The Pedophile File

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Re: The Pedophile File

Postby Cordelia » Mon Apr 03, 2017 7:40 am

I haven't watched this but listened to it on the radio yesterday morning and was struck by the potential value of creative atonement. The haunting and heartbreaking story of little Xiana Fairchild, delivered by a gifted artist.

fwiw.....DeWolf has an interesting background.........

Are you really related to L. Ron Hubbard?

Yes. He was my great-grandfather on my mothers side. My grandfather was L. Ron Hubbard Jr. who later changed his name to Ron DeWolf. His first child was my mother. I have never been a Scientologist in any way shape or form. I'm the only one left in my family who will go on record about the cult. This is explored in great detail in the performance of “The God and the Man” and also discussed in great detail here: THE TOP 25 PEOPLE CRIPPLING SCIENTOLOGY

http://jamiedewolf.com/about/
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Re: The Pedophile File

Postby bks » Mon Apr 03, 2017 10:44 am

That was a very disturbing and moving story. But I don't care for this "creative" form of atonement. It verges on self-aggrandizement, and the performative aspects risk giving the story an unreal quality. In no way should anyone profit or see their status raised from participation in human horror, particularly when the putative point of the story is that the person telling it believes they failed to act in the presence of profound need (arguable from the re-telling, but certainly possible). I detected something mawkish in it, and doing a bit of quick research I see it's an NPR initiative which, frankly, squares closely with its aesthetic style. Media therapy.

Anything that can draw an audience will be monetized. But what's the goal of this?

I'm open to hearing other points of view, of course.
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Re: The Pedophile File

Postby Iamwhomiam » Mon Apr 03, 2017 11:52 am

I posted another short by De Wolf here: http://rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?p=634920#p634920 and it's a work of beauty, imo.

bks, the show Snap Judgement is carried on NPR but there is no secret NPR agenda to any story teller presenting their work or relating their personal experience. De Wolf related a story he was personally involved with and was left haunted by. I would feel much the same had I shared his experience, so I doubt he's seeking fame but I do believe he truly wants this abused and neglected child's name to be remembered, and that to me is incredibly honorable. It is also his goal, as well as his therapy.

You want a story about self-aggrandizement, try this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8wd9zEfvKA

I enjoy story telling. Snap Judgement I look forward to listening each Sunday afternoon, just as I look forward to listening to Selected Shorts, where certain personalities read popular short stories authored mostly by others, though sometime authors do read their own stories. This show is aired late Sunday mornings and it's rebroadcast Wednesday evenings, so If I miss one show I can catch it's rebroadcast. And then there's The Moth radio hour on Friday afternoons. None of the presenters except those union members who are readers of Selected Shorts receive pay for appearing on these shows.

Sorry, but I don't feel as callously about DeWolf as you seem to.
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Re: The Pedophile File

Postby Cordelia » Mon Apr 03, 2017 12:52 pm

I agree with bks about questioning agendas of self promotion and/or self-aggrandizement through a public performance about a tragedy. I don't know DeWolf's motive so can't judge him, but find I'm often drawn in when someone addresses their own culpability and responsibility in a traumatic event. Story telling is an ancient way of communicating and processing life altering events in the presence of others and, as such, I guess a form of group therapy. If that includes self-serving gratuitous content that could further impact those already injured by an event, then yes, it's harmful.

I don't know about 'media therapy', but personally find poetry to be a fine form of 'creative atonement', whether shared, or not, w/others.

('Moth Radio Hour' story tellers esp makes listening to NPR well worth the time, imo.)
The greatest sin is to be unconscious. ~ Carl Jung

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Re: The Pedophile File

Postby Iamwhomiam » Mon Apr 03, 2017 3:59 pm

I suppose that in the truest sense all storytellers do what they do for self promotion, after all, they volunteer to get on the stage to tell their story for the first time and if their audience response is positive and the staff enjoyed their presentation, they might be asked back.

I agree with bks about questioning agendas of self promotion and/or self-aggrandizement through a public performance about a tragedy.


About a tragedy he was tangentially connected to? But bks wasn't questioning any agenda but NPR's. Overall, he said the story felt to him to be "mawkish." You felt that way too, Cordelia?

In my experience, those who have suffered some traumatic experience, even if their connection is peripheral, do much better when they have an audience to listen to the story that caused their trauma.

Could he have made up the bit about knowing the abused child? Sure, but I don't think that's the case here.

Simply put, I disagree with bks and I don't believe he was questioning DeWolf's agenda, and don't believe that the story "verged" on self-aggrandizement.

That was a very disturbing and moving story. But I don't care for this "creative" form of atonement. It verges on self-aggrandizement, and the performative aspects risk giving the story an unreal quality. In no way should anyone profit or see their status raised from participation in human horror, particularly when the putative point of the story is that the person telling it believes they failed to act in the presence of profound need (arguable from the re-telling, but certainly possible). I detected something mawkish in it, and doing a bit of quick research I see it's an NPR initiative which, frankly, squares closely with its aesthetic style. Media therapy.

Anything that can draw an audience will be monetized. But what's the goal of this?

I'm open to hearing other points of view, of course.


The story to me was real and heart-wrenching, and not in any way "unreal." Please explain what you felt was mawkish.

You seem to be saying no one should ever be allowed to tell of some tragedy they were peripherally connected to because they will be accused of self-aggrandizement for simply sharing their tale. Were that the case, our libraries would not have half the books they do.

David Kaczynski should not speak publicly? Yeah, right.
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Re: The Pedophile File

Postby Cordelia » Mon Apr 03, 2017 4:47 pm

About a tragedy he was tangentially connected to? But bks wasn't questioning any agenda but NPR's. Overall, he said the story felt to him to be "mawkish." You felt that way too, Cordelia?


Not his specifically; but of course think politicians do that all the time.I may have had a different impression because I listened to the story on the radio instead of watching the video, which is how I prefer experiencing programs like that; I find them more powerful.
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Re: The Pedophile File

Postby Iamwhomiam » Mon Apr 03, 2017 8:16 pm

I have to admit, that was the first time I watched a radio story being told, as I also prefer my mind's imaginings. I found it looking for its podcast to link to here.
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Re: The Pedophile File

Postby Cordelia » Tue Apr 04, 2017 1:44 pm

Listening to DeWolf reminded me a lot of the 1987 murder of six year old Lisa Steinberg in Greenwich Village. It was a shocking & heartbreaking case at a time when physical/sexual abuse of children was still largely under the radar.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joel_Steinberg

I remember reading that the case inspired musician Suzanne Vega to write & record her song 'Luka'


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZt7J0iaUD0
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Re: The Pedophile File

Postby bks » Tue Apr 04, 2017 2:16 pm

I hear both of you. I may be getting codgerly but it's the mediation of intimate storytelling that's the main issue for me. Certain stories do not lend themselves to retelling to wide audiences -- the "presence of others" part that Cordelia identified matters quite a bit. On stage, typically your not in the presence of others like you for that time. There's little to no interlocution. It's more a performance, and less a human exchange, and I suppose I find myself recoiling a bit from it when the topic is something as horrific and as personal as this.

Having said that, I also understand that some of us have had to suffer experiences that I very luckily have not, and my past insensitivity to IAWIA years ago still weighs on me a bit in these conversations. Ultimately, if it gives people some comfort or strength then who fucking cares what I think? I'm fine with that.
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Re: The Pedophile File

Postby Iamwhomiam » Tue Apr 04, 2017 4:10 pm

bks » Tue Apr 04, 2017 2:16 pm wrote:I hear both of you. I may be getting codgerly but it's the mediation of intimate storytelling that's the main issue for me. Certain stories do not lend themselves to retelling to wide audiences -- the "presence of others" part that Cordelia identified matters quite a bit. On stage, typically your not in the presence of others like you for that time. There's little to no interlocution. It's more a performance, and less a human exchange, and I suppose I find myself recoiling a bit from it when the topic is something as horrific and as personal as this.

Having said that, I also understand that some of us have had to suffer experiences that I very luckily have not, and my past insensitivity to IAWIA years ago still weighs on me a bit in these conversations. Ultimately, if it gives people some comfort or strength then who fucking cares what I think? I'm fine with that.


Cordelia, your mentioning of Lisa Steinberg chokes me up. Horrifying images of her mother evoked my compassion for her, as well. The 77 year-old man whose name she carries is a monster who's been free now for 13 years.

bks, even before reading your response I came to understand that it is perfectly fine for you to feel as you do about performance art dealing with a tragedy. I felt defensive of De Wolf, believing his intent to be purely honorable in the purest sense.

As I listened what came to my mind is the young black boy who wanted to be white who was a neighbor of mine and I was his sort of part-time mentor/father figure. I couldn't help him. At 15 he was killed by a cop, murdered, actually. I felt regret similar to that I imagined De Wolf was experiencing. All I did was feel sad. I didn't write about it. I haven't done anything to honor his existence by telling a story so people will remember his name. And so, all the more I admired him.

His name was Dennis Stratford, btw. (too little, too late)

bks, I assure you I have no recollection of any past insensitivity from you. If I was pained by some remark of yours, I'm long healed! Please free yourself from that burden immediately!
Goodness knows, these days you'll soon find another more worthy to take its place!

I've always appreciated your writing and feel it rather intelligent and I don't recall you ever having engaged in a verbal tumble down or ever being nasty to another, either.

So, how bad's my Alzheimer's?
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Re: The Pedophile File

Postby Grizzly » Mon Apr 10, 2017 9:04 pm

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/09/ ... ghanistan/
The Use and Abuse of Culture (and Children): The Human Terrain System’s Rationalization of Pedophilia in Afghanistan
“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

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Re: The Pedophile File

Postby RocketMan » Tue Apr 11, 2017 5:56 am

Eric Gill: can we separate the artist from the abuser?

Eric Gill was one of the great British artists of the 20th century – and a sexual abuser of his own daughters. A new exhibition at Ditchling asks: how far should an artist’s life affect our judgment of their work?

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesig ... chel-cooke

Nathaniel Hepburn became the director of the Ditchling Museum of Art + Craft in 2014, eight months after it was formally reopened by Nicholas Serota, the then director of Tate, following a highly successful £2.3m redevelopment (in 2014, it was shortlisted for the Art Fund Museum of the Year). “I was aware of Gill’s biography when I got the job,” he says, when we meet again some months later. “But I think I approached it quite coolly and art-historically. My view as a curator was: he’s an artist, and we show his work. I hadn’t felt it [his biography] would be an issue for us, until one day I found myself looking at work we would feel uncomfortable showing. There was one object in particular, and it really brought home the fact that Gill abused his daughters.”

This was an envelope in the Ditchling archives, on the back of which, in two columns, Gill had listed, in some detail, the measurements of various parts of the bodies of his daughters, Elizabeth (Betty) and Petra. “Adjacent to those are his own measurements and then, at the bottom, he writes his penis size, erect and flaccid. It’s a powerful object. It very quickly tells the story. You can’t look at it and say: ‘He was a sculptor, of course he was interested in measurements and form.’” It was at this point that Hepburn began believing that the museum – which does not currently tell its visitors about Gill’s abuse of his daughters – had a “responsibility” to be “more upfront” about certain facts. “It was a slow process,” he says. “We had to explore how we might do it, or even whether we would.”


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And then there was the woman to my right with the striking haircut. She seemed less timid than everyone else. “Look at it, though,” she said, taking it in her hands, and turning it over so that we could see, up close, the ridge formed by the way Gill carved the doll’s luxuriant hair. “She’s got no neck.” What, this woman asked us, did the doll remind us of? When no one replied, she answered her own question. “This is a very potent object,” she announced, running a fingertip slowly over the doll’s head. “It looks to me just like a penis.”
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Re: The Pedophile File

Postby divideandconquer » Thu Apr 27, 2017 8:04 am

Reports of adult sexual misconduct with students at Choate Rosemary Hall, The Choate School, and Rosemary Hall dating back to the 1960s

The reports we received from the 1960s through the present were distributed in a rough bell curve, with the greatest number of reports concerning incidents in the 1980s, with roughly half that number in the 1970s and 1990s, and with significantly smaller numbers in the 1960s and 2000s. We received a handful of reports of sexual misconduct in the 2010s. We neither received nor reviewed a report related to a current Choate student, and we did not substantiate any reports of sexual misconduct involving current faculty members or staff.
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Re: The Pedophile File

Postby Elvis » Fri May 19, 2017 5:32 pm

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-flori ... SKCN18E39H

Thu May 18, 2017 | 7:11pm EDT
Ex-U.S. Secret Service officer gets 20 years for sexting while on duty

A former Secret Service uniformed officer was sentenced to 20 years in prison on Thursday for sending sexually explicit messages to minors, sometimes while on duty at the White House, the U.S. Justice Department said.

Lee Robert Moore, 38, of Church Hill, Maryland, pleaded guilty in March to enticement of a minor to engage in sexual activity and attempting to transfer obscene materials to a minor. He was fired after his arrest in November 2015.

Moore was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Palm Beach, Florida, where his guilty pleas were consolidated, the Justice Department said in a statement.

When he was arrested, Moore was assigned to protect the White House complex, and prosecutors said he sent some of the materials while on duty there.

He was originally arrested on a charge of sending naked pictures of himself to an undercover Delaware State Police officer posing as a 14-year-old girl.

After his arrest, investigators found that Moore had sent sexually explicit images of himself to a minor in Florida and asked her to send him explicit photos of herself, the statement said.

He had similar communications with a 14-year-old girl in Texas and a 17-year-old girl in Missouri, it said.

Moore was sentenced to a lifetime of supervised release after his prison term is over.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson in Washington; Editing by Leslie Adler)
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Re: The Pedophile File

Postby Cordelia » Fri May 19, 2017 6:18 pm


Anthony Weiner Pleads Guilty to Federal Obscenity Charge


Mr. Weiner, 52, will have to register as a sex offender where he works and lives, and he may face a prison term. He pleaded guilty to transferring obscene material to a minor, which carries a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.

Federal prosecutors said in the plea agreement that a sentence in the range of 21 to 27 months would be “fair and appropriate.” Mr. Weiner is to be sentenced on Sept. 8 in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/nyre ... xting.html

He might be wise to ponder what could happen to him if he is sentenced to a prison term.

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