January 14

Events

• Current events

• 1998 - Pedagogue and pedophile are a natural fit - On this date the Ypsilanti school board in Michigan decided to include sexual orientation as a protected group in its contracts and, ultimately, in its policies. The issue was controversial, but not for the old-fashioned reasons that helped bar homosexuals from working in schools in the past. you see, the board members had no problem with hiring gays. Their concern is expressed in these words by Trustees Tom Reiber: "Our own attorney advised us not to include such language. We can have a teacher who is a pedophile, and this teacher may say that he has a right because that's his sexual orientation. We as a board would have no rights at all." It is nice to see people taking seriously the idea that pedophilia could be judged to be a legitimate sexual orientation, even if they are noting it with concern.

• 2002 - The injustice system steamrolls on - Father John Geoghan, the most notorious of the recently accused pedo priests, went on trial in Boston on this date for the first of two criminal cases of alleged child rape and molestation. Over 90 civil lawsuits against Geoghan and the Archdiocese of Boston stemming from Geoghan's three decades of alleged rape and abuse of over 130 Boston-area children, had yet to come to trial. Geoghan was eventually found guilty and sentenced to a minimum of six years. The alleged actions that resulted in that conviction: squeezing a boys bottom one time. Prosecutor Lynn Rooney said that the sentence was appropriate for the case. "The commonwealth's recommendation in this case was based on not just the crime that was committed, but on this defendant himself," Rooney said. "It is the commonwealth's position that this defendant is a danger to the children of the commonwealth and that the only way the children can be protected from him is if he is incapacitated." in other words, the sentence is appropriate given facts not in evidence, accusations he was not tried for.

• 2002 - More proof that teenagers loooove porn - A jury convicted a 19 year old on child pornography charges in Rochester, New York on this date. The judge ordered him to immediately begin serving a mandatory 10-year sentence that the judge described as a "Draconian penalty." US District Judge Gerard Lynch sentenced Jorge L. Pabon Cruz after he was accused of distributing more than 8,000 child porn pictures over the Internet between September and December 2001. Prosecutors said more than 2,800 people online had viewed the photographs, which included images of sexual assaults on children ranging from toddlers to 13 year olds. "I don't know that I think that 10 years in prison is the appropriate best thing for this defendant," Lynch said after the verdict. "On the other hand, it's what Congress has ordained." Some judges are progressive thinkers and not afraid to take what might be unpopular stands. It is just too bad that it did this young man no good.

Deaths

• January 14, 1960 - Ralph Nicholas Chubb was a British poet, printer, and artist.