consensual sex between adults. It is the price he must pay for trying to play upon every long-feared stereotype against the gay community.

It’s not new. In the late 1970s, former Miss Oklahoma beauty pageant winner, and gay rights opponent, Anita Bryant, temporarily made a name for herself by issuing the same kinds of ill-conceived fearmonging arguments as Santorum.

"If gays are granted rights, next we'll have to give rights to prostitutes and to people who sleep with St. Bernards and to nail biters."

Like Bryant, Santorum has previously warned that allowing same-sex marriage could pave the way for the legitimacy of “man on dog” or “man on child” relationships. (Unlike Bryant, however, he seems to have recognized that prostitutes and nail-biters already have equal rights.) 

Santorum the Firm Believer
Additionally, when speaking about the then-pending U.S. Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas, which challenged a Texas sodomy law, Santorum said that sodomy laws properly exist to prevent acts which "undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family." 

The definition and enforcement of this law was always the major problem because- among other things- heterosexuals enjoy the privacy of their bedrooms as much as homosexuals do. Even though many of these laws target both heterosexual and homosexual acts, they are often selectively enforced only against homosexuals. This alone created constitutional problems. The definition of sodomy was also much too vague and the term “unnatural” left too much room for bias. In any case, by 2002, 36 of the 50 states had repealed all sodomy laws or had them overturned by court rulings. The remaining laws regarding the act were later invalidated by this 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision. 

In response to this decision, Santorum stated:

"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything."

So where are the nail-biting floozies with the St Bernards? In same interview he was quoted as saying:

It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn't exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution.

There is also no mention of any right to marriage but nobody is attempting to blame liberal judges for that. The reason for no mention of privacy in the Constiution, as Director of Public Policy for the American Liberty Foundation, Harry Browne observes, is simple:

The Constitution also doesn't include the right to buy products from foreigners, or to have children, or to read a book, or even to eat food to survive.

How could the Constitution have overlooked such basic human rights?

Because the Constitution isn't about what people can do; it's about what government can do.

The Constitution was created to spell out the limited rights or powers given to the federal government. And it was clearly understood that the government had no powers that weren't authorized in the Constitution.

Using the Nine and Tenth Amendments in the Bill of Rights, Browne makes a pretty good case against Santorum's nonsense about no provision on privacy. It's worth a look.
Thus, although the highest court in the nation has established legal policy, Santorum continues to argue the matter. Why shouldn’t any minority see that as a personal assault? 

Later when his remarks created more controversy, he back-peddled, saying, 

"I am a firm believer that all are equal under the Constitution. My comments should not be construed in any way as a statement on individual lifestyles."

You liberals are too being too sensitive, that's all. Well, that's what he'd like us to believe. 
However, as we have seen, he is not a believer in equality in any way, shape or form, no matter how he would like to spin it. 

One Easy Answer to Difficult Questions

There is another example of intellectual dishonesty that Santorum’s wife tries to promote in the clip. Contrary to what she would like to claim, objections to Santorum’s views are not at all limited to gay activists groups and not even limited to civil rights organizations. Of course there are plenty of those but there also been a bi-partisan “thumbs-down” for Santorum’s viewpoint. 

Former Governor of Vermont Howard Dean, objected to Santorum’s remarks saying "gay-bashing is not a legitimate public policy discussion; it is immoral" and called upon him to resign from his post as Republican Conference chairman. Similarly, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle commented that remarks from Santorum were "out of step with our country's respect for tolerance". 
And criticism to these remarks are not limited according to party lines. Republicans Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins Senators from Maine, Lincoln Chafee, Republicans governor and senator of Rhode Island and Oregon Senator, Gordon H. Smith have all voiced concern about his statements. Even John McCain of Arizona remarked, in his usual lily-livered style, that he thought Santorum,” may have been inartful in the way that he described it."

He does find some support with conservative Christian groups. Surprised? The group Concerned Women for America, stated that Santorum was "exactly right." Criticism, they claimed, was merely an attack by the "gay thought police". 

That inate bullying instinct suddenly re-surfaces in his supporters. Vice President for Communications at the conservative Family Research Council Genevieve Wood declared, "I think the Republican party would do well to follow Senator Santorum if they want to see pro-family voters show up on Election Day." This time they don't want to bully the gay minority. They are trying to bully the entire Republican party.

In the video clip we hear Rick Santorum speak with a righteous air. It must  be extremely impressive to the gullible. But the very things he says with such solemn authority are the very statements one has to consider even more carefully.

Santorum's views on same-sex marriage do not reflect the
national view.

“Marriage has existed before governments existed. Marriage has existed since the beginning of time. It’s how we were meant to be.”  

The argument that long-established traditions must be maintained was once made for slavery- which had also existed prior to governments and the beginning of time- and yet, wisdom and tolerance and a common sense of humanity demanded their abolition and have moved our leaders to take an enlightened examination of this institution. This excuse had kept women from voting, and it kept schools segregated. In fact, all of the great reforms to society by the civil rights movements have all been opposed using exactly the same argument. What Santorum represents isn't merely an attack on gay minorities- and that's bad enough- but on the civil rights reforms for all minorities that took place in the 1960s and before. 

“The reason governments include marriage in their laws is because we need to encourage what is best for mothers and father and children.” 

The question is, of course, who decides what is best and based on what criteria. Supported by his collection of well-organized and politically powerful Christian Right Wing groups, (whose narrow views seem to represent a smaller and smaller number of American voters) Candidate Rick Santorum, of course, can always fall back on the easy answer to those difficult questions that diversity presents to our society. 

"Elect me," he seems to be telling people," and I will take this decision- all of the difficult decisions- out of your hands, out of the hands of all citizens.. I will decide for everybody. It's what I have been called  to do.”

A Tiny Fringe

Finally, I will close this post with related news. 

Last week, Santorum received an endorsement from a collection of evangelist organizations after about 150 influential Christian conservative leaders met at a ranch outside of Houston, Texas. Organizers included Gary Bauer, president of American Values in Washington, and Donald Wildmon, founder of the American Family Association of Tupelo, Mississippi, Perkins said. Also attending was Richard Land, president of the Nashville, Tennessee-based Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.
A few days ago, a 6th Circuit Appellate panel in Cincinnati began hearing arguments last week from the president of the American Family Association of Michigan, Gary Glenn and three Michigan ministers, who are suing Eric Holder and the Department of Justice to overturn the expansion of federal hate crimes protections.
In February of 2011, Glenn and the ministers, filed a lawsuit to overturn a federal hate crime law, claiming the law was trying to promote "thought crimes" and “eradicate religious beliefs opposing the homosexual agenda.”

The law was passed passed by Congress in 2009 and protects a variety of minorities who have had reason to fear hate-motivated attacks. According to Jillian Redfeild of TalkingPointsMemo.com

It carves out criminal penalties for anyone who attempts to or “willfully causes bodily injury” to a person and “is motivated by prejudice based on the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of the victim.

Early in 2010, Gary Glenn spoke out on the anti-bullying bill before the state of Michigan legislature. He argued that

the sole purpose of this law is to criminalize the Bible and use the threat of federal prosecutions and long jail sentences to silence Christians from expressing their Biblically-based religious belief that homosexual conduct is a sin.

The bill, in fact was roundly condemned on all sides. According to some critics, because of pressure by conservative religious groups, the final law managed "to protect school bullies instead of those they victimize. It accomplishes this impressive feat by allowing students, teachers, and other school employees to claim that 'a sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction” justifies their harassment.'" As one source states:

In an emotional speech on the Senate floor, Democratic Leader Gretchen Whitmer accused her colleagues of creating a blueprint for consequence-free bullying. “As passed today,” said Whitmer, “bullying kids is okay if a student, parent, teacher or school employee can come up with a moral or religious reason for doing it.”

Evangelists, like Glenn, were equally dissatisfied. He called the bill an attack on religious liberty. It would seem that what he and so many other religious supporters of Rick Santorum really desire is a license to bully and a sanction to hate. He stated:

‘It just makes the point all the more that public policy in this state should not be driven or dictated by such a tiny fringe minority of society." 

The irony seems to have escaped him. 

_________________________________________
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Children Under Attack: A Culture of Unpunished Exploitation 1/2

by Nomad

“They've done it before and they'll do it again and when they do it -- seems that only the children weep. "― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Beyond Complacency and Dissimulation

Jerry Sandusky

The revelations in the Jerry Sandusky case have made the headlines recently, involving accusations of the sexual abuse of boys by a former coach of Penn State University and a director of Second Mile, a charity to benefit needy children. The Second Mile program said it cut ties with Sandusky in 2008.

Sandusky faces 40 criminal counts accusing him of sexually abusing eight boys beginning in the mid-1990s. Some of the assaults, say authorities, happened on Penn State's campus and were reported to administrators. Apparently however, the campus officials didn’t inform police agencies. The charges followed a nearly three-year grand jury investigation. Since the news broke, accusations from other victims have been added.

Sandusky has pleaded innocent to the charges, telling interviewers,

“I shouldn’t have showered with those kids...I could say that I have done some of those things...I have horsed around with kids. I have showered after workouts. I have hugged them and I have touched their legs without intent of sexual contact.”

The grand jury reports are detailed and explicit and painful to read. Victims’ charges have been supported by witnesses. For example, according to unconfirmed claims in the report, when a graduate student accidentally walked in on Sandusky having sex with a boy in the showers at the university, he immediately reported the incident to various authorities, including Joe Paterno, the head football coach. Later he repeated the story to Tim Curley, Penn State athletic director and Gary Schultz, the Senior Vice-President for Finance and Business. They assured him that steps were being taken.

Graham Spanier

Sandusky, according to the testimony of Curley, was asked to return his keys to the university facilities. Furthermore, authorities at Second Mile were informed of the incident. While the University President Graham Spanier was informed, apparently none of the people who knew thought it was important enough to inform the University police or any other police agency. That event occurred back in March of 2002.

And Schultz told the grand jury that he was aware of an earlier charge of a similar incident with Sandusky back in 1998. Both incidents involved minor boys in the showers with Sandusky behaving in a sexually inappropriate manner.

Besides that, there were other warning signs that authorities had ignored. The report suggests that Sandusky used his privileged status in the university sports department to impress and seduce his victims. Meanwhile, he also reportedly used his position at the charity to find his targeted children. The mother of Victim 6, upon discovering suspicious activity between her son and Sandusky, reported her complaints to University police. According to the grand jury report:

After a lengthy investigation by University Police Detective Ronald Shreffler, the investigation was closed after then Centre County District Attorney Ray Gricar decided there would be no criminal charges. Shreffler testified that he was told to close the investigation by the director of the campus police, Thomas Harmon. That investigation included a second child, B.K. also 11, who was subject to nearly identical treatment in the shower as Victim 6, according to Detective Schreffler.

It should also be added that the district attorney mentioned above later disappeared in 2005 under very mysterious circumstances.

One sportswriter, Mark Madden, brought out another rumor that had been circulating. The rumor suggested that accused Sandusky was also running some kind of child sex ring for rich donors to his Second Miles Foundation. Certainly the names of donors on the organization’s website are quickly being “cleansed” but that’s hardly unexpected given the circumstances. Without any real evidence, the rumor is fairly easy to dismiss. On the other hand, it would go a long way in explaining how such a sorry state of affairs could have continued for so long.

For me, the most tragic and inexcusable aspect of this shocking story is the fact that so many responsible people had an opportunity and a duty to investigate the matter and bring a halt to the sexual abuse, but did nothing. All of the warning signs were clearly there, reports were made, people were informed. Apparently, however, the immediate- in fact, the only- response was to turn away, to ignore and, later to cover up, what they had known; complacency and dissimulation crossing the border into complicity and a criminal failure to act.

As a society, we seem willing to accept a culture of the sexual exploitation of our children and to tolerant the fact that the guilty are allowed to go unpunished. In these two posts, I would like to examine this theme in detail with separate cases, involving children, sexual abuse and the corruption of justice.

Ghosts of Scandals Past

In the Sandusky case, the grounds for a conspiracy are unavoidable, it seems, but, even if one choose to dismiss that possibility, it is still difficult to explain how so many people could have allowed things to go so far, knowing that the probability that the whole matter would eventually come out.

After all, Graham Spanier's educational background in marriage and family counseling should have afforded him some kind of insight, or, at the very least, allowed him to understand the gravity of the charges.

Ronald Roskens

Furthermore, Spanier should have known how damaging even the accusation of sexual misconduct could have been since he had served as chancellor of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, from November 1991 to July 1995, not long after a similar scandal erupted involving Ronald Roskens, a former chancellor of the University of Nebraska- Omaha.

Roskens had abruptly been fired as president of the University of Nebraska, in a secret meeting of the state Board of Regents in July 1989. No public explanation was given for his removal. However, the rumored reason was, at least according to some reports, that evidence of his involvement in various orgies had been reported (incl. surveillance photos of nude young boys in Rosken's home). Gossip like that could be easily ignored had it not been Omaha.

Lawrence E. "Larry" King, Jr.

Omaha had earlier been the epicenter of the infamous- though now largely forgotten- Franklin Credit Union scandal. On November 4, 1988, the Franklin Credit Union was raided and closed by the FBI and the IRS. Thirty-nine million dollars was missing. Franklin Credit Union had been founded back in 1968 in a minority neighborhood in Omaha, Nebraska. Its primary purpose was to provide loans to minorities. In August, 1970, Lawrence E. "Larry" King, Jr., (not to be confused with the former CNN talk show host) was fast-rising "star" in the Republican party, became manager and principle executive.

Shortly thereafter, strange fantastic reports began to circulate concerning pornography, videotapes, and photographs which had been confiscated from the Franklin Credit Union by the FBI. In no time at all, the dam broke, and other allegations began to flood in. These allegations, more detailed and serious, involved drugs, sexual misconduct involving children, pornography- even satanic ritualized activity. Things became surreal when some eighty children came forward with allegations against prominent individuals in the Omaha community. Big-wigs trembled in penthouses and dimly-lit offices. Late night phone calls by nervous-sounding voices. Even top names in the local law enforcement and the local branch of the FBI were mentioned as participants.

Incidentally, another famous name has recently surfaced in regards to this scandal. (Admittedly, the connection is interesting and suggestive but in fact, probably leads nowhere. Other websites have attempted to make some link nevertheless.) That man is the former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain. Cain had served as chairman of the Omaha branch of the Kansas City Federal Reserve and was connected in a peripheral way to Lawrence King. (Nothing directly connected however.) Cain and a group of investors actually had purchased the ailing Godfather's franchise from Pillsbury which had formerly been owned by William “Willy” Theisen. Theisen was a name that came up in the investigation of Franklin Credit.
(In fact, Theisen sold the company to Pillsbury in the mid-1980s and stepped down from actively managing the company. In 1986, Pillsbury named Herman Cain CEO and President of the brand.) 

In his autobiography, This is Herman Cain!, Cain writes that in September 1988, “we closed on a leveraged buyout and we are now the heavily in debt owners of Godfather’s Pizza, Inc,” with help from CitiBank. Whether there were any financial arrangements made through Franklin Credit Union is never mentioned. 

Another person reportedly involved in the scandal was Harold W. Andersen, the owner of the Omaha World-Herald, was also on the Board of Directors for Omaha branch of the Kansas City Federal Reserve between 1973-1979. (We shall hear more about this man later.)

Apparently, Ronald Roskens was also implicated in this scandal. According to an investigator in the Franklin Credit Union Sex Scandal, Gary Caradori's daily notes for Feb. 19, 1989:

I was informed that Roskins [sic) was terminated by the state because of sexual activities reported to the Regents and verified by them. Mr. Roskins was reported to have had young men at his residence for sexual encounters. As part of the separation from the state, he had to move out of the state-owned house because of the liability to the state if some of this sexual behavior was "illegal." Upon Roskins vacating the house, he was provided a house by Joe Seacrist [sic) of the Lincoln Journal-Star.

Gary Caradori

If you’d like to ask what Caradori meant by “illegal,” I’m afraid you won’t be able to. On July 11, 1990, Gary Caradori was killed along with his 6-year old son in the crash of his small plane, after a mid-air explosion, the cause of which was never discovered. It is known that Caradori had met with a key witness in the case, had interviewed him and had been given highly incriminating photographic evidence. (According to one source, a deputy sheriff first at the crash site said there was child pornography scattered all over the farmer’s field.) 

Jed Killian, writing for Deadline Live explains in more detail.

As author Nick Bryant notes, Caradori got incriminating photos from Nelson and flew back with them. Writes Bryant: “The pictures showed who the adults were and who the kids were. I (Nelson) gathered that the purpose was blackmail and it was political. The contents of the pictures, and the events surrounding them, would be an instant end to a politician’s career.” That evidence was allegedly taken away by persons unknown, and never seen again.

Admittedly this charge from Caradori against Roskens is only hearsay and not proof of anything, but, in the Roskens affair, we continually see this pattern repeated- of ignoring the serious charges and pushing the accused down the conveyor belt of his career. But why? Why not allow justice to take its course? The reasons would soon become clear.

New York Times Article

On May 19, 1989, Lawrence King was indicted by a Federal grand jury. He was later tried and convicted of fraud and income tax evasion directly related to the Franklin Credit Union matter. Eventually he served his time and was released in 2001. (He reportedly lives the suburbs of the nation’s capital.) No, to answer your question, he never served prison time for the sex abuse charges, or for prostituting children, or for exhortation.

He never faced any of the more horrendous allegations in court. Those charges were summarily dismissed when one of the key witnesses recanted. It was later revealed that that witness had been pressured by threats of long jail time if he proceeded. And that was not an idle threat at all.

When it came to the Franklin Credit Union Scandal, simply telling the truth was a dangerous enterprise. As the witnesses were soon to find out, it was also a punishable offense.

According to sources, Alisha Owen, who had testified in March of 1990 before a grand jury about her own victimization at the age of 14, painfully recounted how she was repeatedly and various occasions raped by the Omaha Chief of Police, Robert Wadman. She also gave testimony about many other King activities, including being transported to parties where she was pimped the wealthy and powerful elite. This included various important politicians, on both a state and national level.

The result? She was later convicted of first offense perjury in 1991 and was sentenced on August 8, 1991, to nine to 27 years in prison. During her prison term, she was in solitary confinement for a period longer than any female citizen in the history of the State of Nebraska.

Paul Bonacci

A careful investigation of the proceedings reveals numerous problems with the perjury cases against Owen.

Another victim, Paul Bonacci said he had been active in the operation of the satanic cult/sex/drug ring network since 6 years of age. Paul Bonacci first reported his abuse by Larry King, Alan Baer and others in 1986, to the Omaha Police Department, a full two years before the Franklin Credit Union case had broke. (Decide for yourself, the videotaped interviews conducted by investigators at that time are online.) Not long after the Franklin case became public in 1989, Paul Bonacci was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison for briefly touching a young boy on the outside of his pants. (Doctors have stated that he suffers from mental deterioration caused by years of abuse.)

In all, after a few other victim/witnesses were treated similarly, the seventy-six other children recanted their reports of sexual abuse in the Franklin matter. Despite credible witness/victims providing verifiable details about the activities, the grand jury threw out the child sex abuse charges and dismissed the claims as a hoax.

But then, perhaps it shouldn’t really surprise anybody that justice was denied. The extent of the scandal and who may have been involved comes from an unauthorized biography.

Way back in 1985, a young girl, Eulice (Lisa) Washington, was the center of an investigation by Andrea L. Carener, of the Nebraska Department of Social Services. The investigation was instigated because Lisa and her sister Tracey continually ran away from their foster parents, Jarrett and Barbara Webb. Initially reluctant to disclose information for fear of being further punished, the two girls eventually recounted a remarkable story, later backed up by other children who had been fostered out to the Webbs...

Lisa, supported by her sister, detailed a massive child sex, homosexual, and pornography industry, run in Nebraska by Larry King. She described how she was regularly taken to Washington by plane, with other youths, to attend parties hosted by King and involving many prominent people, including businessmen and politicians. Lisa specifically named George Bush as being in attendance on at least two separate occasions.

George H.W. Bush

According to her allegations, she attended a party in Chicago with King and several male youths in September or October 1984.. She indicated George H.W. Bush was present at this party. (Indeed, according to the Chicago Tribune of October 31, 1984, Bush was in Illinois campaigning for congressional candidates at the end of October.) Lisa Washington witnessed Bush give money to King in exchange for “access” to a black nineteen-year-old named Brent. This testimony was given well before the Franklin Credit Union Scandal began. It was, however, later corroborated by another witness, Paul Bonacci, during the sex scandal investigation, who claimed to have witnessed sex between the vice-president and the young man.

When a retired United States Federal Bureau of Investigation Special Agent In Charge and head of the Los Angeles FBI, Ted Gunderson, interviewed Boncacci, the stories grew even more detailed and horrifying.

According to Bonacci, many of the child victims were kidnapped off the streets. He gave precise details about the operation in interview with the investigator.

Bonacci told me that when he was 10 to 14 years old, he was used as a decoy in malls, parks, etc., to lure other children his age near an automobile so the adult members could grab the victims and force them into the car. Paul and another youth would then jump on the victims and place a chloroform cloth over their mouth and nose. The victims would be taken to a secluded location and later auctioned off for up to $50,000.00 in Las Vegas, Nevada or Toronto, Canada. Bonacci advised me that the auction location in Nevada is approximately 50 miles north of Las Vegas on an air strip and that he saw children auctioned off, then placed in unmarked airplanes operated by foreigners with accents wearing turbans. Other children who were auctioned off were placed in campers after being drugged to ensure that they would be asleep in the event that the camper was stopped by the police.

And the operation apparently had the backing of US goverment agency officials.

Bonacci also told Gunderson that DEA (Drug Enforcement Agency) airplanes were used to transport children who had been abducted into these pedophile rings from one place to another. The children were always made available to serve their elite sponsor's twisted appetites.

According to the information gleaned from Bonnaci, the conspiracy went to the top levels of government.

Most important was this revelation by Bonacci to Gunderson, who later reported, "Paul and other children told about youngsters, both male and female, being taken from orphanages, foster-homes, and Boys Town in Omaha, Nebraska, driven to Sioux City, Iowa (184 miles), and then flown to Washington, D.C. for sex orgy parties with dignitaries, congressmen, and high level public officials at Larry King's Embassy Row condominium. Larry King rented this condominium for $5,000.00 per month while earning a salary of only $17,000 per year." This bears repeating: Foster homes, Boy's Town, and orphanages, were being used to procure a virtually unlimited supply of children for elite controlled, organized, satanic pedophile rings.

Washington Times article

The Franklin Credit Union merged with another sex scandal which rocked Washington.

On the morning of June 29, 1989, The Washington Times headlined: "Homosexual Prostitution Probe Ensnares VIPs with Reagan, Bush." The Times continued: "A homosexual prostitution ring is under investigation by Federal and District authorities and includes among its clients key officials of the Reagan and Bush administrations, military officers, congressional aides and U.S. and foreign businessmen with close ties to Washington's political elite.'' Craig Spence, a high ranking Republican operative, was highlighted as the 'call boy' power broker behind the scenes. Paul Bonacci swore he had been one of the children who had toured the White House on several of those after hour 'call boy' tours. To back up his claim, Bonacci drew a map/sketch that depicted a private area of the White House that was deemed to be accurate by those in the know. Larry King and Craig Spence were working the "White House pedophile circuit" together.

Like so many of these things, the news broke and then seemingly faded away without a whimper, with hardly a twitch in the collective memory of most Americans. It was far easier not to think about the possibility that it was true. Admittedly it was a distasteful subject for most people. It was far easier to dismiss the whole thing without much consideration. Perhaps, despite all the evidence, people simply refused to believe that there were actually people this evil roaming the halls of government. (We have seen a similiar reaction regarding the fake pregnancy allegations against Sarah Palin. A strange unwillingness to look into the issue.)

Omaha World Herald article

The Omaha World-Herald, owned by one of the men implicated in the scandal, was particularly aggressive in portraying the entire incident as a hoax.

But not everyone dismissed the allegations nor accepted the orchestrated “smearing” of the victims/witnesses and investigators. Perversely, despite the court’s ruling that the Franklin Credit Union child sex ring was merely a “hoax,” Bonacci was awarded $1 million dollars in a lawsuit against King. (Bonacci has never received a penny of the court ordered one million dollars awarded to him.) The federal court obviously believed Bonacci’s testimony in spite of declaring that there was no truth in the allegations and incarcerating other victims for testifying.

And so the case was closed, putting to rest one of the most grievous examples of a miscarriage of justice in US legal history.

Second Strike

As far as Ronald Roskens, the sordid story was only just beginning.

Strangely enough, within a year after Roskens being dismissed from the University, President George H.W. Bush selected Roskens to head the Agency of International Development. (For a map of the Roskens’ connections, Try this link ) His promotion is definitely unusual because such an important government position would no doubt have involved a great deal of vetting to prevent such things as blackmail or, as in the events above, scandal. In the past the agency had provided millions of dollars in U.S. goods and services to foreign governments around the world so the possibility of corruption through extortion should have set off alarm bells. (Some have claimed the agency was nothing more than a CIA front- not such an easy allegation to dismiss as we soon see.)

And yet, nobody in the Bush administration seems to have taken any notice of Roskens dubious past. If they did, it didn’t seem to bother them at all. It didn’t take very long to see problems with Roskens however.

As Eric Konigsberg, writer for The New Yorker, the New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, pointed out back in June, 1992

If he couldn't run a university, why should he be entrusted with a $7.5 billion government agency? Probably because his sponsor was Dick Herman, a Republican National Committeeman from Nebraska whose South Bay Beer Distributors company in Los Angeles, one of the largest Anheuser Busch distributors in the country, has listed James Baker and Bob Strauss as shareholders.

Unfortunately, failure didn't exactly chasten Roskens. At AID, he promptly ushered in friends like Katherine Morgan, his new head of the foreign aid policy office, whose resume included no work in government or international development, but stints as a nun, patent lawyer, and dean of college admissions. And then there was "consultant" Kermit Hansen, a regent at the University of Nebraska.

But the director has also had some help from the White House. To White House personnel staffer Tom Kranz, AID was a safe and profitable place to dump Sally Montgomery, a friend and former stewardess; there, she earns $90,000 a year as a deputy assistant administrator.

While there's not always direct correlation between bad appointees and bad governance, under Roskens' leadership AID seemed to specialize less in international development than in the development of personal wealth. Since Roskens appointment, an impressive number of AID contractors and administrators have been sent to prison for rigging contracts, accepting bribes, and padding expense accounts. Roskens himself was forced to pay back more than $3,000 from an AID subcontractor for violation of ethical standards. And on three recent occasions, the federal government has required Roskens to reimburse private organizations, two of which are AID contractors, for honoraria or travel expenses he accepted illegally.

By October of 1992, after a year long investigation, Congressman John Conyers, Jr., chairman of Legislation and National Security Subcommittee of the Committee on Government Operations, confirmed that AID Administrator Roskens had abused his public office for private gain. While none of the charges in the investigation involved sexual abuse, they did outline a pattern of financial and ethical misconduct. In his letter to the Speaker, Conyers states:

Although the AID Inspector General investigated and referred this same misconduct, the Justice Department declined to prosecute Dr. Roskens on charges of conflict of interest, illegal gratuity, and dual compensation. And when senior AID officials referred the Inspector General's findings to the White House, Presidential Counsel C. Boyden Gray only criticized two instances in which the Administrator inadvertently and unknowingly failed to comply with applicable standards of conduct, and demanded repayments from Dr. Roskens. No other disciplinary action was taken against the AID Administrator, although his domestic travel schedule fell dramatically.

A Textbook Example

In fact, Roskens, the University of Nebraska and AID had already had an on-going relationship even before President Bush, Sr. made this appointment. That relationship might go a long way in explaining how this unusual appointment occurred. While chancellor at University of Nebraska, Roskens had negotiated an exchange program with Kabul University in Afghanistan, and oversaw development of the center for Afghanistan studies.

Under an AID grant to the University of Nebraska-Omaha and its Center, the agency spent $51 million on the university education program in Afghanistan from 1984 to 1994. One part of that grant involved the publishing of textbooks in the dominant Afghan languages of Dari and Pashtu. In an effort to fight communism, and specifically the Soviet occupation, the textbooks were filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to spur resistance.

President Reagan meets with Afghan "Freedom Fighters"

It must have sounded like a good idea at the time, the indoctrination of children to generate Islamic militancy.

The Mujahideen, Afghanistan's freedom fighters, used the classroom to prepare children to fight the Soviet empire. The Russians are long gone but the textbooks are not. The Mujahideen had wanted to prepare the next generation of Afghans to fight the enemy, so pupils learned the proper clips for a Kalashnikov rifle, the weight of bombs needed to flatten a house, and how to calculate the speed of bullets. Even the girls learn it.

According to the Washington Post

During that time of Soviet occupation, regional military leaders in Afghanistan helped the U.S. smuggle books into the country. They demanded that the primers contain anti-Soviet passages. Children were taught to count with illustrations showing tanks, missiles and land mines, agency officials said. They acknowledged that at the time it also suited U.S. interests to stoke hatred of foreign invaders...

AID dropped funding of Afghan programs in 1994. But the textbooks continued to circulate in various versions, even after the Taliban seized power in 1996.

Officials said private humanitarian groups paid for continued reprintings during the Taliban years. Today, the books remain widely available in schools and shops, to the chagrin of international aid workers.

“The pictures [in] the texts are horrendous to school students, but the texts are even much worse,” said Ahmad Fahim Hakim, an Afghan educator who is a program coordinator for Cooperation for Peace and Unity, a Pakistan-based nonprofit.

An aid worker in the region reviewed an unrevised 100-page book and counted 43 pages containing violent images or passages.

According to The Genesis of Global Jihad in Afghanistan, quoted by Pervez Hoodbhoy, Pakistani nuclear physicist, essayist and political-defence analyst.

The program ended in 1994 but the books continued to circulate: ‘US-sponsored textbooks, which exhort Afghan children to pluck out the eyes of their enemies and cut off their legs, are still widely available in Afghanistan and Pakistan, some in their original form.

Another Twist of the Tale

As repulsive as this saga is, following it to its logical conclusion requires a very strong stomach.

After the invasion of Afghanistan of 2002, news reports about the militant textbooks made headlines. The headlines, however, failed to mention the actual source of the books. In response to this news, George W. Bush announced in a radio address that 10 million U.S.-supplied books would be shipped to Afghan schools would teach “respect for human dignity, instead of indoctrinating students with fanaticism and bigotry.”

The first lady stood alongside Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai on Jan. 29 to announce that AID would give the University of Nebraska at Omaha $6.5 million to provide textbooks and teacher training kits.

Thus the same people who printed the original textbooks which preached religiously-inspired violence to children would now be the same people who would print books teaching secular respect for human dignity.

Most remarkably, at the time, the mainstream media were nearly completely fooled. (One notable exception was the Washington Post.) For example, Elizabeth Neuffer in the Boston Globe, March 17, 2002, wrote in an article about the obstacles to education in Afghanistan, a year after the US invasion:

The obstacles to accomplishing that goal are enormous. What few schools impoverished Afghanistan once had – about 2,000 – are now all virtually destroyed, pummeled by gunfire or turned into refugee camps. Teachers here have not been paid for months, even years. Those schoolbooks that still exist are pro-Taliban screeds and deemed unusable.

By not mentioning the source of the textbooks, Neuffer gives the impression that the books were written by the Tablian- or some other militant Islamic organization- and not the University of Nebraska, under the supervision of the US government.

The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), March 25, 2002, gives an even more misleading impression:

“Afghan children ran, skipped and dawdled to their classrooms like pupils everywhere yesterday for the start of a new school year — with girls and women teachers back in class and subjects like math replacing the Islamic dogma of the Taliban.

“In a symbolic break from a war-scarred past, children opened new textbooks written by Afghan scholars based at universities in the US.

“There are even pictures of people — images banned by the fundamentalist Taliban.”

Closer to home, the Omaha World-Herald declared that,

“Afghanistan stands at least a chance of hauling a modern, healthy society up out of the ashes of war and oppression,” partly because University of Nebraska at Omaha “officials and staffers” will be “cranking up their presses in neighboring Pakistan” to churn out schoolbooks, all funded by “a $ 6.5 million grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development [AID].”

That promotional editorial is, at least explainable. The former publisher and Chief Executive Officer of the Omaha World-Herald, Harold W. Andersen, was also the Chairman of the Board of Trustees for the University of Nebraska Foundation. (It’s possible he even wrote the article but I cannot verify that.)

It is clear that Andersen also had connections to the Franklin Credit Union. He had headed a Franklin volunteer advisory board and back in 1986, led Franklin's building fund drive with $600,000 to pay for a renovation of the Franklin Credit Union. However, as one source tells us:

These money-raising efforts lost some of their luster in 1989, when it was revealed that the money was used to build an addition to the credit union, the most prominent feature of which was a bedroom. The retreat was equipped with "a brass bed, a fluffy white comforter, a stereo and a television," according to former Franklin employee Noel Seltzer, quoted in the March 5, 1989 Lincoln Journal. Others said King used it for afternoon trysts with his homosexual lovers.

Former Nebraska State Senator John DeCamp, author of the book The Franklin Cover-up, specifically implicated Harold Andersen as one of the top-five perpetrators in the child sex scandal. Those claims were based on hours of interviews with victims.

Be that as it may, what about Ronald Roskens, you ask? On November 18 1992, after only two and a half years at the agency, he became one of the first Bush agency chiefs to announce his resignation. Under a cloud of shameful scandal? I hear you asking. No. Not one little bit. More of a lateral move. Despite what others might consider a less than auspicious career, Roskens was apparently on the path to greater success.

In 1993, Roskens became president and chief executive officer of Action International, a think tank comprised of 35 former heads of state and other policy leaders. Just two years later, the Omaha, Nebraska, resident was named honorary consul general of Japan and was elected to the board of the Friends of the World Food Programme, a United Nations agency headquartered in Rome, Italy.

Additionally Roskens is listed in the “Who’s Who in America,” “Leaders of the English Speaking World,” and “Community Leaders of America.” Additionally Roskens has also received twelve Honorary Degrees from institutions of higher education around the world.

Interestingly- given the rumors in his past, Roskens was also honored with an induction in DeMolay Hall of Fame on June 25, 1993. According to its website, Related to the Freemasons, the DeMolay organization is:

dedicated to preparing young men to lead successful, happy, and productive lives. Basing its approach on timeless principles and practical, hands-on experience, DeMolay opens doors for young men aged 12 to 21 by developing the civic awareness, personal responsibility and leadership skills so vitally needed in society today. DeMolay combines this serious mission with a fun approach that builds important bonds of friendship among members in more than 1,000 chapters worldwide.

That is not to imply that this organization has anything to hide or that it has done anything wrong. Over the years, it has apparently accomplished a lot of good things to help young people rise out of their less-than-promising backgrounds. However, the same could be said for Sandusky’s Second Mile, which had also achieved many good things. It is all the more unfortunate that a single individual has been allowed to undo all that work and close the doors for any further assistance. As John Kennedy once said, “A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers.” The same is also true for organizations, such as DeMolay.

The story of Ronald Roskens is one of a systematic failure; namely, a consistent inexplicable tendency by authorities to reward improper conduct and poor performance. Governments, universities and corporations seem to expend greater energy attempting to cover pernicious wrong-doing rather than trying to remove the source and prevent its recurrence. Brushing it under the carpet and hoping the problem is never discovered seems to be the only reaction. In the Roskens affair, keeping lids on and brushing things under the carpet has been remarkably distressingly successful.

But who suffers most? Clearly it’s the children. It’s the ones who are the most defenseless.

For at the end of the day, with the help of men like Roskens, we, as a nation, have helped to create a whole generation of anti-imperialist Islamic jihadist with school textbooks filled with hateful propaganda. We then armed their older brothers and fathers and uncles to fight our Cold War enemies without the slightest thought to the future. It never seemed to occur to anybody that these children, the children we indoctrinated with hatred and bitterness would someday grow up, that they would not simply disappear once they had served our short-term needs.
And when that did happen, when it was our turn to face their grownup seething hatred, what was our solution?
It was to exterminate them.

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