Issue 334
April 29, 2005
The following article appeared on nytimes.com on April
28, 2005:
Jackson's
Ex-Wife Says She Praised Him as Part of Deal
By John M. Broder
SANTA MARIA,
Calif., April 27 - Michael Jackson's ex-wife, the mother of two of his three
children, testified at his molesting trial on Wednesday that she had made a
videotape praising Mr. Jackson to help repair his image after the broadcast of
a documentary in which he admitted sharing his bed with young boys.
Debbie Rowe,
who was married to Mr. Jackson for three years before they divorced in 1999,
said she sat for a nine-hour videotaped interview in February 2003 after being
told that by doing so she would be allowed to see Mr. Jackson and their two
children, Prince Michael, now 8, and Paris, now 7. Ms. Rowe, a prosecution
witness, said that she had not seen any of them in several years and that the
promised reunion never occurred.
Ms. Rowe
said Mr. Jackson had asked her in a telephone conversation to make the
videotape because the documentary was "full of lies" about his
relations with children. She said the phone call had been arranged by several
associates of Mr. Jackson who are named as unindicted co-conspirators in the
10-count indictment of Mr. Jackson.
Her
testimony was the first to link Mr. Jackson directly to the men who,
prosecutors contend, conspired to kidnap the family of the boy, now 15, who has
accused Mr. Jackson of molesting him and to force them to make a videotape
attesting to his character.
Mr. Jackson
is charged with four counts of child molesting, one count of attempted child
molesting and four counts of giving alcohol to a minor to aid in sexual abuse,
in addition to the conspiracy count.
Ms. Rowe
said that though she was married to Mr. Jackson and bore two children by him,
she never lived with them. She received limited visits with the children after
the divorce and later gave up all parental rights.
She is
currently fighting in court to have her visiting rights restored. Ms. Rowe had been an assistant to Mr.
Jackson's dermatologist and said she had known Mr. Jackson for more than 20
years. She smiled at the defendant several times during her 40 minutes on the
stand on Wednesday. Her testimony is expected to continue on Thursday.
Ms. Rowe
said she had been happy to participate in the videotaped interview because she
had been led to believe it would bring her back in contact with her children.
She insisted that the interview, conducted by Mr. Jackson's associates, had not
been scripted and that she had not seen any of the questions in advance.
"I was
excited to see Michael and the children," she said, her voice cracking
with emotion, "to be reintroduced to them and to be reacquainted with
their dad."
She added,
"He's my friend."
Near the end
of the day's testimony, Ms. Rowe said she had given some untruthful answers
during the taped interview. Mr. Jackson's lead lawyer, Thomas A. Mesereau Jr.,
repeatedly objected when Ronald J. Zonen, the assistant district attorney
handling the questioning of Ms. Rowe, tried to establish which of her answers
were false. But just before the day's testimony ended, she said she gave
untruthful answers to questions about
her opinion
of Mr. Jackson's fitness as a parent.
Prosecutors
are expected to pursue this line of questioning on Thursday and to show
excerpts from the videotaped interview. Earlier on Wednesday, Judge Rodney S.
Melville of Santa Barbara County Superior Court denied a request by the defense
to declare a mistrial on the basis of what one of Mr. Jackson's lawyers called
prosecutorial misconduct. Out of the
presence of the jury, the lawyer, Robert M. Sanger, said in his motion that
Gordon Auchincloss, a senior deputy district attorney, had raised issues in his
questioning of Mr. Jackson's personal filmmaker, Hamid Moslehi, that the judge
had earlier ruled out of bounds.
Mr.
Auchincloss had questioned Mr. Moslehi about his filming of a Jackson interview
conducted by Martin Bashir, a British journalist, and had used the words
"sleeping with boys" in a reference to Mr. Jackson's activities.
Though the
judge agreed that the wording should not have been used, he denied the request
for a mistrial.
Nick Madigan
contributed reporting for this article.
* * * * *
The
following article appeared on guardian.com on April 26, 2005:
Doctor
admits she had 'no evidence' for child abuse claim
Staff and
agencies
A senior paediatrician admitted she had
no grounds to claim that children had been drugged by two nursery nurses
falsely accused of child abuse, a disciplinary hearing heard today.
The General Medical Council (GMC) heard
testimony Camille De San Lazaro made during an earlier legal hearing in which
she admitted making unsubstantiated allegations when helping families make
compensation claims in relation to the false child sex abuse accusations.
Dr Lazaro faces a charge of serious
professional misconduct over her involvement in investigating child sex abuse
claims at the Shieldfield nursery in Newcastle.
Nursery nurses Dawn Reed and Christopher
Lillie were charged with sex abuse after another worker at a different nursery
in the city pleaded guilty to indecently assaulting some of the children in his
care.
Although the pair were acquitted,
Newcastle council set up an inquiry into the allegations, which published a
report falsely accusing them of sexually abusing dozens of children.
The nursery nurses successfully sued the council for libel and
under cross-examination in the trial Dr Lazaro admitted her accounts of abuse
had been "overstated, exaggerated and emotive".
Further details from the libel trial
emerged today when the hearing was read extracts from the transcripts where the
consultant paediatrician admitted she had included unsubstantiated allegations
in compensation applications.
The hearing heard she had written that
drugs had "almost certainly" been involved in abuse. It emerged she
had agreed with the libel trial judge that she had "no proper basis to say
that".
The doctor, based at Newcastle's Royal
Victoria infirmary, has worked in child protection for 30 years, and is also a
senior lecturer at Newcastle university.
* * * * *
The
following article appeared on boston.com on April 26, 2005:
Miami
Beach targets sex offenders
Mayor seeks
to block child predators from moving into the city
By Manuel
Roig-Franzia, Washington Post
MIAMI BEACH --
Sprinkled among the pulsing dance clubs, flashy cars, and all-night,
every-night glitter of this adult playground are pockets of another world.
There are 15 schools and 38 parks in this gangly, 7˝-mile-long barrier island
city, each pulsing with a sound of its own: children's voices.
Mayor David
Dermer is close to building a virtual wall around the children, rewriting
municipal law to almost entirely block registered sex offenders from moving
into his city. If Dermer succeeds -- his proposal was passed unanimously in the
first of two required votes -- specialists say Miami Beach would have one of
the most restrictive sex offender
policies in
the United States, if not the most restrictive.
Dermer's
measure would more than double the buffer zone required between the homes of
registered sex offenders and schools, parks, school bus stops or any ''place
where children regularly congregate."
It is one in
a flurry of proposals inspired by the arrests of registered sex offenders in
the separate killings of two central Florida girls whose bodies were found one
month apart.
The slayings
of Jessica Lunsford, 9, and Sarah Lunde, 13, have led to proposed state laws
that would require lifetime monitoring of some sex offenders by global
satellite positioning systems, mandatory 25-year prison terms for sex offenses
against children younger than 12, and automatic jailing of sex offenders who
violate probation until a judge can determine whether they represent a threat.
Both the
Miami Beach measure and the state proposals, with the exception of the stalled
probation violation bill, are gliding through the voting process and likely to
become law soon. It is a familiar pattern: awful crimes against children, quick
new laws.
Still, even
proponents of the new measures are unsure whether they will prevent children
from being abused.
''Legislators
very often don't know what to do, but they want to do something," said
Louis Schlesinger, a John Jay College psychology professor who was a researcher
for a Catholic Church review board that investigated the priest sex abuse
scandal.
Schlesinger
offered informal advice to Dermer and supports the Miami Beach measure but is
unsure whether it will be as successful as hoped.
For one, he
said, setting up residential buffer zones does not prevent predators from
entering an area where children gather. ''How are you going to know?" he
said. ''Are they going to wear a big 'S' on their chest?" A Miami Herald
columnist suggested something more permanent: a tattoo on the forehead
The long
reach of 24-hour cable news has played a huge role in the push for new laws.
The search for Jessica -- which ended March 19, when she was found with her
hands bound after being abused -- was tracked intensively, with cable news networks
breaking away from other reports for new developments.
''This
wouldn't be happening today if it wasn't for the media," said
Representative Charles Dean Sr., a Florida Republican and former sheriff in
Citrus County, where Jessica was found. Dean has sponsored a House bill named
in her honor.
Jessica's
father, Mark Lunsford, became an immediately recognizable face during the
search for his daughter, his agony on display for days before a national
audience.
Since then,
he has been equally visible, appearing on morning television news programs to
talk about toughening sex offender laws and lobbying lawmakers in Tallahassee.
During one visit to the Florida state capitol, Lunsford wore a tie with his
daughter's image on it.
''You can
never legislate away the opportunities for criminals," Dean said.
''However, we can assure these folks we are in the process of doing everything
we can."
In the past
few days, the public's rage about sex crimes has been palpable. Protesters
picketed the home of a registered sex offender in Winter Park, Fla., and a
convicted child molester committed suicide in Ocala, Fla., after neighbors made
his presence known by placing fliers near his home.
Dean's
''Jessica Lunsford Act" -- which was passed unanimously and will be
combined with a similar Senate bill that was also passed unanimously -- will
increase the mandatory prison term for sex crimes against children younger than
12 from 10 to 25 years.
After being
released, the offenders would be monitored by global satellite positioning
devices for the rest of their lives.
Such
monitoring is growing in popularity nationwide, though Florida would be among
the first to require that it continue for an offender's lifetime.
The law
would also let prosecutors file felony charges against anyone who knowingly
lives with a sex offender who violates reporting requirements.
* * * * *
The
following article appeared on latimes.com on April 25, 2005:
Fear
Hinders Rwanda's Quest for Justice
Official
policy calls for citizens to accuse and for genocide participants to publicly
confess. But a code of silence in villages thwarts the process.
By Robyn
Dixon
Times Staff
Writer
KIGALI,
Rwanda — The sight of a mob murdering his father has given Naphtal Ahishakiye
no peace these last 11 years. It was May 28, 1994, one crime among millions
during Rwanda's genocide. Helpless and hidden in a tree, he watched the mob
stuff his father headfirst down a latrine.
But the long
wait for justice has ended in disappointment. At a recent community hearing,
witnesses identified the killers as militia members who had fled Rwanda after
the genocide and were beyond the reach of the law.
Ahishakiye
identified villagers who still lived in Rwanda, but no one would come forward
to back up his story.
"You
know someone, you know what he did, you know what he said and what his
companions
said. But they do not admit it," he said. "It's very disappointing.
When you see all that, you develop a kind of hatred for the person who did not
come forward … even more than the person who did it."
In 2002,
facing the prospect of putting at least 761,000 people — and perhaps more than
a million — on trial for genocide, Rwanda introduced a form of traditional
community justice called gacaca. The government has promoted the approach as
the only way to achieve reconciliation.
But its
objectives are sometimes contradictory: The government seeks to find the truth,
give justice to survivors and help them recover bodies of loved ones. It also
wants to empty the jails and cut spiraling prison costs.
Rwanda's
efforts to deal with the genocide are a key step on a continent where war
crimes often go unpunished, but problems with the trials eat away at public
confidence.
In theory,
Rwandans should stand up and make accusations, and killers should make public
confessions. However, a code of silence in the villages puts justice out of
reach for survivors such as Ahishakiye, an unemployed man in his mid-20s.
About 700 of
the thousands of elected gacaca judges have been implicated in the genocide.
Many of the judges, regardless of their record, are poorly trained. Defendants
don't have lawyers, and there is no efficient alternative to the community
trials.
In 1994, the
government and militias exhorted Rwandan Hutus to slaughter Tutsis — members of
the nation's other primary ethnic group — and anyone who tried to protect them.
Inflammatory
radio broadcasts described Tutsis as "cockroaches," and the popular
euphemism for killing was "going to work." The exact number of dead
in the 100 days of killing is not known, but Rwandan authorities have put it at
more than a million.
Genocide
survivor groups have expressed disappointment with the judicial process.
Human Rights
Watch has criticized Rwanda's process as below international legal standards,
but officials in the group have also said there is probably no perfect way to
deal with so many cases.
The U.N.
tribunal based in neighboring Tanzania has been slow, handing down only 21 convictions
and three acquittals since it began work in 1995. Likewise, Rwanda's criminal
courts have no hope of dealing with the huge number of the accused.
Domitilla
Mukantagazwa, executive secretary of the gacaca courts, brushed aside the
criticism, arguing that the process would provide a model for the rest of the
world in dealing with war crimes such as genocide.
In Rwanda,
gacaca was initially a political solution to the problem of feeding 120,000
prisoners.
"When
they go back to their families, they are working and cultivating the
land," Mukantagazwa said. "We think the aim of gacaca is not only
justice, but reconciliation and reconstruction of the social fabric of society.
The law says that it is the duty of every Rwandan to tell the truth."
With jails
overcrowded, officials decided to free thousands of suspects on condition that
they cooperate in the hearings, admit their crimes and express remorse.
Many had
already spent close to a decade in jail by the time they were freed, she said. About
45,000 were freed. Those accused of rape, leadership in the genocide or
multiple murders are not eligible for release.
Local courts
have been gathering evidence and finalizing charges against suspects since the
process began, and in some areas Rwandans have begun to hold trials. In the
first 10 days of March, 192 people were convicted and only one was acquitted,
Mukantagazwa said.
Several
prominent people, such as Ruhengari province Gov. Boniface Rucagu, are among
those facing trial, she added.
But there
are reports that secretive groups called Ceceka (Be Quiet) have formed in some
areas to protect the perpetrators. Survivor groups complain that in regions
that lost almost all their Tutsis, it is very difficult to mount successful
prosecutions.
The inmate
releases have also undermined the process in some areas, with witnesses in
tight-knit rural communities afraid to testify for fear of retribution.
Emmanuel
Twagirayezu, 27, has moved to Kigali, the capital, instead of remaining in his home
village.
In 1994 he
watched from the bushes as his mother was forced to jump off a cliff and his
father was attacked by machete when he refused to leap. He says that he saw
three men, including a villager named Jerome Nsabimana, take his sister away
and that she was raped and tortured for a week before being killed.
Twagirayezu
was shocked when he met Nsabimana in Kigali recently.
"I was
surprised that he was released," the survivor said. "The
circumstances are a mystery. He must have bribed his way out, because when I
asked the officials what happened, they said his file got lost so he had to be
released."
When
Twagirayezu returned to his village, it was difficult to find people willing to
testify about what happened, he said. The community had closed up to protect
its members.
"They
believe that if they pin down a family member" for participating in the
genocide, "they'll be outcasts from the family when that person is
released," he said.
Chantal
Niyonsenga, 26, a former government office worker, said that, in the years
right after the slaughter, several Hutus in her villages had identified the
killers of her parents and family.
In recent
years, however, the witnesses have clammed up, she added, while other Hutus
have said all the killers have fled the country.
"I lost
hope, because the informers told me, 'We're being harassed, so we'll never say
anything,' " she said. "They say there is no way they can create
enmity with a relative or a friend, so they just keep quiet."
She said she
was afraid to go to the gacaca hearings in her village because relatives of the
killers were among the judges. Like Twagirayezu, she was chilled when she met a
man, walking free in Kigali, who she had been told was a ringleader in the
genocide.
Niyonsenga
said that she confronted him and demanded an apology but that he told her he
had been set free like many other prisoners.
Benoit
Kaboyi, executive secretary of the Ibuka survivor organization, said prisoners
were willing to confess to one murder in order to qualify for release but not
to multiple killings or rape that would keep them behind bars.
"Gacaca
cannot tell us everything. It's impossible," he said. "Do you think
it's easy to say, 'My mother killed a person?' Or that a cousin or a friend
killed? How can I say what my brother has done? If you go and say what
happened, the society will push you outside."
Niyonsenga
said that for her, truth and reconciliation were just a distant hope.
"If the
truth is never revealed, I don't feel that people can live alongside each other
peacefully and harmoniously," she said.
* * * * *
The
following article appeared on nytimes.com on April 22, 2005:
2
Retired Detectives Plead Not Guilty to Murdering for the Mafia
By Alan
Feuer
Two retired
city detectives accused of betraying their badges to become paid Mafia killers
were formally arraigned in Brooklyn yesterday, pleading not guilty to
committing at least eight murders for the mob.
The
arraignment of the two - Louis J. Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa - struck the
opening note in what promises to be a spectacular trial, Kings County style.
The charges in the case include, for example, the murder of a gangster on the
shoulder of the Belt Parkway and the 1986 shooting of a diamond dealer whose
skeleton, officials say, was discovered nearly six feet beneath the concrete
floor of a Brooklyn garage this month.
Not since
1912 have there been such explosive criminal charges involving the New York
Police Department, said Edward Hayes, Mr. Caracappa's lawyer. It was then, he
reminded the court, that a police lieutenant named Charles Becker was tried for
the murder of a two-bit gambler and informant named Herman (Beansie) Rosenthal.
(Lieutenant Becker was convicted and died in the electric chair on July 30,
1915.)
The
defendants in this case, dressed in pastel federal smocks, appeared in Federal
District Court in Brooklyn for the first time since their arrest at a Las Vegas
trattoria on March 9. Mr. Caracappa, 63, looked drawn and gaunt, with his hair
brushed back and eyeglasses perched on his nose. Mr. Eppolito, 56, was pale and
jowly, his own hair pushed back above a pasty, heavy face.
Behind them,
in the pews of the court, sat a gallery of police detectives, top Mafia
prosecutors and well-known newspaper columnists, their presence testifying to
the prominence of this particular case. So, too, did the defendants' lawyers,
Mr. Hayes and Bruce Cutler, who is perhaps most famous for having represented
John J. Gotti, the Gambino family don who died in 2002. The two lawyers are
friends of long standing.
Aside from
the pleas, the hearing yesterday was occupied mostly by minor business. Mr.
Hayes informed the court that Mr. Caracappa objected to being in solitary
confinement 23 hours a day at the Metropolitan Detention Center and, that
furthermore, he was cold. Judge Jack B. Weinstein ordered that both defendants
be given warmer clothes.
Mr. Cutler,
at one point, mentioned a series of secret tape recordings of his client made
by a government informant. It has been widely reported that a wholesale
clothier turned wholesale drug dealer named Burton Kaplan is cooperating with
prosecutors and will serve as an important witness in the case.
Just how
widely, in fact, disturbed Mr. Hayes so greatly that in court he denounced
"agents of the executive branch" for leaking confidential information,
like Mr. Kaplan's name, to the press. He quickly added that he had nothing but
respect for the two prosecutors on the case, Robert Henoch and Mitra Hormozi,
suggesting that his quarrel lay with the investigators who had put the case
together.
After the
hearing, Mr. Eppolito's daughter, Andrea, 28, told a crowd of reporters that
she and her family would stand by her father and Mr. Caracappa throughout the
trial.
"My
father loved being a cop," she said. "My dad made a vow to protect
and serve the people of this city and he did it very, very well. Now it's time for
somebody to protect and serve him."
That was Mr.
Cutler's cue. He told the reporters that "today is just the end of the
beginning," and that he fully expected an acquittal.
"We
will try this case in the well," he said in the old-time fashion,
"and win it in the well."
It is highly
unlikely that there exist in New York City two trial lawyers who get more
publicity than Mr. Hayes and Mr. Cutler. Both speak off the cuff, if not always
to the point.
After
chastising Mr. Cutler for monopolizing the microphones - a gentle joke - Mr.
Hayes made a statement that managed to mix together references to a well-known
Mafia killer, Representative Tom DeLay and Genghis Khan. He then appealed to
the reporters to understand his client's plight by understanding their own.
"The
companies you work for mistreat you horribly," he said, adding that he
hoped the coverage of such a spectacular trial would at least earn them a
raise.
* * * * *