Cedar Park, Texas

[highflight]

Found this in one of my news feeds:
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Hope for Children

If you live in Leander, Cedar Park, or other surrounding areas, you've no doubt heard the protests of the #FightForGK supporters regarding a very publicized trial. This trial involves two young boys (only 4 years-old at the time of the abuse) who clearly shared detailed information about sexual abuse by Greg Kelley, a high school student living at the in-home daycare where the boys were being cared for.

The facts in the case (which can be found on numerous sites if you do a search) clearly indicate Greg Kelley's guilt, and he was ultimately convicted of super aggravated sexual assault in a unanimous decision made by a jury of 12 of Greg's peers. A good place to find information is through Amy Smith, child advocate, who has a very informative blog called WatchKeep. Read Chief Mannix's letter regarding this case and the public fight against the families on Amy's blog here: WatchKeep .

Greg accepted a deal, sentencing him to 25 years in prison with no right to appeal, and he's required to register as a sex offender for life. Yet despite Greg's acceptance of guilt through this deal, a group of supporters rallied around him insisting on his innocence and vowing to clear his name. They've made numerous claims of having proof of Greg's innocence, yet even with an attorney they hired, they have been unable to produce any such proof.

As the group grew in numbers, like a dark fog creeping over our community attempting to hide the light of truth, the families of two precious little boys tried to pick up the pieces of their lives and move on. But the fog turned into thundering storms as the media attention on the #FightForGK side made moving on very difficult.

Imagine, if you can, the devastation this type of abuse must have on the children and their families. Then imagine their community, who is supposed to look out for each other, especially for children who can't look after themselves, turning against them. Imagine them turning on their TV to watch the local news and seeing these people, who live all around them, fighting to free their child's abuser. This is what has happened to these innocent children and their families. The children have been accused of "making up" these stories. The parents have been accused of coaching their children to falsely accuse an innocent man...for what reason I can't even fathom. They've been dragged through the mud and back again, and for what?

This group of approximately 100 active members continue to blindly march onward behind a leader who has vowed to "never stop fighting" to free the man who sexually assaulted of these young boys, without so much as a second thought for the children's lives they continue to trample on. And all the while they point their fingers at the families and mock those who dare go against them and support the children, saying things such as, "God will rub your face in your lies." This is how they treat people who cry out against sexual abuse. They weave a thick fabric of misinformation and lies and toss it over every last ounce of truth, smothering hope and healing.

But we have a chance to change that. We can make a difference starting now. I've been where these families are and I'm telling you, they need us. They need our love and our support, and they need to know we believe them. Let's stop allowing this to be about Greg Kelley. I'd love to never have his name reach my ears again. Let's reach out to these sweet families and show them that their community DOES care about them. Let's show them that no matter who stands against them, truth is on their side and so are we, and we won't allow one of our own to be abused. Let's show them the face of God through our love and support. Let's break the chain of silence, rip away that blanket of lies and allow hope and healing to pour down on them.

I've started this GoFundMe campaign for the two families affected by the story I've just shared. Please know that after the GoFundMe fees, every penny will be split equally among these two families. I will deliver two money orders to Myrna Fuentes of Cedar Park Police Department, Victim Services, and she will get the checks to the families.

I don't know what, if any, financial needs they may have, but I just ask that you give from your heart. They can use the money for counseling, mortgage payments, groceries, Christmas gifts, or even a vacation if that's what they decide. Goodness knows they deserve a nice vacation!

Thank you for caring and for showing these families that they are not alone.

 

[Still]

The behavior of that mad gang she describes is purely indicative of evil. These people are genuinely evil, thus they side with evil.

I wish I could send in tons of money to the families. I wish I could make it all go away for them.

 

[C. E.]

The link to Watchkeep in the original post above is certainly worth reading.

It would seem that Mr. Kelley is as guilty as his conviction would compel us to believe. Yet recently we have seen disturbing examples of police executing their duties with a zeal that steps beyond enforcement and into judgment. We have seen a major magazine story on a gang rape at the University of Virginia start to unravel before our eyes, which should certainly remind us all of the dangers of trial by media. We are watching disturbing charges against Bill Cosby that for many further shatter our ability to find comfort in unquestioned trust. Especially for us as victims - many who (like me) have yet to see any justice meted out to their perpetrators - it can be far easier to applaud the apprehension and conviction of someone rather than to question it. And in some cases, questioning the guilt of a suspected perpetrator is incorrectly rephrased by others as questioning the seriousness of the crime itself.

However, with 147 people exonerated from death row in the United States, and with 324 people exonerated with DNA evidence alone, plus an estimated wrongful conviction rate for serious crimes that approaches 5%, it is worth asking the question. If justice can no longer stand the scrutiny of re-examination or even appeal, that is a threat to all of us.

That said, the Cedar Park Police Chief's statement in the link above is very compelling. But he admits enough about the process which convicted Kelley that it gives me pause. Kelley was the only focus of the investigation, he "lawyered up" (as if that is something an innocent person would not do when challenged by the state?), he acquiesced to a plea, and one of the children recanted his testimony resulting in those charges being thrown out.

My whole journey through my abuse was about looking at things as they truly were, rather than as I believed they were. It was a bold commitment to see the truth beyond the lies I built my life upon - lies that merely masqueraded as truth, lies I never questioned because of my desire that they be truths. It takes strength to look at a thing with full honesty and candor, to hold oneself vulnerable to scrutiny, to be committed to truths more than convictions.

I do not profess to know of Kelley's innocence or guilt, nor is it my place to take a side on that argument. But I hope that the seriousness of the charges against him prove their full validity when held up in the harshest light.

Winston Churchill said it best:

.......The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.

 

[Nothing Man]

I think Eric makes some excellent points. None of us really know the truth. I wish there was a way to guarantee that only the guilty get convicted. But I suppose that unless I see unequivocal proof of innocence, I have to side with the victims.

 

[victor-victim]

i am reminded of woody allen and oj simpson.
i want to form a valid view,
but the facts are hard to find.

opinion is not evidence.
rumour is not research.
suspicion is not conviction.
speculation is not investigation.
law is a poor substitute for justice.
one is theory, one is practice.

but when it comes to child protection,
action is imperative.
apathy is unacceptable.
anger is understandable.
errors are inevitable.

sexual safety
and spiritual security
of minors and children
should be high priority.
but in pursuit of justice,
the rights of accused
must not be ignored
and never abused.
presume innocence.
provide defense.
do the due diligence.
examine the evidence.
acting in ignorance,
rage or revenge,
is not the right response
to this challenge.

 

[Still]

In this nation, a court has not only the final word, but the only official word. No one is guilty of ANYTHING until a court says its so.

News media cannot call the accused "a rapist," unless a court says he is.

By definition within this case, Kelly is a low-down, baby-rapist.

I truly don't know how anyone can even begin to think of re-consideration for this rapist, especially where and how his supporters do not consider the victims tragedy.

There IS such a thing as a WRONG. And yes, people can and do commit wrongs! Or representative court says its so...it is so. The "what if" dance around here makes me wanna puke!

May Kelly writhe in excruciating misery for the next 24.9 years, and then die.

I wish the same upon the mad-dogs who are assaulting the victims and their families.

 

[C. E.]

It is worth noting that while there is certainly no argument that the court has the final official word, we all know that there exists a court of public opinion. While the news media may not call an accused a "rapist", such distinction amounts to mere formality when the media presents such suggestion as fact, as in the case of Rolling Stone Magazine and a University of Virginia student named Jackie.

[quote:Sabrina Rubin Erdly, Rolling Stone Magazine, Nov 19 2014]Jackie was just starting her freshman year at the University of Virginia when she was brutally assaulted by seven men at a frat party.[/quote]
This is drawn right off the "kicker" of the article, a blatant contention presented as fact and since proven questionable by other investigative reports by the Washington Post. Note the absence of the modifying adjective allegedly. In my opinion, this case was already tried by the media - right in that statement. Similarly, Bill Cosby, according to many polls, is considered guilty in the court of public opinion having never been tried or convicted.

To say that no one is guilty of anything until a court says they are suggests that most of our collective assailants are in fact not guilty of the crimes against us. And what about those accused and obviously guilty of the crime, but are released on technical legal grounds? Are they truly not guilty? Consider also that the same court system that allows us to define Kelley as a "baby rapist" also imposes an anachronistic statute of limitations standard that amounts to forgiveness to many other abusers.

If a definition of Kelley as low-down baby-rapist is strictly based upon the definition of court decision, then it would follow that the definition of my abuser - who managed to avoid prosecution - would be up-standing Christian family man, as he is regarded in the non-judicial circles of the neighborhood he moved into.

I agree there is such a thing as wrong. I very specifically delineated some of the parameters of such wrongs in my previous post regarding wrongful convictions. Wrong is not necessarily the sole province of the accused, and sometimes not even of the convicted.

My own philosophy is that there is a danger in embracing absolute rights and wrongs. I see such approaches as more like those asymptotic graphs many of us learned in high school - infinitely approaching an absolute but never quite reaching it - that what I perceive as right will guide me, yet never be immune from moral scrutiny. To close the books on, for example, a legal case indulges vanity at the expense of context. In other words, the defense of the decision becomes more important than allowing its mettle to be proven naturally against the variables of time, memory, circumstance and evidence.

If Kelley is truly guilty - and, personally, I would likely put my chips on the guilty compartment of a hypothetical Vegas roulette wheel - his conviction will stand the test of challenge and merely reprove itself.

As far as the "what if" dance causing such severe gastric perturbation, one must also consider the "what ifs" of false accusations and wrongful convictions. They happen. In my own (unrelated) profession, I see rather egregious and uncorrected media misinformation from major sources, and I cringe thinking that those outside my profession embrace some of the unvetted garbage that finds its way to print. In this case, an opinionated news feed is presenting a "blind" mob of about a hundred people who take issue with the process that convicted Mr. Kelley, painting the article with words that assume the infallibility of the conviction in an effort to sway more simple minds. Critical minds should dig deeper - beyond the palatability of compelling opinion. Critical minds see more. Critical minds could have saved many of us whose abuse continued precisely because adults refused to look beyond what they wanted to see.

To assail reconsideration of this by equating it to inconsideration of the victims is a false argument. Is it at all possible that Mr. Kelley was set up, perhaps even by another who is the real abuser? I don't know that for a fact. Do you? Do some of us not understand how incredibly diabolical and sociopathic many abusers are? My own abuse history was a scaffold of pretty lies so carefully constructed by our molester that the feet of our parents tread right upon that scaffold without seeing a thing - without noticing that so many of us were abused often quite literally under their noses, under the clip-clop of adult shoes on the kitchen floor above us. Often times after molesting me in the basement, my molester went upstairs and enjoyed a cup of tea and schmoozy chit-chat with my mom while I quietly stood there because my keester was too sore to sit upon. He created a perfect world of mirrors that frankly impressed the hell out of me. When the adults looked in those mirrors and liked what they saw, they looked no further. CSA above all is a crime of not seeing by those who could have or should have seen. So why would we venture to EVER close our own eyes?

 

[Still]

I once met Barry Scheck at a private legal conference hosted by my legal publishing house. He now heads-up The Freedom Project. They free death-row convicts via DNA testing and then battling with the courts to secure freedom. The stories of systemic abuse he and his crew can relate are astounding.

Lies, deceit, and piss-poor defense counsel puts thousands of wrongly accused people behind bars throughout this nation. This is an "injustice" that can and I'm sure does occur in all types of cases, including CSA. But conviction of CSA accused is phenomenally thin. A murder case, robbery, battery, white-collar crime...it all sees many convictions, as the cases have no problem garnering prosecutorial attention and diligence.

CSA cases are a class of their own when it comes to conviction. From rates of charging (being very very few), to barely detectable proportions of prosecution.

The very nature of conviction of and for CSA cases is highly unique as well:

Next we examined reasons why charges were not filed. The most common
reasons included insufficient evidence (81%) or a vague or incomplete child
disclosure (48%). Other reasons included non-participation by the victim
(3%) and pretrial intervention (2%). Twenty-six percent of cases had other
reasons, such as the offenders passing a polygraph, the suspected coaching
of a child, the offenders subsequent arrest for other offense, child recantation,
or suspected custody issues. - SOURCE - Academic

The filtering and deletion of these cases receives much effort and attention for various reason-elements as stated in the research. Its hard to prove a comparative absence, but I've never found ANY crime category in my deep legal research career that receives such effort to vaporize the case by any means.