I am sending this because the disabled are often
victims of abuse and although I know it is
offensive to some, Utah is a breeding ground for
bad law. Once they pass it, then they use their
clout to push it out onto other states. First
girls suffer the abuse, then their fathers can
force them to have the incestuous baby, and if
birth defects abound, the girls are told they
were not righteous enough and blamed again.
<http://www.slweekly.com/editorial/2006/politics_2006-04-20.cfm>http://www.slweekly.com/editorial/2006/politics_2006-04-20.cfm
Dangerous Notice
A Philly organization takes on Utah’s abortion law.
by
<mailto:[log in to unmask]:Dangerous
Notice&[log in to unmask]>Katharine Biele
The Leadership Council rode into town a day too
late for House Bill 85. That’s the bill some
say now gives abusive fathers notification that
their daughters want to terminate a pregnancy the fathers caused.
As Dr. Paul Fink appealed to a tony gathering in
Federal Heights, the stroke of midnight saw Gov.
Jon Huntsman Jr. sign HB85 into law. If only they
had known earlier, bemoaned Joyanna Silberg, the council’s vice president.
She and Fink, a past president of the American
Psychiatric Association and professor at Temple
University, were on the road promoting the
nonprofit that brought a cadre of shrinks
together in cyberspace. Hell, they don’t even
have an office, much less a staff, says Fink.
In 1998, this group of professionals joined to
stave off a growing movement seeking to discredit
victims of abuse. “I wasn’t going to let
these bastards win,” says Fink. At first called
the Leadership Council on Mental Health, Justice,
and the Media, it is now known as the Leadership
Council on Child Abuse & Interpersonal Violence,
reflecting a narrowing of its focus.
There are, of course, many “bastards” in the
field of psychiatry, but the one most often
referred to by the council is the False Memory
Syndrome Foundation, formed in 1992 by families
and professionals connected with the University
of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and Johns Hopkins in Baltimore.
“They saw a need for an organization that could
document and study the problem of families that
were being shattered when adult children suddenly
claimed to have recovered repressed memories of
childhood sexual abuse,” says the FMS Website.
This is an issue almost tailor-made for Utah,
playing on those who fear most the image of
families shattered to allegedly further the goals
of militant gays and monolithic government. The
arguments between the FMS advocates and the
Leadership Council have some of those
bash-science elements you’d see in the
evolution debate. But it’s a different kind of
science, dealing with the mind and how, under
certain circumstances, you might trick it.
A few years ago, the Sundance Film Festival
honored the film Capturing the Friedmans with the
Best American Documentary prize. At this, the
Leadership Council took up arms, determined to
keep an Academy Award out of reach.
The Friedmans were a quirky family that seemed to
exist with a camcorder in their faces. Arnold
Friedman was a science teacher who gave computer
classes at his home in the 1980s. He and his son,
Jesse, later pleaded guilty to sexually abusing
dozens of boys over the years. Filmmaker Andrew
Jarecki cobbled together the Friedman home movies
to create a film that questioned whether the Friedmans were treated fairly.
Apparently, the film was so good that Jesse
Friedman submitted it with his motion to overturn
his conviction. But the council and some news
organizations questioned whether the film was
really a straightforward documentary.
Young men began contacting the council and
ultimately wrote a letter in 2004 saying they
were Friedman victims and asking the academy not
to recognize the film. Not only was the film
ignored but, while accepting his award for Mystic
River, Tim Robbins made a plea for abuse victims to seek help.
The council looks at the Friedman issue through
the prism of pedophilia and maintains there’s a
disturbing trend toward normalization of the
practice. Mainstreaming took flight in the late
1990s after the “Rind Study,” a controversial
and widely distributed report on child sexual abuse.
Psychologists Bruce Rind, Philip Tromovitch and
Robert Bauserman asserted that there’s only
slight evidence of psychological harm from child sexual abuse.
While the council documents studies to the
contrary, Silberg alleges the study is a thinly
veiled tool to promote sexual relationships between adults and children.
“The problems and injustices surrounding child
abuse are the same as the problems in divorce,”
says Fink. “Children are distraught and no one
is paying attention to them. There’s a lack of
understanding that children are relatively fragile.”
Instead, the focus is on the perpetrator, on
who’s guilty and who’s dangerous.
“Nationwide, children don’t have a voice,”
Fink says. “We believe children are blind, deaf and inert.”
That’s the way it is with HB85, which still
requires parentsabusive or notto be notified of
a daughter having an abortion, even if they
can’t necessarily grant consent for the
procedure. That’s the way it is with the
victims of priest abuse, with the Lost Boys of
polygamy and the barely prepubescent sister-wives
still locked in closed polygamous communities.
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