The ubiquitous Harvey Silverglate rises to the defense of Alan Dershowitz in reply to an article in the Harvard Law Record that takes Dershowitz to task for calling Virgina Roberts a prostitute after he is alleged to have been one of her Johns. (Hat tip to Eyre)
Dershowitz calling that young girl such reminds me of the mentality of a guy who was dating this women for a year or so and was the first person who got to know her in the Biblical sense. She was deeply in love with him. He told her one day when they discussed their future that she wasn’t in the picture because he would never marry a woman who wasn’t a virgin.
The phenomenon of one accused of doing a dastardly act turning it on the accuser as if it were her problem is not new to Dershowitz. His alleged use of a young woman on six occasions for sexual favors followed by his vile attacks on her was rightly condemned by two Harvard law students. Responding to their well thought our condemnation came the hectic and frantic response of one of Dershowitz’s bosom buddies from way back,
Unfortunately Silverglate leaves out his close association with Dershowitz in writing the letter. From the way it reads it looks like he’s offering an impartial rebuttal to the article. I would suggest that one so closely associated with another as Silverglate is to Dershowitz should not hide that association. Silverglate should not write as if he doesn’t have a dog in the fight.
He writes as if he does not knows that Dershowitz is now being sued for libel by attorneys so he has a forum into which he can defend himself. Dershowitz has been given the opportunity to submit to a deposition and bring forth his proofs but he won’t do that until he is able to depose the other side to see what evidence it has. Silverglate doesn’t mention that.
Silverglate wrote of Dershowitz’s: “frustration at being without a legal forum which to vindicate himself and prove his new accuser to be a perjurer.” Shame on Silverglate saying Dershowitz can prove her a perjurer. He doesn’t know whether Dershowitz abused this young girl six-time as she alleged in her affidavit. Further, Dershowitz as far as I know has not filed a counter affidavit against her claim.
If anyone had a forum to defend himself it is Dershowitz with his access to the media like the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and other mainstream media. (He’s had two op-eds in the WSJ over the last several weeks.) He also has a chorus of support in the Boston media. It took a courageous student newspaper to rightly fault him.
You won’t see Dershowitz taken over the coals by any of the columnists who usually jump on the sexual peccadilloes of prominent people. The silence is so deafening one has to truly wonder at the timidity of our local media. Or, is there more to it than merely being afraid?
He also has a legal forum as I noted. Plus he has the support of his many lackey-like friends who also have unique access to the media.
What amazes me is none have condemned Dershowitz for his continuing association with one of the major child abusers in America? Neither Silverglate or the Harvard law professors who presented the same issues as Silverglate seem to have trouble with his association with that man. It would seem to me knowing of his association with Jeffrey Epstein they’d feel a little sleazy rising to the defense of Dershowitz.
Silverglate talks about the “Kafkaesque” conundrum of Dershowitz, using the same expression Dershowitz used in the WSJ. Did Dershowitz help him write the letter? He tells us the law school students “appear to have little regard for the painful” position Dershowitz found himself in. How about Silverglate having some regard for the painful situation that Dershowitz’s friend Jeffrey Epstein put so many young girls in. Tell me when Dershowitz ever had any regard for the painful positions he put people in.
He goes on to say Dershowits’s “vigorous and harsh attack on his accuser [Virginia Roberts] was launched against a now adult.” In Silverglate’s mind if the young girl who alleged that she was abused as a teenager by a man in his sixties reaches her majority she becomes free game for the alleged abuser to call her a “a prosltitute” and to claim she “was not victimized . . . she made her own decisions in life.”
Your remember Harvey Silverglate. As I said he and Dershowitz have been bosom buddies from way back. He and Dershowitz appeared before the Governor’s Counsel which was holding a hearing on the nomination of Paul Mahoney to become a District Court judge. Dershowitz told the Harvard Crimson he was going to raise questions about Mahoney’s “religious and ethnic” bias.
He had no basis for raising it but he and Silverglate paraded in there with their unfounded accusations ready to destroy a man’s reputation based upon outlandish hearsay. Silverglate was the lawyer in the 75 State Street case where another outlandish accusation of extortion occurred. He and Dershowitz were after Mahoney because he had worked for Billy Bulger. It was a way they thought they could besmirch both Mahoney and Bulger.
No one ever accused of anything by Dershowitz had as evil an associate as Jeffrey Epstein. In fact, most accused by Dershowitz lived upright and honest lives full of integrity. None has ever been accused of doing such a heinous act as Dershowitz has been accused of doing by Virginia Roberts.
Dershowitz being accused of having sex with a young girl only gives him back a taste of the medicine he has willingly dispensed to others. He has yet to answer under oath the question why of all the men who sexually molested young Virginia Roberts it was he she named and one or two others. He is the least defenseless persons in the world. He has many minions speaking out to support him despite knowing the adage you can tell a man by the company he keeps.
Silverglate should save his sympathy for someone a little more worthy of it. He should worry about the pain suffered by all those Dershowitz has wrongfully accused.
There are hundreds of brands out there manufacturing the shoes.
The world is really shrinking and ideas are being shared around the globe at a rapid pace.
Moccasin UGG slippers are quite popular among the men.
As the article points out, legal jujitsu and/or legal manipulations, friendships and politics, blur the lines of real justice in America.
Almost every attorney at one time or another has had a judge issue a “rigged” decision for motives that are never revealed and never will be.
The “rules” are really not the “rules” applied to everyone. Despite Rule 3:07, the Massachusetts Board of Bar Overseers looks the other way depending on who and how much is involved.
One of the best examples (there are many) of the Board’s negligence would be the Morris Goldings’ money laundering and theft of client funds of approximately $17 million, “arising out of eleven cases or matters.” The “eleven cases or matters” occurred over a period of approximately seven years. What did the Board do about the complaints against Goldings over that seven year period? Where was the oversight? Despite the judge’s order for restitution, not one dime showed up. Who were the beneficiaries of this theft? Who paid? The Massachusetts taxpayers. What was Goldings’ penalty? Soft time of approximately two years in a Florida “country club” federal prison. That would be about $8 million per year that Goldings “earned” during his physical and mental rehabilitation period in the warm Florida sunshine.
Every reasonable person in America knows or should know that there is no such thing as “equal justice under the law,” and that the alleged “rule of law” applies to some and not for others.
If you have no money, no status and no connections, how or why would anyone expect “equal justice?” What court of law is concerned with “equal justice?”
If you are being framed and/or retaliated against by the U.S. Attorney’s office for refusing to participate in public corruption and/or criminal activity, what can you do about it? Nothing. Unless you have money for a proficient and courageous attorney, don’t expect real justice from the federal court.
Based on my direct knowledge, certain judges have decided that pro se litigants shall remain defenseless and their verified facts and evidence mean nothing against the false claims of a corrupt assistant United States attorney.
As another example of “court justice”, the state Probate and federal Bankruptcy courts across America are used by predatory attorneys to separate middle and working class hard working people from their full inheritance and other money, by any means necessary. Prima facie fraudulent pleadings mean nothing to some judges. These two courts are, perhaps, the two biggest criminal operations in America, yet the pattern and practice of pure thievery are allowed to continue.
America talks the best justice the world has ever known. The reality is much different.
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Your last paragraph really strikes me. Personal Integrity & Honor are the keys to the whole system on which the Republic is based. One should conduct oneself at all times so as to not even give the inference of impropriety. I will never cheat anyone. I’m the kind of guy who feels guilty when a clerk gives me too much change and I’ve driven too far down the road to turn back. True honor is something that comes from the heart. It is something that makes one feel good inside and at one with oneself. A sense of pride and dignity. I compared Paul Cassell and Dershowtz in my last post. My bet is that if both of them died today one would definitely do so feeling good about themselves, and the way they had lived their life. The other knowing that under all the verneer that they really were a no good scoundrel, at least if they were capable of being honest with themselves. So my friend, Who died richer?
Hank:
You answered your own question.
About “money” and “reputation” upon death, I read somewhere that can’t take money with you, but you can take your reputation.
We’re in a justice system that, in my experience, is totally rigged and nothing can or will be done about it because the “riggers” and the “perpetrators” are the beneficiaries of that same revolving door.
Does that mean that all lawyers and all judges are crooked? No, that’s not what it means. However, one crooked judge can do a lot of damage and all of the lawyers appearing before that judge will say nothing or else.
I am not an attorney, but almost any lawyer could tell you that they, too, have been the victim of a rigged decision. What surprises me the most is that the majority of attorneys are honest and yet they allow the few crooked ones to taint their profession.
For example, in the Probate and Bankruptcy courts, the respective Guardian Ad Litem and the Trustee are appointed by the judge. It’s a judge/attorney alliance that cannot be defeated, which means that the appointed attorney can “misappropriate (court terminology for stealing)” as much as he or she can get away with. If the attorney’s conduct is exposed and loses before the Board (not by the judge), the penalty is usually a short term suspension, which is usually no penalty at all. The “suspension” only means that they cannot use the court during the suspension period, but they can continue to work in their office every day counseling clients and promoting new business.
The Judicial Conduct Commissions and the Board of Bar Overseers in each and every State in America are complicit with all of the court and attorney corruption in the profession. Elderly financial abuse in the probate court system across America is rampant and nothing can be done about it.
And what about the secret society of judges? Sounds crazy, doesn’t it?
The conclusion: If all you have on your side are the law, the facts and the evidence and the other side has no “personal honor and integrity” chances are the law, the facts and the evidence loses.
Don’t shoot the messenger, but in America, the “rule of law” has been substituted by the “rule of like” and that’s about it.
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Doug,
Do not lose faith. Live a moral ethical life in such a way that you can be proud of yourself. Any of what corrupt lawyers, judges, politicians or other do is what it is. Hopefully they will one day be held accountable on this earth but maybe not. When you die though you can do so holding your head high as an honorable man and they can not. It’s not about who can die with the most toys/money, or have committed the most debauchery, or traveled , or partied they most. It is about who one lives their life as a person. I’ve been screwed a number of times in my life, but I always come away with my dignity and self respect. Unethical people have neither so I still come out way ahead in the long run.
What really stands out to me is the stunning contrast between Dershowitz and the plaintiffs attorney Paul G. Cassell. Cassell appears to be a consummate professional who is truly interested in truth and justice. He avoids grandstanding and does not seek out the media. He obviously cares deeply about victims rights and noting the Weldon Angelos case that even perpetrators are treated fairly. Compare this with the way Dershowitz operates and Cassell appears far more credible and a true man of honor. I understand that a defense attorney has an obligation to give his client the best defense possible but the deal Dershowitz negotiated for Epstein appears that it may even amount to malpractice on his part and the DOJ attorneys as well.
Google … The Pleasure Wars : The Bourgeois Experience – The New York Times … A incisive accounting of matters Bourgeois and the two quintessential Bourgeois ” Bourgeoisophobes ” ( Flaubert’s coinage) … Gustave Flaubert and Friedrich Nietzsche ….. * PROLETARIAT 🙂
Gustave Flaubert I seem to recollect now. The quote was uttered by the cynical chemist, Homais. in MADAME BOVARY
Marx my words in a manner of speaking, but recollect a funny quote from long ago whose attribution must remain to , in the mists of time, a party acknowledged but forgotten. Paraphrasing : ” The Bourgeoisie were a self-invented Class who yearned to be envied by the Proleteriat in exactly the same way they in turn envied the Elite. ” … Filed under : Meet The New Guard ; Same as The Old Guard .
Birds of a feather flock together. Bourgeois decadence is destroying our society.
Khalid:
The curtain slowly rises on those who are behind the screen pulling the levers.
Matt: I thought using a proxy to be a good idea, but I was wrong. Dershowitz is at it again in the Huffington Post today. I don’t have a link handy. Apart from everything else, there’s a weird vanity at work here. Instead of staring into a mirror, he lovingly looks at each piece he pens.
Dan:
I found his response yesterday in the Huffington Post about him not showing compassion to Virginia Roberts. It’s at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-dershowitz/dershowitz-responds-to-ch_b_6752882.html He says the young girl he had sex with is not the victim, he is the victim. He goes on with a litany of attacks against her but we’ll have to see how those turn out. He writes” “I condemn anyone who may have exploited her which rings false since he is buddies with the guy who she worked for.
He says he has compassion for rape victims but: That’s why I, and everyone else who shares that compassion, should show no compassion for a woman, like Jane Doe #3, who has made up a false story of being raped by a man she has never even met, in order to line her pockets with cash. The woman is not seeking any cash from him as far as I have read.
He ends by saying: “I am not asking for compassion, only fairness and an opportunity to prove my total innocence. No “political correctness” will stop me from doing everything reasonable within my power to prove she is lying about me. Would any of you do less if you were falsely accused of so heinous a crime?” He has the chance now to prove his innocence. He can take a deposition which he says he won’t do until the other side discloses its hand first. He still hasn’t given us a reason to understand why this woman went out of her way to name him. I’d like to hear him on that.
By the way, he’s now calling on Obama to respond to Netanyahu after saying Obama totally misled the American people. I sometimes wonder whose side he is on. He also made an absurd statement that Congress had equal power with the president when it came to making foreign policy. He said they were co-equal branches of government. So is the judiciary if you want to carry out the analogy. Should the judges also be involved in inviting foreign leaders to come to the court to speak against our president?
Too bad that karma is not recognized by the courts?
GOK:
It would be nice but perhaps it wouldn’t change anything.