RachelWeepingforHerChildren

Sometimes when I write so much about Elsa Newman and her chldren, I feel almost overwhelmed by a simple question: Why would anybody believe me?

Today, I am addressing that question by posting a website where many other similar cases appear. Child after child after child after child...stories that will make you cringe or weep or both. These are from the state of California, county by county stories of the unbelievable, which I refer to because they absolutely must be believed.

http://www.protectiveparents.com/cases.html

Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living! Mother Jones

This, obviously, is not a picture of the real shoes in question. This sketch is here simply to serve as a visual aid and to attract attention to my subject for the day: a child’s shoes and where they were on the night Margery Landry broke into the house of Elsa Newman’s estranged husband.



I’m trying, in the interest of complete truth, to dig deeply into this story of the Elsa Newman case. And today, in the process of my search, I learned something new and completely unexpected.

During Elsa Newman’s first trial on the “conspiracy to commit murder in the first degree” or whatever they called it, Katherine Winfree showed a series of slides. These slides, as I understand it, were intended to provide the jury with views of the bedroom where the then-husband of Elsa Newman was asleep with his youngest son at the time Margery Landry broke into the house. If my informants are correct, the child was nude; the father was nude from the waist down.

Oh…well…the father said the child had had difficulty sleeping and had come and crawled into Dad’s bed.

Not an uncommon occurrence, you say? I agree. Many a child crawls into a parent’s bed in the night, whether from difficulty sleeping or to find safety after a nightmare.

But why was the child naked?

Why was his father naked from the waist down?

And the thing I just learned today: the child’s shoes and socks were on the floor beside the bed. They were visible in one of the slides shown by prosecutor Katherine Winfree in Elsa Newman’s first trial. You remember…the slides of the crime scene.

So what this father is telling us is that his younger son was unable to sleep that night. Thus the boy got up from his bed…removed his pajamas…put on his shoes and socks…walked to his father’s room…removed those shoes and socks…and crawled into the bed where his father lay, only partly clothed.

And you expect me to believe this? Who do you think I am?--a prosecuting attorney?

What I cannot understand is why the prosecuting attorneys, having seen those shoes and socks, could possibly have missed their significance.

Do they simply not care about anything but winning a case?

 

I am on the email list for The Innocence Project. This bit of news was in my in-box this morning.  

I cannot contact the Innocence Project by e-mail to obtain permission to use this here...but on their message was a link to click to send this message to friends. By this means, then, I send this information on to all my friends who read this blog.  

 I rejoice for Dean Cage. I grieve his years of unjust confinement.   And at the same time--forgive me for indulging myself in an expression of a little heartache--when in the name of G-d will someone be able to do something for Elsa Newman!!!    

 Dean Cage exonerated in Chicago:
After nearly 12 years in Illinois prison for a rape he didn’t commit, Innocence Project client Dean Cage is finally free today. His mother and other family members picked him up when he was released late last night from a prison three hours outside of Chicago. Back at his mother’s Chicago home early this morning, his family threw a party to welcome Cage home.

Cage said at a Chicago press conference this afternoon that he is overjoyed to be rejoining his family and that he is committed to working for fair justice in his home state and across the country. He is the 217th person exonerated by DNA testing in the United States, and the 29th in Illinois. Only Texas — with 31 — has more DNA exonerations than Illinois. 

Read news coverage of Cage’s release — and learn more about his case and others across the country — on our website.

Cage was wrongfully convicted of raping a 15-year-old girl on her way to school during the winter of 1994. The victim’s identification of Cage as the attacker was the centerpiece of the state’s evidence against him at trial. After the assault, the victim helped police prepare a composite sketch of the perpetrator. A week later, police received a tip that a man matching the sketch worked at a local meat market. Police took the victim to the market, where she identified Cage. Later, at the police station, the victim identified Cage again, this time based on the sound of his voice.

At today’s press conference, Innocence Project Co-Director Peter Neufeld said Illinois has been a national leader for several years in reforming the criminal justice system for capital cases. But the state has fallen short in implementing reforms that can prevent wrongful convictions in non-capital cases, which are the vast majority of convictions — and wrongful convictions — in the state. Last summer, the Illinois Legislature created a commission to study non-capital wrongful convictions and develop reforms that can make the criminal justice system more fair and accurate. Nearly a year later, that commission has not been funded and no members have been appointed to it.

Neufeld and Cage today called on the Illinois Legislature to move quickly to get the commission started on its critical mission, noting that a similar commission in Illinois led to substantial reforms in capital cases. "If this commission were operating as it’s supposed to, it could help prevent a substantial number of wrongful convictions and restore confidence in the state’s criminal justice system," Neufeld said. "Perhaps most chilling is the reality that people across Illinois are still being wrongfully convicted based on eyewitness misidentification that could be prevented if the state enacted simple, straightforward reforms that are proven to work."

 

Many Americans labor under the false impression that it is a simple thing, indeed, for an abused child to get help. For many children, this is absolutely untrue. Abusers are not simple people. Many are sociopaths--showing a charming, charismatic front to the world, while they inflict sexual...physical...and mental abuse on a child. They control the child by any means possible, so that no one will believe the child--or, as in the case of Elsa Newman, or the case of the Castillo family [both in Maryland, incidentally; both in the same county in Maryland, incidentally; both under the same judge in the same county in Maryland] no one will believe a mother who tries to speak out for her children.

Here is a challenge for you: if you are struggling over the question of whether or not to accept my assessment of Elsa's case--that Elsa is unjustly imprisoned and that her two children are in the clutches of a pedophile parent--then read about the Castillo's. There is no arguing over that one at all. The mother pled with the judge not to allow the father unsupervised visits, saying he was a threat to the children. The judge disregarded her pleas, allowed the unsupervised visits. And all three Castillo children are dead--drowned in a bathtub by their father, during one of those unsupervised visits.

OK...back to the question of why the children themselves do not disclose abuse:

There are several categories of threats from an abuser—all designed to keep a child in silence and keep the abuser and his abuse secret. The first may be the verbal threat:

If you tell…I’ll kill you.

If you tell…nobody will believe you, because you’re a kid and I’m and adult.

If you tell…I’ll give you such a beating that nobody will be able to tell who you are.

If you tell…I’ll kill your mother.

If you tell…well…you know those drugs I’ve been getting for you? You won’t be getting any more. You know what “cold turkey” means?

If you tell…like you did before…and those social workers come out here again, like they did the last time? The same thing will happen all over again. There won’t be any evidence…and I’ll beat the shit out of you when they’re gone.

If you tell, I’ll kill your dog [who may be the only friend the kid has]. And you remember what happened to your other dog…and your hamster.

If you tell, I’ll send you to an orphanage, and you will get nothing but stale bread and water until you grow up. If you go to an orphanage, no one will ever adopt you—and no one will ever love you. No one ever loves somebody who grows up in an orphanage.

If you tell, everyone will know what you’ve been doing to me, and they will know it’s your fault, because you are such a bad person.

If you tell, nobody will believe you, because they know me and they like me…and they know what a bad person you are.

There are also the implied threats. For example, the broken toy syndrome—one father used to throw children’s Christmas presents across the room and break them. No words accompanied this. There was no verbal threat. There was only the implied threat that the mental image left in the child’s mind.

Another category is the demonstrated threat. In a case like this, the abuser might, for example, turn on a stove burner…hold the child’s hand near enough to the burner that the hand hurt—badly. And then warn the child that telling would result in her/his whole hand being held on the burner.

Finally, there is the threat by the enabler—the mother or father who knows at some level what the other parent is doing. This person may try to convince the child that what is happening is normal. “You just have to put up with it. That is what men are like.” This parent may then issue threats of her own, much in the same vein as those issued by the actual abuser.

 

 

I have come across a most interesting story—one that in many ways seems to parallel the Elsa Newman case. The man—both husband and father--involved in the second case is one Mark A. Castillo. For the sake of the privacy of Elsa's sons, we'll make do without a name for their father.

In the Castillo case, the authorities did not believe the mother. In Elsa’s case, the authorities would not believe the mother.

In the Castillo case, the separation and divorce were ugly. In Elsa’s case, the divorce had turned ugly.

In both cases the children were quite young.

The Castillo’s had three children. Elsa and her husband had two.

In the case of the Castillos, the husband and father seemed to be a pleasant person, easy to get along with, who seemed to love his children. In Elsa’s case, the husband and father was quite charismatic and seemed to love his children.

In the Castillo case, Mark Castillo talked to the mother about how he could most hurt her. In Elsa’s case, the father seemed to be—and still seems to be—looking for ways to hurt his ex-wife. 

In the Castillo case, the mother desperately wanted custody, believing that her children would be harmed by their father. In Elsa’s case, the mother desperately wanted custody, believing that her children were being abused by their father, both sexually and otherwise.

In the case of the Castillos, the authorities chose to believe the husband. In the case of Elsa Newman, the authorities chose to believe the husband.

In the Castillo case, Mark Castillo was allowed unsupervised visits with his children. In Elsa’s case, the father was allowed unsupervised visits with his children—visits the children begged not to have to make.

Elsa’s ex-husband charmed the authorities and found the perfect way to hurt her. He gained custody of the boys. He testified against her—charming the jury and the media, so, partly as a result of his efforts, she ended up in prison. He limits, to every extent he can, their contacts with her. When he was required to take them to see their mother, he would say things like, “Well…let’s go. I have to take you to see your ‘bad mom.’” Or “Here’s a letter from your “terrible mother.” For twenty years, Elsa Newman will live her life in prison—where her children are nothing but an occasional letter, email or phone call—strictly monitored by the children’s father. And she will live out those years, knowing that because nobody would believe her, her children are now in the hands of a pedophile custodial parent, knowing every day of her imprisonment that it could have been different, if only someone would have believed her.

Mark A. Castillo also found the perfect way to hurt his children’s mother: He drowned them in a bathtub. That’s right. All three of them. All dead. He admits it. Now Amy Castillo, because no one would believe her, will live out her life in a different kind of prison—where her children are nothing but memories, knowing every day of her life that it could have been different, if only someone would have believed her.