Doofus of the Day: Author, Caught Plagiarizing Red-Handed, Freaks Out Accusing Victim of Child Abuse!
Posted earlier: Author Busted for Plagiarism
Judge Joseph Shapira fully accepted Shapiro’s claim. In a 92-page verdict, the judge explained why he decided to convict Ragen of copyright infringement, theft, negligence and unjust enrichment.
According to the verdict, Ragen ‘copied fundamental parts from the plaintiff’s work.’
The court compared the books and found ‘textual resemblance and identicalness in the characters and segments… A significant part of the similarity is expressed in literal identicalness between the texts in both works.’
‘A cultural disgrace’
During the trial, Ragen claimed that it was all a mistake and that some of Shapiro’s text ‘got stuck in my head’. But the judge rejected her explanation, calling it ‘unreasonable and unreliable’.
But, instead of apologizing and making restitution as she was ordered by the court, Naomi Ragen had a raging, frothing, Pamela Geller meltdown and wrote the following:
Dear Friends,
I wanted you to hear this from me. As some of you may have heard, for the last few years I have been hounded by two hareidi women authors who have sued me in Israeli courts for copyright infringement based on several sentence and word fragments. I have been fighting these ridiculous allegations as best I can.
Earlier this week, to my absolute horror, the judge involved decided to find in favor of one of them, a woman named Sarah Shapiro who wrote a book in 1992 called “Growing with my Children” in which she detailed her physical abuse of her small children [it appears that the esteemed courageous author Ms. Ragen has now committed libel on top of plagiarism—VB] and her attempts to gain control of her temper. This book was given to me by her editor who asked me to encourage her in her writings. I did the best I could, hoping that it would help her and her family. [That’s not what she testified in court.]
Arutz Sheva published the entire screeching, bugfuck crazy rant.
Naomi needs to spend some time in a quiet room. It is doubtful that her attorney or her agent approved of this essay, which contradicts everything that was reported about this case in YNet and Haaretz, media sources that can hardly be said to be sympathetic or a party to an “evil Haredi plot to silence the courageous woman author.” As reported in the article above, a totally secular judge ruled in favor of the plaintiff.
Plagiarism is like a drug. A writer may get away with it once, and goes on to copy again and again. However in this day and age of digital scanning, plagiarism is one of the stupidest and crudest things a writer can possibly attempt.
She needs to get over herself and stop acting like one of the evil characters in her own (or maybe someone else’s?) stories.
UPDATE: The screeching crazy rant may even contain a death threat. “The Tal case was decided completely in my favor after Tal passed away.”