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ALBERT LEA, Minn. - Two teenage girls who worked at a nursing home have been charged with abuse, accused of taunting, spitting on and groping the breasts and genitals of residents who suffered from Alzheimer's disease and other dementia disorders.
According to the criminal complaint, filed Monday, 19-year-old Brianna Broitzman and 18-year-old Ashton Larson laughed earlier this year as they spat in residents' mouths, poked and grabbed them, and at times mocked them until they screamed.
Broitzman and Larson worked as part-time aides at the home.
No one answered the phone Thursday morning at Broitzman's home. There was no information in court records on attorneys for either teen.
Complaint: Eight teens involved
Four other teens who worked with them at the Good Samaritan Society were charged as juveniles for failing to report the incidents.
A total of eight teens were allegedly involved in the incidents, but there was no record of criminal charges being filed against two of them.
Broitzman and Larson are charged with assault, abuse of a vulnerable adult by a caregiver, abuse of a vulnerable adult with sexual contact, disorderly conduct and failing to report suspected maltreatment. All are gross misdemeanors.
If found guilty, Broitzman and Larson "most likely will face suspended jail sentences and probation, so they'd have the threat of jail hanging over them if they get in more trouble," Freeborn County Attorney Craig Nelson told the Star Tribune of Minneapolis.
The Minnesota Department of Health released a report in August showing that 15 residents with Alzheimer's disease or other dementia disorders were abused at the facility between Jan. 1 and May 1.
Group allegedly laughed about incidents
According to the complaint filed Monday, one of the aides said the group gathered at work or school to "talk and laugh about the incidents."
Mark Anderson, administrator at the Good Samaritan Society in Albert Lea, told WCCO-TV that the past few months have been difficult for the staff, the home's residents and their families.
"We are just really thankful that the proceedings are moving forward and hopefully can see some closure to this whole process," Anderson said.
John Kevin Hines had been pacing on the Golden Gate Bridge for 40 minutes in anguish, crying. If one person asks me what's wrong, I won't go through with this, he thought, over and over.
Eventually, a woman wearing giant sunglasses approached him. "Would you take my picture?" she asked. The 19-year-old accepted the camera from her and clicked it five times. Then he snapped. The moment Hines released his hold on the 4-foot-high railing, he regained his grip on reality.
During the 4 seconds between jump and splashdown, he could think clearly. All the problems that had made him want to die moments earlier? Those seemed less overwhelming than a 220-foot plunge into San Francisco Bay. Oh, my God, I don't want to die, he thought. What have I done? God, please, save me. It's a prayer seldom answered. Since the bridge opened in 1937, someone has jumped from it every 2 weeks on average. Out of roughly 2,000 attempts, only 28 "failed."
The psychologist Edwin S. Shneidman, Ph.D., a pioneer in suicide research, once said that it's a bad idea to kill yourself when you're feeling suicidal. That's no joke: You're not solving problems well. You're unable to step outside your troubled mind. And those things make you a very, very dangerous man. Realization of the risk comes too late for many, from bottom-rung stragglers to men whose lives and achievements seem worthy of celebration, not self-termination.
Their final act perplexes family and friends. It saddens them, sickens them, and even angers them. And in the end, it worries the rest of us, too. Because any of us could be walking that bridge one day. The numbers are so gut-churning, it's like looking over a bridge railing. Nearly 26,000 men took their own lives in 2005. That's nearly four times the number of women who did the same thing, even though three times more women than men attempt suicide. (For every completed suicide by a man or woman, 25 attempts fail.)
Whereas a woman might swallow pills halfheartedly, a man is four times more likely to complete the act, mostly because men tend to use guns — and their aim is true. As grim as that sounds, it gets worse. Mark S. Kaplan, Dr.P.H., who researches suicide at Oregon's Portland State University, believes the suicide death toll may be up to 25 percent higher than officially recorded. Many single-car accidents seem mysterious. When an overdose occurs and toxicology results are ambiguous, as in the case of Heath Ledger, was it a tragic accident or an exit strategy? Some medical examiners will certify a death as suicide only if the victim leaves a note, and yet only about 20 percent of people who kill themselves do so. Sometimes insurance companies pay the survivors less, or nothing at all, in cases of suicide. The denial of friends and family is a factor, too: It's less painful to think a loved one didn't die by his or her own hand.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Violent Death Reporting System, which tracks the circumstances surrounding violent deaths (including suicides), might be able to sort all this out — if it were funded in more than 17 states.
'Uniquely dangerous moment'
There's always an internal detonator with suicide, but an external spark helps light the fuse. One factor that comes along every few generations is economic distress. During the Great Depression, when banks went bust and people's life savings vanished, suicide rates soared. Another instigator: large numbers of veterans returning from armed conflict, many of them with troubled (or injured) minds, lousy job prospects, and fractured families. Which begins to explain why suicidologists, who study the phenomenon, are feeling a little edgy themselves these days. "For those who serve in the military, the suicide risk may be even greater considering multiple deployments, possible brain trauma from concussive blasts, and combat-relatedpost-traumatic stress," says David A. Jobes, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the Catholic University of America. "This may be a uniquely dangerous moment for young American men and suicide, given the recent economic upheaval."
As a cause of death, suicide is different from disease; the ripples from each event extend much further than a single splash in San Francisco Bay.
At the Boston Park Plaza Hotel & Towers, the 20th-anniversary "Healing After Suicide" conference is under way. The room is dark except for candlelit tables surrounded by survivors — an umbrella term for friends and family members of the deceased. (Currently, nearly 5 million people in the United States have had a suicide in their family.) I stroll among large bulletin boards covered with photographs of faces: smiling, serious, shy, handsome, nondescript, friendly, distant. This isn't a gallery of misfits; these are the kinds of expressions that fill all of our family albums.
In a side room at the conference, I see a haunting echo of the smiling victims pinned on the bulletin boards. The last row of academic posters ends with disturbing photographs of men and women striking suicidal poses. These aren't actual suicides; the images are from the International Affective Picture Set, designed to provoke responses in psychology experiments. The researcher, Donald H. Marks, Ph.D., M.D., is the hepatitis clinic director at Cooper Green Mercy Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama. Ten of Dr. Marks's hepatitis C patients became suicidal while they were taking an interferon drug. The drug's prescribing information warns that this could happen. So when Dr. Marks performed functional MRI scans on the brains of these suicidal patients while they looked at the creepy photos, they all showed "activation" in specific brain regions that might be associated with suicidal thoughts. Might there be a self-destruct button embedded in our CPU, one that could be identified and disarmed in at-risk individuals? Jobes, for one, thinks suicide will never be reduced to something so simple.
"After all, we know the brain chemistry of depression, but most depressed people don't take their own lives," he says.
On stage in the other room, a mother is recalling one of her five children, the brightest of her brood. He could have done anything in life, she says, but in high school, with no warning, he shot himself in the head. Suicide is murder for your loved ones. Much of her adult life has been an attempt to find meaning in a devastating loss.
Thomas Joiner, Ph.D, a professor of psychology at Florida State University, is also dealing with that kind of loss. I'd studied his research and prepared my questions on my way to Tallahassee to meet with him, but it's only when we sit down across from each other, alone in a huge, impersonal conference room, that it occurs to me: I need to ask this 43-year-old father of two sons about his own father's death — by suicide.
"I'm comfortable talking about it," says Joiner, who also lost his maternal grandfather to suicide. "It's important to discuss, as a way of learning more about an important public-health problem."
As a kid growing up in Atlanta, Joiner knew his father felt down once in a while. But he suspected nothing more. Even later on, when he studied suicide as a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, he didn't make the connection. The day his dad died, his mother called to say he'd disappeared. The police wouldn't find the body until 2 1/2 days later. The cause of death: a self-inflicted knife wound.
"My response was extreme shock," says Joiner. "Just a deep, agonizing sort of loss and sadness — what most people feel in such sudden-death scenarios."
The final page of his father's life would remain blank; there was no note. Only in hindsight does Joiner suspect that his father had a variation of bipolar disorder. The hidden nature of suicidal thoughts makes me wonder if perhaps a lot of men entertain these urges.
"I take your point," says Joiner. "There is this other layer: Why did it happen? How much anguish and pain must he have been enduring? That was there for me, and it remains there for me to this day."
The vague threat, the unvoiced desire for death, is not unusual in men who will eventually kill themselves. They may make an offhand crack or casual remark. "They'll hint that something's wrong and then take it back," says suicide expert Lisa Firestone, Ph.D., coauthor of "Conquer Your Critical Inner Voice." Even doctors don't know what to do half the time. Kaplan randomly chose primary-care doctors in Illinois from the files of the American Medical Association and sent them a survey, asking how they managed depression and suicidal tendencies in their patients. Roughly 50 percent of the doctors said they wouldn't ask those patients if they had access to a gun at home.
Mental health professionals often don't have all the training they need to help at-risk patients, either. As part of his master's degree program in psychology, Jason Spiegelman served an internship as a therapist at the San Fernando Valley Community Mental Health Center, in California. "Learning the theory and actually practicing it are two very different things," he says.
Sitting in a Baltimore restaurant, Spiegelman describes a Monday morning that began for him like any other — until he arrived at work. As he walked in, he says, the secretary glanced up. "One of your clients committed suicide over the weekend," she said, as if announcing the arrival of a FedEx package. A feeling of nausea flooded the young therapist's body as he climbed the stairwell to his boss's office. "I'll never forget it," he says. "The fear. The self-loathing. Am I going to lose my internship? And then, a second later: How can I be thinking of myself?"
Spiegelman instantly knew who was gone. Juan (not his real name), a Latino man in his 30s, had been in therapy for years. The man's case file spilled over with notes outlining years' worth of mental doodling about suicide — what the experts call ideation. For all of his formal education, Spiegelman hasn't taken a single class on suicide. That's the norm, not an exception.
Most clinicians learn on the fly rather than in school or professional training programs," says Jobes. "It's the most common clinical emergency, and yet clinicians are not typically well trained to deal with it." Spiegelman had done everything he'd been trained to do with such clients, including taking a suicide assessment: He'd asked Juan a series of questions designed to gauge the immediacy of the threat. The more specific the suicidal thoughts are, the greater the chances they'll be acted upon, the theory goes." As often as we did the assessment, he never went beyond a vague fantasy of suicide," says Spiegelman, 35, who today works as an assistant professor of psychology at the Community College of Baltimore County, Maryland. Juan's father would later say his son's mood brightened in the days before he died. When Juan did commit suicide, he hanged himself — an approach he had never mentioned.
Spiegelman doesn't blame himself. His supervisor's review noted that he hadn't missed anything. Mostly, though, he credits Juan's father with keeping the tragic event from destroying the life of a second man. "He was as gracious as you could imagine," says Spiegelman. "He said it wasn't my fault, that his son spoke highly of me. The father took care of me, which was a nice thing, because it doesn't always go down that way."
Suicidal men tend to share certain characteristics: They feel trapped in their lives. They're commonly substance abusers. Depression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia are highly correlated with suicide risk.
But there are still miserable men with no desire to check out early, thank you, and others who seem well adjusted but who flirt in their minds with suicide. Psychotropic drugs that dampen depression don't always douse a death wish.
"I think every man is capable of reaching a desperate place where suicide can move onto his psychological radar screen," says Jobes. "But who goes there, when, how, and why is this unique interplay of biochemistry, social forces, family modeling, and other factors. How those queue up is remarkably complex and specific to the man who's struggling at that moment. "I'd always thought of suicide as a tragedy primarily affecting two groups of men: adolescents, for whom upheavals that would seem manageable soon enough instead become matters of life and self-inflicted death; and the aged, who might feel miserably alone or who simply can't stand the thought of another day of nursing a hurt that's been aching all their lives. There's a reason for that misperception.
"Several years ago, colleagues of mine organized a National Institute of Mental Health conference on suicide and middle-aged men, and there was sort of a ho-hum reaction," says Jobes. "Like, who cares about those guys? Most suicide prevention focuses on subgroups, whereas few seem to notice the 800-pound gorilla."
"Men in the overall U.S. population just haven't been the focus of a lot of suicide-prevention efforts," adds Kerry L. Knox, Ph.D., director of the Canandaigua Center of Excellence for Suicide Prevention of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. That's mind boggling, since 70 percent of all suicides by men occur in life's prime, not its dawning or twilight. Suicide rates are comparatively low under age 16, rise gradually through age 18, and then jump through age 24; the normal four-to-one male-to-female ratio of suicide deaths rises to seven to one between the ages of 20 and 24. But rather than tumbling after age 24, the rate actually levels off at the high point. One cause of the spike is that mental disorders often tighten their grip in a man's early 20s.
"[Patients with] bipolar disorder and schizophrenia have a higher risk of suicide during the first 5 years of the disorder rather than later on, when people often have learned to accept it and deal with it," says Firestone.
Recognizing psychological land mines
These individuals are usually prescribed drug regimens, which can help if they remember to swallow all of their pills. But that's a tacit admission of mental illness, one that's often resisted. In rare cases, taking mood-altering drugs can make a bad situation worse. Even if a man reaches his 20s in good shape, psychologically speaking, suicide land mines — like the ones mentioned below — remain scattered along the journey throughout his 30s and 40s.
Relationships: Joiner estimates that "romantic disruptions" and other relationship issues trigger depressive episodes in about 75 percent of men between the ages of 20 and 40 who commit suicide. "Especially in their early 20s, guys can think,This one person was right for me, I've lost her, and it's all over," Firestone says. "They lack the perspective that they're going to have other relationships, maybe even better relationships, in the future."
Career Failure: Data going back decades shows that, like clockwork, economic downturns push more men over the brink — a fact that should concern us all now. Men draw much of their identity from their careers, and when unemployment rises, that underpinning falls away. Many men at that highly vulnerable age for suicide — the early 20s — may struggle simply to begin a fulfilling career in a sharp economic downturn. The feeling of being a burden doesn't apply only to people failing at life. Even the most successful, driven men, the ones we perceive as being on top of their game, can buckle under a heavy load.
Which might explain why Tennessee Titans quarterback Vince Young was reported to have mentioned suicide to a therapist earlier this season. "With so many people identifying with and riding on his success, the burden of failure can loom large," says John Draper, Ph.D., director of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline program. The higher the stakes, the more there is to lose.
Shame and Humiliation: It's one thing to fall from grace; it's another to have that fall subjected to public display and ridicule. That prospect was a major contributor to "executive suicides" such as those committed by Clinton lawyer and confidant Vince Foster, and Enron vice chairman Cliff Baxter. Fame isn't a prerequisite, either; going public can mean having your own family and social circle learn embarrassing news. "There's this very male lineage of suicide being a face-saving way of resolving dire circumstances," says Jobes.
Modern Warfare: Historically, suicide rates among soldiers have dropped "in theater" during times of actual combat, but that trend has been turned on its head in Iraq and Afghanistan: The number of suicide attempts in the U.S. Army has increased sixfold since the war on terror began. Nearly 600 soldiers in that military branch alone — the size of an infantry battalion task force — have died by suicide. The Army itself estimates that up to 11,600 times during that span, an Army soldier has attempted to harm or kill himself. That doesn't bode well for returning veterans, who are at heightened risk for suicide once they leave the structure of military life.
When Mark Kaplan and colleagues used national health surveys to track 320,890 men for 12 years, they learned that the veterans in that group were no more likely than the others to die from natural causes or by accident — but twice as likely to die by their own hand. Recent reports suggest 1,000 suicide attempts per month among V.A. vets, a total that the V.A. spokesperson I interviewed wouldn't dispute.Self-preservation is our most basic instinct, so suicidal people must be mentally ill, right? Not necessarily. Joiner believes men learn fearlessness every time they play a contact sport, fight in a bar, or experience pain or injury. This eases the brakes that stop us from doing something contrary to our nature. Sometimes, that includes killing ourselves.
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Never is "learned fearlessness" so prevalent as it is during the violence of combat, and the participants did report becoming more tolerant of mayhem and danger. "When I was overseas, I kind of lost connection with reality... and my feelings," said one subject. "If you don't have any emotions, you aren't scared or afraid, either."
If Joiner is right, many of these vets will be at high risk of harming themselves, perhaps fatally, as civilians. Learned fearlessness is particularly dangerous when it's combined with the feeling of being a burden to others.
"Those pieces — isolation, fearlessness, and feeling like a burden — simultaneously lead to suicidal behavior," says Joiner. "You think, 'my death will be worth more than my life to people I love.' "From study reviews, suicide experts find that isolation usually emerges as the biggest risk factor of all. Jobes has seen this dynamic unfold among soldiers. But when men do reach out, they can regain their footing quickly. "Once you pull them out of that internal world, they respond well to a two-heads-are-better-than-one approach to problem-solving in therapy," says Jobes. "But it's a conundrum because they're not seeking treatment."
For a man who tried to kill himself, John Kevin Hines is pretty lucky. On his descent from the Golden Gate Bridge, he threw his head back during free fall, which allowed him to hit the water in a seated position — albeit at 75 mph. He opened his eyes as he plunged 50 feet, and as it became darker, he thought, I didn't die. What am I going to do now?
A man who moments ago tried to kill himself was desperately fighting for his life now. He broke through the surface just before passing out. At the moment he jumped, a woman who had a Coast Guard friend on speed dial just happened to be driving over the bridge — which is the only reason two Coast Guard members fished Hines out of the water.
"Do you know what you just did?" one of them asked."Yeah, I just jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge." "Why?" "I don't know," said Hines. "I guess I wanted to die." "Do you know how many people we pull out of this water who are dead already?"
Of course, the best way to prevent suicide is to keep men like Hines off those bridges in the first place. In 1996, John Draper founded a crisis hotline for the Mental Health Association of New York City. Three years after gaining national attention for its work surrounding 9/11, the organization won a grant to run the national network of suicide hotlines. Every month, the network's 133 independently operated call centers receive more than 40,000 calls. A recent study in the journal Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior found that when people call a hotline they experience a decrease in hopelessness and psychological pain (but no reduction in intent to die). The effect lasts for weeks afterward. Twelve percent of callers said the hotline kept them alive.
"Sometimes when a man's mind is locked in to suicide, there's a paradoxical openness, too," says Draper. "If you're open to killing yourself, might you be open to less absurd notions as well? They just have to stay alive long enough to find other options."
Another sobering truth is that a prior attempt makes you more likely to eventually kill yourself. But Draper turns that upside down. "Past attempts carry a lifetime risk estimated at about 7 percent," he says. "That means 93 percent of those who attempted suicide found ways to survive periods when they were convinced life wasn't worth living and to go on to live out their lives. What might they have missed otherwise?"
Back From The Brink
Leading suicide expert Lisa Firestone, Ph.D., director of research and education at the Glendon Association, details suicide's progression, and how to halt it.
1. Losing interest in school, work, or hobbies
"A male friend won't tell you he's sad, but he will tell you if he's lost interest in his hobbies," says John Draper, Ph.D., director of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. "Disruptions in those areas are real signs."
What he's thinking: What's the use? My work doesn't matter anymore. Why bother even trying? Nothing matters anyway.
Warning signs: Decreased work or academic performance, giving up hobbies or other previously enjoyed activities.
Don't: Cajole or demean. Nor should you assume that this is just a slump, and wait for things to pass.
Do: Gently but persistently point out that he may have a problem, and that treatments are readily available.
2. Directing hatred toward himself
"Tearing oneself apart creates the psychological pain and desperation that drive the suicidal person," says Firestone. "Suicide becomes a way to escape the pain and aggravation." I'm incompetent, stupid.
What he's thinking: I'm ugly, disgusting. I'm a fool, a creep, a reject. I don't deserve anything; I'm worthless.
Warning signs: Statements of helplessness, extreme psychological pain, desperation, increased irritability and anger.
Don't: Judge, turn away, or otherwise feel that these are feelings "real men" shouldn't have or talk about.
Do: Listen. Allow him to express his feelings. Offer him a more com- passionate evaluation of himself.
3. Feeling like a burden to family and friends
"I've had patients insist in front of their wives, 'No, no, you'll be better off without me,'" says David A. Jobes, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at the Catholic University of America. "Family members don't feel that way."
What he's thinking: See how bad I make everyone around me feel? They'd be better off without me. I'll just stay away and stop bothering them.
Warning signs: Moodiness, lack of communication, lethargy, exhaustion, hopelessness.
Don't: Ask vague questions like, "You're not thinking about doing anything, are you?" This telegraphs disapproval.
Do: Talk openly. Ask, "Are you thinking about killing yourself?" If his answer doesn't sit right, ask him again.
4. Talking about suicidal thoughts
"As simple as it sounds, talking about wanting to die by suicide is a very clear and dangerous warning sign," say Joiner. Unfortunately, that sign is often missed or ignored.
What he's thinking: I'd better plan it. It's the only thing I can do. I have to buy a gun and then find a deserted back road, maybe. Reading or writing about death, reminiscing about a dead person, saying things like, "I might as well be dead."
Don't: Assert that suicide is immoral and leave it there. He desperately needs help. Don't let him reassure you he's fine.
Do: Empathize with the pain but not the solution. Find a counselor. Call the hotline numbers.
5. Initiating his own demise
"People can become so despondent, and yet they hide intentions," says Eric Caine, M.D., co-director of the Center for the Study of Prevention of Suicide at the University of Rochester. "They might tell a doctor they're fine."
What he's thinking: I can't even do this! I've thought about this long enough. Look, I'm miserable every minute. Just end it. It's the only way out!
Warning signs: Preparing a note, a will, or both; giving away prized possessions.
Don't: Be sworn to secrecy. What's more important: his confidence or his life?
Do: Remove means (guns, pills, poisons). Connect him with crisis counselors. Time is running out.
6. Sudden, dramatic mood change — for the better
"In his own mind, he may finally be at peace with his decision — not the decision to seek help, but the one to end it all," says Firestone.
What he's thinking: This is the solution to all my problems. I have made my decision. I am in control now. All this pain will soon be over.
Warning signs: An unexpected, even jarring brightening of his disposition, especially one that doesn't feel natural to you.
Don't: Think, Whew, everything's fine now! I can stop worrying about him for a while.
Do: Ask him to give help a chance — tell him he can always decide to kill himself later. Arrange for help immediately!
Women in the military have it hard enough – trying to make their way in a traditionally-male dominated field, going into countries that often don’t accept women in these types of roles. But many of them also are victims of sexual trauma, harassment and rape, as well.
Reuters reports that nearly 15 percent of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans - men and women - seeking medical care from the U.S. Veterans Affairs Department have suffered "military sexual trauma." And that number only includes those who report their victimization, and doesn’t include active-duty personnel. There are about 190,000 women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Experts agree that many victims don’t report their abuse.
The term "military sexual trauma" is defined by law as sexual harassment, sexual assault, rape and other acts of violence of a sexual or sexually biased nature. It can also be repeated unsolicited, verbal or physical contact of a sexual nature toward a male or female which becomes threatening. In Iraq and Afghanistan, women are not only victims of rape or sexual harassment of their fellow soldiers, but also by local residents.
Rachel Kimerling of the National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System in California, and other officials stress that there are many ways veterans can seek help if they are victims of such trauma. Kimerling’s center also has a Women’s Trauma Recovery Program, which includes treatment of military sexual trauma. Other VA centers, such as the one in New York and New Jersey, also have specialized women veterans health-care programs. Every VA facility in the U.S. has services for sexual trauma, which can also lead to depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, drug abuse, problems with personal relationships, and post-traumatic stress disorder.
"We are, in fact, detecting men and women who seem to have a significant need for mental health services," Kimerling told Reuters. "If you think about military service where you are living and working so closely with the same people, that even if it is not sexual assault … it is possible that severe sexual harassment is just as traumatic."
Here’s a PBS report from September 2007 on rape in the military. It reports that one out of every seven female soldiers was raped during the first Gulf War. Medical experts said you’re four times more likely to develop post-traumatic stress disorder from being a victim of sexual assault than combat.
The Secret Service has joined West Hollywood, CA, police to investigate a Halloween display that shows a likeness of Sarah Palin hanging by a noose.
The homeowners say the effigy is just a joke, and even though people of all political stripes are offended and outraged, they’re not willing to take it down. One local official called for a hate-crime investigation, but police said the act doesn’t rise to the level of a crime by any means, just a case of really bad taste.
An effigy of John McCain is on top of the house, coming out of the chimney, surrounded by red paper flames.
"If it is nonviolent and doesn’t cause any problems, then they have the right to do it,” Steve Whitmore, spokesman for the Sheriff’s Department, told The Los Angeles Times.
Click here to see the local video report about the effigy.
Chad Michael Morrisette, one of the owners of the house, on Monday was dubbed by super-liberal MSNBC host Keith Olbermann “today’s worst person in the world.”
"This is not the spirit of Halloween, sir," Olbermann said. "It is the spirit of violence."
The Palin doll is outfitted with beehive wig, glasses and a vintage Neiman Marcus red coatdress.
"If it’s a political statement, it’s that their politics is scary to us," Morrisette said of the McCain-Palin campaign. "This is our palette and this is our venue of expression."
Residents interviewed, as well as Morrisette himself, agreed that had it been a Barack Obama effigy instead of a Palin one, all hell would have broken loose. Double standard, anyone?
West Hollywood Mayor Jeffrey Prang issued a statement Monday urging Morrisette to take down the display, saying city officials have been inundated with angry calls for not forcibly removing it.
"I respect that we all have the right to freedom of speech. However, with that right comes responsibility," Prang said. "While these residents have the legal right to display Sen. John McCain and Governor Sarah Palin in effigy, I strongly oppose political speech that references violence — real or perceived. Politics in America has become extremely polarized in recent years and we all have a responsibility to focus on our political differences in a thoughtful and peaceful manner. I urge these residents to take down their display and find more constructive ways to express their opinion.”
Self-described anti-feminist New York lawyer Roy Den Hollander has sued Columbia University over its women’s studies program he claims "demonizes men," saying it should either be eliminated altogether, or the school should offer a comparative men’s program.
He says the teaching of such programs centers around the idea that men are "the primary cause for most, if not all, the world’s ills."
Also named in the suit is the U.S. Department of Education, Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, New York Board of Regents and its Chancellor, New York State education commissioner, and president of the New York State Higher Education Services Corp.
In a suit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Hollander — who, on his MySpace page, calls himself a 100-year-old "civil rights attorney" who brings civil cases to "defend the rights of men against the feminists, feminist allies and feminist opportunists" — complains that Columbia uses federal money to fund a "religionist belief system called feminism." The class-action suit argues that the women’s studies program "demonizes men and exalts women to justify discrimination against men based on collective guilt."
It also accuses state and federal authorities of violating the First Amendment of the Constitution by aiding Columbia, and federal authorities for violating equal protection under the Fifth Amendment by "aiding the intentional discriminatory impact against men."
The New York Times reports that Hollander’s suit says such programs that serve as "a bastion of bigotry against men" at universities nationwide are "spreading prejudice and fostering animosity and distrust toward men with the result of the wholesale violation of men’s rights due to ignorance, falsehoods and malice."
Hollander last year filed a suit in federal court that accuses New York City nightclubs of discriminating against men for charging them more admission than women. He also last year filed another federal suit challenging sections of the Violence Against Women Act as unconstitutional for what he describes as its allowing illegal immigrant women to acquire citizenship by falsely accusing their American husbands, or ex-husbands, of mistreatment.
Fort Riley quickly closed ranks around Sergeant Renteria. That became clear to Ms. Renteria after a brief conversation in August 2007 with an assistant at the inspector general’s office. “‘Honey, we are not going to bring a soldier back who beat on his wife a couple of times or because you feel things weren’t done correctly,’” Ms. Renteria said, recalling the conversation. “‘He is over there fighting for his life.’”Though Renteria is now divorced and has yet to see her husband charged with his crimes against her, Renteria’s one of the lucky ones, as hard as that may be to believe. North Carolina’s Fort Bragg has seen three women killed over the past four months, one of whom was pregnant. The women’s boyfriends or husbands played a role in each death. The rise in violence — and the apparent disinterest from Army officials — has deterred many women from reporting abuse, lest they be ostracized or tarnish their lovers’ careers.
Very long article, but too important not to post in its entierty.
10 women charged him with drugging and sex attacks, but juries said no
Leigh thought her date was going quite well, right up until the point, she says, when she was drugged and raped. It was her first time meeting Jeffrey Marsalis, a gregarious trauma surgeon who had contacted her through the online dating site Match.com. Tall, blue-eyed and engaging, Marsalis had taken her out in downtown Philadelphia, entertaining her with stories of life in the ER.
“He seemed a little full of himself,” Leigh recalls; still, she was having a good time. She slowly drank one beer, then a second. Their date was in its fourth hour when Marsalis ordered a carafe of white wine, and Leigh excused herself.
“I would never think to be so cynical that I’d stand there and watch as he poured my drink,” remembers Leigh, a striking blonde (who, like all accusers in this article, is identified by her middle name). When the 28-year-old accountant returned to her barstool, her glass of wine was waiting. Leigh took a sip.
As she would later testify, the next thing Leigh remembers she was in a dark room, facedown on a bed — and Marsalis was anally raping her. The pain felt as if he were ripping her in two. Her limbs were leaden, her mind sluggish.
“Stop, please stop,” Leigh mumbled. Marsalis simply chuckled. Leigh slid back into unconsciousness but kept resurfacing that endless night to discover Marsalis violating her limp body. Finally, she opened her eyes to an apartment filled with late-morning light.
“Good morning,” Marsalis said, smiling and leaning in for a kiss; Leigh, stunned, kissed him back. “I had a wonderful time last night. I hope you did, too,” she says he told her, staring into her eyes. Leigh felt groggy and confused as she pulled on her jeans.
So when Marsalis walked Leigh to her car and suggested they get together again, Leigh heard herself say, “Sure.” She was certain she hadn’t gone to bed with her date of her own volition — and that she couldn’t possibly have blacked out after barely three drinks — but her certainty was softening in the face of his chivalry. Am I reading the situation wrong? Leigh wondered as she drove herself home. Would a rapist act this nicely?
Baffling as her experience seemed on that day in February 2005, Leigh was only the latest woman to struggle with the same confusion. Because Jeffrey Marsalis wasn’t really an ER doctor looking for love. He was an unemployed paramedic and nursing-school dropout whose true profession, prosecutors assert, was full-time predator. Investigators would discover 21 women who claimed Marsalis drugged and raped them — many listed in a file on his computer called “The Yearly Calendar of Women.” Authorities suspect his true tally is far higher. “Any woman was potential prey,” says Philadelphia special prosecutor Joseph Khan. “Plenty of women were attracted to him, but this guy was aroused by the very idea of nonconsent.”
As Leigh drove home that morning, she had no idea what lay in her future: that she would join 9 of those 21 accusers to face Marsalis in Philadelphia courtrooms over the course of two trials, telling nearly identical stories of assault. They would be 10 educated, professional women versus a demonstrated liar — a man who had pretended to be a doctor, a CIA employee, even an astronaut — whom a court-appointed psychologist would decide met the legal definition of a “sexually violent predator.” And yet the most remarkable thing about both trials wasn’t the way they exposed the alleged tactics of a serial date rapist. It was that despite the outrageousness of the accusations against Marsalis, the testimony of 10 women wasn’t enough to get a single rape conviction against him. The verdicts in these cases would be far lighter than his accusers sought — and victims’ advocates say the outcome reveals a disturbing truth about the justice system. Nationwide, despite all the legal advances of the past three decades, little has changed for women who report a date rape. Because in far too many instances, juries don’t believe date rape exists.
Cases still hard to win
When it comes to rape prosecutions as a whole, so much has changed for the better: Thirty years’ worth of advocacy, better investigation techniques and tighter laws have led more women than ever to come forward and report the crime to police. But in cases of nonstranger rape — which represent three quarters of all rape cases in the United States — all that progress often comes screeching to a halt in the deliberation room. “Cases where a victim knows her assailant are still extraordinarily hard to win,” says Jennifer Long, director of the National Center for the Prosecution of Violence Against Women in Alexandria, Virginia. “Juries are extremely resistant.”
Until now, it’s been impossible to know exactly how many of these cases collapse in court, because no prosecution data was being collected. But the research and training group End Violence Against Women International in Addy, Washington, just completed a four-year study across eight states and has allowed SELF an exclusive early look at its conclusions. Of all the rape cases that come across prosecutors’ desks, stranger-rape cases have the best courtroom odds, with 68 percent ending with a conviction or guilty plea. But when a woman knows her assailant briefly (less than 24 hours), a mere 43 percent of cases end in a conviction. When they know each other longer than 24 hours, the conviction rate falls to 35 percent. Even fewer, 29 percent, of intimate partners and exes are punished. “And keep in mind, the cases that come through the prosecutor’s door are the strongest ones — strong enough for the police to have referred them along in the first place,” notes EVAW International research director Kimberly Lonsway, Ph.D.
Back in the 1970s, most reported rapes were committed by strangers; those cases are now in the minority. Yet juries — and many judges as well — still think of rape as being only between strangers, says Lynn Hecht Schafran, director of the National Judicial Education Program of Legal Momentum, a woman’s advocacy group in New York City. “To a juror, a rapist is a guy who jumps out of the bushes and throws a woman to the ground,” Schafran explains. “She has terrible injuries, and she leaps up and reports it immediately to the police. Anything that falls short of that story is questionable.”
Incredibly, that analysis holds true even in a situation as extreme as that of Marsalis. What’s especially troubling is that the very things that some of his accusers speculate made the juries so skeptical are typical elements of nonstranger assaults. It doesn’t fit with most people’s misguided concept of rape, for example, that Marsalis’s accusers went out with him willingly — thinking him a worldly doctor, the embodiment of Mr. Right — and were initially enjoying their evening with him. As the defense hammered home, none of the women stormed to the nearest police station or went to a hospital for a rape exam and toxicology test. In fact, the opposite happened: In a near-masochistic twist, most of Marsalis’s dates had contact with him again — behavior that seems too bizarre to be believed, but that psychologists say is actually not uncommon among women raped by someone they know. Nonstranger rape is a distinct crime whose survivors exhibit equally distinct behaviors — the very actions the Marsalis defense used against his accusers. It makes you wonder: If these 10 women didn’t get a satisfying result, what chance does anyone have in a date rape case?
“You hate to tell people that we have such terrible success with these cases at trial, because it makes victims think, Well then, why press charges?” says retired police sergeant Joanne Archambault, president and training director of Sexual Assault Training and Investigations, also in Addy, Washington, a firm that educates law enforcement about rape. “But the truth is, until we change the public’s attitude about how they see women and sexual violence, we’re going to keep losing.”
‘I wanted to confront him’
Two days after Leigh awoke in Marsalis’s bed, she found herself seated across the table from him at a Chinese restaurant. This is not a date, she reassured herself; rather, it was a fact-finding mission. “I wanted to confront him about what happened. I needed to figure out what was going on,” Leigh remembers. She hadn’t told anyone she feared she’d been raped. She needed more information first, some validation of her suspicions. “And all that went wrong,” Leigh whispers, eyes glazing with tears.
The last thing Leigh says she remembers about that dinner, she was picking at the noodles Marsalis was dishing from a serving plate, trying to muster up her courage to ask: Did you rape me? Then, she says, she blacked out. As Leigh would later tell the court, she woke up in Marsalis’s bed again. He was on top of her, once again having sex with her inert body. “It was just devastating,” Leigh says. She spends a long moment composing herself, tucking wisps of hair behind her ears. “I made the stupidest decision to go out with him that second time,” she says finally. “I think to myself all the time, How could I have done something like that? But I did.”
How could Leigh have done such a thing? The idea of reaching out to one’s rapist seems like nothing any woman in her right mind would do. Yet the majority of the 10 women who ultimately testified against Marsalis had contact with him afterward. One 33-year-old woman testified that, after regaining consciousness in Marsalis’s apartment, she discovered his bed was soaked with her menstrual blood, humiliating her; she later FedExed Marsalis a set of sheets. Two of his accusers befriended him. Two others went on to briefly date Marsalis. Yet another accuser, a 26-year-old pharmaceutical representative, told the court that the assault left her pregnant — and she allowed Marsalis, of all people, to accompany her to the abortion.
“There are so many reasons why victims reengage offenders,” says Veronique Valliere, a clinical psychologist in Fogelsville, Pennsylvania, who specializes in sexual abuse. By establishing a relationship on her own terms, a person feeling helpless can reclaim her lost dignity. “Someone yanks that sense of control from you, and you need to get it back,” Valliere explains. Denial also plays a powerful role, as many survivors have a hard time accepting the idea of themselves as a victim — and turn to their attackers to help explain away their fears. “We can’t believe someone would do something so terrible to us,” Valliere says. “We work under the assumption that this must be something we can understand through talking it over.” It’s the classic female response to tackling a problem: Let’s discuss it.
Marsalis’s accusers may have been especially prone to have further contact with him because in many cases their memories of those nights were foggy. And prosecutors argue that Marsalis skillfully exploited that confusion. In interviews with SELF, one accuser described how it unfolded: In October 2003, Marie was a 23-year-old grad student living in Marsalis’s building when one evening, she ran into her neighbor “Dr. Jeff.” Marsalis asked her out for a drink at a nearby bar. Two gin and tonics later, she would testify, it was suddenly sunrise, and Marie was naked from the waist down in Marsalis’s bed. “I was bleeding and hurting,” she remembers. “But I just didn’t remember anything. And I didn’t want to acknowledge that I’d been raped.” The whole thing didn’t make sense to her — she’d never blacked out before in her life — so Marie got out of there as fast as she politely could and avoided Marsalis for several weeks. But when she came face-to-face with him at the building’s Christmas party, she acted perfectly friendly. “Talking to him, I guess it was a way of asserting myself, an attempt to restore some normalcy,” Marie says. “I was trying to be logical instead of emotional.”
Nevertheless, Marie’s subconscious couldn’t forget. She began withdrawing socially and starving herself. A 5-foot, 100-pound pixie to begin with, Marie lost so much weight that within three months, she was hospitalized for a heart arrhythmia. As she lay in the ER, it occurred to Marie that Marsalis had said he worked at that very same hospital.
“I called him,” she says hollowly. And Marsalis visited her, playing the role of doctor by wearing a stethoscope and flipping through her chart. Two days later, after Marie had gone home, the “doctor” showed up at her apartment to check on her. Then, as Marie would tell the court, Marsalis steered her to her bed, pinned her down and raped her again. This time, there was no blackout to cloud her perception; Marsalis offered no smooth talk as he pulled up his scrubs and left. Marie made her way to the shower, curled up under the water and cried. Yet she didn’t even consider calling the police.
Only 19 percent of rapes reported
Think most women would behave differently — that in the same situation, they would jump up and call 911? Think again. According to government estimates, a mere 19 percent of rapes, including stranger rapes, are ever reported in the first place. As Valliere notes, women who have been sexually assaulted find so many reasons not to call police, including denial, shame or their hazy grasp of the facts due to drugs or alcohol. Many survivors assume they won’t be believed. Still others, such as Marie and Leigh, are mortified into silence by what they see as their complicity in their own attacks. “I brought myself to this situation,” Leigh explains, voice surging with emotion. “And I had done it not once, but twice. Who in the world’s gonna believe that?”
Leigh never called the police. Instead, she did her best to move on. She forced herself to date again on Match.com — “I didn’t want to be afraid,” she says — where she soon met a man and fell in love. In September 2006, Leigh had been engaged for three days when she got a call from an FBI agent. “He said in a voice mail that it’s about a man I dated from Match,” she recalls. “And I knew, immediately.” Leigh met with the agent in his Philadelphia office and poured out the story she’d been holding back for so long. It was only then that Leigh learned who Jeffrey Marsalis really was and why investigators were so keen on speaking with her.
The agent told Leigh that Marsalis had recently been tried for the rapes of three other women. The first accuser had called the police in March 2005 — roughly two weeks after Leigh’s attack. She was a 25-year-old pharmacist, a religious woman who had been saving her virginity for marriage until, she would testify, she had blacked out during a date with Marsalis and had awoken underneath him. In a surprising turn of events, when police showed up at Marsalis’s apartment with a search warrant, the building’s 29-year-old manager had blanched — and blurted, unprompted, that Marsalis had drugged and raped her, too. Up in Marsalis’s apartment, law enforcement collected his computer; they realized they had an even bigger case when they found “The Yearly Calendar of Women,” listing some 58 first names, and other files with contact information. Among them was a 27-year-old lawyer who told an uncannily similar tales.
The following January, all three of the women had taken the stand in Commonwealth of Pennsylvania v. Jeffrey Marsalis. By uniting them in a single trial, the Philadelphia district attorney’s office had hoped to prove a pattern of predation, to erase any doubts a jury might have. But during the weeklong trial, the case had come undone. For one thing, the defense denied that Marsalis drugged the women, and there was no physical evidence to support that accusation. Police had found a syringe of liquid diphenhydramine in Marsalis’s apartment, a drug that can cause powerful sleepiness, and theorized that he’d used expired medications he’d had access to at school or work. But testing was not completed and the syringe was not introduced as evidence. Plus, none of the accusers had gotten a toxicology screening — which presumably wouldn’t have turned up anything anyway, because the drug would have left their system quickly. It was the behavior of the women, however, that the defense used to truly torpedo the case. The apartment manager had become friends with Marsalis. The attorney had gone on to have a short relationship with him. Neither had immediately called police or gone to a hospital for a rape-kit exam. As for the pharmacist, she had waited more than a month to make a report.The jury had acquitted Marsalis on all counts. Even so, moments after the jury read the not-guilty verdict, Marsalis was rearrested right in the courtroom: He had new charges to face. Already in custody during his first trial, he was denied bail again and sent immediately back to jail.
The second trial
Prosecutor Joseph Khan urged Leigh to join this second trial, for which they planned to combine the strongest cases among Marsalis’s long list of accusers. Marie, too, was contacted by the D.A.’s office. She was reluctant, but they told her that her story was compelling enough to bolster the other cases. “I wouldn’t have done it if it was just me,” Marie says. “But because I could help the others, I felt it was something I had to do.” So the two women joined five others to face down Marsalis in court. They had safety in numbers; no way could they lose this time.
“Jeffrey is a playboy,” said defense attorney Kevin Hexstall, speaking to the jury in June 2007. “You don’t have to like him for that, but you got to respect and understand the fact that’s all he is.”
The core of the defense’s theory was simple: All seven women were lying. Each had gotten drunk, had consensual sex with Marsalis and regretted it. Then, when authorities called them and revealed that Marsalis had lied about his profession, they felt betrayed and cried rape as revenge. “This is not the forum for that!” Hexstall told the jury in his closing argument. “Throw a brick through his car window, slash his tires. Get online and tell the rest of the world he’s not a doctor.... You don’t come up with this kind of nonsense and play with this man’s life!”
The jury sat rapt. “Let’s think about what some of the real patterns are, and some of the real similarities in these cases,” Hexstall boomed. “All of these women wanted to date Jeffrey Marsalis,” he said. “They all went out drinking. Nobody said, ‘Let’s catch a movie, we want to go to a ball game, let’s just have dinner, let’s meet in the park, I just want to talk.’ They all went out with Dr. Jeff, and they all went out drinking alcohol.”
Although rape-shield laws protect women from having their sexual past discussed at trial, acquaintance-rape defenses continue to “play into these myths about how ‘good’ women act versus ‘bad’ girls,” Long says. “And that it’s the risky behavior of the ‘bad’ girls that somehow invites a rape.” Trials often hinge not on the behavior of the defendant, but rather on whether the woman did enough to protect herself from his advances. From that point of view, Marsalis’s seven accusers had done everything wrong. “We were definitely on trial,” Marie comments drily. “If it was the 1600s, it would have been a stoning.”
The women’s composure may not have helped their standing with the jury. Although a couple of them became emotional during their testimony — including Marie, who blotted her eyes and took breathers — most, like Leigh, kept it together. But experts say many jurors expect women to weep when they are talking about a rape. “If you don’t cry, it means nothing happened to you,” says Legal Momentum’s Schafran. “Of course, if you cry too much, you’re too hysterical to be believed.” (Hexstall reminded the jury that one woman had cried while testifying about her abortion, but not while discussing the alleged rape — proof, he claimed, that the sex had been consensual.) The fact that many of the women had continued to function in their everyday life was further evidence that nothing had occurred. “Rape is the only crime where victims aren’t allowed to be OK,” says psychologist Valliere, who points out that in cases of car theft, for example, the theft’s emotional impact doesn’t factor into the verdict — only whether the car was taken against the victim’s will. “But if someone is raped and seems OK, we say, ‘Could that really have been a rape?’”
It’s a given, too, that no one on a rape jury has any real insight into the crime or its consequences, because during the jury-selection process lawyers routinely weed out almost anyone who admits to real-life experience with sexual assault. Clouding matters further, Pennsylvania law forbids the use of expert testimony to explain the behavior of rape victims (a policy state legislators are trying to change, as a result of outcry over this case). So the Marsalis jury had little context in which to understand the lurid, difficult-to-digest details they were hearing.
Judge Steven Geroff also wouldn’t allow witness testimony from yet another accuser, a woman who had worked with Marsalis at an Idaho ski resort. And in one final confusing stroke, right before jurors headed into the deliberation room, they were read a jury instruction — antiquated and misleading yet still standard in Pennsylvania — saying in part that the women’s failure to immediately report their assault “should be considered” in the jury’s decision.
When the jury returned after five days, it proclaimed Marsalis not guilty of eight of the nine counts of rape he was facing. They had deadlocked on the remaining charge, unable to decide whether Marie’s second, violent encounter had indeed been a rape. Instead, the jury opted to find Marsalis guilty of two counts of the lesser charge of sexual assault. One assault conviction was for Marie’s second attack. The other conviction was for the case of a 26-year-old advertising exec who, upon waking in Marsalis’s bed in the middle of the night, had driven herself home; when Marsalis had called to apologize for “things getting out of hand,” she had refused to see him again. She was the only one of the seven women who had called police — albeit four years later, after she saw a TV news report of Marsalis’s courtroom rearrest.
The jury isn’t talking, but courtroom observers have a theory about why the jury chose to believe these two women above the other five: Their behaviors fit best with the rape-victim stereotype. Both had welled up while testifying and described lasting emotional damage. They were also the slightest physically of the accusers; in a parade of strikingly put-together women, they may have come across as most vulnerable. And so the jury seemed willing to acknowledge that something had happened to them — although whatever it was, it didn’t rise to the level of rape.
A third trial
As for the other five accusers, including Leigh, the jury concluded that no crime at all had been committed against them.
“Twelve people looked me in the face and called me a liar,” Leigh says softly, hugging her knees at the kitchen table of the apartment she shares with her husband. “I put myself out there. I told them every terrible detail. And they said no.” Even Marie, who had the most positive verdict, felt cheated, especially when she realized she’d have to endure a retrial on the hung rape charge. As she watched footage of jurors sprinting from the courtroom, some shielding their face, Marie became enraged. “If you’re going to make a decision that affects people’s lives, tell us why you decided what you did,” she demands. “Don’t go running out of there, hiding your face like you’re ashamed!”
In the end, Marsalis took a plea deal to avoid a retrial: Prosecutors agreed to drop Marie’s remaining rape charge in exchange for Marsalis pleading no contest to a charge of “unlawful restraint” for yet another accuser who had not been part of either trial. “They used my hung charge to get some vindication for her, which she wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. So that made it worth it,” Marie says.
Although Marsalis faced as little as community service, at his sentencing hearing, Judge Geroff delivered a stronger message than the jury had: He sentenced Marsalis to 10.5 to 21 years behind bars plus four years probation, the maximum allowed, and noted that he’ll face mandatory Megan’s Law registration for the rest of his life. “What you were was a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Geroff told Marsalis from the bench. “Your lifestyle was a fantasy. What’s happened to your victims is reality.” Seated together in two rows at the front of the courtroom, a group of Marsalis’s accusers smiled with relief, some through tears. The sentencing softened the blow of the disappointing verdict; finally, their combined efforts had yielded something. “At least he’s locked away, and I know he won’t do this to anyone else. Without all of us there, that might not have happened,” Leigh says. “And of course, all this isn’t even over yet,” she adds.
Because in January, Marsalis heads to a courtroom to be tried for rape a third time. Court documents filed by the D.A. in the Philadelphia cases describe the accuser’s story: Back in late September 2005, shortly before his first trial was to begin, Marsalis made his way to Idaho, where he took a job as a security guard at a ski resort. There he invited a 21-year-old coworker to join him for a drink at a local bar. Over beers, she told him she wasn’t interested in him romantically — she was a lesbian. Marsalis ordered another round and handed her a kamikaze. She noticed a sugary-looking residue at the bottom of the glass; when she drank it down, however, it tasted bitter, not sweet. The rest of her story unfolds in a now-familiar way: She awoke the next day in Marsalis’s bed, feeling sore and nauseated. He graciously walked her back to her dorm, chatting the whole way and leaving her with the suggestion that they “hang out sometime.”
Instead, this accuser did something unusual: She contacted the police. Then she had a rape kit done. The prompt investigation turned up eyewitnesses who said they had seen Marsalis dragging her, barely coherent, out of a taxi while she mumbled, “No, I’m going to stay here.” And when police confronted Marsalis, he initially denied having sex with her. “She is more of a manly type of a woman for one,” he told police. “If I was going to have sex with somebody, wouldn’t I have picked someone who is some drop-dead gorgeous woman? You think?”
This case has it all, it seems, everything to erase doubt from the mind of a juror: prompt reporting, physical evidence, eyewitnesses, Marsalis’s inconsistent statements to police and, because of the accuser’s sexual orientation, no dating behavior to confuse a jury. In other words, her case bears no resemblance at all to a typical report of nonstranger rape. And that is exactly why experts predict that this time around, the woman taking the stand will finally win.
LONDON, England (CNN) -- Paying for sex with trafficked or exploited women would become a crime under new laws proposed by the UK government Wednesday.
Under proposed laws, it would be illegal to buy sex from a trafficked or exploited woman in the UK.
The act of purchasing sex is not currently a criminal offense in England and Wales -- although there are laws against paying for sex in a public place and persistently soliciting prostitutes.
Now UK Home Secretary (interior minister) Jacqui Smith says she is proposing the new measures to protect vulnerable women and tackle the demand for prostitution.
Britain's interior ministry, known as the Home Office, introduced the new measures Wednesday after a six-month review that looked at what else the government could do to protect women being exploited for sexual gain.
"I want to do everything we can to protect the thousands of vulnerable women coerced, exploited or trafficked into prostitution in our country, and to bring those who take advantage of them to justice," Smith said in a statement.
Smith said the new measures will shift the focus onto sex buyers because they create demand for prostitution and demand for the trafficking of women for sex.
"There will be no more excuses for those who pay for sex," she added.
As part of the review, the government looked at the experience of other countries including Sweden -- which has criminalized paying for sex -- and the Netherlands, where brothels are licensed.
The government estimates around 80,000 people are involved in prostitution in Britain, with about 4,000 women having been trafficked for sexual exploitation. It says the prostitution market nationwide is worth up to £1 billion ($1.52 billion).
Trafficking is the movement of women from one place to another for the purposes of sex. British Authorities have said trafficking usually involves the trafficker promising to bring a woman to Britain for a better life and then forcing her into prostitution.
The measures -- which must be approved by Parliament -- would mean that those committing the new offense would be given a criminal record and fined £1,000 ($1,520) -- even if it was a person's first offense and the offender did not know the prostitute was being controlled by a pimp or had been trafficked.
Police would also be given powers to close and seal premises suspected of being used for sexual exploitation, such as brothels, which the government said will prevent further exploitation and abuse from taking place.
Sexual Violence
Three in four women (76 percent) who reported that they had been raped and/or physically assaulted since age 18 said that a current or former husband, cohabiting partner, or date had committed the assault. (U.S. Department of Justice, Prevalence, Incidence, and Consequences of Violence Against Women: Findings from the National Violence Against Women Survey, November 1998)
13% of college women indicated that they had been forced to have sex in a dating situation. (Johnson, I.; Sigler, R.; Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Forced Sexual Intercourse Among Intimates, 2000)
Seven in ten rape and sexual assault victims knew their attacker prior to the assault. (Rennison, Callie M. Criminal Victimization 1999: Changes 1998-00 with Trends 1993-99. Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice, August 2000)
Seven percent of girls in grades five to eight and twelve percent of girls in grades nine through twelve said they had been sexually abused. (Commonwealth Fund Survey of the Health of Adolescent Girls, 1998)
Approximately 66% of rape victims know their assailant. (Bureau of Justice Statistics, National Crime Victimization Survey, 2002)
In 2001, 41,740 women were victims of rape/sexual assault committed by an intimate partner. (Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Data Brief, Intimate Partner Violence, 1993-2001, February 2003)
Abuse and Teens
Nearly three in four tweens (72%) say boyfriend/girlfriend relationships usually begin at age 14 or younger. (Liz Claiborne Inc. study on teen dating abuse conducted by Teenage Research Unlimited, February 2008.)
62% of tweens (age 11-14) who have been in a relationship say they know friends who have been verbally abused (called stupid, worthless, ugly, etc) by a boyfriend/girlfriend. (Liz Claiborne Inc. study on teen dating abuse conducted by Teenage Research Unlimited, February 2008.)
Only half of all tweens (age 11-14) claim to know the warning signs of a bad/hurtful relationship. (Liz Claiborne Inc. study on teen dating abuse conducted by Teenage Research Unlimited, February 2008.)
More than three times as many tweens (20%) as parents (6%) admit that parents know little or nothing about the tweens’ dating relationships. (Liz Claiborne Inc. study on teen dating abuse conducted by Teenage Research Unlimited, February 2008.)
1 in 3 teenagers report knowing a friend or peer who has been hit, punched, kicked, slapped, choked or physically hurt by their partner. (Liz Claiborne Inc. study on teen dating abuse conducted by Teenage Research Unlimited, February 2005.)
Nearly 1 in 5 teenage girls who have been in a relationship said a boyfriend had threatened violence or self-harm if presented with a break-up. (Liz Claiborne Inc. study on teen dating abuse conducted by Teenage Research Unlimited, February 2005.)
13% of teenage girls who said they have been in a relationship report being physically hurt or hit. (Liz Claiborne Inc. study on teen dating abuse conducted by Teenage Research Unlimited, February 2005.)
1 in 4 teenage girls who have been in relationships reveal they have been pressured to perform oral sex or engage in intercourse. (Liz Claiborne Inc. study on teen dating abuse conducted by Teenage Research Unlimited, February 2005.)
More than 1 in 4 teenage girls in a relationship (26%) report enduring repeated verbal abuse. (Liz Claiborne Inc. study on teen dating abuse conducted by Teenage Research Unlimited, February 2005.)
80% of teens regard verbal abuse as a “serious issue” for their age group. (Liz Claiborne Inc. study on teen dating abuse conducted by Teenage Research Unlimited, February 2005.)
If trapped in an abusive relationship, 73% of teens said they would turn to a friend for help; but only 33% who have been in or known about an abusive relationship said they have told anyone about it. (Liz Claiborne Inc. study on teen dating abuse conducted by Teenage Research Unlimited, February 2005.)
Twenty-four percent of 14 to 17-year-olds know at least one student who has been the victim of dating violence, yet 81% of parents either believe teen dating violence is not an issue or admit they don't know if it is an issue. (Survey commissioned by the Empower Program, sponsored by Liz Claiborne Inc. and conducted by Knowledge Networks, Social Control, Verbal Abuse, and Violence Among Teenagers, December 2000)
Less than 25% of teens say they have discussed dating violence with their parents. (Liz Claiborne Inc. study of teens 13-17 conducted by Applied Research and Consulting LLC, Spring 2000)
89% of teens between the ages of 13 and 18 say they have been in dating relationships; forty percent of teenage girls age 14 to 17 report knowing someone their age who has been hit or beaten by a boyfriend. (Children Now/Kaiser Permanente poll, December 1995)
Nearly 80% of girls who have been physically abused in their intimate relationships continue to date their abuser. (City of New York, Teen Relationship Abuse Fact Sheet, March 1998)
Of the women between the ages 15-19 murdered each year, 30% are killed by their husband or boyfriend. (City of New York, Teen Relationship Abuse Fact Sheet, March 1998)
NORTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. - Ann Burke saw signs of trouble with her daughter's boyfriend.
He'd incessantly call her at night, keep her from her family, and, ultimately, physically abuse her during a tumultuous relationship that ended with her death three years ago.
Burke's 23-year-old daughter, Lindsay, may not have understood the dynamics of an abusive relationship, but her death is helping to ensure that other young people do.
The initiative was spearheaded by Burke and her husband, Chris, who say schools should be obligated to teach teens the warning signs of abusive relationships and broach the subject head-on so victims feel empowered to get help and leave violent partners.
'This could happen to anyone'
"If this could happen to her, this could happen to anyone," said Ann Burke, a health teacher who runs a memorial fund to raise money for dating violence workshops for parents and educators.
One other state, Texas, mandates unspecified awareness education on dating violence for students and parents, while several other states encourage it. But the Rhode Island measure goes further by requiring the topic be incorporated annually into the curriculum for students in seventh through 12th grade.
Burke says such education would have allowed her daughter to recognize the danger in her relationship earlier. Though her daughter left her boyfriend several times, she didn't change her phone number or have a plan for safely cutting off contact for good.
She also believed she could be friends with her boyfriend if the romance ended.
"I said, `No, he said that to you before, Lindsay. You can't just be friends,'" Burke recalled.
Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick Lynch, who shepherded the proposal through the legislature last year, said domestic violence is a disturbingly common crime, yet education about it is scarce and haphazard.
"You teach sex ed, you teach 'don't do drugs,' you teach 'don't drink,' you should also be teaching 'don't be a victim of domestic violence,' " said Lynch, whose office receives about 5,000 cases a year.
Gaining traction around nation
The law is gaining traction around the country, with members of the National Association of Attorneys General unanimously adopting a resolution encouraging the education in their states. Nebraska's top prosecutor said he intends to submit legislation modeled after Rhode Island's law, and apparel maker Liz Claiborne Inc. has helped promote it around the country.
The education focuses as much on nurturing good relationships as avoiding abusive ones.
In a recent sophomore health class at South Kingstown High School, teacher Karen Murphy reviewed communication skills for friendships and romantic relationships, including waiting until you're calm before confronting someone with a problem and openly expressing your feelings.
"You've just found out that somebody spread a rumor about you and you approach them at their locker," Murphy told the class. "Are you going to want to start talking to her when you're extremely angry after you've just found out about it?"
"No," the class replied in unison.
Alex Butler, a 15-year-old sophomore, said he didn't think dating violence was a problem at his school but that the education has helped him identify stages of abusive relationships.
"It's nice 'cause then you can warn other people even if you don't know them," he said.
Even if the lessons seem obvious, teachers hope students will recognize that some behaviors they may tolerate in their relationships — obsessive text messaging, for instance, or physical control — are unacceptable and possible precursors to violence.
Problems emerged in relationship
Ann Burke said Lindsay fell hard for Gerardo Martinez after meeting him at a wedding, and though he seemed respectful and nice, problems emerged after Martinez began exerting control over her daughter.
Ann Burke became so distraught that she couldn't sleep and she sought the advice of counselors. Fearing the worst, she even told Lindsay she couldn't bear to live without her.
One day in September 2005, after Lindsay had moved in with her brother to get away from Martinez, Burke became concerned when Lindsay didn't answer her phone.
Police found Lindsay in the bathtub of Martinez's home, her throat slashed. Martinez was convicted last year of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Burke believes her daughter would have wanted her to teach others about dating violence.
"You may have killed her physical body, but I'll be damned: her spirit is still living on in her family and friends," she said. "We're going to do what we need to do."
Not gender violence, but I thought it was interesting all the same because of the way it looks at both perspectives. Both sides believe they are the victims.
There is a certain high school, in a small city in the heart of America, where a question that started in crowded hallways grew to principals' offices, a school district, a police department, and mushroomed to the whole town: What's the deal with Billy Wolfe? How did he get so bruised and battered? Sixteen, a sophomore, and a marked man. Or, so says his mother, Penney. And she's kept score.
Penney Wolfe: Everyday that something new happens, it opens like a new wound for me. But it's a wound I will get healed. And I will heal it for my child.
When we first met this lanky, very soft-spoken Arkansas teen in March, he said the prospect of going to school each morning gave him stomach aches.
Billy: People have tried to push me down the stairs in the school. So every- every time I go down stairs, I glance behind me.
Well, perhaps you can't blame him. Just getting to school has invited trouble. And unlike most kids, he's got the video to prove it. A cell phone camera was rolling when a schoolmate stormed toward Billy and sucker-punched him.
Now watch closely as a security camera shows Billy moving toward a seat on his school bus. Suddenly, no apparent pretext, a couple of guys yank him down. Billy tries to fight back, but is no match for their pummeling. Afterwards, says Billy, the kids jeered him.
Billy: "Ha, ha, you got your *** kicked."
Keith Morrison: "You got your *** kicked."
Billy: They were saying that, yeah.
What is it about Billy? Something different, vulnerable? He was born in Arizona, playful, shy, liked being outside.
Keith Morrison: What kind of kids did he gravitate to?
Penney Wolfe: I think anybody that would actually pay attention to him.
In the 4th grade, Billy and his family moved here to Fayetteville, Arkansas, a growing city popular for its good schools.
Billy was a bright kid, but he had trouble reading or concentrating. He was distractible, zoned out sometimes. There was no hint in his records of any behavioral problems, though sometimes, said a teacher, he didn't seem to pick up on social clues very well. Playable is the way his father Curt put it; ripe for teasing.
Curt Wolfe: His natural defenses - make him a little easier to - to get a response out of. It's easy to play him.
Keith Morrison: To get a reaction from him?
Curt Wolfe: You bet.
Billy says the teasing first began on the playground - when kids would unaccountably kick him.
Keith Morrison: And you don't know why they would do such a thing?
Billy: No.
Keith Morrison: If they kicked you would you, what, run after them and try to kick them back?
Billy: Yeah. But then they, like, have a group of friends.
It was 2004, he was in the 7th grade, when the trouble burst into view. At least, for Billy's parents.
Penney Wolfe: It was a phone call. A childish sort of prank. A classmate called and offered, graphically, to sell Billy a sex toy.
Keith Morrison: What kind of a sexual toy?
Penney Wolfe: I don't wanna say it on camera.
Penney had to make a decision so many parents have had to make - to get involved or not. She called the boy's mother.
Penney Wolfe: A lot of people might critique me and say, "Well, he was just pullin' off a prank. Why did you-- why'd you call his mom?" Well, there are things in life that I believe are appropriate, and things that are not. And that was not appropriate for my child.
Keith Morrison: What did Billy think about it?
Penney Wolfe: He was mortified. He was like, "Mom." You know-
Keith Morrison: Leave it alone?
Penney Wolfe: Yeah. (laughter) I was like, "No. This is not right and he's not going to do this again.
Penney's telephone call would be the beginning of a campaign she felt she had to wage.
Keith Morrison: What happened next?
Billy: School, the next day, he came to me with a list of 20 kids that said they were gonna beat me up. Or help him beat me up.
Keith Morrison: So what did you think?
Billy: I told my mom when I came home. And she told the principal.
Penney Wolfe: And I kept tellin' 'im, you got opportunity to stop this. You can stop this from happening if you call these kids, and he said he saw the list. He knew the kids that were on that list.
But Penney says no calls were made and a few days later, Billy says he got cornered in the school restroom. That's when the same boy connected to the sex toy incident, along with some others, peeked over into Billy's stall to poke fun at him. Billy told him to stop, and says when he came out to wash his hands:
Billy: I just got hit in the face.
Keith Morrison: Just like that? Whack?
Billy: Yeah.
Things didn't let up. Later that year, amidst the routine teasing, there was that beating incident on the school bus. Even though the tape shows Billy being assaulted, students told the principal that Billy was the one who'd started the fight. And when Billy denied this-
Penney Wolfe: The principal said, "Well, Billy, I've interviewed three of my prized students-- " Those were his very words. And he said, "They never lie to me, Billy." He said, "You did this. And I'm suspending you."
Billy: And I told him that if he'd just watch the video, he'd see.
Keith Morrison: So right away they went and got the tape and looked at it?
Billy: No. Not right away. After I served my suspension, they went and looked at it. And found out that the kids were lying.
A police report was filed, but, the Wolfes say, at least one of the assailants remained in school, unpunished.
Billy: They let the kids roam the halls and just make fun of me.
In the 8th grade, things spilled over outside school jurisdiction. In the spring of 2006, some teens Billy knew pretended they wanted to play basketball with him in the park. Instead, they made mince-meat out of the boy who was easy to play, and took his money. A police report was filed and the attackers were punished. Still, it seemed never ending.
Apparently it didn't matter what Billy said or did. In 9th grade, some schoolmates crafted his reputation for him by launching a Web page with a cruel name - "Everyone that hates Billy Wolfe" -and Billy's image superimposed on a peter pan cut-out. A word, "homosexual," meant to further debase him was splayed across it. Billy's girlfriend at the time called him with the news.
Keith Morrison: I can't imagine what that must be like, to open up Facebook and see a page like that. Humiliating.
Billy: Humiliating. Yeah. Very, very embarrassing.
Penney Wolfe: When my son saw that Web site, he was crushed.
Once again, Penney said she went to a school administrator - this time asking for help in reining in the cyber-bullies.
Penney Wolfe: I said, "They're callin' him a homosexual." And - and he said, "Well, is he?" Like it would be okay that- the demeanor that these children had if he was.
No one from the school district would agree to be interviewed on camera. But according to a spokesman, the principal did notify the parents of the students who were part of the Web site, and that the page was ultimately taken down. Still, the character bashing persisted.
Keith Morrison: Anything else?
Billy: Yeah, I've heard that I tip, I - pushed Dylan out of his wheelchair. I didn't. But, that's what I heard.
Keith Morrison: Can you give me a kind of a laundry list of the rumors you've heard?
Billy: Okay. I'm a gay Nazi who likes to kill retarded kids-- kids' cats.
Worse still, says Billy, kids continued to pick fights with him. But now the Wolfes were done. They're also considering a lawsuit against the Fayetteville school district.
In March, Billy's parents sued one of the alleged bullies, and other as-of-yet unnamed conspirators for unspecified damages - charging them with assaulting and battering Billy.
Penney Wolfe: These children just need a good lesson. They need to be stopped. They don't understand the impact that they're having on people's lives.
But of course, you must have known it couldn't be as uncomplicated as that. Surely there must be something more to this. Is Billy truly an innocent victim? And why is the whole town talking?
Will: I'd say a good 90, 95 percent of the stuff that has happened to him, he deserved, like getting hit in the face. Getting the stitches. And he deserved that.
Keith Morrison: Rough justice in the law of the jungle, huh?
Will:(laughter) It's high school. You get a helmet.
Did you ever tease anyone?
Billy: Well, I tease my friends.
Keith Morrison: Smack somebody on the way through the hall?
Billy: Uh-uh.
Keith Morrison: Shoved them?
Billy: Uh-uh.
Keith Morrison: Never participated in a fight?
Billy: No, sir.
Keith Morrison: And if somebody pushed you, you pushed back?
Billy: Yeah, but I wouldn't start it.
Shouldn't a parent intervene? It's not an idle question. These incidents do happen, and lately they've been showing up on the Internet, like the beating by girls of one of their own. Dreadful stuff.
So, in the Wolfes’ case, were they right to file a lawsuit against some of the kids they say were parties to the bullying?
Were they right to take it national - to the New York Times, and then our own TODAY show?
Sixteen-year-old Billy Wolfe admits he's not perfect, but says he's been relentlessly bullied over the past 4 years: half a dozen severe beatings, some captured on camera. Some others painful in a different way. Shouldn't a parent intervene?
In the Wolfes’ case, were they right to file a lawsuit against some of the kids they say were parties to the bullying?
But if the Wolfes hoped for some kind of respite, that hope was in vain. A Web site with chatter about Billy's case linked itself to another site that offered "Everybody hates Billy" T-shirts. A friend, worried about more trouble, walked him to the school bus stop every morning. The school assigned an adult to tail Billy through the halls, which were now buzzing with rumors.
Male student: They say he tries to pick fights with people, but I don't know him. I don't know if he does.
That national attention struck a nerve here in Fayetteville wasn't necessarily appreciated. The local newspaper raised the possibility that Billy was not an innocent victim - but a problem student who was sometimes the aggressor. Penney read the article and broke down.
Penney Wolfe: They want to make my son out to be the bully. This is wrong.
But in situations like this, there often so much innuendo, miscommunication and speculation that poisons the air - often making it difficult to prove who's right or wrong.
Here's one of the kids who claims Billy is the real bully. He'd eventually be named in the Wolfes’ lawsuit: 9th grader Will Starks.
Will: He will antagonize people until they decided they're fed up with it. And then he'll make them hit him first.
Keith Morrison: How does he antagonize people?
Will: He'll call names every now and then. Or he'll just give you the most God awful stare you'll ever see.
Will told us he was in a school hallway one day last year, just minding his own business, when Billy started an altercation.
Will: There was rumor goin' around that I was sayin' stuff about his mom. Which, I don't do that. It's wrong. And he came up to me in the hallway and pushed me and said, "What are you sayin' about my mom, punk?" And I said, "Dude, I didn't say nothin'. Go away."
But that just wasn't true. And when pressed, Will came clean about his badmouthing - at least to me.
Keith Morrison: You did though.
Will: Yeah.
Keith Morrison: but you weren't about to admit it?
Will: It wasn't no big thing.
Keith Morrison: But a big thing to him though, wasn't it?
Will: I guess.
And judging by a note Will posted one day before their hallway blowout, Will was already prepared to go toe to toe with Billy -- just not with his own toe.
"Haha, who said I was gonna touch him?" he writes. "Haha, nah, I got people that are gonna do it 4 me."
Might one of those special friends be Ian Teeters? Ian says he happened on Will and Billy arguing in the hall and rushed in to intervene.
Ian: I didn't want my friend to get in trouble. And Billy kept pushing me. And I just kinda lost my temper and punched him.
Too bad a video camera wasn't running. At the time, Ian belonged to a Facebook site called "I love watching fights at school" which encouraged members to capture them on camera - not so uncommon these days. Even so, Ian says he's not one to start them - though his punch that floored Billy apparently earned him a reputation as a chivalrous tough guy.
Ian: I kind of enjoyed it for the first week or two, 'cause people were so like, "Hey, you beat up Billy."
It also earned him a mention in the Wolfes’ lawsuit. For the record, both Ian and Will Starks deny all of the allegations or claims in the lawsuit.
Will: If you had someone not leave you alone and you couldn't get away from 'em, what would you do?
Keith Morrison: I'm trying to think? Would I hit 'em in the face? Do you think I should?
Will: It'd be up to you.
Will's musings about Billy were something of an education for his mother.
Will's mom: I'm not on the computer so I'm not a computer person, so I don't know what's goin' on.
And that of course is not uncommon. How many parents know how their kids behave on the Internet? Mrs. Starks listened as I read what will posted just hours after Ian decked Billy.
Keith Morrison (reading to Will and his mother): "And then my friend just clocks this little ***** right in his jaw, and ends up bustin' out one or two of his teeth. And this little ho out drops to the floor and passes the **** out, or just starts ballin’. But it was funny as ****. I'm a little mad I didn't get a punch in because a teacher was like right around the corner. Ah, damn. Wish I could have."
Keith Morrison: You're mad at this kid, huh? Kid s-- starts comin' up and shovin' you for sayin' nothing, I mean--
Will's mom: He was pushing you?
Will: Yeah, he was shoving me--
Will's mom: If he is instigating all these fights, does he think he can instigate it and upset people and get away with it?
Keith Morrison: So this isn't a story about the victim of bullying--
Will's mom: Well, as a mother, there's always two sides to everything. You wanna know-- No mother ever wants to know that their son's the bad guy.
Perhaps the one Billy's most mad at is his neighbor and former best friend. Billy and Dylan Gray, who has cerebral palsy, were practically inseparable once. And then, sometime in middle school, their friendship suddenly turned quite sour.
Dylan: I think once the students and him got into it more, then I-- then he started picking on me too.
Keith Morrison: Once he and the students started getting into it, he began to pick on you?
Dylan: Yeah.
Keith Morrison: What was he doing?
Dylan: At first, there was a simple smirk when I would pass him in the hallway.
Keith Morrison: A smirk?
Dylan: Yes. And- he- got to the point where he started calling me names, like stupid, retarded.
In fact, it turns out that the infamous "every one that hates Billy Wolfe" Web page originated out of Dylan's house - though Dylan claims it was his friends who created it.
Keith: Do you ever think to yourself that maybe he's been used as a punching bag a bit too much?
Dylan: I don't know all- every incident that happened with him- but in my opinion, he deserved it.
Penney Wolfe: It's so wrong what those boys are saying.
Billy: Mom, don't worry about it. They can say what they want...
Penney Wolfe: There've been times where he said, "Mom, just stop. It'll be all right. Just stop. It'll go away." It doesn't go away.
Keith Morrison: Do you ever wish that nothing had ever been done about this. That you'd just sort of put your head down, and--
Billy: No. It would still be going on now.
Billy, for whatever reason, is bullied, resented, belittled. Fights back in court, and resentment spreads. In the lessons of suspicion and dislike, straight “A”s all around. Respect? Well, sadly, not so much. There are no winners in this, of course.
(Above: An unconscious and shackled Dreamgirl being licked by Dr. Destiny, who simultaneously thrusts his thumb into her mouth. This is one of those panels that makes me think DC writers and artists need some kind of mandatory sexual sensitivity class. Image from Justice Society of America #5 written by Geoff Johns and drawn by Fernando Pasarin) 