Andrew Vachss's Blog - Posts Tagged "child-rescue"

"Across the globe criminals are using technology to facilitate the sexual exploitation of children. Police are overwhelmed and outnumbered. These Oak Ridge scientists are the good guys we've been waiting for. Their computers will become child-rescue engines." That's Grier Weeks, Exec. Director of Protect. And this is what he--what all of us are excited about.

Eric Holder was appointed U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia by Bill Clinton. He was later elevated to Deputy Attorney General in 1997 ... and, thus, was in office when Clinton shortened the sentence of Mel Reynolds, who sexually assault/abused a 16-year-old campaign volunteer. When Clinton suggested a pardon for Marc Rich—who fled the US after being convicted on 65 counts of tax evasion—Holder's response was "Neutral, leaning towards favorable."

And now? For two years (and three budgets) Holder's Justice Department has refused to so much as ask Congress for the full funding of law enforcement authorized under the PROTECT Act of 2008. How do you convince Congress of the urgent need for child rescue funding, when the Obama administration doesn't even care enough to ask for it? Here's what Grier Weeks writes, in his piece in The Daily Caller:

Congress needs to fully investigate what the Justice Department knew and when it knew it. It needs a full accounting of what evidence resides in Justice Department-sponsored databases that could locate both child predators and their victims. It needs to demand that the full resources of the federal government are immediately deployed for child rescue in every community across the U.S. Every child victim who has been, or can be, identified should be brought to safety now, before they come to further, grievous harm.

Go read Mr. Weeks' entire article ... his call for justice from Attorney General Eric Holder and his U.S. Justice Department.

From a 1990 interview with Andrew Vachss: "Are [court-appointed advocates, such as guardians ad litem, useful in protecting a child's rights and guarding against what might be called judicial child abuse]? The answer is, they can be. Are they ever a substitute for actual representation by lawyers? No. Underline no. Repeat, NO. ... There are states—and Florida is an excellent example—where a child who is the victim of abuse will not be represented by a lawyer but will be represented by a 'court-appointed special advocate' [CASA]. These people are not lawyers. Because they're not lawyers, they can't represent a child in terms of the totality of that child's needs. They can't file a motion. They can't argue before a court with any kind of force. ... You look at a state like Florida that could provide a stream of attorneys for a Ted Bundy and can't provide one attorney for an abused child. I think there's such a moral difficulty with that, that it's unresolvable." Now, from a story in this week's Miami Herald, we see the very real consequences of Florida's failure to hire lawyers for child-abuse victims: State agency had many warnings during abused girl’s life