After taking in some of the outrage among friends over the seemingly sympathetic coverage CNN gave to two Steubenville, Ohio, teens convicted of raping a young girl, I decided to watch the specific report that generated all the fuss.
Mood music:
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People are often conflicted over stories like this because the convicted are two kids who did what a lot of kids are capable of doing when they had too much booze. Reporters seemed heartbroken as one of the boys collapsed into the arms of his attorney after the guilty verdicts came down. “My life is over,” Ma’lik Richmond lamented to his lawyer. “No one will want me now.”
I just have a few points to make here:
While most kids have it in them to rape a classmate when they’re loaded, it’s usually a small minority of kids who go through with it. For that reason, I have trouble feeling sympathy for these boys. Teenagers know rape is evil. These kids knew what they were doing, drunk or not.
I don’t believe their lives are over. For starters, they’re getting off easy, spending one to two years in juvenile hall. True, they will forever be branded as sex offenders, but society will go easier on them because they were “stupid kids” at the time of their crime. They can absolutely turn their lives around and do something valuable, like standing up as examples of what kids should never do. They can go in schools across the country and help turn kids away from their darker instincts.
Feel badly for these boys if you must. But if you don’t feel a lot worse for the girl who was raped, there’s something wrong with you. She has been damaged far more than those boys will ever know. She’s the only victim in this case.
Feeling compassion for the convicted is all well and good. After all, no one should be happy that two teenagers are being locked away. But they did a crime and must be punished.
Don’t let the booze factor cloud your mind. The boys may have been drunk, but they still knew right from wrong and chose wrong. And, for the love of God, don’t you dare suggest the girl had it coming because she was blasted. I don’t care how a woman dresses or how drunk she is. No one ever deserves to be raped.
In this case the justice system worked. It’s an unhappy thing. But it’s the right thing.
Last month, on the way to a security conference in NYC, I made a side trip to Amityville, Long Island, to take pictures of the so-called Amityville Horror house for a work-related slideshow. Today we launched it, and I wanted to share it with you here.
There are a lot of good people out there who deal with brutal medical situations that make them outcasts. There’s the depression I’ve covered extensively here. And there are things like being transgender. But if you’re behind bars for murder, should taxpayers be paying for your treatment?
Mood music:
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Depression is a simpler example. If antidepressants can make a convict well enough to better serve the prison community where he or she is doing time, I’m for it. Maybe their crimes were so bad they should never get out. But if taxpayer-funded treatment means they can become well enough to counsel inmates who aren’t there for life, it’s a win in my book. At the least, it’s better to put them to work keeping the prison running than to let them take up space as useless blobs.
When the convict is transgender and wants a sex change, the picture gets a lot muddier. Take the case of Michelle Kosilek, a convicted murderer formerly known as Robert Kosilek.
U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf recently ordered state prison officials to provide Kosilek — serving a life sentence for killing his wife in 1990 — with a taxpayer-funded sex change. Wolf ruled that surgery is the “only adequate treatment” for Kosilek’s “serious medical need.” In his 126-page ruling, the judge said, “The court finds that there is no less intrusive means to correct the prolonged violation of Kosilek’s Eighth Amendment right to adequate medical care.”
Check out Boston.com for more details on the case.
I’ve seen a lot of outrage over this in the usual online places (Facebook, etc.). At first, I was a little outraged. This guy made a choice to receive the hormonal treatments that have helped him become a transgender being. Should we taxpayers be paying for his personal choice to become a woman?
Like depression, being a transgender can debilitate the inmate, which means he’s not doing what we tend to picture prisoners doing, such as making license plates and mopping floors. Wouldn’t it be better to “cure” Kosilek and put him (or her) to work?
I’m having trouble seeing how this medical problem was beyond Kosilek’s control. He chose to become a woman. But the more I think about it, the more I remember that many medical conditions are the result of the choices we make. Many heart conditions started with the sufferer choosing to eat junk and smoke. If you have something like Hepatitis C, there’s a decent chance it came from the dirty needle you chose to stick in your arm.
Kosilek chose to become a woman and got hormonal treatments. Now he’s trapped between two sexes, an outcast. Of course, he became an outcast the day he decided to murder his wife.
In the final analysis, society has a choice to make.
Either we accept that the prison system runs on taxpayer dollars and, as such, inmates must receive free treatment for whatever ails them, or we decide prisoners really should rot to death in their cells.
I lean toward the first scenario. People end up in prison for many reasons. Some are rehabilitated and go on to rejoin and contribute to the good of society. Some will never get out but are too mentally gone to know right from wrong.
But the bigger issue is that American justice is supposed to be rooted in compassion. If someone murders another person, we can deny the murderer freedom for life. But as a compassionate society, we should also take care of them when they have medical problems, even if the problem sprung from bad choices.
Maybe it’s not fair. But doing the right thing isn’t always a matter of fairness.
Last year, Mötley Crüe bassist Nikki Sixx created a Twitter shitstorm when he opined about Michael Jackson being an alleged pedophile. At the time, I wrote a blog post about it being a fascinating case study in human nature. This week marks the third anniversary of Jackson’s death, and the case study has taken an interesting turn.
Mood music:
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I knew something was up when my post from last year started getting a ton of traffic. I also started getting fresh comments on the post, all of it defending Jackson and panning Mötley Crüe’s chief songwriter. So I explored Google and found another interesting Twitter exchange, this time between Jackson’s daughter, Paris, and Sixx.
Jackson sent him this tweet: “Heyy quick question dude – and this is coming from a huge fan of motley crue – but why do u feel the need to hate on talented ppl [people]?”
To which Sixx replied: “Hello parisJackson. My snarky humor and sarcasm sometimes gets the best of me. I sincerely apologize to you and your family. God Bless.”
According to published reports, she accepted his apology and he invited her to come on his radio show. “If ya ever wanna come on SixxSense and talk about what Your working on would love [to] have you on,” he tweeted.
I had forgotten about my post from last year, so I went back and read it. It mostly stands the test of time in terms of how I feel about the subject. I think Jackson did a lot of good in his life but that the cloud hanging over him was hard to dismiss.
True, he was never convicted of being a pedophile, but the reports of what went on in his home still make me uneasy.
Watching a childhood friend become a pedophile definitely colored my reaction to the Sixx-Jackson controversy. But I fully admit that I’m basing my views on all the things that were reported in the media. For all I know, everything that happened behind closed doors was harmless. The media has a long history of getting it wrong.
I still find it curious how the masses were ready to tear Jackson down at the time of the allegations yet conveniently forgot about all them when he died. I guess we all suffer from varying degrees of hypocrisy.
One thing’s for certain: Nikki Sixx seems to have had a change of heart — at least in how he chose to give his opinion on the King of Pop.
I’m glad Paris Jackson challenged Sixx the way she did. And I’m glad he apologized.
I admit feeling some glee over the fall of former U.S. senator and presidential hopeful John Edwards. I always thought the guy was full of himself, and cheating on his cancer-stricken wife was probably one of the shittiest examples of infidelity you could find. Yet I’m going to defend him — a little.
Mood music:
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Edwards was back in the news this week when a jury found him not guilty on one count of accepting illegal campaign contributions. A mistrial was declared on five other charges after the jury declared it was hopelessly deadlocked, USA Today reported. He was accused of using nearly $1 million from Rachel “Bunny” Mellon and Fred Baron to cover up his affair with Rielle Hunter, a former campaign videographer.
At a press conference yesterday, Edwards said, “I do not believe I did anything illegal. I did an awful, awful lot that was wrong. There is no one else responsible for my sins. … I don’t have to go any further than the mirror. It’s me and me alone.”
Yeah, I’ll say it:
I always believed Edwards was more about cockiness and empty rhetoric than substance.
I hate him for the way he treated his wife, Elizabeth.
I’ve always seen him as a political narcissist.
I also admit that in holding those views, I’m a hypocrite. I think any of us who judge him are hypocrites. We’re all sinners, right?
I’ve never cheated on my wife, but I’ve sure as hell lied to her. It’s usually because I’m embarrassed or ashamed of something stupid I’ve done in the addiction department. I’ve written about the lying at length in this blog.
The dumb things I did to cover the damage of my addictive behavior makes me understand all too well how a guy like John Edwards could play fast and loose with the law to hide his sins. It’s a human weakness we all have inside of us. Some are luckier than others at controlling it.
I also have an ego of my own, so it’s kind of funny that his irks me so much. Maybe it’s because his ego comes with a stylish head of hair.
Convictions or not, Edwards is paying for his sins. His political viability is vaporized and he knows he did shitty things and that the public hates him for it. I think the suffering he has to go through for that is appropriate. But like the rest of us, he could — if he really wants to work at it — rebuild himself and turn his experiences into something good.
If he can do that, I’ll be one of the first to give him credit.
I held off on writing about the JetBlue captain who suffered an emotional breakdown in flight because the case seemed too cut and dry for my added perspective.
Mood music:
http://youtu.be/JRlkTNlLy3w
That’s because I was thinking about this from the perspective of a frequent flyer. I prefer that the guys running the cockpit of my plane are sober and of sound mind. If someone is on the mental edge, they shouldn’t be flying a plane. And if a captain unexpectedly loses it, he should be removed from the cockpit.
There’s nothing remarkable here. I think any airline passenger would echo my sentiments.
The justice system appears to have reached the same conclusions. According to a Reuters story posted this morning, a grand jury indicted the pilot and charged him with interference with a flight crew. From the article:
Pilot Clayton Osbon “moved through the aircraft and was disruptive and had to be subdued and forcibly restrained from re-entering the cockpit” during the flight from New York to Las Vegas, the federal indictment said.
The unusual indictment of an airline pilot was filed on Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Amarillo, Texas. The JetBlue flight made an emergency landing in Amarillo on March 27 and Osbon, 49, was taken into custody at the airport.
Osbon is undergoing a court-ordered psychiatric examination to determine whether he can stand trial and his “sanity or lack thereof” at the time of the incident, according to court documents.
The FBI said Osbon began saying “things just don’t matter” while he was at the controls of the Airbus A320 about halfway into the five-hour flight, and that he told the flight’s first officer, “We’re not going to Vegas.”
After the pilot suddenly left the cockpit and started running up and down in the aisle, banging on a restroom door, and attempted to force his way back into the locked cockpit, several passengers retrained him until the plane landed, court documents say.
The FBI said that while he was being restrained, Osbon yelled “pray now for Jesus Christ,” started yelling about Iraq, Iran, and terrorists, and at one point shouted toward the cockpit, “guys, push it to full throttle!”
A detention hearing that had been set for earlier this week to determine whether Osbon should be released on bond was postponed while his psychiatric exam continued.
As dangerous as this guy was, I can’t help but feel for him. As someone who has suffered from panic attacks and emotional breakdowns, I can certainly place myself in his shoes. The inside of an airplane is THE WORST place on Earth to have an emotional breakdown. You’re trapped in a tube with nowhere to go. Anything can happen in that situation.
Some have called for heads to roll at the airline, but I think that’s pointless. We can yell until we’re blue in the face about how there should be tougher screening for pilots to ensure no one gets on a plane emotionally unhinged. But you can’t always catch these things in a screening.
I’ve had days where I woke up energized, confident and ready to take on the world. Then, somewhere in the day, without warning, my emotional equilibrium would take a dive. It has happened on the job, and at home. It has happened with me behind the wheel of a car and in the kitchen with sharp objects in my hand.
Screening beforehand might have revealed some latent depression, but that’s not enough to predict that the person is a ticking time bomb.
There are no good guys or bad guys in this tale. What happened happened and I doubt anything could have been done to avoid it.
If the pilot had been acting out before takeoff, the plane never would have left the ground with him on board. Not in this post-9-11 world.
That’s the problem with time bombs. You can never predict when they’ll go off. You can’t catch this type of explosive in a TSA line, especially when the TSA is preoccupied with patting down toddlers in wheelchairs.
I just hope the pilot gets the help he needs.
JetBlue Flight 191 on the ground in Amarillo, Texas. It made an emergency landing after its captain had to be restrained. Roberto Rodriguez/AP
I’m flabbergasted by a report where pedophiles claim to deserve special rights, on par with gay rights. Sorry, folks. But there’s a mighty big difference between you and the rest of society.
The article that has be pissed off is in the Greeley Gazette. It leads with this:
Using the same tactics used by “gay” rights activists, pedophiles have begun to seek similar status arguing their desire for children is a sexual orientation no different than heterosexual or homosexuals.
Critics of the homosexual lifestyle have long claimed that once it became acceptable to identify homosexuality as simply an “alternative lifestyle” or sexual orientation, logically nothing would be off limits. “Gay” advocates have taken offense at such a position insisting this would never happen. However, psychiatrists are now beginning to advocate redefining pedophilia in the same way homosexuality was redefined several years ago.
In 1973 the American Psychiatric Association declassified homosexuality from its list of mental disorders. A group of psychiatrists with B4U-Act recently held a symposium proposing a new definition of pedophilia in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders of the APA.
B4U-Act calls pedophiles “minor-attracted people.” The organization’s website states its purpose is to, “help mental health professionals learn more about attraction to minors and to consider the effects of stereotyping, stigma and fear.”
In 1998 The APA issued a report claiming “that the ‘negative potential’ of adult sex with children was ‘overstated’ and that ‘the vast majority of both men and women reported no negative sexual effects from childhood sexual abuse experiences.”
Wow. Fucking wow.
I’ve written before about how pedophiles are not beyond redemption and forgiveness for their actions, and how, as someone with a mental illness and addictions, I can somewhat relate to them as not wanting to be the way they are.
That’s where it ends.
Let’s start with the comparison to gays. I know many homosexuals and am related to several. They would never allow their instincts to take them to a place where they sexually harm someone else, especially children. In fact, if these relatives ever got their hands on a child molester, they would probably burn the person alive.
At the very end of the day, most of us are afflicted with mental imperfections. In my case, it’s OCD and addictive behavior. In someone else’s case, the problem is an excessive temper or a strong streak of narcissism.
Homosexuality is more complicated. I don’t see that as a mental defect. It’s just the way a person’s sexuality develops. In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with them.
Whatever the case is, though, there are people who act on their darker impulses and destroy other lives in the process. It’s the rage-aholic who crosses the line to murder. And it’s the pedophile who touches a child.
We all have a choice: We can have bad urges and act on them, or we can learn self control. If we make an awful choice that hurts someone else, we have to pay the price. Commit evil and you give up your rights.
Everyone does have a shot at redemption, in my opinion. As humans, we can choose to forgive, especially when someone commits evil. But only God can decide if your soul is worth saving.
As for the rest of us, we have to protect our children. That means locking pedophiles away.
Came across a disturbing report by Steve Visser in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that clearly illustrates how far we have to go in getting the mentally ill the help they need.
Detention Officer Terroyanne Harris considers the inmates she oversees on 3 North as much patient as prisoner. They suffer from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress and other mental illnesses. Some walk aimlessly around their cell block. Some are lost in hallucinations.
Most are in the Fulton County jail because they are more of a nuisance than a danger in the free world.
Taken into custody for petty crimes such as trespassing, damaging property or resisting an officer, some end up trapped in a revolving door of arrest and release. Others languish behind bars for years as they wait to be declared competent enough to stand trial.
Fulton County is not an aberration. The same is true in DeKalb, Cobb and Gwinnett counties, as well as some rural counties in the state.
Jails have become the new asylums. In Georgia, more mentally ill people are locked away than are treated in all the state psychiatric hospitals combined.
This is bad for a variety of reasons, the first being that a mental illness sufferer’s chance of recovery is seriously diminished in a bleak environment like that. Environment can make all the difference. I know from experience.
My OCD and depression run hot whenever I spend too much time indoors, hidden from the daylight. Even walking into a hospital to visit someone for an hour has a depressing impact on me. It’s a bleak environment, where people are essentially imprisoned by their illnesses. But it’s still better than the inside of a jail cell.
The article captures one aspect of this tragedy quite well:
With more mentally ill people on the streets, more have run-ins with the law. A Supreme Court decision in the mid-70s made it harder to involuntarily commit those with mental illnesses. Jail is where many land.
I can’t help but think of the fellow in my hometown people call Crazy Mike.
In any city there’s a guy like him.
The stereotype is usually a long beard, ratty clothes and the fellow is usually living on the street. He talks aloud to no one in particular and falls asleep on playground equipment.
Is Mike better off in a jail cell? I can picture him easily getting detained for disturbing the peace and ending up in the slammer. But I can’t picture him being better off.
I think of all the war veterans who are on the street or in jail because their experiences in combat left them traumatized for life. They fought for their country and deserve better.
The state of Georgia needs to reform its system now. Locking the mentally ill away in jail isn’t just tragic. It’s outrageous. I don’t fault officers in the correctional facilities. They seem to be doing the best they can with the tools they have. The problem is that these inmates shouldn’t have landed there in the first place.
Here’s hoping Georgia and other states find a way to solve this problem.
Yesterday I wrote a post over at my information security blog about famed hacker Kevin Mitnick and how he is conducting himself in the limelight. Is he redeeming himself after a life of crime?
That’s the point a lot of people seem to be debating. Should a man or woman who has made mistakes in life apologize in every interview, at every conference, behind every closed door?
I’m reminded of that scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” where Indiana Jones tells Marion Ravenwood that he can only say he’s sorry so many times. “Well say it again anyway!” she says as she slams down a tray full of shot glasses. In the same scene, she notes that everyone’s sorry for something.
But when do you reach the point where you need to make your amends and get on with life? I have my half-baked theories.
In Mitnick’s case, he did his crimes and served his time. He has used his hacking skills for good in recent years. I know many people in the security community who consider him a friend.
I don’t think he needs to say he’s sorry anymore. Using his skills for the greater good is good enough to me. And as for his conduct in promoting his book, “Ghost in the Wires,” I don’t mind. If you write something, your goal is to have as many people read it as possible. I can be shameless in proliferating this blog, but I don’t apologize. I don’t write it so it’ll sit there on the Internet being read by five people a year. You can’t be useful to people if they don’t know you’re there.
Writing this thing is partly my way of paying it forward. It’s a lot more useful than repeatedly telling everyone I’m sorry for the way I used to be. After awhile, the apologies ring hollow unless they’re backed by real change.
When you change, apologies become less necessary.
If you have to keep apologizing, then you probably still have some behaviors to change.
Since I’ve been adding new readers along the way, I always get questions about why I started this thing. I recently expanded the “about” section, and that’s a good starting point. But more of a back story is in order.
Mood music:
Before I started THE OCD DIARIES in December 2009 with a post about depression hitting me during the holidays, I had always toyed with the idea of doing this. The reason for wanting to was simple: The general public understands little about mental disorders like mine. People toss the OCD acronym around all the time, but to them it’s just the easy way of saying they have a Type-A personality.
Indeed, many Type-A people do have some form of OCD. But for a smaller segment of the population, myself included, it’s a debilitating disease that traps the sufferer in a web of fear, anxiety, and depression that leads to all kinds of addictive behavior. Which leads me to the next reason I wanted to do this.
My particular demons gave me a craving for anything that might dull the pain. For some it’s heroin or alcohol. I have gone through periods where I drank far too much, and I learned to like the various prescription pain meds a little too much. But the main addiction, the one that made my life completely unmanageable, was binge eating.
Most people refuse to acknowledge that as a legitimate addiction. The simple reason is that we all need food to survive and not the other things. Overeating won’t make you drunk or high, according to the conventional wisdom. In reality, when someone like me goes for a fix, it involves disgusting quantities of junk food that will literally leave you flopping around like any garden-variety junkie. Further evidence that this as an addiction lies in the fact that there’s a 12-Step program for compulsive over-eaters called Overeater’s Anonymous (OA). It’s essentially the same program as AA. I wanted to do my part to make people understand.
Did I worry that I might get fired from my job for outing myself like this? Sure. But something inside me was pushing me in this direction and I had to give in to my instincts. You could say it was a powerful OCD impulse that wasn’t going to quit until I did something about it.
I write a lot about my upbringing, my family and the daily challenges we all face because I still learn something each day about my condition and how I can always be better than I am. We all have things swirling around inside us that drive us to a certain kind of behavior, and covering all these things allows me to share what I’ve learned so others might find a way out of their own brand of Hell.
I’m nothing special.
Every one of us has a Cross to bear in life. Sometimes we learn to stand tall as we carry it. Other times we buckle under the weight and fall on our faces.
I just decided to be the one who talks about it.
Talking about it might help someone realize they’re not a freak and they’re not doomed to a life of pain.
If this helps one person, it’ll be worth it.
When I first started the blog, I laid out a back story so readers could see where I’ve been and how personal history affected my disorders. If you read the history, things I write in the present will probably make more sense.
With that in mind, I direct you to the following links:
The Long History of OCD
An OCD Christmas. The first entry, where I give an overview of how I got to crazy and found my way to sane.
Snowpocalypse and the Fear of Loss. The author remembers a time when fear of loss would cripple his mental capacities, and explains how he got over it — mostly.
The Ego OCD Built. The author admits to having an ego that sometimes swells beyond acceptable levels and that OCD is fuel for the fire. Go ahead. Laugh at him.
Fear Factor. The author describes years of living in a cell built by fear, how he broke free and why there’s no turning back.
Prozac Winter. The author discovers that winter makes his depression worse and that there’s a purely scientific explanation — and solution.
Have Fun with Your Therapist. Mental-illness sufferers often avoid therapists because the stigma around these “shrinks” is as thick as that of the disease. The author is here to explain why you shouldn’t fear them.
The Engine. To really understand how mental illness happens, let’s compare the brain to a machine.
Rest Redefined.The author finds that he gets the most relaxation from the things he once feared the most.
Outing Myself. The author on why he chose to “out” himself despite what other people might think.
Why Being a People Pleaser is Dumb. The author used to try very hard to please everybody and was hurt badly in the process. Here’s how he broke free and kept his soul intact.
The Addiction and the Damage Done
The Most Uncool Addiction. In this installment, the author opens up about the binge-eating disorder he tried to hide for years — and how he managed to bring it under control.
Edge of a Relapse. The author comes dangerously close to a relapse, but lives to fight another day.
The 12 Steps of Christmas. The author reviews the 12 Steps of Recovery and takes a personal inventory.
How to Play Your Addictions Like a Piano. The author admits that when an obsessive-compulsive person puts down the addiction that’s most self-destructive, a few smaller addictions rise up to fill the void. But what happens when the money runs out?
Regulating Addictive Food: A Lesson in Futility. As an obsessive-compulsive binge eater, the author feels it’s only proper that he weigh in on the notion that regulating junk food might help. Here’s why the answer is probably not.
The Liar’s Disease. The author reveals an uncomfortable truth about addicts like himself: We tend to have trouble telling the truth.
Portable Recovery. Though addiction will follow the junkie anywhere in the world, the author has discovered that recovery is just as portable.
Revere (Experiences with Addiction, Depression and Loss During The Younger Years)
Bridge Rats and Schoolyard Bullies.The author reviews the imperfections of childhood relationships in search of all his OCD triggers. Along the way, old bullies become friends and he realizes he was pretty damn stupid back then.
Lost Brothers. How the death of an older brother shaped the Hell that arrived later.
Marley and Me.The author describes the second older brother whose death hit harder than that of the first.
The Third Brother. Remembering Peter Sugarman, another adopted brother who died too early — but not before teaching the author some important lessons about life.
The Tire and the Footlocker. The author opens up an old footlocker under the stairs and finds himself back in that old Revere basement.
Child of Metal
How Metal Saved Me. Why Heavy Metal music became a critical OCD coping tool.
Insanity to Recovery in 8 Songs or Less. The author shares some videos that together make a bitchin’ soundtrack for those who wrestle with mental illness and addiction. The first four cover the darkness. The next four cover the light.
Rockit Records Revisited. The author has mentioned Metal music as one of his most important coping tools for OCD and related disorders. Here’s a look at the year he got one of the best therapy sessions ever, simply by working in a cramped little record store.
The Rat in the Church Pew. The author has written much about his Faith as a key to overcoming mental illness. But as this post illustrates, he still has a long way to go in his spiritual development.
Running from Sin, Running With Scissors. The author writes an open letter to the RCIA Class of 2010 about Faith as a journey, not a destination. He warns that addiction, rage and other bad behavior won’t disappear the second water is dropped over their heads.
Forgiveness is a Bitch. Seeking and giving forgiveness is essential for someone in recovery. But it’s often seen as a green light for more abuse.
Pain in the Lent. The author gives a progress report on the Lenten sacrifices. It aint pretty.
