Thank God.

VRT News

"Marc Dutroux shocked Belgium in the 1990’s with the kidnap, false imprisonment and rape of 5 girls and 1 young woman: Julie Lejeune (8), Mélissa Russo (8), An Marchal (17), Eefje Lambrecks (19), Sabine Dardenne (12) and Laetitia Delhez (14). Four of his victims were murdered. Only Laetitia Delhez and Sabine Dardenne were rescued alive. Marc Dutroux was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2004."

Dutroux's wife went to the house to feed his dogs while he was in jail, knowing two girls were captive in the cellar.  She fed the dogs and left the girls to starve there.  She's currently out of prison.

After all these years the house has finally been demolished; there will be no memorial to the girls who died there per the families' wishes.

At the site of the other building, where two of the girls survived, there is a memorial garden. 

Sabine Dardenne's book, I Choose to Live, was inspirational for me in coming forward with my story.  I read through her reviews and saw that some people were angry that she didn't give enough details about the rape and accused her of a cash grab.  (Because nothing gets you richer than torture/rape, amirite?)  It prepared me for the same, which did happen.   So she will always be a personal hero of mine.

One of my least-favorite things about America is the way its laws are really antiquated and uneven.  It's  a big part of the serious inequality problems that we have, and one of the things that keep our prison-industrial complex happy.  It's all fairly slapdash and arbitrary, and states can do almost whatever they want -- or not. I remember slavery being outlawed in Mississippi in the 1990s.  Jeez, take your time, no rush or anything.  They weren't doing it anymore, but still.

But this just kills me.

The Hill

"The bill, which was narrowly voted down 9-8 by the committee, sought to establish 18 as the age of consent for marriage and remove the ability for minors to even seek consent from a parent, guardian or court to marry. "

To be clear, it's almost never an underage boy trying to get permission to be married to an old woman.

My friend Wendy Huggy got married, I think she was only 14 or 15 at the time, to a 27-year-old man.  That was in Illinois, before Chris Hansen had a TV show where he tricked guys like that into thinking they might get to marry (or at least bang) a 15-year-old girl.  But on his show, when they got there it was actually cops waiting to arrest them.  Good times!

Why did the State of Illinois allow Wendy to marry this guy without any parental signature?  Her mom had abandoned her.  The rest of her family was in Florida.  Say whatever you want about West Virginia, the rest of America is a shithole for women too.

I have a love-hate relationship with the Arts & Entertainment Channel -- which is kind of weird since they don't know I exist.

The thing is, they do some of the best true crime reporting.  What I really hate about true crime is the sheer exploitation, the bandwagon nature of it, where people cover the same two or three cases in minute detail.

For me, as a survivor, I want true crime to be about what we can learn and what we can be doing better to get better outcomes for everyone.  A&E still isn't doing that.  But they at least come closer, and tell a more diverse range of stories.  A&E does some research.  And they do give survivors some voice that they wouldn't otherwise have.

But I'm almost always left screaming at the screen for one reason or another.  The title of the above-linked episode is "Suspicion Cast On Murdered Schoolteachers Soon To Be Ex."

If you watch the episode, what was very clear to me in the beginning was that the police allowed suspicion to fall on the ex -- only the most natural thought in the world -- by not following through on the very obvious investigative leads from the beginning.  People talk because they don't know what to think.  But the police knew what to think, and they shouldn't have allowed it to go that way.

SPOILER ALERT:  Episode reveal below.

So at the very beginning of the crime scene discussion they mention that there were multiple intruders, that they stayed in the apartment for hours torturing the victim, and that they ransacked the place searching through things like cereal boxes.

Based on my life experience -- and I'm not even a cop or a drug dealer -- that sounds like they very obviously thought that drugs and/or money were hidden in the home.  Right?  She wasn't sexually assaulted.  She obviously wasn't targeted at random of they're searching through items in her freezer.  They for some reason believe she has something of value hidden inside her home.

They also had the ex-husband's cell phone data showing that he was nowhere near the place. 

They found a lighter in the apartment near the point of obvious forced entry, although the victim was not a smoker and had no candles, incense, or other reasons to have a lighter.  This also contained DNA from an unknown male, not the husband.

In the end, they solved the case because the husband, so tired of being demonized as a murderer by the entire town, started asking around at the barbershop.  And since this was an obvious gang of drug dealers that had gone to the wrong house looking for some other drug dealer's girlfriend -- DUH -- there were a lot of people who actually knew what had happened. 

I suppose A&E doesn't want to risk becoming seen as "anti law-enforcement" by accurately labeling this episode "Man Solves Ex-Wife's Homicide By Asking Around At Barbershop."  For God's sake.

This is something that never stops messing with my head, how quick the police have always been to blame victims. 

Almost every cold case show features (a) a perpetrator who did at least one heinous, vicious crime against someone else that should have let people know he was dangerous, and (b) a victim who could have been helped much sooner had their case been taken seriously. 

Take, for example, Todd Kolhepp, the "Amazon Review Killer."  We, as a society, need to have some way of keeping tabs on people who are quite that loose on their hinges, so that when someone like Kala Brown goes missing in their area, we routinely go check their property.  Todd should've been on the radar after his first horrifying childhood rape.  The boy wasn't right, and that was obvious very early in his trail of destruction.

This report about the murder of Kim Basel made my brain explode on so many levels.  I have really mixed feelings about A&E overall, for one thing, as I've discussed elsewhere.  As a native Chicagoan, I appreciate Bill Kurtis and think he's a good person.  But A&E's true crime reporting -- while often really good, isn't exactly victim-centric.

For example, the title of this clip is "crime family flips on each other."  And for me, that really buries the lead in a dreadful way, which is that these people tortured a teenage girl with her sister on the other end of the line, and then the police said she was a runaway and waited two weeks to begin looking for her.  The fact that these dirtbags all recorded each other to save their own skin is neither here nor there.

Someone on the police department must have been on the payroll, is the only way I can imagine this situation playing out as it did.  This young girl was involved with a local crime family, supposedly a girlfriend of a much older, well-known gang leader, when she got caught shoplifting.  She called home to say she was in trouble and needed help.  Her sister heard her being beaten in a shower before the phone went dead.  And they still had the audacity to say she ran away.  Zero effort by the police.

Watch this show and see what I mean, how infuriating this is for me as a survivor.  A&E does some of the best true crime reporting.  I know Bill Kurtis to be a fairly decent guy personally.  But watch how they report this.  What don't people get about how utterly, non-stop rage-inducing  this is?

This horrifying case reminds me of the murder of Reena VIrk. 

CBS News

"Court documents say that investigators believe Darin Schilmiller of New Salisbury, Indiana, posed as a millionaire named "Tyler" online and offered 18-year-old Denali Brehmer $9 million or more to "rape and murder someone in Alaska," the station reported.

Brehmer was supposed to send photos and videos of the killing back to Schilmiller, according to the court documents.
Brehmer is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Cynthia "CeeCee" Hoffman. Hoffman was killed June 2 near a rural Anchorage trail. Police found her bound with duct tape in the Eklutna River near Thunderbird Falls. She had been shot in the back of the head."

Hoffman, a special-needs teenager, believed that Brehmer and the other person she went to the trail with that day were her best friends, and that they were taking pictures of each other duct-taped for fun. 

The despicable cruelty of Brehmer, who phoned the victim's father to express support while he searched, saying she was sure she'd be home soon, sickens me. 

Brehmer admitted to abusing two other girls, a 15-year-old and a 9-year-old, for Schilmiller.  I'm glad they were caught.

Something that got grossly underreported, in my opinion, was the Border Patrol Serial Killer, Juan David Ortiz.

I watched some coverage of his trial.  But it was unedited trial footage, which, if you've ever watched it, can be very long and boring.  There is a lot of waiting while they do procedural things, and it won't make a lot of sense unless you follow the entire thing, all day, every day, for weeks.

USA Today

"From Sept. 3 to 15, 2018, prosecutors said, [Juan David] Ortiz picked up the women – Melissa Ramirez, Claudine Luera, Guiselda Hernandez and Janelle Ortiz – along Laredo’s San Bernardo Avenue, a stretch populated by sex workers and drug pushers. One by one, he drove them out to remote stretches of the county and shot them with his government-issued .40-caliber handgun, leaving their bodies slumped on dirt roads or under overpasses. All women were known to be sex workers who struggled with drug addiction.

Prosecutors also played all 9½ hours of a videotaped interview conducted by investigators on Ortiz after his arrest, where he described how he picked up and shot the women in remote locations. In the video, Ortiz told him how he returned to San Bernardo Avenue – Laredo's red-light district where the women lived and worked – repeatedly, looking for another victim. 
"I continued driving on (San Bernardo)," he says in the video. "This is where the monster came out."

On Tuesday, prosecutors also played a jailhouse phone call recording between Ortiz, being held at Webb County Jail at the time, and his wife, Daniela Ortiz. In the call, Ortiz's wife tries to console him as he complains that he's worried about the lengthy confession he gave investigators during his interview.

....

Since January 2010, more than 245 people have died as the result of an encounter with an agent with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which includes Border Patrol, according to a list compiled by the Southern Border Communities Coalition, an advocacy group. 

Immigrant advocates for years have pushed for more transparency in how the agency disciplines its agents for wrongdoing. They point to a number of cross-border shootings by Border Patrol agents over the years as a troubling trend at the agency. "


So I didn't get all the way into researching this case, because there is so much to it, and the material isn't broken down.  I would have to review all of it to review anything  But I feel like it's an important one. 
Ortiz was convicted on four counts of murder.

  A 22-year-old former police officer has been arrested in the murder of 16-year-old high-school junior Susana Morales.

Fox 5 Atlanta

"In the warrant application, officials allege that [Miles] Bryant lives close to where Morales was last reported on Windscape Village Lane and dumped her naked body in the woods.

The warrant also says police suspect Bryant of rape, murder, and other felonies, though the former officer has not been charged with any of those offenses at this time. 

Bryant does face charges of concealing the death of another and false report of a crime. In the warrant, police accuse Bryant of falsely reporting that his vehicle had been broken into and that his gun was stolen."

You would have to see how gorgeous and tiny this teenage girl was, at 5'2 and 115 pounds.  What a cowardly and sickening crime.

A woman Bryant knew from school, Elesha Bates, describes a number of weird and creepy things Bryant allegedly did, including trying to unscrew her doorknob to get in her apartment, which her neighbor brought to her attention.

Bates went to his department.

From the above link:

"She says Bryant became so aggressive she feared for her life and reported the then police officer to his employer Doraville Police and Gwinnett County Police. The 21-year-old says she feared for her life.

Reporter: "Did you get a firearm because of him?"
Bates: "Yes."

Doraville Police says they launched an administrative investigation, talked to Bryant and the behavior stopped. Doraville Police says they told Bates to report any potential criminal charges to the Gwinnett County Police Department."  [Emphasis added]

Sorry, but that's just so infuriating to me, that this bullshit flies.  They had no follow-up questions.  We told this police officer not to act like a lunatic anymore, and he said okay, scout's honor.  And when he allegedly abducts and murders a teenage girl, we get to do a surprised Pikachu face and say it's a stain on law enforcement everywhere as if nobody could have foreseen something like this.

Again from the same link above.

"Gwinnett County Police says they are not sure why her complaint was not followed up on, but they are reopening the case.

Ms. Bates believes both police agencies dropped the ball."

I do, too.  And a teenager got murdered, whoopsie.  The same department that insisted she was a runaway when she was reported missing, assumed Miles would stop acting crazy when they told him to.  They're not sure why her complaint wasn't followed up on?  I know why.  They DGAF.

Some people are assholes.  And then there's Harvey Weinstein. 

I really don't care about him, other than being glad to know he'll probably never get out of jail.  The specifics about his case, like which ones he was convicted of and which ones he was acquitted of, I will leave for other people to report.  The most important bits, for me, other than his pissy little gloating that the movie She Said didn't make money, are the below quotes

From The Daily Beast.

"Weinstein also spoke at the hearing, begging the judge to go easy him and calling it all “a setup.”

“This is about money and coming after me,” he insisted. “Please don’t sentence me to life in prison. I don’t deserve it.”

Hahahahaaaaaa fuck you, Harvey. 

At 70 years of age they gave him another 16 years in Los Angeles, to serve after he finishes his time in New York.  He's probably going to die in prison.

They always say, "She's lying for money," while they destroy you economically.  Eat a dick as ugly as yours, Harvey.

Okay everybody, grab a box of tissues.  We're going for a ride in the waaaaaaaahmbulance.

I'm going to post the Daily Beast article in its entirety, adding emphasis of my own.

"A former Google executive has filed suit claiming he faced retaliation and was eventually fired because he reported sexual misconduct by a colleague. Ryan Olohan, 48, claims the tech giant swept his complaint under the rug because he is a man and the alleged aggressor is a woman. According to the New York Post, the suit alleges that Tiffany Miller groped Olohan at a business dinner in 2019--and then began reporting him for microaggressions after he went to human resources. Miller denies it. “This lawsuit is a fictional account of events filled with numerous falsehoods, fabricated by a disgruntled ex-employee, who was senior to Ms. Miller at Google,” her spokesman said. “Ms. Miller never made any ‘advance’ toward Mr. Olohan, which witnesses can readily corroborate.”

What drew my snark about this was my personal experience.  I recall working at a certain law firm in Chicago back in the day.  One of the attorneys was a notorious creeper.  He would lean against our shoulders while we did his work. None of us were comfortable with having his genitals on our arms.

None of the women in my work group appreciated his leering looks or his double-entendre comments.  At one point he brought in a box of vintage porn photos that he claimed had belonged to a deceased client, and he supposedly needed his secretary to inventory them.  She was to number each one and give them descriptive titles, which she declined.

When I finally got fed up with his bullshit, I went to HR and complained.  They immediately told him who had complained.  Then he came straight to me and gave me shit about it, immediately, and each day thereafter.  He was a partner, I was at the bottom of the typing pool.  They made no attempt to prevent him hassling me about it.

A few weeks later I was "reduced in force" for lack of work.  Then they hired someone else to replace me.  Did I have the means to sue the law firm that I worked for?  No, no I didn't.

So forgive me if I don't collapse into a puddle for poor, dear, Ryan Olohan.  I'm not calling him a liar.  It sounds like they have an extremely sloppy interpersonal culture over there.   She was probably rude and they obviously didn't get along.

I'm just saying that what happened to him isn't that big of a deal in the scheme of things.  She didn't even allegedly touch his dick, only his stomach.  She still shouldn't have touched him or talked about his wife or their sex life, especially if she's his superior.  And so?  Grow the fuck up, Ryan.

Does that sound harsh?

If Ryan had a real problem and weren't being a dork about it, I would be right behind him.

Look at the first thing I highlighted there.  He's claiming that the reason Google didn't pursue it is because the alleged aggressor is a woman!  HAHAHAHAAAAAA  OMG as if Google is now somehow pro-woman?  GOOGLE? Google is the great enabler of toxic women?  Bless his heart. 

No darling, this is how sexual harassment and general workplace bullying have always worked.  Nobody has ever given a fuck about your feelings or your personal space being violated.  They always do whatever makes you go away with minimal disruption to their work flow.  Welcome to our world.  Take a number whenever you stop sobbing.

Look, it's not impossible that a woman boss grabs your junk.  Some dweeb allegedly had the nerve to grab Terry Crews' balls, who is big enough to snap people like twigs -- in front of his wife, no less.  Sex offenders do stupid and crazy things, and some of them are female.  It's a power trip.

This article from The Daily Mail gives a lot more detail, which actually makes me much less sympathetic to Olohan overall.  Really it was the "... and they wouldn't help me because I'm a man" that made me want to watch him get skewered by narwhals, but also this:

• All of these alleged issues arose while the coworkers were drinking together after work hours.  In other words, could have been avoided, unlike the ton of sexual harassment I have had to march through my entire working life -- for which I am sure I got paid much, much less than Ryan Olohan.  But whenever we have a shitty male coworker, we're expected to definitely not go out drinking with him after he's already groped us once.  And if we do, when he rapes and strangles us, it's our own fault, right?  Every time.
• The "groping" in question involved her touching his abdomen only, no actual sex organs.  GO FUCK YOURSELF, RYAN.  As a paramedic I don't know how many people grabbed my boobs and crotch while I was working, and I literally just swatted their hands away because I knew that any other action on my part would be career-ending.  So put on your big-boy britches and really just GFY, Ryan.  I know women who have been raped, penetrated and strangled at work, didn't dare come forward at all, were forced to quit and find other jobs whether they could afford it or not.  Just fuck you, Ryan. 
• The Daily Mail article makes it really clear that Ryan feels very victimized as a white guy. 
• Now, if his boss was being obnoxious to him sexually, and he was told, "You gotta let Tiffany be Tiffany," that's messed up.  I'm not a believer in "let X be X," the old "boys will be boys."  If Google is now extending that to women also, that's not a net positive nor a feminist milestone, that's just bullshit.  Less accountability for toxic women is not the goal.  But if that is what happened, that Google is sweeping his complaint under the rug, it's not because he's a man and she's a woman.  It's because that's how the world has always worked, honey bunny.

Bottom line, Ryan Olohan's argument is that women get a free pass and men are under attack, boo hoo hoo.  I wonder what color is the sky on his planet?

Ryan should be really grateful he doesn't have boobs, that's all I can tell him.  I'm really trying to sit here and even think about every time I got harassed or grabbed on the job, and how insanely rich I would be if I could have sued somebody every single time.

Next time don't go out drinking with your coworkers so much.  You should know a good-looking guy like you can't be around women when they're drunk, they get ideas.  Dress in a way that doesn't show them your tight abs.  Always have somebody walk you to your car.  Keep your keys laced in between your fingers.  You know, the hundreds of things women have to constantly do to hopefully avoid getting sexually victimized.

My friend Donna met Bill Kurtis back in the 80s.  She had a Geo Metro, which was the most eco-friendly car on the market back then.  She was driving it, and Bill Kurtis pulled up next to her and gave her a thumbs-up.  That was very cool for back then.  Bill Kurtis was a big deal.

Other people had seen him around and had similar experiences of him being a fairly regular guy, definitely not a butthole at all despite being a big celebrity -- very much like Roger Ebert.

So when I saw that A&E has now done this piece I have mixed feelings, to be honest.  Bill Kurtis does some good reporting and I know him personally not to be a dick.  Carol Marin was like a honey badger of the news all my life, and a few more Chicago investigative legends too.  I really appreciate those people as a true crime writer.

But A&E has an exploitative streak that hearkens back to the earliest days of true crime, the True Detective magazines of the 1970s.  There's always an ick factor, always something for the low-empathy, getting-off-on-the-violence crowd.  It's walked way back from the shameless pulp magazines.  But it never disappears completely on A&E.  For me the exploitation of sexual violence in the media is like a sandwich that has mayo only slightly tinged with poo.  It doesn't bother the general population somehow.

I started reading those True Detective magazines at the drug store when I was 8, trying to understand what had happened to me with Joe Kalady.  And I remember the day I stopped, when I suddenly realized these stories were by and for guys like Joe.  I had a panic attack and ran home from the drug store as fast as I could.

Despite whatever benefit of the doubt I'm willing to give Bill Kurtis, I can only give this piece a mixed thumbs-up, thumbs-down, because I'm hesitant to watch it today based on my mood.  A&E is not necessarily "for survivors."  There's a tinge of exploitation throughout.  Some days I just can't cope with it.  They'll getcha.

I'm going to watch this at some point.  Because I do appreciate Bill Kurtis and the things they have reported.  But I have seen things on that channel (not necessarily reported by Kurtis) that have irked me bad enough that I've had to discuss it in therapy more than once.  I can't always afford to watch their reporting in terms of my mental health.  I've seen them do things that were downright dishonest and manipulative.

I'm glad they're covering the rape kit backlog.  I discuss this in my book.  So I appreciate the support, especially from as big a platform as A&E.  It's progress.