This is an old story.  But most of the time the stories I care most about don't make national headlines, as this one didn't.  So it takes me a while to find and report them with my limited resources.

From DOJ:
Jesus Manuel Menocal Jr., 34, a former Hialeah Police Department sergeant, was sentenced in federal court in Miami, Florida, to three years in prison and one year of supervised release, the statutory maximum sentence. 
Menocal previously pleaded guilty to three counts of violating the civil rights of women by sexually exploiting them.
“The Department of Justice will not tolerate police officers who abuse their authority to prey on those they are sworn to protect,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Civil Rights Division. “The Civil Rights Division will continue to vigorously prosecute these cases to secure justice for the victims of these reprehensible crimes and to ensure that perpetrators who use their unique power to take advantage of others are held accountable.”

The DOJ is super proud of itself for giving an on-duty cop serial rapist a big three years in prison after he pled guilty.  The State of Florida gave him a walk.  The rapes were all free and clear.  We could only agree, as a society, that raping people with your badge and gun is a violation of their civil rights.  But the raping itself is a freebie.

When I went to research this, the first thing I found was this "tactical training" center by the same name.  Jesus Menocal shouldn't be out of prison and training people how to be excellent police officers yet, so I was confused.  Well, it turns out Jesus Menocal is a junior.

From the linked website, with emphasis added:

"Jesus “Jessie” Menocal Sr. has over 33 years of active law enforcement experience. He served as Chief of Police in a South Florida municipality for 10 ½ years and remains an active law enforcement officer with a local municipality. Since 1987, Jessie has been an active instructor for the Police Academy and was instrumental in the development and implementation of the active shooter curriculum. He also brings his expertise in active shooter protocols to the private sector as well. Jessie is an NRA certified firearms instructor. During his career, he has organized and hosted the SWAT Commanders meeting for various Federal, State and local agencies.

Okay, so his father can tug very hard on the local strings to make sure that his son doesn't get prosecuted.  And lo and behold, locally in Florida, he wasn't.  If it was up to local law enforcement, Jessie, Jr. would probably still be out there Holtzclawing merrily away.

Even after being sentenced, Meniscal wasn't taken into custody right away.  He was given another 60 days to surrender whenever it suited him.

As noted, his lawyer spent six minutes victim shaming, and also for whatever reason mentioned Antifa.  Look at the Meniscal family website and yes, they look like the sort of Antifa hunters who are proud of their admitted serial rapist son, the former police officer.

Bottom line, Meniscal got less than one year per admitted rape.  As noted in the video report linked above, "the state called them unreliable witnesses and declined to file charges."  Even with bodycams, GPS in the vehicles, cameras in every room, where there's a will to permit rape, there's a way.   He was facing life in prison.  But no.

When the chief of Hialeah stands at the podium and says bad apples, gives the old "this isn't who we are," I call bullshit.

"This incident involving one individual is in no way a reflection of the police department."

Except yes of course it is.  Just like all those priests are a reflection of the Catholic Church that protected them.  He did all of that on your watch, sir.  And then someone had to come in from over your head, the DOJ, to slap him on the wrists.  If not for DOJ, he'd still be raping minors as a sergeant in your office.

I'm an expert on surviving both sexual assault and narcissistic abuse.  So I had to watch Netflix' new hit series Baby Reindeer.  It's a high-quality show and worth the watch.  It brought up a lot of important points that I would like to address.  So there will be heavy spoilers in my discussion.

First and foremost, it's very rare to see a show where sexual assault is handled so well.  Donny, the protagonist in Baby Reindeer, gets repeatedly assaulted -- and by more than one person.  So while it's upsetting in general, it was actually much less unpleasant than usual for me as a survivor.  Because all of it was done with a heavy dose of realism, what it's like for the survivor, and without any tip of the hat to the way rapists normally get to add their $0.02.  There's no "Harvey Weinstein factor" in this show.  There's no pretense of a moral high ground while making sure it's still fappable for bad men -- which is pretty much always the case and why I so seldom watch TV or movies.   The rape scenes aren't there for shock value or given from the rapist's POV -- as they usually are.  The male gaze is not happening here. 

So I appreciated that.  I respected the writer's (Donny's) honesty about how he contributed to the mess, how confusing and horrible it was.  Also that he took active steps to improve his life and become a better person.  He worked to own up to his bullshit and make better choices.  And that's all we can really do.   So on that level, as a survivor, it was really good.  Nobody's perfect when they get attacked by someone even less perfect than themselves.  It's really an excellent show and he deserves full credit and support.

The question of sexism and sexual assault is addressed in a variety of ways, from Donny being assaulted by his female stalker, to the police response to it, to him then also being assaulted by a man.  These are only some of the questions that are raised.

Donny goes back to his male assailant even after going viral in a clip discussing the rapes.  And his attacker has no shame about it even after being called out, still doesn't see it for what it was because he's not in handcuffs.  Maybe this can help people understand why people continued to give friendly replies to Harvey Weinstein and others like him.  You can't really afford to completely alienate these people when you have showbiz dreams.  And you live in a world of rape culture where what they did to you is an open secret and it's fine.

One example of sexism coming into play was people -- including Donny -- underestimating the seriousness of Martha as a stalker.  It should be noted that the people who primarily didn't get it were the more heteronormative males in the story:  Donny himself and his bros from the pub.  His trans girlfriend got it immediately (although in fairness she's a therapist).  But the one who actually thought it was funny and significantly worsened the situation was one of his macho buddies.

Keep in mind that the entire series was written by Donny, the protagonist.  So when he goes to report this to the police, and they tell him they'd take it more seriously, if it was a man stalking a woman, that's a pretty huge piss-take.  No really, as much as I enjoyed the series, fuck you for that.

Let me take a moment here to point out that in very recent memory, one London police officer has been convicted of killing Sarah Everard.  Another one was found to be a serial rapist, whose nickname at the station was "Bastard Dave" because of his cruelty.  Go back to the Yorkshire Ripper case and see how many fucks they've ever given about women being stalked.

As he points out in the show, to his credit, the biggest stumbling block for Donny is his own negative thoughts and ideas about his male sexuality within our heteronormative society.  He's ashamed of his conflicted feelings and then he gets attacked.  He's insecure and craving attention and approval to such an extent that he indulges Martha the stalker, and Darrien the rapist, well past the point of knowing it's unhealthy.  A lot of his refusal to fight back or help himself is rooted firmly in his dishonesty and insecurities about his sexuality.

So what's not addressed in the show, and what I will address here, is to ask whether Donny is also a narcissist?  We have the excessive need for attention, check.  Highly dishonest and cowardly, yes.  I would assert that having a stage persona is a way of abandoning who you really are in order to live in a more favorable fantasy world.  He also has impaired empathy.  It's not that he has no empathy.  It's that he empathizes weirdly, at the wrong times, for the wrong reasons.  His empathy is misplaced.  His inability to form meaningful connections with other people comes back to his constant dishonesty and self-centering. 

For example, when Donny goes to see his parents and tell them about the viral video and that he confessed to having been sexually assaulted, he's worried that they'll disown him for being bisexual or having been raped. 

His mother is the first to speak.  She doesn't skip a beat on supporting and accepting him.  And I became semi-furious, personally.  I have two parents who couldn't be bothered to give a shit about me at all.  But Donny's parents are so 100% for him even in his adulthood.

The real kicker, though, is that when Donny's father shares that he was also assaulted, he has to repeat himself more than once.  Donny is so incredibly self-centered, so busy thinking of himself as the only important one, that it has never occurred to him that any other man may have also experienced sexual assault in the past.  No, he's super special. 

This is what exhausts me about men and sexual assault.  Really Donny is the one who never gave it a second thought until it happened to himself personally, the heteronormative guy who never thought about any of that until he started to having feelings that he couldn't cope with.  And then he projected how unfair all of that was onto women, how WOMEN don't know that men get raped!  Because HE'S never thought about it before.  Fucking kill me now.

But that part about how the police would be Johnny On The Job if only he were a woman, no, seriously fuck you.  That's just a rock hard fucking no.

I remember going to the police when I was working as a paramedic, about being stalked by a coworker.  I never bought him any Diet Coke.  I went to the police after the fourth or fifth text message, once I was sure who it was.  I had to persist with the cops multiple times to get them to take it.

I went to the sheriff in the same county where I was employed.  That individual worked with me at a side job in the next county over.  So I was technically a coworker with the sheriff, and my stalker was not.  I had text messages on my phone threatening to kill me, saying he was looking in my windows and seeing me naked, giving my correct address.

Unlike with Donny and Martha, there was nothing in reverse.  There was zero social contact or anything he could show other than me having worked a couple of shifts assigned with him.  I certainly never went over to his place and screwed him.  I had no idea why he fixated on me. I had to turn my phone over.  They could see that there was zero contact from me to him.

When I brought it up to my chain of command, I was called into a meeting with six male members of the "brass."  The very first question was if I had a dating relationship with him.  I said no.  They pushed me on that multiple times:  how did he have my phone number?  From the employee phone list at the other place.  My concern in bringing it up to them, aside from wanting someone to know why in case anything happened to me, was that they never hire him at that service.

I later found out that the reason everyone kept asking me if I had any personal relationship with him at all, and doggedly coming back to that question over and over, is because if I had, all investigation would have stopped right then and there as a "lover's quarrel."  As it stood all they did was question him.

At the end of the day, my chain of command took zero action to protect me.  They didn't even pick up the phone.  It was all I could do to get the sheriff's detective to follow up on questioning the suspect, who I was able to identify by the weird way he acted and strange things he was saying to firefighters about me.  

I had to doggedly make that investigation happen.  And I'm not sure I would have been able to do anything at all if I wasn't a paramedic in the same county.  And then he faced no consequences, he only stopped.  So fuck you for that one, Donny.

Again, the only people who don't think men get raped are heteronormative men who have never given rape a second thought until it became a problem for themselves personally.  Women are aware that women molest children.  We think they're scumbags.  Women know that men sometimes rape other men, and ditto.  We want them in prison for it. 

Also, it needs to be said that this show is still kind of victim-blamey.  Because at the end of the day, Donny still could have done a lot more to not be victimized.  Donny made a lot of bad choices.  And many of the decisions that he made are not available in quite the same way for women.  It's not an apples-to-apples comparison.   (And even so, shame on both Martha and Darrien.  It's still not his fault what they did.)

For example with Martha, it seems like he's engaging her out of pity.  He can see that she's crazily lying when she claims to be an attorney to the rich and famous, but she can't afford a Diet Coke.  So why keep buying them for  her?  I assumed pity.  But he admits that he craves the attention and approval, that she makes him feel special.  That's why he continues with her even after she's obviously unhinged.  Once she starts talking about "wanting to unzip you and climb inside," that's  a serious red flag, bro.  Talking about her meat curtains, all of that is super weird and icky.  Women know to flee from that, a guy who says such things about climbing inside you that way. It's not ending well.

Because in the reverse scenario, it isn't normally pity or not wanting to hurt their feelings that keeps women playing along.  It's the fear of telling him no, that he'll escalate and murder you if you don't say yes.  That happens all the time, when women try to end a relationship or simply say no to someone who should never on any planet think he has a chance, like the maintenance guy in her building, and then get murdered for not going along.  We get killed for that all the fucking time. 

So Donny's desire for attention is what it is.  Women weren't always allowed to earn their own livings, and were chattel property of their abusers, as the way of things since time immemorial until very recently.  We've had to convince men -- in courts of law run entirely by men -- that being married to them doesn't entitle them to stick dicks in our bodies at will without permission, in almost every country of the world.  Right?  Let's get a grip on reality.  That's never been a thing in reverse.

Another thing that may be attributed to sexism is the scene where Martha sexually assaults him.  If she were a man, and following him down that canal, and he's telling her to stop and leave him alone, she'd have gotten smacked.  And I recommend yes, crack her one.  Anyone who's putting hands on you in that creepy scenario, don't let them get their hands down your pants until you have a freeze response as he did.  Gender is no excuse.  Hit them, or whatever you need to do, so you can get away.  Fuck that.

But the thing of Donny having the freeze response during her assault, and blaming himself and not feeling human afterward, not knowing what to think or how to feel, all of that was 100% spot on.  Same with her blaming him about it.  Exactly how it works.  Every rapist claims it was consensual and you liked it.

So for me, since the narcissists in my life were my parents, it's a little weird for me to see a show where the buy-in was entirely voluntary.  In my case what I wanted from them was the most basic thing, which Donny's parents gave freely and my parents never did. 

I can't imagine playing along with Martha's bullshit.  So again, it seems to me like Donny is also a bit of a narcissist, which doesn't get addressed in the show except by way of Teri calling him out and then dumping him.  But Teri should never have taken him back after (a) lying to her about everything, and then (b) ditching her on the train.  He's a douche.  He really is.  She has the cutest apartment and supportive friends.  She looks like Frida Kahlo.  She needs him for what?

Overall this is a good show and worth watching.  I do get really tired of the silly things men need to say about sexual assault while thinking about it for the first time.  But it does all need to be said, so.

 Allison Wean is being sent to prison.

I'm posting this here for reference.  People will say that women don't get punished for the same sex crimes that men do, or women receive probation only, or that women receive some automatic leniency.  Actually the reverse is true. Officer Timothy Barber repeatedly raped a minor while on duty and pled down to probation only, unlike Allison Wean.

I remember the case of some police officer, I want to say he was in Louisiana.  He appeared to have done some rather overt sexual misconduct on traffic stops and been caught -- good.  But the sentencing he received seemed highly disproportionate.  For example Daniel Holtzclaw got something like 13-15 years per charge, and the African-American officer in Lousiana had gotten something like 50 years per charge.

That's how this case appears to me.  Like the Louisiana officer, I'm not arguing that Wean is any less despicable.  She groomed and abused this child.  She's going to prison, that's good.   I'm pointing out that the justice system went, "Bing, bang, boom, bye, lady, you're a child molester."  And that this is contrary to the many narratives that will appear in the YouTube comments below the video.

Meanwhile, all my life, male molesters have been running amok without consequences, raping and even murdering children and adult women multiple times under the refrain "boys will be boys." 

I've never been an advocate for "girls will be girls."  I think the only people calling for leniency for Ms. Wean were members of her family. 

I could not be prouder of the delegation that went all the way to France.  They marched right up to the devil and punched him in the nose.  God bless.

It's a hard line for me to walk a lot of the time, not wishing anyone dead.  But should I cry that Rivoire died?  I'm sorry he wasn't forced to face justice in Canada.

It's the same old infuriating line of reasoning:  the perpetrator 100% denies everything.  Everybody else believes the survivors.  But there's no proof.  So the rest of the world throws up its hands and cries "nothing we can do, alas."  Welcome to rape culture.

Shame on all the dirty bastards who hid him from the law.  Shame on the Catholic Church and all of the enablers from all institutions who do similar things.  The Mormons are no better, I don't believe any of them are.  Walmart certainly isn't.  I just don't have time to blog about that.  But really, the Catholic Church should be a tiny bit morally or ethically better than Walmart.

The linked video has some interesting interviews.  But it's titled "Inside the Indian Reservation Where People Go Missing."  Then it doesn't address anything about the how or why of people going missing.   Instead he takes an ill-informed stab at the history of boarding schools.  This guy means well.  He tried.

It's upsetting to see how the shittiness of America has fully pervaded Native America.  I knew that it had, because I've been all through the West for the last ten years.   But I don't have any personal experience with Natives who have access to casino money. It's depressing to see how clearly money doesn't fix it.  Even when people do have access to drug rehab facilities, they need more than that. 

America is doomed.  Even people who are literal members of a tribe, enrolled members of a family with an ancient name that they know, can't withstand end-stage capitalism without alcohol and crystal meth.  The village can no longer raise the child.

What really struck me was when he said his mom couldn't even talk about the boarding school.  She'd fall silent.  That's my experience, too.  People just choke up about it, they can't even go there.  Those schools were the most shameful torture camps for children.  My mind was completely blown when I read Luther Standing Bear's book, his shilling for that horrible place, his rationalizations of the horrors he described. 

I can understand why Standing Bear said what he did, in his own personal context  But as an Italian-American, and a Catholic, especially as a survivor, I can never feel anything but shame, grief, and remorse for any of that.  I'm so horrified.

It's important to point out, however, that the young man in the video got one important thing very wrong:  Catholics and Anglo-Saxon Protestants are two very different communities.  Never the twain shall meet.  Catholics did many bad things and also ran horrible boarding schools.  But the "Kill the Indian, save the man" situation of Captain Pratt, and the ethnic cleansing pogroms of America overall, were an Anglo-Saxon Protestant joint.  Andrew Jackson was a Protestant.  The Trail of Tears was a Protestant situation.  Custer was a Protestant.

Let's not get it twisted:  in our modern era, from the Mayflower forward, America's punishment fetish has been a Protestant thing.  Specifically hanging and lynching, lots of which was done against Native Americans (and my people, who called both the act and the people it was done to linciati) are strictly a Protestant jam.  Catholicism doesn't allow for capital punishment.  Abraham Lincoln had the option of pardoning a number of Natives who were to be hanged.  He pardoned most, but not all of them. 

The Catholic Church was responsible for destroying the Mayan codices, for the horrific child trafficking mass murderer Christopher Columbus, and for having the most questionable moral high ground, for sure.  But they're entirely distinct from the boss-man of America. Catholics have never been in charge in America.  Plenty of horrible murderers were Catholics.  But our rank-and-file don't stand in lynch mobs as a rule.

And I, as a second-generation American of Napolitan stock, need to draw that distinction.  Because my people aren't actually in the same ethnic community as Columbus, either.  His people don't so much recognize us and vice versa.  So this young man is making a bit of a whiteberg.

I'm not saying the Catholics are overall any less racist or imperialist, or better.  The pope's moral high ground is the janitor's bathroom at Deutschebank.  I'd just like there to be a clean line when laying blame.  Catholics go all around the world protecting their horrible priests, like the old Frenchman who was accused of assaulting Inuit children.  We're famous for it.  But they do then incorporate all of the Indonesian, and Inuit, and African, and other people who converted into one big coat of every color that is our (molested) Catholic family. 

Protestants still run America to this day, and do all the same things, and are invisible and oblivious to that fact, pointing at Catholics, because we're all white.  Catholics shouldn't be equally blamed for Protestant crimes, is what I'm saying.  "Kill the Indian to save the man" was by, for, and about Protestants.

I remember how horrible Catholic schools were for me as a white, Catholic child who spoke English in the 1970s.  And our nuns were racist, while believing they weren't, and teaching us not to be, as best they could.  Some of them tried their best, they really did.  They just weren't good at being nice to kids.  They were unhappy people in a dishonest religion.

Look how bold this girl is, grabbing the magazine out of a mugger's gun and tossing it!  JFC

And check out her classmates, not flinching an inch while she fights off a masked attacker with a gun. 

One of them ran away. The other one didn't even pull out his phone to call for help, or at a bare minimum gather evidence.  Not a damned thing from anyone.  So much heroism.

Incels have no idea why they can't get laid.

"Hey mister, I wanna know.  Are you hipster, or a hobo?"

Well, this great kid actually couldn't tell.  And he tried to be nice to a super rich guy.

Yeah, I know it's bullshit.  But I like to see things going well once in a while.  Nice to see a really good kid get rewarded.  Puts me in a better mood.

This is another really sad story with no happy ending in sight.  There's only one survivor left, his dad.  His mother lost her other son and then died before Jaylen's remains were found.

I'm short on time right now.  But my research into this matter suggests that Jaylen's skeletal remains were found by a maintenance man.

The residence appears to be a group home since 2011, before Jaylen went missing.  It's owned by some corporate entity and it's been continuously occupied by multiple transient people.

When they say "group home" I take it to mean either a sober living facility, an assisted living place for people with mental health issues, or a place for sex offenders and other people coming out of the criminal justice system.   The kind of place neighborhood people should have been aware of, local kids should have been warned about.

Jaylen went to a corner store on his bike and was never seen again.  My theory of the case is that some sex offender lured him into the building Gacy-style, with the promise of some work, and murdered him:  "I'll give you $20 to help me move this old radiator out of the attic."  Boys that age are always looking to earn a little pocket money.

This is a situation where the murderer got away with it this long because of end-stage capitalism.  I'm willing to bet it's someone who was already known to have problems that made them a danger to the community.  But they have to live somewhere.  So they get sheltered in group homes, where someone in theory keeps tabs on them.

And yet they were able to murder a 12-year-old and let his body decompose in the attic with nobody finding out for years. 

This happens because in end-stage capitalism, many people accept positions of responsibility without actually fulfilling the corresponding responsibilities.  They have important titles that pay them handsomely.  But they don't do anything to prevent someone like Jaylen from getting killed.  Because that's not the object of the game.

Rest in peace, Jaylen.

"No ma'am, I really wasn't."

"I'm not like that."

Every alleged sex offender immediately swears they're as innocent as Sunday morning, just saying.

So as an old survivor, I'm loving the age of omnipresent videos.  Because here we have an actual video, and yet the denial is STRONG.

I hate the phrase "believe women." I don't want people to believe me because I'm a woman.  I want them to give me baseline credibility because I'm a human being.  And because we can see videos like this, how the video evidence tracks to the words that reflexively come out of people's mouths, who the most motivated liar group is in real life -- perpetrators, not survivors.

This is a rabbit hole I don't have time to get into.  Because it's horrible, I have no doubt.  But fortunately:
1.  The baby is safe.
2. Elias Huizar will never work as a police officer again.