Larry Nassar gets 175 years.....

[smartcooky]

Frankly, I am more interested in how far up the chain the Cover up scandal goes....

Michigan State and USAG is a given. I wonder how far it goes into USOC? I'm betting that at least some officials in USOC were fully aware of what was going on.

Aly Raisman seems to have taken "leadership", if that is the right word, of the survivors, or at the very least seems to be acting as their spokesman. She seems confident and speaks very well. IMO, USAG could do worse than asking her to sit on the new board.

 

[theprestige]

I wonder how far it goes into USOC? I'm betting that at least some officials in USOC were fully aware of what was going on.

I dunno. Why would the school or the gymnastics board have passed any of the accusations up the chain to USOC officials?

We know from the trial and related reporting that officials on the gymnastics board, and officials at the school, were contacted by the victims, and did nothing. But there's been no reports of the victims contacting USOC officials. So it's likely that at most, some USOC officials might have been vaguely aware of possible problems. But I'm betting USOC officials are vaguely aware of possible problems in all of the Olympic sports organizations under their banner.

 

[pgwenthold]

Michigan State and USAG is a given. I wonder how far it goes into USOC? I'm betting that at least some officials in USOC were fully aware of what was going on..

I say it again, I'm waiting to hear about Bela and (more importantly) Marta Kiroly.

She was the most powerful person in Little Girl (aka Women's) Gymnastics for many, many years. I'm waiting for her to be found to be up to her neck in ...it.

 

[Bob001]

I dunno. Why would the school or the gymnastics board have passed any of the accusations up the chain to USOC officials?
....

McKayla Maroney says USOC knew plenty.

Gymnast McKayla Maroney filed suit Wednesday against the United States Olympic Committee and USA Gymnastics, alleging that officials had her sign a confidential financial settlement to keep secret the sexual abuse she suffered as a teen by team doctor and confessed molester Larry Nassar.

In papers filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, Maroney, a gold medalist and one of the nation's best-known Olympic athletes, also accused the USOC of covering up its knowledge of Nassar's misconduct as part of a "culture and atmosphere that conceals known and suspected sexual abusers."

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-maroney-gynnastics-settlement-20171220-story.html

 

[theprestige]

McKayla Maroney says USOC knew plenty.


http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-maroney-gynnastics-settlement-20171220-story.html

That's not a lot, but it's something, at least. Individual gym board officials and school officials have been named, in the accusations. Have individual USOC officials been named?

"USOC vaguely contributes to the culture of abuse" is different from "on Date X I told USOC officials Y and Z, and they did nothing."

 

[Meadmaker]

I say it again, I'm waiting to hear about Bela and (more importantly) Marta Kiroly.

She was the most powerful person in Little Girl (aka Women's) Gymnastics for many, many years. I'm waiting for her to be found to be up to her neck in ...it.

The Kirolys are certainly at the center of the cult-like atmosphere.

And.......it works. The guy makes gold medals. Ok, so they destroy some girls in the process, and not just by protecting a sexual abuser here and there, but just robbing people of childhood in a lot of different ways. I would love to see a documentary that tracks a group of girls that almost made the Olympic team.

My hunch is that they protected themselves by absolutely refusing to know anything they didn't want to know.

 

[angrysoba]

Nonetheless, his overall point is correct.

When a person commits a violent crime, is caught and charged, we put them in prison in the first instance to punish them for their crime, and to protect the public. Rehabilitation is only a consideration after the first two requirements are satisfied. If this were not so, then we could simply dispense with incarceration altogether, and rehabilitate the offender outside the prison system.

Is that what you would like to see happening for murderers and rapists?

Actually, reading a little about Breivik's incarceration, it seems that in Norway the top priority is indeed protection of society. The liberty that makes crime possible is restricted, and retributive punishment is minimal, it seems:

According to the Directorate of Norwegian Correctional Service, prison should be a restriction of liberty, but nothing more.

...

Sentences are kept very short. On average they are no more than eight months long, and nearly 90% of sentences are for less than a year.

"This means most prisoners are going to return to society at some point. Put that together with very short sentences, and rehabilitation becomes even more important," says Anders Giaever, a commentator with Norway's daily VG newspaper.

However, some crimes, such as that of Breivik, are obviously much worse than those which receive short sentences.

Oh so you can have long sentences as long as you call it something else.

That's totally different. You see in the backwater, barely civilized US we "imprison" people for years but in the post-scarcity Singularity utopia of Sweden they "detain" people for years.

Yeah, apparently in Norway...

Only 94 people in Norway, Breivik being one, are sentenced to "preventative detention" in an extra-high-security prison. This means they can be kept beyond the longest sentence permitted by law - 21 years - if they continue to be considered a risk to society.

Does it seem crazy to have a system in which prisoners scheduled for release might be examined on a case-by-case basis to determine whether they still pose a threat to society?

A socialist society does not imprison people, just detains them...interesting.

What's funny about these complaints about "socialist societies" (if that's what we are calling Norway and Sweden these days) renaming things for convenience is that when these prison systems are explained the common reaction is "And you call that prison?!?"

Well then, if it is sufficiently different to what you think a prison should be then maybe giving it a different name is indeed what's called for. Isn't it at least more honest and less Orwellian that having San Quentin - a state prison with death row and a gas chamber - run by California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation?

 

[angrysoba]

There's also another angle to this, the idea that longer sentences don't reduce crime.

It's simple. When people in in prison they aren't committing crimes. (Things like in-prison crimes and the rare things like check fraud that are occasionally committing from within prison not withstanding).

So... crimes rates sort of have to go down with longer sentences unless you want to argue there's some sort of... conservation of crime in the overall society, some factor that causes the criminals in prison to be replaced in overall society by new criminals and what would that factor even be?

I'm not being flippant here. I know studies as to how longer sentences affect crime rates do tend to no show direct correlations but I'm honestly confused as to the "how" more so than the "why."

There's plenty of valid reasons to oppose longer sentences but I do see how on a logical, almost purely mathematical level longer sentence can't reduce crime rates. "Crime" isn't an industry that recruits new people to met employment numbers.

If longer sentences reduce crimes than what effect on crime do you think would be achieved if, instead of the 175 years this guy got, they gave him 350?

 

[JoeMorgue]

Does it seem crazy to have a system in which prisoners scheduled for release might be examined on a case-by-case basis to determine whether they still pose a threat to society?

It's crazy if potential future crimes are seen as more of a factor than crimes already committed.

Look at it this way. Bill commits a crime and immediately goes to the police, turns himself in, and gives a full legal confession. But in this hypothetical world police have a magic device that can magically predict if someone is ever going to commit a crime and Bill comes back clean. He will within a metaphysical certainty never commit another crime.

Should Bill be punished? Because a lot of people seem to suggesting that he shouldn't, or at least creating a legal and moral scenario where there would be no reason to.

And again people are just going to have to forgive me for not getting how exactly so many people read a story about a serial rapist getting a long sentence and the long sentence is what puts sands in their crack and they want to complain about.

I've heard the sentence called "barbaric" more then I've heard the multiple underage rapes called barbaric so again forgive me if I think some people's priorities might be a little bit skewed and this whole thing is just a little off to me.

 

[angrysoba]

It's crazy if potential future crimes are seen as more of a factor than crimes already committed.

Look at it this way. Bill commits a crime and immediately goes to the police, turns himself in, and gives a full legal confession. But in this hypothetical world police have a magic device that can magically predict if someone is ever going to commit a crime and Bill comes back clean. He will within a metaphysical certainty never commit another crime.

Should Bill be punished? Because a lot of people seem to suggesting that he shouldn't, or at least creating a legal and moral scenario where there would be no reason to.

And again people are just going to have to forgive me for not getting how exactly so many people read a story about a serial rapist getting a long sentence and the long sentence is what puts sands in their crack and they want to complain about.

I've heard the sentence called "barbaric" more then I've heard the multiple underage rapes called barbaric so again forgive me if I think some people's priorities might be a little bit skewed and this whole thing is just a little off to me.

I've set up a thread where we can discuss this. As it is I think a lot of us, and I am one of the biggest culprits, have derailed this thread enough already.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=326816

 

[Thermal]

I'm curious. Is there even one peer reviewed article that suggests that pain can be relieved by fingers being put in a girl's or woman's vagina? It's not something I had ever heard of before this case came up, and the fact that he also had child pornography in his possession certainly supports the notion that pain relief was not his only motivation, if it figured into his motivation at all.

I really don't by his claims, and even if there was any therapeutic value to what he was doing, the way he was doing it was very wrong, but I am curious as to whether there is any trace of medical justification, such that he may have somehow convinced himself that he was doing therapy rather than just molesting girls under the cover of medical treatment.

I'm no doc, but it does seem to be a recognized treatment, although the bulk of this therapy seems directed at problems other than sports injuries. See NCBI/Mayo Clinic link below. From the section 'Assessment of the Pelvic Floor':

Digital palpation of the pelvic floor muscles is used to assess contraction and relaxation and to evaluate pain...Pelvic floor muscles are assessed for tenderness, tone, contraction, and relaxation through vaginal and rectal digital palpation.30 The strength of a pelvic floor contraction can be classified subjectively as absent, weak, normal, or strong after asking the woman to squeeze around the palpating finger.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3498251/

 

[smartcooky]

I'm no doc, but it does seem to be a recognized treatment, although the bulk of this therapy seems directed at problems other than sports injuries. See NCBI/Mayo Clinic link below. From the section 'Assessment of the Pelvic Floor':



https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3498251/

I would expect this type of treatment to be done in a clinic, by a female doctor, with supervision, or with a female nurse present, not in a doctor's private hotel room with no-one but the male doctor and the underage girl present (after she has been given sleeping pills).

"......the scariest night of my life happened when I was 15 years old. I had flown all day and night with the team to get to Tokyo. He’d given me a sleeping pill for the flight, and the next thing I know, I was all alone with him in his hotel room getting a ‘treatment.’ "
- McKayla Moroney

 

[Arcade22]

Oh so you can have long sentences as long as you call it something else.

That's totally different. You see in the backwater, barely civilized US we "imprison" people for years but in the post-scarcity Singularity utopia of Sweden they "detain" people for years.

Pay attention! Norway is not Sweden and detainment is not a form of criminal sanction found in Swedish law.

We have life imprisonment which in practice is an indeterminate sentence of at least 12 years effective time.

As an example of a notorious criminal who was released recently in Sweden you can look up Mattias Flink, who shot a bunch of women dead in a drunken rampage while in the military. He was released after serving about 20 years in prison.

 

[Information Analyst]

Its not lies, its understanding.

If you don't like the way others understand or interpret your posts, be more clear!

You seem to be the only person who interpreted it in the way that you chose to. That suggests problems with your comprehension, not my clarity.

If you still don't get it, bear in mind that the last part of your post I quoted was, "Only when considerations related to 1 and 2 are met, should rehabilitation become a consideration." It is your idea (repeated in #401 above) that rehabilitation is a low priority and - by implication - completely separate from any other, priority - specifically public safety - that is contradictory. But then, I said as much in subsequent posts, so if you are continuing to maintain ignorance, I can't help you further.

 

[smartcooky]

If you still don't get it, bear in mind that the last part of your post I quoted was, "Only when considerations related to 1 and 2 are met, should rehabilitation become a consideration." It is your idea (repeated in #401 above) that rehabilitation is a low priority and - by implication - completely separate from any other, priority - specifically public safety - that is contradictory. But then, I said as much in subsequent posts, so if you are continuing to maintain ignorance, I can't help you further.

I have answered in another thread...

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?p=12165359

...to keep this thread clear of sidetracks.

 

[ponderingturtle]

Does it seem crazy to have a system in which prisoners scheduled for release might be examined on a case-by-case basis to determine whether they still pose a threat to society?

Think of it as reverse parole.

 

[3point14]

For sufficiently small values of "excessive". Some might argue that Sweden is excessively lenient on people who have committed multiple heinous acts against citizens and society.

Should this be at least partially discoverable by looking at crime rates and recidivism rates and seeing if they're higher in Sweden?

Perhaps it is also the case that fully-assimilated Swedes come from and return to a culture where 18 years in prison actually cures most ills.

Maybe 18 years inside with a focus on rehab has amazing results?

 

[3point14]

There's also another angle to this, the idea that longer sentences don't reduce crime.

It's simple. When people in in prison they aren't committing crimes. (Things like in-prison crimes and the rare things like check fraud that are occasionally committing from within prison not withstanding).

So... crimes rates sort of have to go down with longer sentences unless you want to argue there's some sort of... conservation of crime in the overall society, some factor that causes the criminals in prison to be replaced in overall society by new criminals and what would that factor even be?

This doesn't entirely hold. If being incarcerated for any length of time is something that causes someone to be more accepting of a life of crime then the increased number of criminal activities once released could cause crime rates to go up, not down.

I'm not being flippant here. I know studies as to how longer sentences affect crime rates do tend to no show direct correlations but I'm honestly confused as to the "how" more so than the "why."

There's plenty of valid reasons to oppose longer sentences but I do see how on a logical, almost purely mathematical level longer sentence can't reduce crime rates. "Crime" isn't an industry that recruits new people to met employment numbers.

 

[GlennB]

I'm not being flippant here. I know studies as to how longer sentences affect crime rates do tend to no show direct correlations but I'm honestly confused as to the "how" more so than the "why."

There's plenty of valid reasons to oppose longer sentences but I do see how on a logical, almost purely mathematical level longer sentence can't reduce crime rates. "Crime" isn't an industry that recruits new people to met employment numbers.

Dogbert worked this out too

 

[3point14]

Dogbert worked this out too

I'm shocked that a comic dog drawn by a quasi-libertarian hasn't thought it through enough to come up with a plausible mechanism. Shocked, I tells ya.