(CW: CSA) Josh & Anna 51: An Unappealing Appeal

[Mrs Ms]

37 minutes ago, Zebedee said:

 

Michelle, Pecan, LaCount and Anna all give character statements. Maybe Anna should not talk about how happy everyone is when he sounds so cheerful coming home from „work“, since we now know what he was up to.

Is there any way to link just to these character references? I am fascinated by what they could be, but really want to avoid trial descriptions of images.

[Antimony]

Okay, Defense Snark Time.

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The 34-year-old father of seven who stands before this Court for sentencing has lived an admirable life while navigating unique challenges associated with being in the public spotlight since childhood.

Girl, where? Where?

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. However, in determining the appropriate sentence in this case, Duggar asks this Court to recognize him for the person he is

They did. 

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 he worked exceptionally hard

Name one time. 

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a profoundly hardworking man committed with every grain in his body to his family, his faith, and to helping those around him at any cost

Name one time, I dare you. 

[Zebedee]

2 minutes ago, Mrs Ms said:

Is there any way to link just to these character references? I am fascinated by what they could be, but really want to avoid trial descriptions of images.

I am on my phone so cant copy and paste, but they are on page ten onwards of the defence document linked a few posts earlier. There is no description of anything there. It’s half two in the morning for me, otherwise I’d do it from my computer. 

[Antimony]

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Duggar and his wife, Anna, married in 2008 and they are profoundly committed to one another

...I don't believe you, Mr. Lawyerman.

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Anna describes her husband as “considerate, respectful, quick to forgive, patient, and genuinely the kindest person I know.

Anna, girl, get close, huddle in, because I am begging you to meet some better people.

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helps answer homework question

Surely all schoolwork is homework in homeschool...

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 lends a hand sweeping up spilled crackers

Alert the media!! Josh Duggar!! Husband of the year!! On at least one occasion!! Helped sweep up some crackers!!!

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Anna’s father explains that his son-in-law “is truly a fantastic Daddy and he truly loves his family.

Why did Mr. Grapejuice use the word "Daddy" and not "Father" here? Vom-dot-com.

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Stated simply, any punishment imposed on Duggar is also a punishment imposed on his family

Okay, this is actually true, but maybe Duggar should have thought about that before he devoted his short-lived political career to the furtherment of far-right ideology that brings us the modern prison system and "tough on crime" rhetoric for even small crimes, hmmm? Hmm, Josh? Hmmmmm. Something to think about. Hmm.

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the analysis employed by the United States Supreme Court with regard to the crack cocaine Sentencing Guidelines:

Yea, just wondering how Jim Boob & Co. feels about the crack cocaine sentencing disparity....I think I have a guess. Anyway.

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As he moves forward into the next chapter of his life, Duggar continues to have so much good to offer the world

Name one thing!! Name ONE thing!! I dare you!!

Okay, Defense document - read. Some of it I agree with, because I'm a dirty smelly prison abolitionist hippy with incarcerated pen pals. However, all those things I agree with are structural problems of the system that have nothing to do with Josh himself, who is icky. It also may be the case that the cult members being the only ones providing support for Josh (on paper) isn't the greatest material for Gelfand to work with, because he's sort of forced to point out "spiritual guidance" and such, which is not very strong evidence for the average, non-IFB reader. 

If Josh didn't have to keep playing the image of Best Godly Son and Family Man who sometimes Sweeps Crackers, maybe Gelfand could have made a better argument by throwing the cult under the bus and suggesting that the seriousness of Josh's crimes is tempered by the fact that he did grow up in an inherently abusive household with warped sexual thinking (which is true!), was wronged by his parents neglecting to address his teen crimes properly (also true!), and by suggesting to the Court that a lower sentence would allow Josh to access more appropriate treatments and services, but Gelfand can't do that because we're still entrenched. You could imagine such an argument for a mirror-verse version of Josh who become unnotably secular after the end of the reality show, and I imagine that would have been the easier argument to make, but they've given their Defense attorney such poor material to work with to begin with that the document is giving off "repetitive high school essay" vibes. 

[QuiverFullofBooks]

Spilled crackers? Seriously? I think the defense might be trolling his client a little, but maybe that really is all he has to work with. Throwing the cult under the bus isn’t an option, because Jim Bob is writing the checks.

[Antimony]

32 minutes ago, QuiverFullofBooks said:

Spilled crackers? Seriously? I think the defense might be trolling his client a little, but maybe that really is all he has to work with. Throwing the cult under the bus isn’t an option, because Jim Bob is writing the checks.

To me it feels like they were like, "Anna, please write us a detailed character statement about your husband with specifics of how kind he is" and the best she could come up with was...sweeping crackers.

Sort of tells on herself. 

[Jackie3]

2 hours ago, Antimony said:

Okay, Defense document - read. Some of it I agree with, because I'm a dirty smelly prison abolitionist hippy with incarcerated pen pals.

I feel sick to my stomach having read those pre-sentencing documents. It sounds like you do, too. What does being a prison abolitionist mean in such a case? Surely you believe he should be locked up? 

People use the term "therapy" rather freely in these cases. I can assure you that sexual predators do not get better unless they want to AND they receive a very specialized type of therapy. Counselors in prison usually are low paid and do not have this specialist training. Providing generic "therapy" to sex offenders in prison doesn't work unless the predator wants to get better AND the therapist knows what he is doing. So I don't think that Josh will become a law-abiding citizen simply by attending "therapy" in prison (or anyplace else for that matter).

Edited May 12, 2022 by Jackie3

[lumpentheologie]

2 hours ago, Antimony said:

Quote

Stated simply, any punishment imposed on Duggar is also a punishment imposed on his family

Okay, this is actually true, but maybe Duggar should have thought about that before he devoted his short-lived political career to the furtherment of far-right ideology that brings us the modern prison system and "tough on crime" rhetoric for even small crimes, hmmm? Hmm, Josh? Hmmmmm. Something to think about. Hmm.

Is it though? I'm sure it's difficult for the kids but first and foremost it ensures their safety. 

@Antimony Thank you for this analysis, I totally agree on every other point!

Edited May 12, 2022 by lumpentheologie

[Bad Wolf]

So, 3 -20 years. I was thinking he'd get 5, but after reading some of that, I'm hoping for more. How could he watch those children being tortured and not think about his own kids. The longer he stays away from them the better. One day they're going to find out what daddy did. Poor little Ms.

[Antimony]

42 minutes ago, Jackie3 said:

I feel sick to my stomach having read those pre-sentencing documents. It sounds like you do, too. What does being a prison abolitionist mean in such a case? Surely you believe he should be locked up? 

People use the term "therapy" rather freely in these cases. I can assure you that sexual predators do not get better unless they want to AND they receive a very specialized type of therapy. Counselors in prison usually are low paid and do not have this specialist training. Providing generic "therapy" to sex offenders in prison doesn't work unless the predator wants to get better AND the therapist knows what he is doing. So I don't think that Josh will become a law-abiding citizen simply by attending "therapy" in prison (or anyplace else for that matter).

I said nothing of the efficacy of any specific therapy for any given offender, I simply think it would have been a more convincing legal argument. 

Prison abolition is a complex movement and philosophy. It is different from prison reform in that prison abolition posits that the system is poisoned and cannot be reformed but must be dismantled. So. I suppose, technically, yes, I don't believe he should be "locked up" because I don't believe prisons, as we define and build and fund them, should exist. Prison abolition and the associated philosophies have been pioneered by many scholars, but notably many Black Women smarter than me.

"What happens to the rapists, if you don't believe in prison?" is a favorite "gotcha" and it's been answered at length by many abolitionists already but in sort the answer is, "What happens to them now? Only rarely, and often seemingly by accident, does the criminal justice system even address rapists and the addressing of them it does do often re-traumatizes victims rather than providing any actual healing," but that's a short summary.

But, from the linked above;

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As mentioned earlier, this response typically does not satisfy people. It is usually followed by another question. “What about the R. Kelly’s and the Harvey Weinstein’s of the world? What will we do with them?” My response remains “what are we doing with them now?” Both R. Kelly and Harvey Weinstein did what they did for decades in the face of public knowledge. 

In short, I think prisons do more harm than good. There has been a time in human society before prison, there are pockets of humanity without the concept of prison, and there will be a time after prisons are gone. And before you think this sounds absolutely utterly totally unimaginable, it helps to remember that the existence of prison itself, is in fact, a reform of/response to capital and corporal punishment systems that people previously found immoral. 

It is probably impossible for me to explain all of prison abolition and activism here and I don't feel like I've been asked in good faith at all, but I've provided more than enough resources to anybody who actually wanted to see what leaders in the movement have to say about these same difficult questions. 

51 minutes ago, lumpentheologie said:

Is it though? I'm sure it's difficult for the kids but first and foremost it ensures their safety. 

@Antimony Thank you for this analysis, I totally agree on every other point!

Kind of same answer as above, and thanks!

Are Josh's children safer without living with him? Probably, but we can't actually know that without the kind of speculation that makes one taste bile on the back of the tongue. In general, though, I fundamentally do believe the prison system serves to destroy communities, punish families, and we know that the experience of having a parent incarcerated is especially painful to children, not just "hard on" but like, a trauma in it's own right. 

It's also worth noting here that prison, as it exists, doesn't mean just "not living with Daddy" for the kids anymore. This is also what I'm considering. It means restricted access to communicating with their father, it means facing something really scary to get to see him. Because of mail rules, it means Daddy can never get your drawings made with Crayola's in the mail, because the mail room trashes everything that isn't written in blue or black ink because you could hide drugs in the wax. It means Daddy can't get cards unless you make *sure* there are no bits of glitter on them and nothing that is objectionable the rules. It means Daddy cannot correspond with you freely. Too many pages in the letters? Trash.  You can't send Daddy origami or crafts from school because its all prohibited. Daddy might not be allowed to own children's books to read over the phone because the cardboard covers count as "hardcovers" so they're not allowed. It isn't just that a parent no longer lives there, it's all of these little dehumanizing things that children bear the brunt of that are absolutely unnecessary and inhumane. It's one thing to imagine a stranger going to prison, but to know somebody in prison is to enter a world of Kafkaesque horrors. 

Finally, I don't really care about Josh. I don't. I don't give a real rats ass. The Defense he's made is nothing more than, "This was a nice White Christian guy, could you please give him the special treatment, Dearest Government? Pretty Please with a Check from Jim Bob on Top, XOXO Justin Gelfand" and he is asking to be an exception to the system. It is the system I have issues with and no amount of me hating Josh Duggar is going to make me end up rooting for a system that I believe is ineffective, inhumane, racist, damaging, and dehumanizing. *shrug* In this case, the enemy of enemy isn't my friend, not even my frenemy. 

[mango_fandango]

I still don’t think that “well, most rapists don’t get caught/what are we doing about paedophiles now?” is much of a response. That’s not a solution to what we do with them. So say a rapist IS caught. What should happen? I really would not be happy knowing that a known/identified rapist or serial killer is walking the streets. 

[Mrs Ms]

The Scandinavian open prisons for most criminals and the Scandinavian closed prisons for the rest is my preference. 

[Jackie3]

 

56 minutes ago, Antimony said:

 So. I suppose, technically, yes, I don't believe he should be "locked up" because I don't believe prisons, as we define and build and fund them, should exist. 

So on May 25, you want Josh freed. That's what you are hoping for. You want Josh walking home, with a smug smile on his face. Because then his kids can give him cards with glitter. So you are on Jim Bob's side, then?

I disagree completely. I want Josh Duggar locked up.  I want him locked away, where he cannot molest anyone or watch babies being tortured. 

For that matter, I also want the Turpin parents locked up. If they weren't locked up, their children would still be starving and chained. But you want them free to continue to torture their kids?

What about the makers of the CSA? You feel that they get to walk, too? Walk around town, looking for victims---that's your best case scenario?

 

 

1 hour ago, Antimony said:

In general, though, I fundamentally do believe the prison system serves to destroy communities, punish families, and we know that the experience of having a parent incarcerated is especially painful to children, not just "hard on" but like, a trauma in it's own right. 

Having a father who molests you is hard on a child too. Well, not just "hard on" but a trauma in it's own right. 

 

[Antimony]

2 minutes ago, Jackie3 said:

 

So on May 25, you want Josh freed. That's what you are hoping for. You want Josh walking home, with a smug smile on his face. Because then his kids can give him cards with glitter. So you are on Jim Bob's side, then?

I disagree completely. I want Josh Duggar locked up.  I want him locked away, where he cannot molest anyone or watch babies being tortured. 

For that matter, I also want the Turpin parents locked up. If they weren't locked up, their children would still be starving and chained. But you want them free to continue to torture their kids?

What about the makers of the CSA? You feel that they get to walk, too? Walk around town, looking for victims---that's your best case scenario?

 

 

You could have just said, "I'm going to give the worst bad faith reading of all of this, make it clear that I never meant to seriously consider your viewpoint or the movement, and then attack you." and saved me a little time, but okay. 

[EmCatlyn]

3 hours ago, Antimony said:

To me it feels like they were like, "Anna, please write us a detailed character statement about your husband with specifics of how kind he is" and the best she could come up with was...sweeping crackers.

Sort of tells on herself. 

Tells a lot about what is not expected of Duggar men if “sweeps crackers” makes him a “good person and father.”

[Antimony]

36 minutes ago, Mrs Ms said:

The Scandinavian open prisons for most criminals and the Scandinavian closed prisons for the rest is my preference. 

It is also very much much much worth noting that the American Prison System is a special case because it is a direct descendant of racialized slavery* and obviously other countries dont have the same roots to their carceral systems.

*As distinct from non racialized slavery (e.g. some Roman systems) and variants of serfdoms.

17 minutes ago, Jackie3 said:

Having a father who molests you is hard on a child too. Well, not just "hard on" but a trauma in it's own right. 

Wow I bet that would be a real gotcha statement if I was a prison abolitionist who never survived CSA and childhood physical abuse.

If. 

If.

If.  

[Mrs Ms]

18 minutes ago, Antimony said:

It is also very much much much worth noting that the American Prison System is a special case because it is a direct descendant of racialized slavery* and obviously other countries dont have the same roots to their carceral systems.

*As distinct from non racialized slavery (e.g. some Roman systems) and variants of serfdoms.

Wow I bet that would be a real gotcha statement if I was a prison abolitionist who never survived CSA and childhood physical abuse.

If. 

If.

If.  

Please ignore the troll and carry on sharing your perspective! 

I live in NZ and our prison system isn’t as nuts as your one, but since watching a documentary in the early 2000s about Scandinavian prisons I really wish we had it here.
 

Imagine teaching criminals how to function in society via education and work training/experience and treating any mental and addiction issues (along with the rest of society because socialism) to take away most reasons for repeat offenders and lifelong criminals?

Edited May 12, 2022 by Mrs Ms
Forgot some words

[mango_fandango]

I can see that prison abolition could work in a lot of cases like drugs or theft or similar, as people who commit those offences tend to be from poor/vulnerable backgrounds and/or have a serious addiction. Identifying potential offenders would take a lot of work but it could help reduce a lot of serious crime. The only problem would be identifying those people in the first place. Sometimes it can be almost impossible to predict who’s going to become a serious offender. Many serial killers, for example, come from abusive family backgrounds, but most people from abusive backgrounds don’t go on to commit serious crimes. 

[Jackie3]

29 minutes ago, mango_fandango said:

The only problem would be identifying those people in the first place.

That's an insurmountable hurdle. 

[Smee]

I don’t know enough to declare myself a prison abolitionist or not, but this does feel a bit like when I’m like “tear down capitalism!” and someone is like “oh so you don’t think surgeons should be paid better than McDonald’s workers”. Like… that’s not where my objections with an inherently abusive and inequitable system start or end but ok. I suppose when pushed on it I do believe low end service workers from impoverished backgrounds and poorer educations should still be able to lead a life as comfortable as a surgeon’s.

[Zebedee]

OK, the character witness letters, in full, are up at https://www.dropbox.com/s/stzm87xbt6zc0yg/Defense Sentencing Letters.pdf?dl=0.As you'd expect, there aren't any nasty surprises in them, so entirely safe to read. No character statement from JimBob or any siblings.

ETA: the least important thing in any of these letters, but it still made me cringe - Michelle signed her name with a heart over the "i". Just, WTF?!

Edited May 12, 2022 by Zebedee

[Smee]

Ugh. It’s all so… I get that Anna loves him and the things she says might be true, but what does any of that have to do with his future likelihood of again harming children? Nothing she says about him, even if he WAS super loving wonderful philanthropist father of the year, can negate the severity of what he actively sought out to watch and the psychological assessment of him as unrepentant.

Anyone able to give a quick rundown on who Nicole Burress is? Condescendingly telling an American judge they don’t understand anything about Jesus seems like a wise move.

[Bluebirdbluebell]

I said it before and I'll say it again. Anna's father should have been at the trial. Partly for emotional support and now to learn the truth about what his son-in-law did. 

[Smee]

Woah I just finished reading them all and the Timothy Burress one is really… something.

[Cam]

Interesting letters.

David Waller’s stands out to me. Where does Josh get enough money to support his wife and seven children and still have enough left over to support a widow giving her $2,000 a month? 

Waller also says of Josh, “He has publicly owned his mistakes and has been transparent about his faults even when he knows he will be misunderstood, maligned and attacked. He has also chosen not to own something he claims he has not done.”  
 

Oh, Michelle with the heart. How old are ya, Meech? Really weird.

LaCount talks about Josh cleaning up their carport, but I will never forget the disgusting photo of the car lot shack that Josh figured no one would ever see. 
 

Timothy Burress says he’d never want to have to put up with what the very public Duggar family has to deal with; Burris says he prefers a life of privacy and simplicity. Well, Mr.Burriss, what about the victimized children of csam and their families? They want their privacy, too, yet their lives have been irrevocably changed by this crime, and the ramifications never end. 

 

 

Edited May 12, 2022 by Cam