So much for protecting kids... it is always about adults...

and what they MUST have, not matter what... imo..(and why am I not surprised it's Massachussetts?)
Maybe he was taken out of context but..., like Mel Gibson "sometimes I wonder..."

Dem pledges: I'll 'rip apart' child-rape victims on stand
'I'm going to make sure rest of their life is ruined'

Posted: June 25, 2008
9:15 pm Eastern

Rep. James Fagan, D-Taunton, Mass. (courtesy Boston Herald)

Massachusetts politician and defense attorney Rep. James Fagan is under intense public scrutiny after he promised to "rip apart" child victims of rape who testify if the state imposes strict sentences for sex offenders.

Fagan, a Democrat, made his controversial remarks on the state House floor, Fox News reported.

"I'm gonna rip them apart," Fagan said of child victims. "I'm going to make sure that the rest of their life is ruined, that when they're 8 years old, they throw up; when they're 12 years old, they won't sleep; when they're 19 years old, they'll have nightmares and they'll never have a relationship with anybody."

As a defense attorney, Fagan said he would prevent accused child sex offenders from experiencing a "mandatory sentence of those draconian proportions."

According to the report, his statements angered both colleagues and activists.

"I thought his comments were over the top and unnecessary," said Bradley Jones, Massachusetts House minority leader. "I appreciate that he's a defense attorney, and felt he had a point to make, but I think it was unnecessary. It was excessive."

Mark Lunsford, a Florida father who lost his 9-year-old daughter after she was kidnapped, wrapped in a trash bag and buried alive by a sex offender in 2005, said he was shocked by Fagan's remarks. He told the Boston Herald that Fagan should have more respect for the rights of sexually abused children.

"Why doesn't he figure out a way to defend that child and put these kind of people away instead of trying to figure ways for defense attorneys to get around Jessica's Law?" Lunsford asked. "These are very serious crimes that nobody wants to take serious. What about the rights of these children?"

The bill Fagan was so strongly opposed to designates mandatory minimum sentences of 10 to 15 years for crimes against children. It has passed in the House and made its way to the Senate.

According to Fox News, law professor Phyllis Goldfarb said Fagan comments were somewhat truthful in that they describe a defense attorney's obligation to find holes in the prosecutor's case when a person accused of sexually abusing a child faces mandatory sentencing.

"It is fundamentally true … if the proof is coming almost exclusively through a child witness you may have to find a way to test it," Goldfarb said. "That's the attorney-client obligation there."

Goldfarb said Fagan's language might have been dramatic, but she said he was just describing his profession.

"You do have to challenge a witness," she told Fox News. "Some people find ways of doing that that are loyal to their role as defense attorneys – testing the proof (in ways) that aren't abusive to a witness, but it's very hard. And I think being put in that hard position is what he seems to be railing against here, using language that's probably a little bit hyperbolic."

According to Boston Herald reports, Lunsford plans to appear before the Massachusetts Senate to convince lawmakers to incorporate fixed prison sentences into the state's final version of Jessica's Law.

Totally despicable!

i just have to say, what if a person is innocent and the charge is false, shouldnt a person have the right of a defense.. or are all people accused "guilty".

i am not defending him, i am just saying, what if you were charged with that type of crime. and you didnt do it.

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I just post the stories, for interest.. for everyone

Lord, what fools these mortals be!
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene ii

Voltaire said: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

H.L.Mencken wrote:"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. Albert Einstein

Seriously, Merc? You are defending a defense attorneys right to terrorize any potential RAPE survivor in a court room setting. Do you know how difficult it is to get ADULT RAPE survivors to testify against their tormentor(s)? I know you will pull a couple stories about people who've been falsely accused, and it is sad for them. However, many, many more people get away with rape because their victims are terrified of court room antics like this. Yes, everyone has the right to defend themselves, but I believe that does not include giving a defense attorney the right to resort to destroying a person in order to destroy their accusation.

"It truly is the one commonality that every designation of humans you can think of has, there's at least one asshole."
--Me

I agree, mercurior.....When a prosecutor AND a defense attorney AND a judge are all winking at each other in agreement, justice is fucked.....unless one's concept of "justice" is merely getting your own way every single time. Un-diplomatic as that guy's remarks are, an advocate should be just that.

Welll...duh. Of course everyone is innocent until proven guilty, even if they're caught with a child on their dick, for some crazy reason. Even people with the corpses of their children found in their homes get trials.
I don't think that's the point of this article. From what I understand, this guy basically said "I will destroy any child rape survivor/accuser on the stand if they increase penalties for child rapists" WTF?

Do you know how difficult it is to get ADULT RAPE survivors to testify against their tormentor(s)? (the answer is Very difficult). I know you will pull a couple stories about people who've been falsely accused, I know such stories and it is sad for them. However, many, many more people get away with rape because their victims are terrified of court room antics like this, so the rapists never even get charged. Yes, everyone has the right to defend themselves, but I believe that does not include giving a defense attorney the right to resort to destroying a person in order to destroy their accusation.

"It truly is the one commonality that every designation of humans you can think of has, there's at least one asshole."
--Me

so its ok for 100 innocent men to go to jail have their lives destroyed, to send to prison 1.. an advocate, has to fight for you, thats the greatest right a person has.

is there no burden of proof, needed in some cases. do you know how many lives have been destroyed by false allegations, an advocate has to fight for you.. we have a course case here, thrown out because the new laws say no anonymous witnesses, can be used.. a person is entitled to face thier accuser..


he shouldnt have said it how he did.. but i would want my advocate to fight for me with as much passion as he did.. wouldnt you..????

i only have one site to put....

http://falserapesociety.blogspot.com/

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I just post the stories, for interest.. for everyone

Lord, what fools these mortals be!
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene ii

Voltaire said: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

H.L.Mencken wrote:"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. Albert Einstein

mercurior is correct. The Supreme Court yesterday ruled the death penalty unconstitutional for child rape, and one of their bases for so ruling was the prevalence of false claims in these cases. Among other things the court said: "There are . . . serious systemic concerns in prosecuting the crime of child rape that are relevant to the constitutionality of making it a capital offense. The problem of unreliable, induced, and even imagined child testimony means there is a 'special risk of wrongful execution' in some child rape cases . . . ." For all rapes, 9 to closer to 50 percent of all claims are false. Check out my Web site: http://falserapesociety.blogspot.com/

This isn't about whether or not people who've been accused of child rape deserve a defense. NO ONE IS ARUGING THAT. Even a person with the raped corpses of children stacked like cord wood in a locked bedroom that they have the only key to gets a defense.

So, with that please explain how this defense attorneys threat is reasonable? Remember, he essentially said "If you (state legislature) increase penalties for child rapists to 10-15 years, I will do everything within my power to destroy any child accuser" Everyone is entitled to a defense...within reason and within the law. I would not want my defense attorney to make up false evidence, encourage witnesses to lie, bring up parts of my life that have no bearing on a case, or destroy the life of another person.

The burden of proof on an accuser...Innocent until PROVEN guilty. People who have been raped and want to press charges have to go through an intrusive physical exam to find hairs, fibers, bodily fluids and injuries. They then have to be interviewed by the police, and press charges. When that happens, they then have to go to court, face their tormentor, and deal with the questions from the defense which often times includes bringing up their dress, manner of acting, and past sexual activity that has no bearing on the case at hand. Why? To protect the defendant.

WAY MORE PEOPLE GET AWAY WITH RAPE than get imprisoned under false accusations. If you want to play the story game. then fine. There was a huge scandal here recently because several years ago a blind woman was raped at knife point for a couple hours. She did everything right, pressed charges, got a rape kit done. The police investigated, found semen stains, blood, injuries and evidence of forced entry. However, one of the investigators who was interviewing her a couple weeks later decided he didn't like that she was unable to remember some details AND her lack of desire to reinact the rape. He charged her with lying to a police officer, she went to jail for a few days. During the resultant investigation, the blue curtain was pulled and the officers backed each other up. The rapist only got charged with this rape several years later, while he was in prison for RAPING someone else, after the police had finished their investigation of the survivor AND a journalist had taken up her cause to bring it to the public eye. Please, show me where the justice is there?

You seem to firmly believe that anyone can walk into a police department, say "So and so raped me", and the cops will just roll up to the accused's home and drag them off to assrape prison. That is so not the case it would be laughable if it weren't so awful.

"It truly is the one commonality that every designation of humans you can think of has, there's at least one asshole."
--Me

No one is arguing a person's right to a fair trial. But fair goes both ways, doesn't it? Yes it does, both sides have to act within the law to prove their cases.

This attorney threatened the state with "If you increase penalties for child rapists, I WILL destroy the lives of the child accusers" There was no mention of false accusations or anything like that. Just "If you increase these penalties, I will destroy lives whether or not the accusations are truthful". That is vastly different from "I will do everything in my power to defend my client". And that is not right.

You seem to believe that anyone can walk into a police department and say "So and so raped me" and the police will strap on their guns, storm the accused's home and drag them off to assrape jail without a second thought. This is so wrong it's not even funny.

"Innocent until proven guilty" means the burden of proof is on the accuser, NOT the accused.

If you want to play the "I've got a story" game, then here goes...
Several years ago a woman in my town was raped in her home at knife point for several hours. She was blind. When the rapist left, she called the police, submitted to a rape kit (an intrusive physical examination) and police search of her home. They found signs of forced entry, semen, blood, and other injuries consistant with forced sexual intercourse. She said she believed she knew who the rapist was because she recognized his voice and cologne.
A couple weeks later an investigator stopped by and questioned her. The investigator became frustrated when the women couldn't remember some details of her story, and refused to reinact the rape with the officer. As a result, she was charged with lying to the police, her rape case was closed, and a case against her was opened. In the resultant investigation, the blue curtains closed and the officers backed each other up. She ended up being arrested for lying to the police and spent a few days in jail. Her rapist was still free.
Years later, her cause was taken up by a local journalist and the entire case was reopened. As a result, it was found that yes, the police department did act together to destroy this woman, and never did anything about the original case. The DNA evidence was finally used to prove that the man she thought raped her for several hours, actually did. And where did they find the man who raped her? In prison, for another rape he'd committed a year after raping her.

You want more? I've got a million of them, each more horrifying than the next.

"It truly is the one commonality that every designation of humans you can think of has, there's at least one asshole."
--Me

Sorry, another can of worms it seems...
This is a problem that can cut both ways...

I have heard the damage done by false accusations. A judge a couple of years back put two teen girls in prison for half a day just to make them think about what they had done (the guy would NEVER be able to have a normal life after that.)

And, of course, false accusations makes all the others suspect, but this seems to be normal human behaviour.

Sorry if I upset people, but when you have a genuine victim, this struck me as the old 'blame the victim' routine.

my point was

he shouldnt have said it how he did.. but i would want my advocate to fight for me with as much passion as he did.. wouldnt you..????

so to repeat myself.. he said it wrong, but the passion is needed in someone fighting for your life, and liberty, and justice..

thats all i said..

HE SAID IT WRONG, HE SHOULDNT HAVE SAID IT LIKE HE DID.. but everyone deserves a right to have a passionate advocate.. please read what i said,

if you look at my first post.. you will see what i said.. i would rather have a passionate defender than an apathetic one.. wouldnt you

*********************************************************************************************************************************
I just post the stories, for interest.. for everyone

Lord, what fools these mortals be!
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene ii

Voltaire said: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

H.L.Mencken wrote:"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. Albert Einstein

mercurior Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> > i am not defending him, i am just saying, what if
> you were charged with that type of crime. and you
> didnt do it.

We had a male client who had gone through a very contentious divorce. His daughter wanted to get back at him and accused him of molesting her. The wife knew it wasn't true, but she helped the prosecution by lying about it. Fortunately, our client was acquitted when it was proven the child's testimony was false. This guy got lucky, but I'm sure there are those that don't. I do think people that honestly are sex offenders should be punished, but it needs to be proven true.

what he said was wrong, but his passion was needed..

if its without doubt, then throw the book at them.. castrate them.. his passion is brilliant.. how he used it to say that stuff. was wrong..

once again.. everyone needs a passionate committed advocate to your client.. but what he said was wrong.. i admire him for his passion.. but not how he showed it in his words..

*********************************************************************************************************************************
I just post the stories, for interest.. for everyone

Lord, what fools these mortals be!
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene ii

Voltaire said: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

H.L.Mencken wrote:"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. Albert Einstein

i agree, but

Hundreds of adults were convicted of ritual abuse of children, mostly during the 1980s and early 1990s. Almost all have had their cases revisited. Most convictions have been overturned because of what investigators now know about:

How easy it was for investigators to get false disclosures of abuse from young children by simply asking direct questions, repeatedly.
How meaningless the past standards of evidence were for sexual abuse of girls.
How meaningless past STD lab tests were when performed on children.
How meaningless past sexual abuse tests were when performed on children.

http://www.religioustolerance.org/ra_roch.htm

Now i am not saying he was right in what he said.. as i have said before.. (repeating myself ad nauseum.. but when cases like those in the links i provided, happen, people are entitled to a defence. more so if they are innocent)..

His Passion is laudable, his words were wrong.. (wouldnt you rather have someone like that defending your other half or brother from a charge like that)

*********************************************************************************************************************************
I just post the stories, for interest.. for everyone

Lord, what fools these mortals be!
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene ii

Voltaire said: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

H.L.Mencken wrote:"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. Albert Einstein

Attorneys have the right to defend their client and work hard at it. No one has the right to destroy another person. How can anyone feel good about him/herself for making such a comment of how s/he would want a victim to be scarred for life? Getting at the truth is one thing. Character assassination is another. Too many teenage girls have falsely accused teachers of abuse to get back at being punished. That needs to be dealt with harshly because the stigma never goes away even if the person is vindicated of the crime.

thats what i have been saying, from the first comment i made.. to the last.. it was misread with the worst possibile reading of what i said.

*********************************************************************************************************************************
I just post the stories, for interest.. for everyone

Lord, what fools these mortals be!
- A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act III, Scene ii

Voltaire said: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

H.L.Mencken wrote:"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. Albert Einstein

I think anyone who falsely accused another of rape, molestation, etc should spend the rest of their life in prison.

I understand this subject can be a slippery slope in terms of cases of those falsely accused of rape (which has already been stated). But it sounds like this asswipe wants to humiliate, frighten and psychologically hurt anyone who dares accuse anyone of sexual assault. It takes a lot of guts for a sexual abuse victim of any age to come forward, and then you get people like this guy who will verbally and mentally abuse them for having that courage? Even if the accusation is genuine?

Why does this guy want rapists going unpunished? Is it another one of those cases where rapises "are people too"? It's so disgusting - I guarantee that if you locked this assface in a room with a dozen sexual abuse victims and let him spout off his bullshit, he wouldn't walk out of the room alive. It take sa special kind of insanity and heartlessness to want to further traumatize sexual assault victims.

Agreed, Cambion. What this douchebag said is beyond vile.

I see no reason why criminals who commit crimes on kids should get harsher sentences. What's the point?

I, personally, would like to see harsher sentences for animal abusers. If I had my way, those fuckers would FRY for the most minor offense. Fuck the kids.