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NYC Officials Fear Of Archbishop Dolan Impedes Justice For Church Abuse Victims

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In August, 2011, Father James (aka Jaime Duenas) of Nativity of Our Blessed Lady Catholic Church in the New York City borough of The Bronx, was arrested on allegations that he had repeatedly molested a 16-old girl working in the rectory.

Prosecutors say Duenas told them the girl was “wearing short skirts” and that she didn’t mind “the massage.”

Wouldn’t you think that given the Catholic Church’s notorious history with child sex abuse, orders would have come down from on high that in no circumstance whatsoever was any employee of the Church to blame a victim, or even an alleged victim?

Yet prosecutors say Duenas told them that the alleged victim “liked it” and that she was wearing “short skirts.”

A victim advocacy group attempted to educate the community about the realities of how sexual abusers operate. But many in the community circled wagons in defense of their priest, with an implied negative judgement about the complaining witness in the case, the 16-year-old girl.

Archbishop Dolan went on the attack. On his blog, he published “Gratitude to the Catholic League” — a Catholic League press release impugning the integrity of the 16-year-old girl.

READ: Archbishop Dolan Bashes Church Rape Victims

The complaining witness alleges that the sexual abuse occurred over a three day span. Dolan’s blog mocks her as a liar, says that she “voluntarily” returned to work on days after she claims Duenas molested her, and states furthermore that Duenas has never previously had an allegation made against him.

Firstly, if Dolan wants to convince the public that he is serious about protecting the well-being of young people in the Church, he will not disingenuously publish that an accused priest has had no prior allegations made against him. It is well-known that abusers inculcate fear in their victims and that victims generally are 1) extremely fearful of coming forward and 2) full of ugly uncomfortable emotions such as shame shortly after the abuse.

Secondly, for Dolan to publish to his blog insinuations that the 16-year-old complaining witness is lying — (this blog written by a Catholic Church kingpin and read by many in the Catholic community, including some that were circling the wagons to protect Duenas and to scorn the girl) — is a form of attempted witness intimidation. Dolan should have allowed the criminal justice process to function — without insinuating that the 16-year-old witness is lying.

Dolan’s attempted witness intimidation went further. The statements from the Catholic League’s Bill Donahue impugned the integrity of SNAP (Survivors Network of People Abused by Priests) calling it a “phony victims’ group.” If SNAP is a “phony victims’ group” as Dolan published, then why was SNAP involved when the Catholic Church paid a $7 million settlement to Church sex abuse victims in Delaware? And why was SNAP involved when the Archdiocese of Los Angeles reached a $600 million settlement with Church sex abuse victims?

If these were “phony” victims, why did the Catholic Church pay them a $600 million settlement?

Dolan actively communicated anti-SNAP propaganda at a time that SNAP was involved in trying to secure — for young people’s safety — the places where Duenas had been working. One of SNAP’s criticisms of Dolan is that he did not inform the communities of Duenas’s arrest; that he left them to learn of it through the media. A SNAP press-release said, “We call on Dolan to stop acting passively and secretly, and start acting compassionately and aggressively. We urge him to personally visit every parish where Duenas worked, begging anyone who may have seen, suspected or suffered child sex crimes to contact police and prosecutors.”

Instead of doing that, Dolan published an anti-SNAP smear calling it a “phony victims’ group.” There is an appearance that the material Dolan published calling SNAP “a phony victims’ group” while also insinuating that the girl is lying was thusly contrived to create a reader take-away that the girl is — however loosely– to be associated with a “phony victims group” and therefore is herself a “phony victim.”

Shame on Archbishop Dolan for publishing such vile and despicable dreck. Double shame on him for publishing it under the title “Gratitude to the Catholic League” beside a photo of his bloated smiling face as though there were nothing conniving and hideous about the press release.

To sum up what is wrong with Dolan’s blog post; 1) The whole thing is calculated to put the screws to the 16-year-old alleged victim and to show other eventual victims that the screws will be put to them in this way too, should they ever dare to come forward; 2) Dolan published that Duenas never before had child sex abuse allegations made against him, as if that proved that Duenas could not possibly be guilty of child sex abuse;  3) Dolan published a defamatory smear against SNAP, which at that time was providing advocacy services in the community. Dolan’s published anti-SNAP smear indirectly encouraged members of Duenas’s parish to circle their denial wagons more tightly. To see how low the Catholic Church stoops in smearing SNAP, look at this Catholic League anti-SNAP screed with a cartoon image of a diapered baby crying.  The Catholic League intended to mock the advocates by depicting them as a crying baby, but I dare say that is not the imagery to use if you do not want people associating your Church with child sex abuse.

Any decent human being would acknowledge that it was monstrously indecent for Dolan to publish the insinuations that the 16-year-old girl was lying.

Because Dolan engaged in this attempted witness intimidation, it would be urgently important for New York City government officials to speak up and to denounce Dolan’s blog post and to tell him that witness smearing of a 16-year-old who is alleging sex abuse is completely unacceptable, that society just will not stand for it.  The criminal justice process should be allowed to run its course without the Archbishop aggressing the witness on his blog.

Yet, apparently, no New York City government official has the guts to denounce Dolan for the smears he published against the alleged victim and SNAP. I contacted New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn in an e-mail copied to most Council members; Quinn did not reply. I called and e-mailed her press contact Jamie McShane and explained that I wanted comment from Quinn about Dolan’s blog post. I said that I did not expect the comment immediately but that I wanted to know by the end of the day whether I could expect comment from Quinn at all.  He said OK, but did not follow up. I also called and wrote my NYC Council Member Gail Brewer; no response. I called and e-mailed the press contact for New York City Public Advocate Bill de Blasio; (the post of NYC Public Advocate is comparable to a Deputy Mayor). The press contact took my questions but provided no follow-up.

Really, New York City Council — really? If this 16-year-old girl were your daughter, you would be totally cool with the smears Dolan published against her?

Remember — the point in this is not whether Duenas is guilty, but that Dolan’s blog post is unconscionable no matter the final disposition of the case. Besides its direct smears against the girl and the victims’ advocates with a demonstrated track record of working for community safety, it conveys improper messages to eventual additional abusers, victims and to the Catholic community in Duenas’s parish as a whole.

Meanwhile, what is in the criminal Complaint against Duenas? Two counts of forcible touching (a DNA Qualified Offense), Endangering the Welfare of a Child (a DNA Qualified Offense), Two counts of Sexual Abuse in the Third Degree (a DNA Qualified Offense) and Three counts of Harassment in the Second Degree.

Duenas is alleged to have repeatedly groped the girl’s buttocks without her permission while she was on the job in the rectory, to have made lewd suggestions to her, to have put her hands under her shirt, unclipped her bra and told her “Don’t tell your parents.”   He also is alleged to have pulled her by her arm into his lap and molested her.

With Dolan’s behavior in this matter so unambiguously wrong, wrong, wrong, why will nobody in NYC government say a peep about it?  Why is the New York City Council so afraid of Dolan that it will not tell him he is wrong when on his blog he trashes a 16-year-old female Church employee and a Church child rape victims’ advocacy group? In a more recent smear against SNAP, the Catholic League’s Bill Donahue said “Catholics are talking about the announcement that Archbishop Timothy Dolan and Archbishop Edwin O’Brien will become Cardinal Dolan and Cardinal O’Brien next month—they’re not interested in wallowing in negativity.”

Evidently, New York City government officials have no scruples or pangs of conscience about making it so easy for Archbishop Dolan not to “wallow in negativity.” Dolan has his techniques down for trashing alleged Church child sex abuse victims in his blog, and he can rest assured that no NYC government official will criticize him for that appalling misdeed that endangers young people in the city. If any NYC officials want to give me an interview, proving me wrong in that, they know where to find me.

New York City– based novelist and freelance writer Scott Rose’s LGBT– interest by– line has appeared on Advocate .com, PoliticusUSA .com, The New York Blade, Queerty .com, Girlfriends and in numerous additional venues. Among his other interests are the arts, boating and yachting, wine and food, travel, poker and dogs. His “Mr. David Cooper’s Happy Suicide” is about a New York City advertising executive assigned to a condom account.

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OPINION

‘Hunger Games at NBC News’: New McDaniel Revelations Have ‘Enraged’ Staffers, Report Says

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The backlash from NBC News’ hiring of Ronna McDaniel is not over. New reporting from Puck, CNN, and The Washington Post reveals the considerable efforts from top NBC and MSNBC brass to recruit, hire, and support the former RNC chair who promoted false election claims, was allegedly involved in helping Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, and refused to say Joe Biden had been elected fairly.

Staffers at NBC News and MSNBC were outraged at McDaniel’s hiring, but new details about behind-the-scenes efforts reportedly have increased that outrage.

Some critics are either calling for resignations of NBC News and MSNBC  leadership, or questioning how long they can ride out the mess.

“What is Brian Roberts going to do?” CNN‘s Oliver Darcy asks. “The Comcast boss is watching an unceasing five-alarm fire rage at 30 Rock, scarring the reputation of NBC News and threatening to consume multiple parts of the Cesar Conde-run NBC Universal News Group.”

“Conde has lost control of his organization, prompting industry insiders to wonder how he continues to remain in his role as chairman of the NBC News Group. In the words of one veteran media executive I spoke to Wednesday, ‘It’s inconceivable that he should,'” Darcy writes, saying Conde’s actions and those of his top executives have “hosed gasoline” on the scandal.

READ MORE: Lawmaker Slammed for Claiming College Basketball Players Were Actually ‘Illegal Invaders’

That scandal involves these revelations from Puck’s Dylan Byers, who reports, “bringing McDaniel to 30 Rock had been part of a nearly two-month-long effort that was spearheaded by Budoff Brown and her boss, NBC News President Rebecca Blumenstein, with buy-in from Conde and his deputies at both NBC News and MSNBC.”

“Rashida Jones,” he adds, “the president of MSNBC, was very interested in having McDaniel appear as a contributor on her network, as well.”

But this bombshell has drawn a good deal of attention. Noting how Chuck Todd led off the very public pushback against the hiring of McDaniel, Byers reports, “On Sunday, Budoff Brown reached out to McDaniel’s aide and former chief of staff at the R.N.C., Richard Walters, to see if there were any friends or colleagues who could speak up on her behalf.”

“The two sides also discussed having these folks call attention to what they saw as a double standard—after all, this was the same network that was turning Psaki, a former Biden White House Press Secretary, into a Maddow-adjacent prime time star. Walters later assured Budoff Brown that they’d been able to advance conservative pushback on social media against Todd, specifically, and that this might give NBC News some cover, for which Budoff Brown thanked him.”

CNN, pointing to those details, adds, “staffers inside NBC News are enraged at the fact an executive would have engaged in such behavior.”

Former Chicago Tribune editor Mark Jacobs, who now writes about politics and the media, called for the firing of Jones, Blumenstein, and Budoff Brown.

Other critics are expressing concerns on multiple fronts.

READ MORE: Ronna McDaniel Is Just a ‘Normal’ Person Who ‘Never Denied the Election’ Says Hugh Hewitt

“It’s like the hunger games at @NBCNews. Every day new, horrible stories of journalism & corporate malpractice. Every single one of these managers must go,” observed Jennifer Schulze, a media critic who was a Chicago Sun-Times executive producer, WGN news director, and adjunct college professor of journalism.

She also highlights a Washington Post report that ropes NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt into the mess.

“Every @NBCNews exec who thought hiring a reputed liar & phony elector co-[conspirator] needs to resign or be fired,” Schulze says.

“The @NBCNews managers who recruited & signed an election denier should be out the door, too,” she adds. “Not only was it downright offensive to hire Ronna, it was journalism AND corporate malpractice.”

Pointing to his newsletter, former Obama senior advisor Dan Pfeiffer writes, “NBC’s ill-fated decision to hire Ronna McDaniel is a story of a media outlet unwilling to accept the ways Trump changed politics, but it’s also one of the best arguments for Dems need to build our media ecosystem ASAP.”

READ MORE: Comer Refuses to Investigate Trump Family Member Over ‘Influence Peddling’ Allegation

He calls McDaniel’s hiring “evidence” the media has “yet to accept the reality that this is not a normal election between a Republican and a Democrat.” And adds, “An [industry] that prizes objectivity above all else, is incapable of accurately covering an election where one candidate is a normal politician and the other is an insurrectionist. Many in the media would rather stumble into autocracy than take a side.”

Veteran journalist and Sirius XM host Michelangelo Signorile observes, “We couldn’t have asked for a better situation to shine a bright light on the corruption of the corporate media—and its impulse to legitimize MAGA extremism and lawbreakers for profit—than NBC’s hiring former RNC chair, election denier, and Trump enabler Ronna McDaniel.”

And he warns, “The forces that made the coup-plotting former RNC chair a paid contributor are still shaping news and information about this pivotal election.”

 

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Lawmaker Slammed for Claiming College Basketball Players Were Actually ‘Illegal Invaders’

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Michigan MAGA Republican state Rep. Matt Maddock is under fire after claiming three buses were “loaded up with illegal invaders.” The buses, according to multiple reports, were actually loaded with the Gonzaga University basketball team arriving for March Madness.

“Happening right now. Three busses just loaded up with illegal invaders at Detroit Metro. Anyone have any idea where they’re headed with their police escort?” Rep. Maddock wrote on social media Wednesday evening, tagging far-right former U.S. Congressman Pete Hoekstra, who served as U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands under Donald Trump and is now the state’s Republican Party chair.

Informed of his error on social media, Rep. Maddock doubled down, and attacked.

READ MORE: Ronna McDaniel Is Just a ‘Normal’ Person Who ‘Never Denied the Election’ Says Hugh Hewitt

“Probably teams for the NCAA Mens Sweet 16 playing at LCA on Friday and Sunday,” a user on X wrote.

“Sure kommie. Good talking point,” Maddock quickly shot back.

ABC affiliate WXYZ executive producer Maxwell White, responding to the Maddock’s original post wrote: “Just to be clear, this was the Gonzaga basketball team. Photos show Gonzaga getting on an Allegiant plane to Detroit for the Sweet 16, and Flight Radar shows a plane from GEG to DTW landed at 7:25 p.m., around the time this photo was posted.”

“This is a wild tweet,” White added, before adding more evidence.

Hoekstra, who was accused of using racism and xenophobia to win his campaign for a U.S. Senate seat (he lost), did not respond directly to Maddock but did repost the apparently false claim.

Michigan State Senate Democratic Majority Whip Mallory McMorrow denounced Maddock’s claim as “dangerous.”

Maddock’s remark also made the national stage when U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell responded.

READ MORE: Trump Campaign Says It Will Deploy ‘Soldiers’ to Polling Places

“Hey Einstein,” the California Democrat wrote, “your state is hosting the Sweet 16. Could it be a team bus? If it is, will you resign for your spectacular stupidity?”

In 2021 The Washington Post reported, “Michigan state Rep. Matt Maddock and his wife, Michigan Republican Party co-chair Meshawn Maddock, have repeatedly been called out by fact-checking journalists for promoting baseless claims of widespread voter fraud and falsely suggesting that covid-19 is comparable to the flu.”

See the social media posts above 0r at this link.

 

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OPINION

Ronna McDaniel Is Just a ‘Normal’ Person Who ‘Never Denied the Election’ Says Hugh Hewitt

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Right-wing talk radio show host Hugh Hewitt is facing backlash after declaring former RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, who was ousted after her hiring cost NBC News a tumultuous five days, a “normal” person who has “never denied the election.”

Last summer, The Washington Post‘s Philip Bump reported McDaniel “is still elevating 2020 election skepticism,” and “won’t say the election was fair.”

“I don’t think he won it fair. I don’t. I’m not going to say that,” McDaniel had said to CNN.

“CNN teased an upcoming interview between host Chris Wallace and Ronna McDaniel,” Bump wrote. “In the clip, Wallace asks McDaniel when she stopped being an ‘election denier’ — that is, someone who espouses skepticism about the validity of the election results. And, surprise! McDaniel never stopped.”

Bump also explained the danger in election denialism: “McDaniel won’t say Biden was legitimately elected because the base doesn’t want to hear it — but the base doesn’t want to hear it in part because leaders such as McDaniel won’t simply admit without qualifications that Biden won.”

READ MORE: Comer Refuses to Investigate Trump Family Member Over ‘Influence Peddling’ Allegation

“Establishing a system in which any loss can easily be framed as illegitimate means establishing a system in which no loss is accepted as valid,” Bump continued. “It means institutionalizing the idea that elections are inaccurate gauges of public opinion and, therefore, that the winners of those elections have no mandate to serve.”

On Wednesday Hewitt, a Washington Post columnist and former Reagan White House aide, said on Fox News that McDaniel “is a fine Republican. She is not an election denier. She has never denied the election.”

Former Republican Congressman Joe Walsh responded to that clip.

Bullshit Hugh. With Trump, she pressured MI canvassers to not certify the results; with Trump, she pressured other state attorney’s to sue & invalidate results in MI, PA, & WI; she worked with Trump on the fake electors scheme; she lied about charges of voter fraud well after those charges had been debunked. No major party chair in American history has done more to dispute a legit election. Shame on you,” Walsh wrote.

Media Matters’ Eric Kleefeld, also responding to that clip: “Somebody who helped coordinate fake electors and passed a resolution calling Jan. 6 ‘legitimate political discourse’ is not normal, and we must at all steps refuse to treat them as such.”

READ MORE: Greene Says She Won’t Take Responsibility if Johnson Loses Speaker’s Gavel Before Election

Hewitt had also told Fox News, “I don’t know who is going to keep MSNBC informed of what normal people think, because Ronna McDaniel is about as normal as they come. She’s a Michigan mom, she’s been in the job seven years. She represents the Republican Party.”

McDaniel, it could be said, does not represent the Republican Party, not the MAGA America First Republican Party of today, neither literally nor figuratively. Donald Trump engineered her ouster and installed his handpicked replacements, including his daughter-in-law and Michael Whatley, a right-wing attorney who was part of the Bush recount team during the contested 2000 presidential election.

The Atlantic’s Norman Ornstein, an emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), blasted Hewitt, calling him “an utter disgrace,” while adding, “shame on those like the Washington Post who showcase him.”

Adam Cohen, vice chair of Lawyers for Good Government, pointedly responded to Hewitt: “Hate to tell you this, but normal people don’t try to foment a coup, or deny the truth about election results Like Ronna McDaniel did.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: Trump Campaign Says It Will Deploy ‘Soldiers’ to Polling Places

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