http://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Hamilton-Logo.jpg00SOL Reformhttp://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Hamilton-Logo.jpgSOL Reform2014-10-08 21:25:202014-10-08 21:25:20Sharon Cotliar, School Sexual Abuse Survivors End Decades of Secrecy, People
New York (CNN) — Police in New York are aware of child molestation allegations by a former relative against actor Stephen Collins, but due to the statute of limitations, he cannot face charges in that case, a senior law enforcement official told CNN on Tuesday evening.
The woman, a relative of Collins’ first wife, went to police in November 2012 and told them she was sexually assaulted by Collins when she was 14 years old while inside his Greenwich Village apartment, the official said.
There are specific laws with child sexual abuse cases in New York that allow for an extension of the statute of limitations, but even with that, this case against Collins — the father figure in the television show “7th Heaven” — cannot be prosecuted, the official added.
An investigation continues to see if there might be any other women with similar allegations, the source said.
In New York, a person has five years from their 18th birthday to make an accusation of sexual abuse to authorities.
TMZ audio recording
Earlier Tuesday, celebrity gossip website TMZ released an audio recording that purports to have been recorded during a November 2012 therapy session involving Collins and his estranged second wife, Faye Grant.
CNN cannot confirm the authenticity of recording.
But Grant told E! News she had nothing to do with the release of the recording.
“I woke up today to learn that an extremely private recording I handed over to authorities in 2012 per their request in connection with a criminal investigation was recently disseminated to the press,” she told E! News. “I had no involvement whatsoever with the release of the tape to the media.”
Following the revelation, Collins, who is involved in a contentious divorce with Grant, was fired from his job on the movie “Ted 2.”
He also resigned Tuesday from his spot on the national board of the Screen Actor’s Guild, a source at the organization with knowledge of the situation told CNN.
Accusations from court documents
According to divorce documents filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Grant says she learned Collins had “been engaging in a long-term pattern of sexually molesting children.” She said Collins admitted to her that he molested three underage girls more than a decade prior, the court document says. Two of the girls lived in New York, one in Los Angeles, according to the divorce papers.
Neither Collins’ attorney nor his agent immediately returned any of CNN’s numerous calls. Grant’s representatives also didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Grant said in the court documents that she was unaware of Collins’ behavior until he told her in January 2012. They separated the next month, after almost 27 years of marriage.
In Collins’ legal response to the divorce filing, his lawyer doesn’t specifically address the claims made by Grant, though he does write that it “is really an attempt to extort concessions in settlement.”
The document says that the now-husband of one of the alleged victims called Grant in December 2012 and berated her for not turning Collins over to the police and threatened to sue her for Collins’ actions.
No charges
TMZ reported Collins made incriminating statements in the recording similar to the accusations in the court documents.
New York police have not commented on the existence of the recording. No charges have been filed.
A spokeswoman for the New York Police Department, Kim Royster, said there is a formal criminal complaint on file that is being handled by the Manhattan Special Victims Squad.
Police in Los Angeles said the department received information two years ago regarding allegations of criminal behavior.
The case is no longer active, LAPD spokesman Andrew Neiman said.
“No crime report was ever made and there was no verified victim,” he said. “We are reviewing that investigation to make certain that nothing was missed, and we are collaborating with New York to assist if we can. The case here has not been reopened. We are merely reviewing the case for accuracy.”
Collins played the Rev. Eric Camden on “7th Heaven,” which centered on the Camden family. It aired from 1996 to 2007.
He also appeared in “Star Trek: The Motion Picture.” On television he played a doctor in at least six different shows.
Recently, he has been a regular on ABC’s “Private Practice” and “Revolution.”
He was nominated for a Primetime Emmy for his supporting performance in “The Two Mrs. Grenvilles,” a 1987 miniseries.
A man who’s suing the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark, alleging a priest sexually molested him more than 30 years ago, wants the state to change the statute of limitations in such cases….
The bill’s fate in the Legislature is uncertain. The bill’s sponsor, Democratic state Sen. Joseph Vitale, said he’s “somewhat optimistic” it could pass but some lawmakers have raised concerns with him about ending the civil statute of limitations outright.
The biggest hurdle, he said, is church opposition to changing the law.
“This is a process where I think most members have evolved in their thinking about his,” he said. “It’s taken years to get where we are.”
http://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Hamilton-Logo.jpg00SOL Reformhttp://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Hamilton-Logo.jpgSOL Reform2014-10-07 20:30:262014-10-08 20:32:46Michael Catalini, Man sues Archdiocese of Newark, alleges priest sexually abused him as a child in late 1970s, Daily Journal
A judge has found the state’s 2005 restrictions on sex offender movement violate constitutional bans on retroactive punishment when applied to a man convicted of sexual abuse in 2002 and effectively banished him from many parts of Brooklyn as a result.
Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Yvonne Lewis determined that Executive Law §259-c(14)—which forbids sentenced offenders from “knowingly entering into” publicly accessible areas within 1,000 feet of school grounds and other institutions where minors are present—violated the Ex Post Facto Clause of the Constitution in the case of Michael Devine, convicted of first-degree sexual abuse of a 17-year-old girl in 2000, when he was 20.
As a result, the judge granted Devine’s Article 78 petition and permitted him to live in Brooklyn with his fiancée and her three children from a previous relationship.
In Devine v. Annucci, 5406/12, Lewis concluded the statute, in this particular case, was retroactively punitive.
“The extent to which Executive Law §259-c(14) prohibits the petitioner from knowingly entering a very substantial portion of Brooklyn puts its limitations on a par with banishment in the eyes of this court,” she said.
The state argued restraints on Devine were “minimal,” noting there were other places outside Brooklyn were he could live.
But the state argument seemed to “reflect perfectly the precise definition of banishment,” Lewis said. “Requiring a person not only to quit his place of residence but also to move out and stay out of an entire borough, is far from minimal.”
Devine, a pseudonym, was sentenced in 2002 to a seven-year term. He was conditionally released in 2008 and deemed a Level I offender, considered to be the lowest risk of re-offense.
In February 2014, the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, one of the respondents in the petition, told Devine the residence he shared with his fiancée and her children was not compliant with Executive Law §259-c(14).
As he searched for a new residence, a monitoring bracelet was placed on his ankle. He ended up living with his mother in Brooklyn.
In Devine’s petition, he said Executive Law §259-c(14) amounted to ex post facto punishment because the amendment was enacted after his conviction and increased penalties because it pushed Devine out of his home and community and held out possibility of incarceration for non-compliance.
The Constitution’s Ex Post Facto clause prohibits an increase in punishment for a crime after it was committed. In this case, prior to the 2005 amendment, the statute, known as the Sexual Assault Reform Act, had a more narrow definition of school grounds and therefore fewer restrictions on movement.
Devine submitted a map showing that he was prohibited from entering—and consequently living in—all but small pockets in the outer edges of the borough.
Despite uncertainty about legislative intent surrounding the amendment, Devine said the statute was so punitive, it vitiated any benign intent from lawmakers. Moreover, he said, the lack of individual assessment made the statute punitive in effect.
Lewis noted the state rejected the map but did not offer its own map in refutation.
The state said the restrictions did not ban Devine from all parts of the city and therefore were not significantly punitive to be seen as an unconstitutional ex post facto law.
In her decision, Lewis said, assuming for argument’s sake that the map was accurate and Devine strictly followed the law, he was “in effect trapped or locked in once he enters a compliant area, to say nothing of the fact that he will have had be non-compliant to reach the place of compliance.”
She noted case law backed her view that in light of the “substantial restrictions,” an absence of individualized assessment made the statute punitive in effect.
The state urged Lewis to follow Matter of Williams v. Dept. of Corr. and Community Supervision, 43 Misc.3d 356. The 2014 Manhattan Supreme Court decision also weighed the ex post facto clause but said Executive Law §259-c(14) was constitutional.
Lewis distinguished Williams from the case before her, saying it further emphasized the need for individualized assessments. There the victim was a 9-year-old girl and the offender had no particular ties to Manhattan.
Here, Devine had established ties to Brooklyn and the victim was 17 years old—arguably not a child, the judge said.
Devine was designated a low risk offender but “categorically grouped with all other sex offenders whose victims were under the age of 18 at the time of the crime. Therefore, the petitioner is viewed and treated in the same light as sex offenders who have been deemed to present a high risk of danger to children. Such an outcome renders the statute punitive when considering the instant circumstances.”
Other courts have considered the application of the ex post facto clause to state and local sex offender rules. For example, Eastern District Judge Pamela Chen recently ruled that the legislative intent behind current state offender registration requirements were not punitive, but meant to protect the public (NYLJ, Sept. 26).
Devine was represented by Susannah Karlsson, special litigation counsel at Brooklyn Defender Services. He was also represented by Lisa Napoli, a supervising attorney at Appellate Advocates.
http://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Hamilton-Logo.jpg00SOL Reformhttp://sol-reform.com/News/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Hamilton-Logo.jpgSOL Reform2014-10-04 22:34:332014-10-04 22:34:33Andrew Keshner, Judge Finds State Limits on Sex Offender Moves Illegal, New York Law Journal
Mary Sanchez: KC Diocese trial extends culture of silence about abuse
By MARY SANCHEZ – The Kansas City Star – 09/30/2014 7:50 PM
The culture of silence continues. It’s hovering in a courtroom in Independence this week like a blanket threatening to smother.
Attorneys for the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph invoke it with every objection, every debate about whether a particular witness should testify in the case of a former altar boy, Jon David Couzens, who alleges abuse by the late Monsignor Thomas J. O’Brien.
This trial is so important because it could tie together decades of allegations and emotions about what the diocese knew, when it knew it and what various clergy did or didn’t do with information. But what the jury is allowed to hear is a compressed and sanitized version. That’s often for good reasons: ensuring a fair trial to the accused.
But sexual abuse of children generally isn’t revealed in succinct ways that are always chronicled and documented, easily recounted in testimony years later.
Rarely do children who are being abused make the allegation themselves at the time, testified Charol Shakeshaft, a professor who helped write the U.S. Department of Education’s guidelines for detecting abuse in schools.
Rather, rumors, gossip and innuendo — essentially hearsay not allowed in courtrooms — are often the way initial suspicions about child sexual abuse first can be detected, she said. Over time, what Shakeshaft termed “a community of knowledge” about the abuse begins to develop. Couzens’ attorneys are trying to establish those in charge at the diocese were in that loop.
First, children talk and joke among themselves, coming up with nicknames for the alleged abuser. O’Brien, who died in 2013, was called the “party priest,” partly because of his excessive drinking.
Next, behaviors and patterns become apparent. A teacher taking a child out of class. A child not wanting to go to a certain activity. Couzens’ mother testified that her son wanted to quit being an altar boy. Another witness talked of O’Brien using the pretense of needing help with boxes to lure him into sexual activity.
Finally, sometimes, suspicions are reported, generally by a third party, Shakeshaft said. And it will often be tentative, someone thinking they might be over-reacting. All of this is why laws have been in place nationally since 1975 forcing the reporting of suspicions of child abuse by teachers, clergy and others.
But it is also why this case is so difficult. It’s as if the very nature of what is being discussed in that courtroom still has the power to remain hidden.
Sharon Cotliar, School Sexual Abuse Survivors End Decades of Secrecy, People
/in New York /by SOL ReformSource: ‘7th Heaven’ actor’s accuser waited too long, CNN
/in New York /by SOL ReformNew York (CNN) — Police in New York are aware of child molestation allegations by a former relative against actor Stephen Collins, but due to the statute of limitations, he cannot face charges in that case, a senior law enforcement official told CNN on Tuesday evening.
The woman, a relative of Collins’ first wife, went to police in November 2012 and told them she was sexually assaulted by Collins when she was 14 years old while inside his Greenwich Village apartment, the official said.
There are specific laws with child sexual abuse cases in New York that allow for an extension of the statute of limitations, but even with that, this case against Collins — the father figure in the television show “7th Heaven” — cannot be prosecuted, the official added.
An investigation continues to see if there might be any other women with similar allegations, the source said.
In New York, a person has five years from their 18th birthday to make an accusation of sexual abuse to authorities.
TMZ audio recording
Earlier Tuesday, celebrity gossip website TMZ released an audio recording that purports to have been recorded during a November 2012 therapy session involving Collins and his estranged second wife, Faye Grant.
CNN cannot confirm the authenticity of recording.
But Grant told E! News she had nothing to do with the release of the recording.
“I woke up today to learn that an extremely private recording I handed over to authorities in 2012 per their request in connection with a criminal investigation was recently disseminated to the press,” she told E! News. “I had no involvement whatsoever with the release of the tape to the media.”
Following the revelation, Collins, who is involved in a contentious divorce with Grant, was fired from his job on the movie “Ted 2.”
He also resigned Tuesday from his spot on the national board of the Screen Actor’s Guild, a source at the organization with knowledge of the situation told CNN.
Accusations from court documents
According to divorce documents filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Grant says she learned Collins had “been engaging in a long-term pattern of sexually molesting children.” She said Collins admitted to her that he molested three underage girls more than a decade prior, the court document says. Two of the girls lived in New York, one in Los Angeles, according to the divorce papers.
Neither Collins’ attorney nor his agent immediately returned any of CNN’s numerous calls. Grant’s representatives also didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Grant said in the court documents that she was unaware of Collins’ behavior until he told her in January 2012. They separated the next month, after almost 27 years of marriage.
In Collins’ legal response to the divorce filing, his lawyer doesn’t specifically address the claims made by Grant, though he does write that it “is really an attempt to extort concessions in settlement.”
The document says that the now-husband of one of the alleged victims called Grant in December 2012 and berated her for not turning Collins over to the police and threatened to sue her for Collins’ actions.
No charges
TMZ reported Collins made incriminating statements in the recording similar to the accusations in the court documents.
New York police have not commented on the existence of the recording. No charges have been filed.
A spokeswoman for the New York Police Department, Kim Royster, said there is a formal criminal complaint on file that is being handled by the Manhattan Special Victims Squad.
Police in Los Angeles said the department received information two years ago regarding allegations of criminal behavior.
The case is no longer active, LAPD spokesman Andrew Neiman said.
“No crime report was ever made and there was no verified victim,” he said. “We are reviewing that investigation to make certain that nothing was missed, and we are collaborating with New York to assist if we can. The case here has not been reopened. We are merely reviewing the case for accuracy.”
Collins played the Rev. Eric Camden on “7th Heaven,” which centered on the Camden family. It aired from 1996 to 2007.
He also appeared in “Star Trek: The Motion Picture.” On television he played a doctor in at least six different shows.
Recently, he has been a regular on ABC’s “Private Practice” and “Revolution.”
He was nominated for a Primetime Emmy for his supporting performance in “The Two Mrs. Grenvilles,” a 1987 miniseries.
According to the Internet Movie Database, he is 67.
UP TV, which airs “7th Heaven” in syndication, said it was replacing the show in its lineup, beginning Tuesday evening.
CNN’s Megan Thomas, Sara Sidner, Lindy Hall and Rachel Wells contributed to this report.
Michael Catalini, Man sues Archdiocese of Newark, alleges priest sexually abused him as a child in late 1970s, Daily Journal
/in New Jersey, Uncategorized /by SOL ReformA man who’s suing the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Newark, alleging a priest sexually molested him more than 30 years ago, wants the state to change the statute of limitations in such cases….
The bill’s fate in the Legislature is uncertain. The bill’s sponsor, Democratic state Sen. Joseph Vitale, said he’s “somewhat optimistic” it could pass but some lawmakers have raised concerns with him about ending the civil statute of limitations outright.
The biggest hurdle, he said, is church opposition to changing the law.
“This is a process where I think most members have evolved in their thinking about his,” he said. “It’s taken years to get where we are.”
View entire article: http://www.dailyjournal.net/
Andrew Keshner, Judge Finds State Limits on Sex Offender Moves Illegal, New York Law Journal
/in New York /by SOL ReformA judge has found the state’s 2005 restrictions on sex offender movement violate constitutional bans on retroactive punishment when applied to a man convicted of sexual abuse in 2002 and effectively banished him from many parts of Brooklyn as a result.
Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Yvonne Lewis determined that Executive Law §259-c(14)—which forbids sentenced offenders from “knowingly entering into” publicly accessible areas within 1,000 feet of school grounds and other institutions where minors are present—violated the Ex Post Facto Clause of the Constitution in the case of Michael Devine, convicted of first-degree sexual abuse of a 17-year-old girl in 2000, when he was 20.
As a result, the judge granted Devine’s Article 78 petition and permitted him to live in Brooklyn with his fiancée and her three children from a previous relationship.
In Devine v. Annucci, 5406/12, Lewis concluded the statute, in this particular case, was retroactively punitive.
“The extent to which Executive Law §259-c(14) prohibits the petitioner from knowingly entering a very substantial portion of Brooklyn puts its limitations on a par with banishment in the eyes of this court,” she said.
The state argued restraints on Devine were “minimal,” noting there were other places outside Brooklyn were he could live.
But the state argument seemed to “reflect perfectly the precise definition of banishment,” Lewis said. “Requiring a person not only to quit his place of residence but also to move out and stay out of an entire borough, is far from minimal.”
Devine, a pseudonym, was sentenced in 2002 to a seven-year term. He was conditionally released in 2008 and deemed a Level I offender, considered to be the lowest risk of re-offense.
In February 2014, the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, one of the respondents in the petition, told Devine the residence he shared with his fiancée and her children was not compliant with Executive Law §259-c(14).
As he searched for a new residence, a monitoring bracelet was placed on his ankle. He ended up living with his mother in Brooklyn.
In Devine’s petition, he said Executive Law §259-c(14) amounted to ex post facto punishment because the amendment was enacted after his conviction and increased penalties because it pushed Devine out of his home and community and held out possibility of incarceration for non-compliance.
The Constitution’s Ex Post Facto clause prohibits an increase in punishment for a crime after it was committed. In this case, prior to the 2005 amendment, the statute, known as the Sexual Assault Reform Act, had a more narrow definition of school grounds and therefore fewer restrictions on movement.
Devine submitted a map showing that he was prohibited from entering—and consequently living in—all but small pockets in the outer edges of the borough.
Despite uncertainty about legislative intent surrounding the amendment, Devine said the statute was so punitive, it vitiated any benign intent from lawmakers. Moreover, he said, the lack of individual assessment made the statute punitive in effect.
Lewis noted the state rejected the map but did not offer its own map in refutation.
The state said the restrictions did not ban Devine from all parts of the city and therefore were not significantly punitive to be seen as an unconstitutional ex post facto law.
In her decision, Lewis said, assuming for argument’s sake that the map was accurate and Devine strictly followed the law, he was “in effect trapped or locked in once he enters a compliant area, to say nothing of the fact that he will have had be non-compliant to reach the place of compliance.”
She noted case law backed her view that in light of the “substantial restrictions,” an absence of individualized assessment made the statute punitive in effect.
The state urged Lewis to follow Matter of Williams v. Dept. of Corr. and Community Supervision, 43 Misc.3d 356. The 2014 Manhattan Supreme Court decision also weighed the ex post facto clause but said Executive Law §259-c(14) was constitutional.
Lewis distinguished Williams from the case before her, saying it further emphasized the need for individualized assessments. There the victim was a 9-year-old girl and the offender had no particular ties to Manhattan.
Here, Devine had established ties to Brooklyn and the victim was 17 years old—arguably not a child, the judge said.
Devine was designated a low risk offender but “categorically grouped with all other sex offenders whose victims were under the age of 18 at the time of the crime. Therefore, the petitioner is viewed and treated in the same light as sex offenders who have been deemed to present a high risk of danger to children. Such an outcome renders the statute punitive when considering the instant circumstances.”
Other courts have considered the application of the ex post facto clause to state and local sex offender rules. For example, Eastern District Judge Pamela Chen recently ruled that the legislative intent behind current state offender registration requirements were not punitive, but meant to protect the public (NYLJ, Sept. 26).
Devine was represented by Susannah Karlsson, special litigation counsel at Brooklyn Defender Services. He was also represented by Lisa Napoli, a supervising attorney at Appellate Advocates.
Assistant Attorney General Inna Ringh appeared for the state defendants.
Read more: http://www.newyorklawjournal.com/id=1202672385488/Judge-Finds-State-Limits-on-Sex-Offender-Moves-Illegal#ixzz3FDannGYD
CA Gov Brown signs criminal extension and vetoes civil.
/in California /by SOL ReformCA Gov Brown signs criminal extension and vetoes civil.
Mary Sanchez, KC Diocese trial extends culture of silence about abuse
/in Kansas /by SOL Reformhttp://www.kansascity.com/
Mary Sanchez: KC Diocese trial extends culture of silence about abuse
By MARY SANCHEZ – The Kansas City Star – 09/30/2014 7:50 PM
The culture of silence continues. It’s hovering in a courtroom in Independence this week like a blanket threatening to smother.
Attorneys for the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph invoke it with every objection, every debate about whether a particular witness should testify in the case of a former altar boy, Jon David Couzens, who alleges abuse by the late Monsignor Thomas J. O’Brien.
This trial is so important because it could tie together decades of allegations and emotions about what the diocese knew, when it knew it and what various clergy did or didn’t do with information. But what the jury is allowed to hear is a compressed and sanitized version. That’s often for good reasons: ensuring a fair trial to the accused.
But sexual abuse of children generally isn’t revealed in succinct ways that are always chronicled and documented, easily recounted in testimony years later.
Rarely do children who are being abused make the allegation themselves at the time, testified Charol Shakeshaft, a professor who helped write the U.S. Department of Education’s guidelines for detecting abuse in schools.
Rather, rumors, gossip and innuendo — essentially hearsay not allowed in courtrooms — are often the way initial suspicions about child sexual abuse first can be detected, she said. Over time, what Shakeshaft termed “a community of knowledge” about the abuse begins to develop. Couzens’ attorneys are trying to establish those in charge at the diocese were in that loop.
First, children talk and joke among themselves, coming up with nicknames for the alleged abuser. O’Brien, who died in 2013, was called the “party priest,” partly because of his excessive drinking.
Next, behaviors and patterns become apparent. A teacher taking a child out of class. A child not wanting to go to a certain activity. Couzens’ mother testified that her son wanted to quit being an altar boy. Another witness talked of O’Brien using the pretense of needing help with boxes to lure him into sexual activity.
Finally, sometimes, suspicions are reported, generally by a third party, Shakeshaft said. And it will often be tentative, someone thinking they might be over-reacting. All of this is why laws have been in place nationally since 1975 forcing the reporting of suspicions of child abuse by teachers, clergy and others.
But it is also why this case is so difficult. It’s as if the very nature of what is being discussed in that courtroom still has the power to remain hidden.
To reach Mary Sanchez, call 816-234-4752 or email msanchez@kcstar.com. On Twitter:@msanchezcolumn.