Comment

Orthodox Abuse Suspects Get Exemption

26
lawhawk4/25/2012 12:03:20 pm PDT

For the DA, it’s a balancing act between releasing information and protecting the rights of the victims. In a small community, releasing information about the defendants would inevitably lead back to the victims, so it’s understandable that the DA would want to minimize the damage and potential blowback from the defendants’ relatives.

However, I think the need to identify those defendants involved outweighs the need to protect the victims from allegedly being identified by others in the community. By going along with the scheme as the DA has done, he’s allowing the community to dictate how sex crimes should be treated, rather than treating these sex crimes the way others are done in general.

One standard should apply.

Fact is that if the community is as insular and close-knit as alleged, then everyone would know about the arrests - and therefore who the accusers would be even without the additional actions by the DA’s office. The policy really doesn’t pass the smell test.