If a proposed bill becomes a law, older victims of alleged sex crimes will be able to use the courts for justice. That’s bad news for men like Bill Cosby
In an interview, Leyva cited U.S. Department of Justice numbers on rape convictions, calling the statistics “shocking.”
“Only two in 100 rapists would actually be convicted and do any kind of time in prison,” Leyva said, when reached by phone. “That was shocking to me. I also don’t feel like the numbers are getting any better.”
Co-sponsoring the bill is the California Women’s Law Center and San Bernardino County District Attorney Michael Ramos. Leyva also said that since she’s made her announcement, other senators have offered to co-sponsor or co-author the proposed legislation.
While the language of the bill is not yet available, I am very pleased to see this big push for change come from all sides. When state, federal, and citizen initiatives all call for change, the cause is harder to ignore.
I loved having lunch with Steve. We’d talk about the play (a little) and then we’d talk about life. Stuff. Each other. Because we weren’t in each other’s social circles, we had a bit of freedom to bounce problems off each other. We could talk about our fears (his was health, ironically) with candor—without causing the other to worry. He taught me to be patient. To embrace silence in a conversation. I love his friendship and I love him.
And when Steve talked about Felicia, he glowed. This year was going to be their second Christmas as a married couple. Steve told me how he envisioned a long and happy life together (and his continual Facebook updates were testament to that).
But things have changed.
Very recently, Steve was diagnosed with a stage four Glioblastoma Multiforme. It’s a tumor in his brain that is robbing him of his memory, his motor skills, and his words. (For those of you who know Steve as the morning host of KPCC’s Morning Edition, you know how tragic this is).
I haven’t seen Steve in a few months, so I did not see the rapid onset of the tumor and the even faster decline in Steve’s function.
But then Felicia began to write.
She posts updates on Caring Bridge, a site where family members of people who are ill can post updates and keep friends and family informed. I’ve followed other friends on the site, and usually the posts are simple—who, what, and where. How to help. Where to bring food.
Felicia’s entries are anything but simple.
Yes, she does post what she and Steve are enduring: cross-city trips for radiation, Steve’s frustration, Felicia’s exhaustion, surgeries, care, middle-of-the-night issues.
And then she goes further. She talks about life. About fear. About dying and acceptance. About learning to ask for help and feeling comfortable in asking people to give them privacy.
But mostly (and I don’t even think that she knows this), Felicia talks about love:
Life and death are unfair. It’s a constant of our existence. Suffering is universal, no matter what we do to avoid it. The only thing that makes any of it worthwhile is the love we share with one another. We have been the recipients of so much astounding beauty, reconciliation, and devotion the past few weeks. It’s a cooling salve on the heat of our emotions.
Or their first Christmas together, as opposed to their second:
We had little fantasies about buying some land in Waimea and raising some small livestock. I said sheep or goats, he was more for chickens. Sheep don’t lay eggs, he said. True enough. But I’m a big fan of sheep’s milk. An argument for another time.
Our second Christmas as a married couple was not as humid or warm or full of new things to see, but it was saturated with love from so many different places.
She’s brutally honest … and funny:
“Do you want to tell folks anything for the holiday?”
“Sure.”
“I’ll type it for you.”
He paused thoughtfully.
“Fuck it.”
She talks about paperwork and encourages her friends to get an advanced care directive, durable power of attorney, and living trust done (I also do, by the way).
She talks about the importance of trying:
Except to ask the question, “what if the treatment doesn’t work?” And even if it does, the prognosis is still a punch to the gut. Steve asked me that question last night. I told him that we would have to make another hard decision.
He asked why we were even bothering to try. He knew the size and aggressiveness of the tumor. The oncology team was incredibly candid about outcomes, statistics, and likely scenarios. I don’t know how his brain encodes memories anymore, but a lot of the important things seem to stick. Those oncology frank talks seem to be one of the sticky memories. And if he’s going to die anyway, why bother with putting him through treatment?
How would you answer that? It took my last bit of control to keep it together and tell him, “because we have to try, babe. We have to at least try to kill this tumor. And if it doesn’t work, or if it’s too much, you tell me. You tell me and we’ll stop.” He nodded. I hoped that was one of the encoded memories.
I believe Felicia is writing to heal. I think she’s writing to express what is going on and to make sense of the chaos that has become everyday life to her and Steve. She’s writing to find forgiveness for the hand they have been dealt.
But she is accomplishing so much more than that. It’s the reason I re-read her entires. She’s teaching us all how to live. How to love. How to mourn for what is happening to Steve. How to show our sadness and love.
I have never met Felicia. But I will forever consider myself in debt to her. Not just for taking care of Steve, but for showing me—all of us—how to live with grace.
And then there’s the whole miracle thing, which I always find a bit dubious, especially in the Internet age.
But this is all irrelevant when it comes to making her a saint.
Why?
Because the sainthood of Mother Teresa has nothing to do with holiness, her work in India, miracles (dubious or not), or the betterment of mankind and the Catholic faithful. It boils down to MONEY. Let’s face it: Mother Teresa is a cash cow.
Making Mother Teresa a saint will do the exact same thing that making JPII a saint accomplished: Billions of dollars in donations for Catholic coffers. Billions. And these donations will not only be coming from developed nations—they will be coming from the poorest areas of Catholicism, because the poor were the focus of her work.
The money won’t stop there.
Soon, we will be seeing her face on merchandise (Vatican sanctioned or not), Catholic appeal brochures, church bulletins, and cathedral banners. Her name and legacy will be invoked in homilies, used to encourage “sacrifice,” and publicized to widen the appeal of her and Catholicism as a whole.
And because no one knows the value of propaganda like the Vatican, making Mother Teresa a saint sooner rather than later ensures the buy-in of the current generation—who will participate in the excitement. The Vatican wants “good buzz.” Waiting longer to make her a saint means that less people will remember her and require that the church educate younger generations about her work and legacy. That’s an excitement killer.
There’s another big Vatican side benefit to Mother Teresa’s sainthood: Sainthood shuts down criticism. It’s tough for survivors and advocates to criticize John Paul II’s involvement in the cover up of child sexual abuse when we keep having to refer to him as “Saint JPII.” We are seen as “attacking the faith” instead of criticizing a man and his actions. The same will most likely happen to Mother Teresa’s critics.
Not that that should stop them. It didn’t stop us …
Last week, the US Senate proposed a bill that would give states money if they enacted legislation that extended or eliminated unexpired statutes of limitation for child sexual abuse. (In other words, if your time is up, it’s up. But if not, you could have your statute extended or eliminated.)
The bill’s language does not differentiate between civil and criminal laws.
According to the bill:
There is authorized to be appropriated to carry out this title $40,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2016 through 2025.
Is that enough to get states on board? We will have to see.
After CA Governor Jerry Brown vetoed TWO bills that would have extended crime victims’ rights and exposed child predators, one man is taking the issue straight to the voters.
In California, a sex abuse victim (who rose to fame after being acquitted of beating up his priest perpetrator) has received the CA Secretary of State’s approval to gather signatures for a ballot initiative that would eliminate California’s civil and criminal statutes of limitations (going forward) for child sexual abuse:
The initiative written by the 48-year-old San Francisco man would wipe out the legal deadline barring prosecutors from filing criminal charges against child molesters and victims from suing them after a certain period of time. It would apply only to children molested after its adoption, not to Lynch and others like him.
While both of these initiatives need your support, they don’t go far enough.
My take: For any law to expose predators on the street RIGHT NOW, the law must be retroactive—that is, it must allow older victims of abuse to come forward and be allowed to meet the burden of proof and use the civil courts. We know this kind of law works. We have seen its success in Minnesota, Hawaii, Delaware, and California (although California desperately needs a second window to help victims—it’s a long story).
