Some few months ago, I had enjoyed the occasion of a private conference
with the Williamsburg area Commonwealth Attorney, Virginia's equivalent
of a District Attorney. Mr. Fairbanks is a man regarded by many, myself
included, to be one to seek certainty prior to prosecution, quite an
admirable quality in a prosecutor.
Quite naturally, as the conversation drew to a close, and given my
interest in the subject matter before us, the conversation turned
toward the Kelly Day-Care case, Wenatchee, and a few others of note.
What surprised me was his perception that a "technicality" had resulted
in the guilty being freed in the Kelly case, a point he had raised to
illustrate both the extent of child abuse, as he views it, as well as
the difficulties faced by prosecutors in establishing their cases.
In briefly mentioning some of the other similar cases in which
prosecutors faced such difficulties, he left me wondering how an
otherwise well-reasoned individual, one reputed as having an innate
sense of fair play and =justice= could be so damned mistaken.  Or
whether, in the alternative, if it is I who am entirely mistaken.
We all tend to selectively filter information in such a manner as to
reinforce our belief systems.  Hence, I needed to open my mind to
consider his position.
Maybe the Prosecutor is right, and the False Memory Foundation and
VOCAL are wrong.  Maybe you really =can= find a way to rape a five-
year-old girl multiple times with a butcher knife and leave no scars.
Maybe you really =can= make miles of underground tunnels disappear
overnight.  Maybe you really =can= dress up like Ronald McDonald and
fly over the city in a hot air balloon without anyone taking notice as
you rape young children with kitchen utensils.  Maybe the government
really =has= developed a rogue R2D2 robot that rapes young children.
And maybe I really can recall whether they had Cool White or Dalite
fluorescent bulbs in the hospital operating room as I was being born
some ThirtySomething years ago.
Lest I begin to sound like a hot air balloon myself, reality springs
forth again in the following posting, the actual Syllabus from the
Kelly Michaels case.  Read it for yourself, and consider the question
of whether or not a mere technicality resulted in the guilty being set
free; and be ever more prepared to address the comments of an otherwise
learned individual handing you such nonsense.
--- FMail/386 1.0g
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