Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

How to Extort a Confession [Gerald Amirault]
The Wall Street Journal ^ | Monday, April 22, 2002

Posted on 04/22/2002 2:48:06 PM PDT by TroutStalker

Edited on 04/22/2004 11:46:27 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]

The latest obstacle to Gerald Amirault's freedom came without fanfare. A three-member panel of the Massachusetts Department of Corrections has now decided that, since the prisoner has refused participation in treatment programs for sex offenders, he was considered to be "in denial." Permission for him to appear before the Board that could grant early parole would therefore be denied.


(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Editorial; News/Current Events; US: Massachusetts
KEYWORDS: amirault
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-53 next last
To: SamAdams76
I agree with you about putting yourself in harms way by volunteering to work with kids. It's just too damn bad it has to be that way.

Here are links in the earlier post linked above, courtesy of Interesting Times:

Here are all the Rabinowitz articles in the series that I could find:

A Darkness in Massachussetts

A Darkness in Massachussetts II

A Darkness in Massachussetts III

Judgement in Massachussetts

The Pursuit of Justice, Continued

Only in Massachussetts

A Juror Has Second Thoughts

Through the Darkness (on Grant Snowden in Dade County, Florida)

Wenatchee

Reckoning in Wenatchee

24 Posted on 07/10/2001 11:29:39 PDT by Interesting Times

21 posted on 04/22/2002 3:40:43 PM PDT by TroutStalker
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 17 | View Replies]

To: jackbill
Dorothy Rabinowitz has singlehandedly kept this case alive. She is to be commended for her persuit of justice and truth in this and other similar cases.
22 posted on 04/22/2002 3:42:16 PM PDT by TroutStalker
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 18 | View Replies]

To: SalukiLawyer
That road paved with good intentions has many, many stones with the mark "For the Children."

Deserves repeating.

23 posted on 04/22/2002 3:44:47 PM PDT by TroutStalker
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 20 | View Replies]

To: Right Wing Professor
The only person who can do anything to stop this travesty is Gov. Jane Swift, who has nothing to lose politically now by granting a pardon or commutation. I'm not hopeful.
24 posted on 04/22/2002 3:48:40 PM PDT by TroutStalker
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 16 | View Replies]

To: moderation_is_not_a_bad_thing
I will take your question as if you asked in good faith, as I see a number of others have. If you don't know this case and the others like it you should -- go and learn. Google up Rabinowitz's essays and storms!

Unfortunately there hasn't yet been a capable playwright to recast the material into the pablumatic pre-digested form young students and dottering socialists need. It is raw and messy.

Remember Albee's play "The Crucible"? Well, that play was a 1960's socialist's retelling of the actual witch trials held in Salem, Massachussetts in 1692. Albee had his target set on the Red Scares, the long series of anti-communist and anti-socialist hysterias that had swept up mnay Americans since the 1880's or so. And in particular what was to become the watershed mark of that long series of mass hysterias, the McCarthy hearings and the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

Albee hit his target square on and devastated it.

In our own time, in the 1980's and early 1990's, we too had a major mass hysteria. Maybe there wasn't yet enough Prozac to go around, whatever.

The subconscious guilt root of that hysteria, I firmly suspect, was in the big increase in working mothers of very young children, and the fact that by working full-time these fertile young women in the peak of their sexual and maternal instinct bloom had to place the very naturally beloved objects of their conceiving and motherhood into the hands of disinterested unrelated parties, whilst at the same time placing their maternally lovely and sexually-peaking selves into the dog-eat-dog work-a-day world where male co-workers and male bosses at best ignored their maternal and sexual blossoming and more than often enough did note it and all the longings and desires for being cherished, longed for, mothering, wife-ing etc.

So much misplaced young motherhood in bloom. Society had not yet adapted. There was an great and serious counter-reaction thrust out of the social subconscious.

The Day Care Sex Scare. From tales of mutilated rabbits used in some weird cultic sexual rituals with toddlers, evil clowns, secret tunnels, to more prosaic yet highly charged claims of sex games with kiddies. All the evil and dark forces of the imagination unleashed!

Evil persons like the Reno herself were quick to the chase and to the exploit of this poisoned cultural well.

And poor sods and innocent good souls, as usual, where burned at all the many stakes the mass and mad public craze was able to muster.

25 posted on 04/22/2002 3:58:18 PM PDT by bvw
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 5 | View Replies]

To: TroutStalker
16 years ago, I sat outside the courthouse (along with 6 other people in news trucks) where "Tookie" Amiralt's trial was held for 2 weeks. Every day, we did what is known in the business as "gratuitous live shots" for the noon nooz

("...Well Jack, we're outside the courthouse waiting for the jury to return a verdict. Nothing has happened since yesterday, we don't know when anything is going to happen, but if something DOES happen, we'll be here to cover it! Back to you in the studio, Jack! ")

The whole thing was a media circus because the media is too greedy, lazy, and stupid to do anything important and they smelled fresh, ratings meat. Beyond the witchhunt mentality that the propaganda ministry I worked in was all too happy to capitalize on, Scott Dirtburger, er Harshbarger, is one of the biggest parasites ever produced in Massachusetts - right up there with Teddy.

26 posted on 04/22/2002 4:00:31 PM PDT by agitator
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: jackbill
Thanks for the link. Of all the sinister weirdos foisted on America by the Klintons in their eight great years of depravity, Joltin' Janet was undoubtedly the weirdest and most destructive. A state, or a country, that rewards her ilk with higher office instead of an indefinite stay in the lunatic asylum, is a doomed polity.
27 posted on 04/22/2002 4:26:07 PM PDT by Argus
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 11 | View Replies]

To: bvw
Arthur Miller, not Albee. I read in the Brit Spectator a couple of weeks ago that the production of The Crucible on in New York (I imagine it's still running) with Liam Neeson is magnificent. Unfortunately, I'm in D.C. I wish I could get up to see it.
28 posted on 04/22/2002 4:27:35 PM PDT by aristeides
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 25 | View Replies]

To: bvw
Author of THE CRUCIBLE was Arthur Miller, not Edward Albee (he wrote WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF?). Otherwise, your analogy to the Salem witch trials in this context is on the money.
29 posted on 04/22/2002 4:31:05 PM PDT by Argus
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 25 | View Replies]

To: TroutStalker
Thanks for the post. I've been following the columns on this case by Rabinowitz for years and am convinced that this is a festering sore of injustice.

To right the wrong government must admit it is wrong. There is no principled person, Democrat or Republican, in a position of authority to do this. So sad. Regards.

30 posted on 04/22/2002 4:38:55 PM PDT by The Irishman
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: SamAdams76; moderation_is_not_a_bad_thing
It doesn't take much to get a little kid's imagination running wild.

Have you ever seen the "anatomically correct" dolls used by social workers and child psychologists for interviewing young children about sexual abuse? They have big round gaping holes at the mouth, vagina, and anus, and a perfectly matched big round cylinder for a penis. Any kid who has ever played with "put the round peg in the round hole" type toys can figure out exactly what the adult wants them to do with these dolls. This is the sort of thing which forms the basis for nearly all convictions of sexual abuse of small children in which there is no physical evidence and no adult witnesses.

31 posted on 04/22/2002 4:53:41 PM PDT by GovernmentShrinker
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 17 | View Replies]

To: aristeides; argus
*oops* Miller, that's true. One of Marilyn Monroe's husbands -- his play "The Crucible" won a Tony in 1953. He also wrote "Death of a Salesman". Given the imaginary abstractions Albee intrudes into his plays, perhaps Albee wouldn't be able to handle this kind of factually-based material anywhere near as well as Miller did, although he is considered a successor to Miller.
32 posted on 04/22/2002 4:54:10 PM PDT by bvw
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 28 | View Replies]

To: TroutStalker
She already said no. It's Election year. The parole board voted 5-0 to let him loose but Swifty said no. He could have walked out of prison 5 years ago if he admitted to the crimes but he said he wont admit to something he didn't do. Once Swift is gone,he's going home.
33 posted on 04/22/2002 5:03:48 PM PDT by freedomtrail
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 24 | View Replies]

To: TroutStalker;all
TroutStalker, I will add thsoe links to the "Dark Underbelly of the Beast" series I'm running. I've followed these cases for years, convinced a modern witch-hunt with a touch of mass psycosis was going on- and I remain so convinced. Let me go see it I can find the ( few ) links I have about this little horror:

Yesterday on Mike's Show - Janet Reno's ...

frontline: the child terror

34 posted on 04/22/2002 5:07:20 PM PDT by backhoe
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 21 | View Replies]

To: Rainbow Rising
despite the high recidivism rate of such criminals

A couple of months ago a link to this site, about sex-offender recidivism, was posted on Free Republic.

35 posted on 04/22/2002 5:11:33 PM PDT by Eala
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies]

To: Argus
Janet Reno is a man hating, predatory, alcoholic lesbian.

Her roomate in college was Hi!!ary.

She was the perfect "fall guy", so to speak, in the clintoon administration. They had the goods on her.

She made her mark in Dade county, FL, prosecuting similar cases which were later overturned.

36 posted on 04/22/2002 5:11:59 PM PDT by MonroeDNA
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: TroutStalker
The only person who can do anything to stop this travesty is Gov. Jane Swift, who has nothing to lose politically now by granting a pardon or commutation. I'm not hopeful.

Didn't she already turn him down?? But what about Mitt Romney (should he succeed in his bid)?

37 posted on 04/22/2002 5:13:39 PM PDT by Eala
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 24 | View Replies]

To: Argus
Janet Reno did the same thing to a guy in Florida when she was DA down there. Railroad the innocent into prison, get headlines, and make sure he stays in there to rot lest someone question your role.

Don't forget her role in the Bobby Finje (sp?) case (Reader's Digest, Jan '94 if I recall correctly). Kept a 12? year old in isolation for two years before trial -- only to see him acquitted. That one was so stinky that even Time had to make a passing comment (but oh-so-quick, and oh-so-vague) in its paean to the (then) new Attorney General in '93.

(I'd noted the comment in the article but didn't understand until RD published the story.)

38 posted on 04/22/2002 5:19:26 PM PDT by Eala
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: TroutStalker
Unfortunately, Janet Reno launched her career on the prosecution of several innocent men, including not only Grant Snowden but Bobby Finje and Frank Fuster. On this Thursday, April 25, FRONTLINE on PBS is running a good expose of the Frank Fuster "Country Walk" case. Don't miss it. For those of you who are interested in a detailed account of the Fuster case that appears in my book, VICTIMS OF MEMORY: SEX ABUSE ACCUSATIONS AND SHATTERED LIVES (Upper Access, 1996, 2d ed), email me at markp@nasw.org and I'll send it to you. My book also contains a good account of the Fells Acres/Gerald Amirault case. I could not agree more that Dorothy Rabinowitz is a hero, by the way. --Mark Pendergrast
39 posted on 04/22/2002 6:47:55 PM PDT by markpendergrast
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: SalukiLawyer
This is hardly "routine" since Gerald Amirault has been in jail for 16 years and is the last of the 80's wrongly accused "child abusers" to remain in jail past all reason, because of cowardly and corrupt politicians.

This case is certainly the biggest travesty in the nation and the only news outlet that cares is the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal because of the extraordinary Dorothy Rabinowitz.

40 posted on 04/22/2002 8:21:59 PM PDT by Deb
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 20 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-2021-4041-53 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson