Abuse In Orphanages

New Zealand's government is hardly the most corrupt or ill-intentioned in the nation. But there, as is the case almost everywhere, going back to at least as far as the Old Testament, orphans get a raw deal and are frequently abused. 

More than 30% of people in care in New Zealand from 1950 through 2019 were abused and many more were neglected. I suspect that as horrible as this is, that it is worse in many other countries (probably including the U.S.).

The mix of problems in New Zealand is multi-faceted. 

Most children in care were Maori (i.e. indigenous Polynesian), even though New Zealand is currently only about 18% Maori, usually in cases where they were removed from their families, putatively, for abuse or neglect. It is a fair guess that Maori children were also on the receiving end of a disproportionately share of the abuse suffered by children within the system. This has echoes of the notorious residential schools in Canada and the U.S., long ago, in addition to the other issues with abuse in orphanages without ethnic bias and issues of the treatment of indigenous people thrown in.

The culpability of New Zealand’s Catholic, Methodist and Anglican churches is also predictable and has been mirrored in Canada, the U.S., and the U.K., as well as many other places. Partially related is the religious affiliation of Maori people, of whom there are about 1,075,000 in the world (mostly in New Zealand, but with about 1/6th in Australia and about 21,000 elsewhere):

Given the total population, 0.1% corresponds to about 500 to 1500 people, and 0.2% corresponds to about 1500 to 2500 people.

Of course, while this is dismal, surely a large share of children in care in New Zealand genuinely were victims of abuse and neglect before the government stepped in and removed them from their families.

New Zealand deserves credit, at least, for a thorough investigation, for apologizing, and for resolving to take action. It is also worth noting that New Zealand apparently has a "no-fault accident compensation system" that makes sense as basically a more seamless version of a system where everyone has casualty insurance (it is discussed at the end of this post).

More than 200,000 people are estimated to have been abused by state and religious organizations in New Zealand that had been entrusted with their care, according to the final report from a landmark independent inquiry released on Wednesday.

The abuse included sexual assault, electric shocks, chemical restraints, medical experimentation, sterilization, starvation and beatings, said the report from the Royal Commission of Inquiry Into Abuse in Care. Many of the victims were children who had been removed from their families and placed in state, religious or foster care.

“For some people this meant years or even decades of frequent abuse and neglect,” the report said. “For some it was a lifetime; for others it led to an unmarked grave.” . . .

The inquiry, established in 2018 by the New Zealand government, involved interviewing nearly 2,500 survivors as it examined orphanages, foster care systems, mental health facilities and other forms of care that were charged with supporting 655,000 people from 1950 through 2019. The inquiry’s leaders described it as the widest-ranging examination of its kind in the world.

The report noted that most children in care were Indigenous Maori, even though the group makes up a minority of the country’s overall population of five million people, and said that “Maori were often targeted because of their ethnicity.”

Beyond the 200,000 people estimated to have been abused, the report said countless others had suffered neglect. . . .

The inquiry found that even when abuses by government and religious leaders were discovered, the leaders “were rarely held to account for their actions or inactions, which emboldened them to perpetrate further abuse.”

Among the inquiry’s 138 recommendations were calls for public apologies from the pope, the archbishop of Canterbury, and New Zealand’s police commissioner and its top civil servant. It also urged the government to overhaul the country’s no-fault accident compensation program to provide tailored support for survivors of abuse.

The report prompted New Zealand’s Catholic, Methodist and Anglican churches to promise change. “We will ensure that action follows our review of the inquiry’s findings,” Steve Lowe, president of the New Zealand Catholic Bishops Conference, said in a statement. “We owe it to survivors,” the Anglican Church said in another statement.

The report follows decades of complaints from survivors. “Survivors repeatedly called for justice but were unheard, disbelieved, and ignored,” according to the report. “Significant resources have been used to deny survivors their voice and to defend the indefensible. This must stop.”

From the New York Times (July 24, 2024).

The core forward looking recommendations of the report are here and focus on creation of a single national regulatory system for both secular and religious care systems.

National No Fault Accident Compensation

According to an article in a medical journal that is very opposed to the tort system of medical malpractice:

In 1974 New Zealand introduced a publicly-funded accident compensation scheme with the goals of minimising the incidence and impact of injury. 

The scheme provides assistance with the cost of treatment and rehabilitation for all personal injuries, regardless of fault, and in exchange bans suing for compensatory damages. Medical injury has always been covered under the scheme. Consequently, in New Zealand there is no culture of suing doctors for damages and doctors pay comparatively low medical indemnity fees of around £790 per annum. Doctors are held to account under separate processes including the Medical Council of New Zealand’s competence and fitness to practise processes, an independent patient complaints system, and a separate disciplinary process. 

The patient complaints system was introduced in 1994 on recommendation of a 1988 government report that found wanting the prior accountability processes in an environment where patients were unable to sue. In New Zealand, patient complaints are not a demand for financial recompense but a demand that an individual be held to account for perceived wrongdoing. A patient may lodge both a claim for treatment injury compensation and, regardless of injury, a complaint against a practitioner.

Although medical injury has always been covered under the scheme, the compensation of medical injury has not always been without fault for doctors. Prior to 2005, patients could obtain compensation by proving medical error. Because all findings of error were reported to the Medical Council, compensation could bring disciplinary repercussions for doctors. Fear of punishment and/or reputational damage discouraged some doctors (and some patients) from participating in the compensation claims process, unfairly restricting access to compensation for injured patients. This situation was rectified in 2005 under the ‘no-fault’ legislative reforms. The reforms extended eligibility to all injuries caused by treatment and replaced the prior reporting duties with a new duty to report ‘risk of harm to the public’ to the ‘authorities responsible for patient safety’. These changes freed doctors to participate in the compensation claims process with little fear, and improved information flows within the system.

The program explains itself here:

Our no-fault scheme covers everyone, including visitors, who are injured in an accident in Aotearoa New Zealand. It can include events that result in mass casualties, and covers children, beneficiaries, and students. You’re covered if you’re working, unemployed, or retired.

There are some limits to the support we can provide. These limits are set by Parliament, which makes laws about what we can and can’t support.

If you're injured in an accident, make sure you go and see your doctor or health provider first. They can make a claim for you. Claims can be made up to 12 months after your injury. We may still consider claims made after this time if there’s a good reason for the claim not being made sooner. 

What is no-fault cover?

No-fault cover means it doesn't matter what you were doing when you were injured or who was at fault. We'll cover you, as long as the injury falls within our legislation.

The cover we provide helps pay for costs to support your recovery and get you back on your feet. It includes payment towards medical bills, treatment, help at home and work and help with your income. 

Physical injuries we cover

A physical injury is when there is actual damage to your body. This includes: 

• sprains or strains - such as the ankle, back, knee or shoulder sprains
• wounds - cut, broken or bruised skin
• burns
• fractures
• dislocations
• dental injuries
• hearing loss
• concussion and loss of consciousness
• maternal birth injuries which occurred on or after 12:00am on 1 October 2022.

We cover most physical injuries if they're caused by: 

• an accident
• sexual violence

We can cover injuries or conditions that happen over time and are caused by the type of work you do. This is known as gradual process conditions. We have to establish if your work tasks or workplace environment are causing your condition.

We can also cover injuries that are long-term, permanent or that happened at birth. 

Injuries caused by treatment

Sometimes getting treatment can cause an injury. We can cover a treatment injury if: 

• the treatment directly caused your injury
• a registered health professional was treating you
• it's not a normal side-effect of your treatment.

We can also cover injuries caused by treatment for an injury we've already covered. 

Conditions that come on gradually from work

We can cover injuries or conditions that happen over time and are caused by the type of work you do. This could be things like: 

• tendonitis from overusing muscles or heavy lifting
• deafness caused by noise at work
• infections or diseases from exposure to certain environments. 

Serious injuries and disabilities

We can cover injuries that cause long-term effects and disabilities including spinal and traumatic brain injuries (TBI), such as concussion.

Find out how we're working to reduce the number, severity, and impact of TBIs:

Reducing traumatic brain injuries 

Mental injuries we cover

If we accept your claim for a physical injury, we can also cover mental injuries resulting from that injury. For example, post-traumatic stress disorder after a physical assault.

If your physical injury is caused by medical treatment we may also be able to cover a resulting mental injury, even if the physical injury isn’t covered.

We also cover mental injuries if you've experienced, seen or heard a traumatic event at work such as working in a retail shop when a robbery takes place. This is even if you haven't been physically injured. 

Sexual abuse

We provide support for anyone in Aotearoa New Zealand, including visitors to the country, who has experienced sexual abuse and assault. We may also be able to help if you're an Aotearoa New Zealand resident and have experienced sexual abuse while travelling overseas. It doesn't matter if the event happened recently or a long time ago.

If you've experienced sexual abuse, use the Find Support website to see the organisations that have therapists who can support you. This support is fully funded and you can start whenever you're ready. There are also services available for your family.

If you're having trouble getting in touch with the right therapist, contact us. We'll help you to make an appointment. 

Dental injury

We can pay for dental injuries caused by: 

• an accident
• sporting injury
• as a result of medical or dental treatment.

We don’t pay for: 

• damage to your teeth or dentures due to normal wear and tear, eg chewing or biting
• damage to your teeth due to decay or gum disease
• damage to your dentures while you were not wearing them
• treatment that was done by someone that’s not a registered dentist, eg a dental technician.

Your dentist will help you to make a claim if you have an injury we cover.

Injuries causing death

We give financial help if someone dies as a result of: 

• an accident
• a work-related disease or infection
• a treatment injury we're covering
• a self-inflicted injury (in some circumstances). 

Maternal birth injuries

If you have experienced an injury while giving birth on or after 1 October 2022, we may be able to help with your recovery. We have guidance on what's normal and what's not.

This is essentially "no-fault" automobile insurance and worker's compensation on steroids and has a lot to be said for it in some form. The tort system does a poor job of compensating people with smaller injuries, and people who have suffered from bad outcomes and accidents when fault is less clear cut. The tort system is also slow, uncertain, and involved immense transaction costs.

Random Thoughts

* The notion that there are many languages that basically have completely parallel languages called registers like Javanese, Aboriginal Australian languages with mother-in-law languages, and historical Korean (which has now devolved into elaborate levels of politeness) is fascinating. I've read a lot about how dialects develop, but not how registers evolve.

* The notion of an Operation Track and Release in anti-submarine warfare, where spies, special forces, and drones would attach a small camouflaged tracker to submarines while not doing anything else is intriguing. If you know where a submarine is, it isn't very hard to disable it with a torpedo or an anti-submarine missile, but finding them is hard. If one knew where a large share of an opposition's submarines were from trackers, one could strike them all in the space of an afternoon without warning with a very modest number of aircraft.

* The AGM-179 Joint Air-to-Ground Missile, or JAGM, which is the successor to the Hellfire missile and intended to be useable in existing Hellfire missile launchers and has a JAGM-MR version which will extend the range of this missile from 5 miles to 10 miles. It can be launched from small ground force patrol vehicles, small or medium sized boats and ships, or helicopters.

* "Camero-Tech, a firm based in Israel, has created a next-generation portable, high-performance imaging device that can actually "see" through walls. Called the Xaver 1000"

* Yesterday, there was a Chinese New Year's celebration massacre near Los Angeles at which ten people were killed and ten more people were injured. The middle aged Asian American perpetrator apparently killed himself as he was being apprehended the next day - when will we wake up and decide that the Second Amendment is an outdated suicide pact?

* I'm looking forward to the return of supersonic commercial flights in the near future.

* The absurd massive construction projects in the oil rich countries of the Persian Gulf that are suddenly everywhere while dazzling are also disgusting. See, e.g., the $500 billion megacity planned in Saudi Arabia that wants to host winter games entirely with artificial snow, and a moon shaped building in Dubai.

* The number of tech workers who have been laid off in the last few months is greater than the number of active duty military personnel in the entire U.S. Marine Corps. "Nearly 200,000 tech employees have been laid off since the start of 2022, according to Layoffs.fyi, a site that tracks job cuts in the sector. Four of the largest tech companies — Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft — have announced a total of more than 50,000 job cuts in recent months." A long boom preceded this mass layoff: "In 2011, the tech sector began a hiring boom that would last a decade. It added an average of more than 100,000 jobs annually, and by 2021, it had recouped all the jobs it lost when the dot-com bubble burst."

* If you want an example of how to be a horrible parent of a teenager, the facts of this recent Colorado Court of Appeals decision affirming a trial court decision to that effect can guide you. Any parent who thinks parenting is about parental rights instead of the best interests of your child is not a good parent.

¶ 2 L.D. is the sole living parent of A.D., one of her three children. A.D. was sixteen at the time of the guardianship proceeding. Although L.D. and A.D. once shared a healthy relationship, it deteriorated dramatically during the summer and fall of 2021. This deterioration gave rise to Petitioners’ request for — and the district court’s grant of — an unlimited guardianship over A.D. We turn to that history now.

¶ 3 In June 2021, A.D.’s car was vandalized while parked in front of the family home. A.D. and his mother had a heated argument about why it happened and who was responsible for cleaning it. Upset by this conversation, A.D. went to stay at his girlfriend’s house. Although he soon returned home, A.D. ran away from home five more times following disagreements with L.D.

¶ 4 In early July 2021, L.D. gave A.D. an ultimatum: he could (1) go to military school, (2) attend therapeutic boarding school, or (3) abide by her house rules. A.D. ran away again that night, but this 2 time he spent over a month away from home, staying with his girlfriend, couch surfing at friends’ homes, or sleeping in public parks.

¶ 5 On August 7, 2021, A.D. was taken to the emergency room after appearing to overdose while partying with friends at a park. The hospital made a mandatory report to the Department of Human Services (DHS). Once A.D. was stable, L.D. and V.T. (L.D.’s longtime colleague and family friend) met with a DHS representative to discuss next steps. L.D. agreed that, given the hostility between A.D. and herself, and between A.D. and his two siblings (who both lived with L.D.), it was in his best interest to stay with Petitioners.

¶ 6 On September 8, 2021, A.D. drove Petitioners’ car to L.D.’s house for his first night back since early July. When he arrived, L.D. became extremely upset that he had driven there. In her mind, A.D.’s operation of a car — and Petitioners’ facilitation of it — violated their agreement that he not drive until certain conditions were met. The next morning, without notice to Petitioners or her son, L.D. called the Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) and withdrew her permission for A.D.’s driver’s license. The DMV revoked his license the next day.

¶ 7 A.D. became enraged when he learned that his mother had revoked her consent and subsequently sent a series of angry texts to her. L.D. then blocked A.D.’s number, thus preventing A.D.’s calls or texts from coming through to L.D.’s phone (though texts came through on her computer).

¶ 8 On September 24, 2021, DHS facilitated an “adults only” meeting with L.D., Petitioners, and DHS representatives. That meeting resulted in three shared priorities: (1) Petitioners were to provide regular updates about A.D. to L.D., who would, in turn, communicate with Petitioners before making decisions affecting A.D.; (2) A.D.’s license would be reauthorized within thirty days once to-be-defined conditions were met; and (3) A.D. would be allowed to be on the high school wrestling team, which all parties agreed was good for him.

¶ 9 Over the next month, Petitioners regularly emailed L.D. updates on A.D. L.D. provided few, if any, responses to these updates. Petitioners also sent L.D. a proposed plan for A.D. to get his license back, but L.D. did not respond.

¶ 10 On October 20, 2021, Petitioners filed their petition for appointment as A.D.’s guardians. L.D. objected to the petition, sought dismissal of the action, and requested attorney fees.

¶ 11 On November 8, 2021, Petitioners requested that the court appoint a guardian ad litem (GAL) to represent A.D.’s interests. Over L.D.’s objection, the court appointed a GAL pursuant to section 15-14-115, C.R.S. 2022, after concluding that, owing to their disagreement over the guardianship, the parties could not represent A.D.’s best interest in the guardianship proceedings. The GAL represented A.D.’s best interest throughout the litigation, and the court also instructed the GAL to provide a report about whether L.D. was “unable to exercise her parental rights.”

¶ 12 On November 14, 2021, before Petitioners filed their reply, L.D. — without consulting Petitioners or A.D. — revoked her permission for A.D. to wrestle the day before the first day of practice. Why she took this sudden action is unclear: L.D. testified it was because A.D. was not maintaining passing grades, while another witness testified that she wanted “leverage” over him to participate in family therapy. Regardless, A.D. was devastated by the timing and nature of this action.

¶ 13 While these motions were pending, Petitioners continued to care for A.D. Petitioners asked L.D. for permission to talk to A.D.’s teachers, coaches, and doctors about how to better care for him. Yet from August to early December 2021, L.D. refused to grant Petitioners permission to engage with these individuals. She ignored or outright refused to allow such communications until December 8, 2021, when, after repeated requests from a DHS representative, she allowed Petitioners to attend — but not participate in — a meeting with A.D.’s teachers.

¶ 14 L.D. also resisted Petitioners’ requests for financial support for A.D.’s care. To her credit, L.D. provided A.D. with $25 per week for groceries. These funds came from A.D.’s $1,800 monthly survivorship benefit, which was established following the death of A.D.’s father when A.D. was three. Petitioners knew the benefit existed and requested more financial support. L.D. did not respond to these requests.

¶ 15 Except for the text exchange between L.D. and A.D. following the revocation of L.D.’s consent for A.D.’s license, L.D. and A.D. never communicated directly. Instead, all such communications went through Petitioners or DHS.

¶ 16 Consistent with section 15-14-205(1), C.R.S. 2022, the district court conducted a hearing on Petitioners’ guardianship motion. The hearing spanned two days, with both sides calling numerous witnesses.

¶ 17 In a written order, the court granted Petitioners an unlimited guardianship over A.D. In so doing, the court concluded that Petitioners had proved by clear and convincing evidence that L.D. was, consistent with section 15-14-204(2)(c), “unwilling or unable” to care for A.D. and that the guardianship was in A.D.’s best interest notwithstanding his mother’s opposition to it.

* The Great Salt Lake will dry up in five years: "The Great Salt Lake, plagued by excessive water use and a worsening climate crisis, has dropped to record-low levels two years in a row. The lake is now 19 feet below its natural average level and has entered “uncharted territory” after losing 73% of its water and exposing 60% of its lakebed[.]"

* This amphibious bus would make sense for national guard units in places where flooding is a likely risk:

* The reel I'm linking to illustrates visually the absurdity of the concept of going to battle in an RV which is basically what the blue sea navy of the United States does.

* Fake storage devices at absurdly low prices are a problem at Amazon.com.

* I wonder what human engineered variants of wild mustard (which is the source of many common vegetables) were attempted but rejected.

* The best head of government in the world, New Zealand’s leader Jacinda Ardern, isn't running for re-election.

* Wise words:

* Vanilla is apparently a New World crop:

* The Convair F2Y Sea Dart was a supersonic jet fighter than could land and take off from the sea.

How Often Are Parental Rights Terminated?

Overall, about 1% of children in the U.S. have biological parents whose parental rights are terminated for abuse and neglect (or voluntarily incident to an adoption of an infant). I'll save detailed analysis for another day.

Recent research has used synthetic cohort life tables to show that having a Child Protective Services investigation, experiencing confirmed maltreatment, and being placed in foster care are more common for American children than would be expected based on daily or annual rates for these events. In this article, we extend this literature by using synthetic cohort life tables and data from the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System to generate the first cumulative prevalence estimates of termination of parental rights. The results provide support for four conclusions. First, according to the 2016 estimate, 1 in 100 U.S. children will experience the termination of parental rights by age 18. Second, the risk of experiencing this event is highest in the first few years of life. Third, risks are highest for Native American and African American children. Nearly 3.0% of Native American children and around 1.5% of African American children will ever experience this event. Finally, there is dramatic variation across states in the risk of experiencing this event and in racial/ethnic inequality in this risk. Taken together, these findings suggest that parental rights termination, which involves the permanent loss of access to children for parents, is far more common than often thought.

Christopher Wildeman, Frank R. Edwards, and Sara Wakefield, "The Cumulative Prevalence of Termination of Parental Rights for U.S. Children, 2000–2016" 25(1) Child Maltreatment 32-42 (May 21, 2020) doi: 10.1177/1077559519848499 (open access).

There is substantial regional variation in this rate in addition to ethnic variation (image and quoted body text from the paper cited above):

American Indian and Alaska Native children are 2.7 times more likely than White children to ever experience the termination of both parents’ rights, and African American children are 2.4 times more likely than White children to experience the termination of parental rights. 

Finally, there is dramatic variation across states both in the risk of experiencing this event for the total population of children and in racial/ethnic inequality in this risk; children in some states have 6–7 times the risk of having their parental rights terminated as children who live in states with the lowest rates of termination of parental rights. 

Foster Care System Still Broken

Kids in foster care in Colorado are about half as likely to graduate from high school as homeless kids and kids in poverty. 

Kids in foster care routinely get bounced from home to home, mistreatment and abuse of children in foster care (often at the hands of fellow foster children) is so common place that it is a cliché.  Ongoing support for foster children once they turn age eighteen in negligible. 

Social services also has a poor record of removing children from horribly abusive and neglectful environments despite clear warning flags.  Older children who are being abused or neglected, and people who might help them, are discouraged from taking action to invoke social services involvement, in part, because the conditions faced by foster children if they are removed from their parents are so bad.

A state audit has determined that child welfare departments in Colorado are greatly understaffed, and there are also not enough foster families.

When the outcomes for homeless kids, kids in poverty, and probably even kids in the juvenile justice system often looks better than those for foster kids, it is hard to argue that the state has met its obligations to children who have already been victims of criminally bad parenting.  These kids deserve better breaks than kids who have been fortunate enough to have at least mediocre parents, not state inflicted mistreatment that follows the abuse and neglect that they have already suffered.

The fact of that matter is that foster children are very frequently poor and are very frequently impaired as a result of the abuse and neglect that they have suffered.  They aren't going to graduate from high school as often as middle class kids from families that have nurtured them their entire lives.  But, it is abundantly clear that the absolutely abysmal academic performance of foster children compared to other populations facing seriously hardships has a lot to do with aspects of the foster care system that are broken and that our lawmakers (in Colorado and in most other states) are too cheap to fund in a way that can give these kids what they deserve.

When parental rights are terminated, children lose stability and their main source of economic support.  Since this condition is due in significant part to state intervention, it is appropriate for the state to spend what it takes to provide for these children properly.  If we can afford to spend $30,000-$50,000 to adequately care for adults who have committed felonies, we can afford to spend much more than we do on children who are innocent victims than we do.

Full Term Crack Babies No Worse Off Than Non-Crack Baby Peers

The Philadelphia Inquirer has a long piece which reports on the reality that the ‘crack baby epidemic’ of mentally retarded or unstable individuals turned out to be unfounded. The experimental design is as simple as can be: compare individuals of similar socioeconomic background, and track them over their lives. The past generation since the 1980s crack wave has been an unfortunate, yet illuminating, ‘natural experiment.’ The researchers found that contrary to expectations there are basically no statistically significant differences between ‘crack babies’ and control individuals.* This is not a surprising result, as there were hints of this in the child development literature even in the 1990s. The author of the study focused on a sample of lower class black Americans, and noted that despite the lack of statistical differences in outcomes due to exposure to crack in utero, these individuals have been exposed to a lifetime of an underclass milieu, which is likely not conducive to human flourishing. In other words, the reality is much more banal and unsurprising when viewed in a broader light.

But for general social policy it is critical to point out that even as extreme a shock to the system as crack cocaine does not seem to have strongly inimical long term consequences for individuals. . . .

* This does not mean that crack might not be correlated with particular problems, but the author of this study seems to suggest that once you remove premature infants from the equation the differences disappear. 

From here.

The theory that kids exposed to crack in utero would be seriously physiologically messed up because of the exposure was very plausible.  But, often, in complex situations, experience is more valuable than reason and plausible possible risks turn out not to be not nearly as bad as they seem.  This is such as case.  

Crack babies aren't a particularly successful group, but this is mostly because they have underclass druggie failures for parents and inherit their parents gene and receive a lifetime legacy of bad parenting, not significantly because they were exposed to crack in the womb.

Norwood, Colorado Is Pro-Rape

In Norwood, Colorado, a small town near Telluride, the locals think that boys who rape other boys are heroes that they buy T-shirts to support, and boys who get raped by the peers and their families who report the incidents to the authorities should be persecuted. 

The three upperclassmen boys who committed the rapes as part of a wrestling team hazing ritual plea bargained down to misdemeanors and were only prosecuted at all because the event took place in Denver rather than on the Western Slope.

No joke.  People in small town America have a lot of really perverse and hateful morals that Norwood, Colorado typifies.  It is hard to express just how evil the people of Norwood are in words.  Jocks who commit crimes are evil squared.  These boys deserved several years in prison each.  I don't want monsters like these boys walking my streets.

Even more disturbing is that the adult coach for the team, Robert Harris, knew that two of his sons were involved and dismissed his sons' acts as acceptable conduct:

Two of the attackers were sons of Robert Harris, the wrestling coach, who was president of the school board. . . .

In February 2012, the boy [who was attacked] rode the bus to Denver as the team manager, in charge of videotaping the older high school students at the meet. After the coaches and wrestlers left the bus to weigh in, three older and bigger boys pinned the younger boy down, bound him with the tape, pulled down his pants and assaulted him, according to the principal. His parents were at a hotel, awaiting the start of the meet. . . .

Just before the meet started, the principal's older son heard the attackers laughing about the assault on his brother and told his father.

"I was shocked beyond belief, and I was mad," the father said. "I do believe I was madder than I have ever been. You're trying to protect your kids, and then something like this happens."

The father sought out his son, who told him what had happened. He then confronted Harris, the head coach, who at first said nothing had occurred, according to the father. In subsequent conversations, Harris said: "This happens 1,000 times a day around the U.S.," the principal recalled.

According to the source story at Bloomberg:

[O]ne of the accused students pleaded guilty to sexual contact without consent; the other two pleaded guilty to third-degree assault. They received varied sentences that included probation, community service and restitution of about $2,500 apiece.

The principal’s contract was up for renewal. After extensive negotiations involving lawyers from both sides, the board renewed his contract and put him on paid leave while it reached a settlement.

The principal was offered another job in a town 200 miles away that pays half his previous salary. The family moved and he enrolled his children in a new school.

Harris was reappointed Norwood’s wrestling coach. He was given a letter of reprimand for leaving students unsupervised on the bus, Crews told police.

Apparently, however, at some point, Bobby Harris was replaced by Dirk Hardman as the head coach for the school's team.

The Daniels Fund awarded a scholarship to Brent Robert Harris in 2012, which was announced the same week that two of his younger brothers were arrested in Denver, charged with multiple serious felonies, and then freed on a $25,000 bond each.  He went on to attend the Colorado School of Mines. 

Earlier this year, Talon Harris, another of the four sons, who was one of the rapists (consistent with the TTH t-shirt language for the shirts made to support the rapists "TTH being the first initials of the three rapists" also here), was back at the state wrestling competition at the scene of the crime from the previous year, near Pepsi Center again and came in third place statewide in division 2A.

A couple of months later his brother Hayden Harris, also one of the rapists, won a third place finish in a different state competition on behalf of the "Norwood Wrestling Club".  Hayden appears to be the one who pleaded guilty to the sex offense as opposed to the third degree assault charge and may have deserved this status, although we may never know if that was what really happened.  He may have claimed the most culpability when it became clear that charges would be pressed, because as the youngest of the three rapists he faced the least serious consequences if convicted of all charges.

Why Harris, Sr. (he goes by "Bobby" rather than Robert; picture on page three) wasn't charged with crimes like failing to report child abuse himself and removed as a coach is a mystery (he resigned from the school board a few days after the charges were filed by the Denver District Attorney's office).  He is a true monster who is just half a step removed from the pedophiles who make child pornography.  In any sane community, he would be utterly disgraced and run out of town with his rapist sons, and Harris Construction, the business of which he is a proprietor, would wither.  But, that isn't what people do in Norwood.  (A report on his race for the school board position in 2007 is reported here and provides some background information on the adults involved in this incident.)

Also high on the list of Norwood monsters is Jessica Bicknase, the mother of the third rapist, who made t-shirts supporting the boys instead of taking her son to the woodshed.  Presumably, Timothy Armintrout, the third rapist (as reported by Grand Junction, Colorado's KREX Channel 5 and by Denver's KDVR Fox 31), is her son.  Mr. Armintrout was also back at the scene of the crime outside the Pepsi Center earlier this year competing in the state finals for division 2A wrestling with Norwood wrestling teammate and fellow rapist Talon Harris.  Their pictures can be found here.

(It probably bears mentioning that I believe that the secrecy imposed on juvenile justice proceedings is a very bad policy that harms the public in multiple ways.  The potential future victims of these three rapists need to know to be afraid of them if they encounter them in the future.  These perpetrators in particular, having escaped a criminal justice punishment commensurate with their very serious forcible rape crimes, also clearly deserve, at the very least, to have their reputations tarnished for the rest of their lives as a result of their actions.  It is appalling that their conditions of probation have not even required each of them to give up wrestling competitions, given the circumstances.  The leniency afforded to these three boys and their father and the school superintendent in this case is stunning.)

David Crews who is the superintendent of schools and imposed a mere one day, in school suspension on the boys that didn't take the conduct seriously, also deserves serious scorn (although the fact that two of the boys were the children of his boss didn't make it easy for him to do the right thing).

Harris, Crews and the school district all ought to be sued for civil rights violations, at the very least.  David Crews is still the superintendent of schools despite committing a serious crime when he failed to report this incident to the police, but Harris is no longer on the board of the Norwood Public Schools whose mission statement, ironically is to "provide a safe learning environment and build respectful individuals", something that the district clearly isn't anywhere near achieving. 

It isn't clear if CHSAA, the governing body of high school sports in the state, took any action in response to this incident.  The incident wasn't mentioned in either of the reports prepared by their wrestling division after the state championship that year, although in fairness, the incident may not yet have been reported to anyone at CHSAA at the time.

This isn't just an anomaly.  It's Western Slope culture.  Consider this story from a year and a half ago from the judicial district that includes Norwood:

The man who was the Republican District Attorney for the 7th Judicial District in Colorado (Delta, Gunnison, Hinsdale, Montrose, Ouray and San Miguel counties, basically the Western Slope to the south of Grand Junction and North of Silverton) when he was arrested in September 2010, Myrl Serra, has pleaded guilty to "criminal extortion and unlawful sexual contact involving three women," felonies punishable by up to twelve years in prison and requiring registration on the sex offender's registry. Sentencing is set for January 19, 2012.

The criminal extortion charges allege that he demanded "sexual favors from women in his office." The sexual contact charges were supported by preliminary hearing testimony in which "one of the women testified that Serra cornered her inside his office in April 2010, grabbed one of her breasts and forced her to touch his genitals." 

These kinds of Western Slope values (and similar ones about mixed race families and children) are the reason that my wife and I moved from Grand Junction to Denver in 1999 after having lived there for three years, and we have never regretted it.

If I had stayed at the firm where I worked at the time in Grand Junction, I probably would have been on the defense team defending these creeps if they had been sued, since we handled Western Slope claims for the governmental equivalent of an insurance defense funds for local governments in that territory.  We were defending litigation involving a similar, but far less egregious case involving conservative, small town Western slope perverts in public office while I was working there.

Incidentally, Telluride's paper reported the story in May of 2012 (via Randy Cassingham's blog).  Some of the details added in his account are that:

Despite legal requirements to report the incident, the school's superintendent admits officials did not do so; the boy's parents called police when he got home and told them what happened. With that, the three boys were suspended from school — for one day. School officials also "discussed" whether the victim should have been suspended too. . . .

In an editorial titled Do the Right Thing, the Telluride Watch newspaper noted that "it is widely acknowledged that similar incidents, clearly crossing any reasonable line, have occurred in Norwood in the recent past, making it impossible to shrug this one off -- extreme as it evidently was -- as an isolated incident."

I call that escalation. When school officials didn't do anything about it, they tacitly agreed with what was going on -- and naturally it got worse.

But here's where it gets really ugly. The CBS station in Denver reported (and the Watch reprinted, here), that the alleged victim's father is a school official. Worse, Norwood School Board President Robert Harris doubles as head wrestling coach at Norwood schools, and has four sons on the team!

In the same story, the paper notes that at a meeting to discuss the case, 70 people showed up, and "The crowd seemed to be separated by an unseen cultural divide wider than Gurley Gulch, which separates the Hitchin’ Post from Two Candles, Norwood eating and drinking establishments patronized by conservative and liberal members of the community, respectively." . . .

The newspaper reports (here) that "A receptionist for Norwood School District attorney Darryl Farrington was instructed to not put a reporter's message through to his voicemail," and that "In addition to Norwood, Farrington lists Telluride, Ridgway and Ouray districts among his clients." 

At the time, the CBS news report noted that this was considered normal in Norwood's sports programs (something also confirmed by the Telluride newspaper):

“After the incident at State Wrestling, we are now hearing about a number of other “taping incidents” from past years- a possible culture of hazing. The district is now investigation the new claims that have bubbled up,” said Dave Crews in a statement.

A Western Slope NBC affiliate reported on the surreal parents meeting held at the school on the day that the DA charged the Norwood rapists.  It's hard to believe how many really bad parents can be concentrated into a town that has a population of under five hundred.  Denver Post affiliate 9News also reported on the story.

Prior to this incident, the Norwood Public Schools were mostly known for another act of small minded and backward small town ignorance in a 2005 book banning incident by previous superintendent Bob Conder (confirmed here by a TV news station)

But, the Denver Post didn't think it was newsworthy until Bloomberg picked it up and never did any reporting of their own, even though the Denver police prosecuted the case in the Denver courts, and the story was covered by more than one Denver TV station.  As the Bloomberg story illustrates, it is amazing how much of a story can be developed from a little headline if you make the effort to sleuth out enough of the facts.

Throwing People Away

What should society do with a mentally ill, multi-drug addicted, unemployable, homeless, 35 year old divorced mother of three children (who didn't live with her) with a long history of suicide attempts? Leave her to become a vagrant until she succeeds in killing herself, or help her with SSI payments and Medicaid care which she would qualify for if she is considered disabled?

The Social Security Administration insisted that she figure out how to free herself from alcohol and drugs, and doing so still fail dismally in efforts to obtain work because of her mental illness, before she could be treated as disabled as a result of her mental illness. The 10th Circuit,based in Denver, in its unpublished decision in the case of Julie Salazar, reversed that decision, ruling that compassion was a better choice.

Ms. Salazar ultimately prevailed largely because the evidence in her case showed that even after staying free of drugs and alcohol for 40 days in a substance abuse program she remained so deeply mentally ill that she had to be transferred directly to a hospital for inpatient mental health treatment.

(The Adminstrative Law Judge in the case misunderstood the medical records and thought that she had improved dramatically after those 40 days, failing to understand that she improved meaingfully only after five days of intensive inpatient psychiatric treatment following the 40 days of substance abuse treatment she had received.)

But, help for her was deferred for five years, which she was lucky to have survived at all.

Also, cases like this one cast into doubt the wisdom of "The Contract With America Advancement Act of 1996" (P.L. 104-121) which provides that:

An individual shall not be considered to be disabled . . . if alcoholism or drug addition would . . . be a contributing factor material to the . . . determination that the individual is disabled.

In other words, our national policy for the past decade has been to let alcoholics and drug addicts suffer without societal help, rather than to provide them the help they need to straighten their lives out.

Throwing people away has a price. Ms. Salazar, for example, broke her arm and it will be forever be a disability because she couldn't afford a doctor and didn't qualify for medical assistance.

Her experience with the system is also instructive. On numerous occasions, she missed meetings and other steps in the legal and bureaucratic process because she was mentally ill. At her final hearing on eligiblity for benefits, she was represented by a non-lawyer friend or family member, rather than by a lawyer. The administrative law judge interpreted some of the medical records to say the opposite of what they actually said, and ignored some of the proper procedures for handling claims like hers.

The quasi-adversary system in place now, that requires beneficiaries to make their own cases for eligiblity, doesn't make a lot of sense when the reason that the people need help is something that makes them inherently unqualified to meaningfully make their case to the government agencies involved.

It is one thing to routinely deny benefits to corporations that have their acts together because they can't meet deadlines and have trouble showing up for meetings. It is another to take the same approach to people who need benefits because they are so mentally ill that they can't hold down a job. In the case of the mentally ill person, an appplicant’s inability to process his or her own case tends to show exactly why that person needs help.

Ms. Salazar's longest period of employment in her life was one year as a pizza shop attendant, and her parenting was so bad that she did not receive any meaningful parenting time after her divorce.

Capitalism works very effectively to reward those who work, and deny help to those who aren't productive. But, it isn't perfect. Some people, like Ms. Salazar, are incapable of escaping their problems without a helping hand, no matter how great the incentives they have to do so.

Cross Posted at Colorado Confidential.