From FoxNews.com:A Massachusetts politician and defense attorney has touched off a firestorm with his shocking public vow to torment and "rip apart" child rape victims who take the witness stand if the state legislature passed stiff mandatory sentences for child sex offenders.
Rep. James Fagan, a Democrat, made the comments during debate last month on the state House floor.
"I'm gonna rip them apart," Fagan said of young victims during his testimony on the bill. "I'm going to make sure that the rest of their life is ruined, that when they’re 8 years old, they throw up; when they’re 12 years old, they won’t sleep; when they’re 19 years old, they’ll have nightmares and they’ll never have a relationship with anybody.”
Fagan said as a defense attorney it would be his duty to do that in order to keep his clients free from a "mandatory sentence of those draconian proportions." Those comments drew the ire of local activists as well as colleagues.
“I thought his comments were over the top and unnecessary,” Massachusetts House Minority Leader Bradley Jones told FOXNews.com on Wednesday.
“I appreciate that he’s a defense attorney, and felt he had a point to make, but I think it was unnecessary,” said Jones, who supported an original version of the bill. “It was excessive.”
The father of the Florida girl for whom Jessica's Law is named also blasted Fagan after hearing the comments.
Mark Lunsford, whose 9-year-old daughter was abducted and buried alive in a trash bag by a sex offender in 2005, told the Boston Herald on Tuesday that Fagan should take the rights of victimized children seriously.
“Why doesn’t he figure out a way to defend that child and put these kind of people away instead of trying to figure ways for defense attorneys to get around Jessica’s Law?” Lunsford told the paper. “These are very serious crimes that nobody wants to take serious. What about the rights of these children?”
The bill that he opposed eventually passed the House and set mandatory minimum sentences of between 10 and 15 years for a set of different offenses against children ranging from assault to sexual crimes. A version is still pending in the state Senate.
From a legal perspective, law professor Phyllis Goldfarb said Fagan was probably expressing a basic courtroom truth – that it is a defense attorney’s job to test the prosecution’s case, especially when mandatory penalties are on the line.
“It is fundamentally true … if the proof is coming almost exclusively through a child witness you may have to find a way to test it. That’s the attorney-client obligation there,” Goldfarb told FOXNews.com.
Goldfarb, who used to direct the Criminal Justice Clinic at Boston College Law School, said Fagan used some over-the-top language, but that he probably didn't relish the idea of cross-examining a child. She said it's just his job.
“You do have to challenge a witness,” she said. “Some people find ways of doing that that are loyal to their role as defense attorneys -- testing the proof (in ways) that aren’t abusive to a witness, but it's very hard.
“And I think being put in that hard position is what he seems to be railing against here, using language that’s probably a little bit hyperbolic.”
Lunsford will be in Massachusetts on Wednesday to push the state Senate to include mandatory prison time in the state's final version of Jessica's Law, according to the Herald.
Reader Information: State Rep. James Fagan is a Democrat representing the Third Bristol District, which includes the city of Taunton. Fagan, a 1973 graduate of Suffolk Law School, has been representing the district since 1993, and serves as chair of the House ethics committee. He can be reached by e-mailing or calling:
State House: 617-722-2040
District office: 508-824-7000
E-mail: Rep.JamesFagan@hou.state.ma.us
I am stunned there is not an outcry so large it reaches the heavens. Can the moral fiber of America be so low that no one is outraged by this man's determination to rape the emotions and utterly destroy the futures of children who have already been raped by predators? Can we have fallen so far from what America once was? Is this truly the America I am faced with in the future? How can this be?
The Face of a Monster - Rep. James Fagan (D)
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Oh my gosh! I sat here with my hand over my mouth in shock. I can't believe it. What kind of monster would do that?
ReplyDeleteOh man. I would NOT like to be this man facing his Saviour. Can you imagine? And the poor poor children who have already been through enough...for him to treat them with such intense lack of compassion is mind boggling.
Disgusting.
Keeley - I know. The horror which arose in me as I read what this man had said was crippling. How do we stop this? The only answer I can think of is to bombard his office with phone calls and emails expressing our outrage.
ReplyDeleteI can't . . . oh my gosh. These children already are throwing up and can't sleep because of what happened to them. And he wants to contribute to their continued torture?
ReplyDeleteI had to read your post twice to really get that he was talking about the victims, and not the perpetrators. It's the perpetrators who should be throwing up, unable to live their lives.
This man really is a monster.
Umm, I agree that the words were horrific, but I don't think that we should take it out on Rep. Fagan. We need to look at the bigger picture of what he was talking about. He is not speaking for himself only, but for what might become the thought of any defense attorney defending in an abuse case. He wasn't speaking personally, he was speaking from the pov of a defense attorney. He doesn't want this to pass, because he knows what pressures defense attorneys face, and is afraid that defense attorneys may be forced to take that attitude. Though perhaps poorly worded, he is defending the victims in his own way. Even if you do condemn his way of saying it (I think we all do), don't condemn his efforts.
ReplyDeleteNow, ME? I think that anyone convicted of abusing a child should be taken out to the back wall of the courthouse and shot dead on the spot. Same for murderers. Aren't we glad I'm not in government?
Weston, I don't know how one could interpret this man's words in any other way that what he's saying. He's the one who said it and apparently, with great passion. I cannot excuse his attitude. A defense attorney can defend his or her client without destroying those who have already been victimized, especially children.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, child predators need to face far more stringent penalties than 10 to 15 years which is nothing compared to the destruction and havoc wreaked on the children they have victimized.
Children NEVER ask for horrible things like this to happen, it's all in those sick adult's minds...
ReplyDeleteAbsolute horror.
This man would not be an attorney for long over here. I 'm afraid he would be lynched.
X
No, children never do.
ReplyDeleteThis literally makes me sick to my stomach. My daughter was molested when she was 3 years old and still to this day (she's 27) suffers repercussions from what happened to her. Believe me, this guy is going to get an e-mail from me. I can only hope none of his children or grandchildren are ever molested.
ReplyDeleteAnd I agree - child molesters should be shot on sight. That would certainly prevent re-offending wouldn't it?