OP-ED: RESOLUTION – SAVE OUR CHILDREN! by John P. Flannery

            We have this dramatic feast of a movie this holiday season, Les Miserables, based on Victor Hugo’s grand tragic novel (in 365 chapters), and a principal focus of that extraordinary tale of redemption is how ex-con Jean Valjean, a victim of disproportionate punishment and abuse, resists rage and adopts the orphan, Cosette, when her mother Fantine dies, and raises her as his own with love, kindness and at great risk and sacrifice. 

Jean Valjean saved Cosette from the Thenardiers, a cruel corrupt couple, who forced Fantine’s illegitimate daughter, Cosette, to work at their inn while treating their own daughters, Eponine and Azelma, so kindly.

When we walk from the darkened theater, we may overlook how little has changed from this artistic recounting of real historic suffering to the present day.

There has been a recent story about adoption and children that makes this crystal clear. 

Russia has put a stop to American adoptions of Russian Children.  The media, with rare exception, has covered this as if it is only a reprisal for America criticizing Russia’s human rights violations.  Citizens are screaming bloody murder, how could Russia do that to the children we would adopt?  But it’s more complicated than that.  It is more like how could we do what we have to the children from Russia adopted by Americans?

Three years ago, Dmitri Yakovlev, a 21-month toddler, adopted from Russia, was left in a parked car for nine hours, and Dmitri died of heatstroke; the adopted parent responsible, Miles Harrison, was acquitted of involuntary manslaughter.  A Russian spokesperson reportedly said, “When we give our children to the West and they die, for some reason the West always tells us it was just an accident.”

Two years ago, there was a 7 year old boy, Artyom, adopted from Russia, renamed Justin, who was put on a plane from Washington to Moscow, with a note by his adopted mother, Torry Ann Hansen, from Shelbyville, Tennessee, that said, “After giving my best to this child, I am sorry to say that for the safety of my family, friends and myself, I no longer wish to parent this child.”  Ms. Hansen paid someone $200 in Moscow to drop the child off at the Education Ministry.  Artyom told Russian authorities that Ms. Hansen was “bad,” pulled his hair, and that he had cried.  Russia thought then to suspend all adoptions of Russian children by Americans. 

This past summer, a Wisconsin couple, Martin and Kathleen O’Brien, who had four biological children and six adopted children - three from Russia - were charged with child abuse.  The three children were beaten, stabbed, kicked in the groin, slapped and doused with pepper spray.  The O’Briens made the adopted children stand naked on the back porch while the biological family ate dinner.  The parents made fun of them and said they should go back to Russia.  A Russian television reporter asked, “why American families with children of their own adopt Russian children and then mistreat them?”

Over the years, since 1991, more than 50,000 Russian children have been adopted by United States citizens.  Nineteen of them have died in recent years. 

I know families that have adopted children from Russia who have raised and cared for them as did Jean Valjean for Cosette – with loving kindness.  But we must admit there are also modern day couples like the Thenardiers who abuse children.

There’s a broader context for this abuse that we must consider – that Americans are not just abusive of adopted children; they are also terribly abusive of their own biological children.

  This is no recent occurrence and, for good or bad, we have some statistics on what the states are suffering in terms of child abuse and neglect, defined, at federal law, in the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act, as “any recent act or failure on the part of a parent or caretaker which results in death, serious physical or emotional harm, sexual abuse or exploitation; or an act or failure to act, which presents an imminent risk of serious harm.”

In 2011 there were 2 million reports of maltreatment of children, prompting a child services agency response and a disposition.    In the entire population of children, there were 9.1 victims per 1,000 children in the population.  Children in their first year of birth were victimized the worst at the rate of 21 children per 1,000 children in the same age group.  Slightly more abuse was suffered by girls.  More than 40% of the victims were white and the remainder split between Black and Hispanic.  More than 75% suffered from neglect, 15% from physical abuse, 10 percent from sexual abuse.  In 2011, there were 1, 545 deaths of children.  80% of the deaths were children younger than 4 years old.  Four-fifths of these deaths were caused by one or more parents.

Upton Sinclair, a muckracker who, in his own right, forced society to reflect upon its harmful excesses, described Les Miserables as a necessary book “so long as ignorance and misery remain on earth.”  He thought that there was something we could learn from such mirrors of our life so long as we witness “the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night” and so long as “social asphyxia shall be possible.”

A resolution we may wish to renew is to save our children – all our children – in this New Year!

GAZETTE COLUMN: A TEACHER IN EVERY GUN STORE by John P. Flannery

Teacher, Victoria Sota, 27, misled the gunman in Newtown, Connecticut,

 told him her children were in the gym,

when she had hidden them elsewhere;

she died to save her students.

This simple phrase, “A Teacher in every gun store,” was posted on Facebook by a friend. 

It was in counterpoint to the crazy ideas  that we should arm every teacher in every class room, with a PPK or assault rifle, and have a cop in every school – but not every classroom. 

Nor should we overlook the “other” substitute initiative for gun reform, that this nation should take a closer look at those who are mentally ill.  Unfortunately, we’re talking detection and discrimination, scapegoating really, not about acceptance or treatment. 

Consider the fact that Asperger’s Syndrome, a developmental disorder, suffered by our latest horrific shooter, Adam Lanza, is not a disorder associated with violence.

The NRA’s Wayne LaPierre, undeterred by Lanza’s mental state, railed against the nation’s mental health: “The truth is, that our society is populated by an unknown number of genuine monsters.  People that are so deranged, so evil, so possessed by voices and driven by demons, that no sane person can ever possibly comprehend them.”

Is LaPierre suggesting a policy that every gun owner must undergo a mental examination at the time of a weapon’s purchase or transfer?  Hardly!

LaPierre calculated he had to divert the nation from any discussion of true gun reform, with forehead slapping distractions.  He also sought to instruct the Republican T-party members in Congress that this stratagem was how to defend gun reforms against those who rebel against the notion that the gunfight at the OK Corral should be the law enforcement model we emulate. 

LaPierre railed at the media for its coverage (even as he manipulated the media to cover him), refusing to answer any questions.

The run up to LaPierre’s statement was orchestrated with NRA-endorsed elected officials calling for pistol-packing teachers in the classroom.  This was a stratagem to make the cop in every school sound almost reasonable by comparison, ignoring the fact that there were armed guards at Columbine and Virginia Tech and other killing fields, that made no difference.

Anyone who has fairly studied the current system involving “School Resource Officers (SROs),” knows it really should be called “Cops in Schools,” and that,  instead of protecting our children from violence, it has criminalized our students, turning the school corridors into court anterooms. 

Critics call the “Cops in Schools” initiative a “school to prison” pipeline.  For example, in Spotsylvania County, in Virginia, a freshman honor student shot spit balls at another kid in class.  For this, he was suspended for a year and charged with three criminal misdemeanor assault charges. 

In a class action lawsuit in New York, students complained they were arrested for minor, non-criminal activities, handcuffed and locked away without teacher or parental consent, and then taken to hospitals for psychiatric evaluations. 

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R), a former federal prosecutor, gets it.  Christie has rightly opposed this “cop in a school” initiative, saying, “You don’t want to make [schools] an armed camp for kids.”  Nor a place to ruin their lives with trumped up criminal charges.

If we really thought a cop in every school was necessary – because this time the mayhem was at a school, by logical extension, we should have cops at all the other places where guns mowed down innocents - in churches, movie houses, shopping centers, and more. 

Instead of cops, the answer is we need to control who gets what weapons instead.  While it may not make much sense to put a teacher in every gun store to instruct on the values of evolving civilizations, it really might be a good idea to put cops in gun stores instead - and at gun shows – and also at gun manufacturing plants, for at its origin, where the manufacture, supply and distribution of guns occur, that’s where we have our problem. 

We should also have a public debate about demanding reparations and damages for victims from these carefree and reckless gun manufacturers, dealers and traders, and impose taxes on guns while dedicating the proceeds to the victims and their families.

Or we can ignore all this, do what we’ve done since Columbine (where there were armed guards), since Virginia Tech (where there were armed guards), look the other way until, of course, the next innocent is killed – but then we might have to admit, after so many deaths, how we have failed these victims, our friends and neighbors, by acting not at all.

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GAZETTE COLUMN: THE WRECKING BALL by John P. Flannery

The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors compromises the Courthouse Green

There they go again. Our Board of Supervisors can't help itself.

We have another in your face - "you're not as religious as we are" - December moments. I'm talking about our Board's assembly of preferred religious symbols on the courthouse grounds to the exclusion of others.

These Supervisors are the same people who would insist the problem with America is that we don't abide by the U. S. Constitution. Yet it is so very hard for our Supervisors and their learned counsel to read and abide by the First Amendment to the Constitution that prohibits the establishment of religion.

So they decided to pick a list of religions and say, implicitly, who can be offended by that? One practical answer is every other religion that was not included. But the right answer should be everyone including the included.

Today in Loudoun County we choose several religions to honor and advocate, tomorrow, we choose one, and then we choose a sect of one religion. This was President Thomas Jefferson's concern, that there would be warring sects and whichever prevailed would dictate what the nation must believe.

Years ago, my wife Holly and I visited Bali, a more beautiful place in the world is hard to imagine. Religious symbols abound. The entrance ways to homes are studies in religious meditation. The Bali government, however, requires its citizens to identify themselves by one of three specified religions, Hindu, Muslim, or Christian. I asked, "What if I am a Jew?" The answer was, "Well, then you'd identify yourself as Christian." I said, "But that's not Jewish!" My respondent shrugged.

What if this was the forced choice in America? No doubt some anti-Semites would be pleased with the exclusion of Jews but find it disconcerting to highlight and endorse or "establish" religions that were not Christian. There's the rub when government prefers and chooses one or several religions as permissible.

We don't believe our Board misunderstands the First Amendment. We believe instead they are imposing their religious views on the community - a very un-judaeo-christian thing to do as I read the scriptures, not to overlook that it's also extra-legal and unconstitutional.

The Board has tried some sleight of brand in support of constraining our individual rights and liberties. They have had the gall to say that they were allowing for the exercise of free speech. But a government advocating for and establishing religion is not free speech. Nor is the speech contemplated by another phrase in the First Amendment "free" when the government authorizes what may be said, purposefully excluding what else might be said. The freedom of speech is an individual and personal freedom enjoyed by the people, not by the government, and rebels against the controlling and channeling of such righteous exertions by the government as the Board is doing in our fair county.

Some say, "what's the big deal?" This is oft said by those unaffected by the unconstitutional constraint - in the past, for example, those who didn't have to sit in the back of the bus. It is by tolerating such offenses against individual rights, even when we are unaffected, a kind of "das macht nichts" (it doesn't matter) approach, that we all lose our rights by not so subtle degrees. For next time, the incursion may be about "your" rights.

In the category of calling the kettle black, we have Leesburg Supervisor Ken Reid, the most formidable aspirant to the intolerant-as-a-bed-bug designation, currently held by the orange-hatted Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio, for calling atheists, "terrorists." When called on it, caught at it, Supervisor Reid gave some iteration of I-misspoke-intolerantly and I should have used better code to communicate my real biased thinking to those that agree.

Supervisor Reid's spoken aloud sentiments reveal his unconcealed bias that no person may embrace the uncertainty of life and say he or she disbelieves in a divinity that has a Judaeo-Christian origin. The "terrorism" of which Supervisor Reid rails is the dissenting belief system that conforms not at all with his own. The specific objection that he made was against atheists who would express these views on a court house lawn that Supervisor Reid had declared sacred to certain specified religions for a season that our Board has chosen.

Supervisor Reid's confessional gaffe instructs us as to the true meaning of this array of select religious symbols on the civic space to the exclusion of others that represent belief and unbelief systems that the board did not select and that the Constitution assures are protected.

Perhaps next year the abundant private venues all around our court house grounds will suffice to allow each person to celebrate what he or she chooses to express without interference by public officials who swore to uphold a Constitution that they'd rather violate instead.