#Drug defence lawyer

[reginacriminallaw]

Understanding the Drug Treatment Court Regina: A Path to Recovery

For individuals in Regina, Saskatchewan, who have criminal charges related to drug use, they can choose to participate in drug treatment court without going to the regular court. This program is what specializes in offering rehabilitation instead of scary punishments. It is for offenders of non-violent drug-related crimes who are addicted to drugs and thus offense-oriented. The whole purpose of the court is really life-changing, trying to break up cycles of addiction and reoffending.

In Saskatchewan, CDSA lawyer Saskatchewan expertise becomes indispensable when it comes to the job of Drug Treatment Court (DTC). This is where drug treatment courts provide an entire system and supportive environment that motivates people to treatment while being monitored for their illegal actions. Let us investigate how drug treatment court Regina works and how it could benefit an individual while further improvement by consulting a CDSA lawyer Saskatchewan.

Drug Treatment Courts are specialized courts established in order to give treatment rather than punishment among those who get into trouble due to substance abuse but commit non-violent drug-related crimes. The drug treatment court Regina is targeted at the root causes of the criminal behaviour caused by addiction and provides an alternative for the participant to take towards recovery and reintegration into society.

DTCs, or Drug Treatment Courts, are established courts in the states for the unique purpose of rehabilitation as opposed to incarceration. These courts can act as an avenue to mitigate the consequences that the participants suffer from non-violent drug-related crimes. Counselling with substance abuse, vocational training among many others are among the medical and other supportive services offered in DTCs to the participants. These programs have been made according to the needs of each participant so that they could have what they need to break free from addiction and build their future.

Qualification for Drug Treatment Court

Not everyone arrested related to drug possession qualifies for a drug treatment court Regina. There are strict eligibility requirements, and it is very important to have the help of a good CDSA lawyer Saskatchewan to get through the process. The basic requirements depend on the following factors:

Be charged with a non-violent drug offense, usually on the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act (CDSA).

Have proved and recognized substance abuse issues that contribute to behaviour which leads to criminal acts.

Be willing to participate in those programs as well as follow instructions of the court.

Have no significant history of criminality or previous violence.

An expert CDSA lawyer Saskatchewan can ascertain your condition, profile eligibility and place you on the best strategy for accessing the Drug Treatment Court program.

Role of a CDSA Lawyer Saskatchewan in Drug Treatment Court

How a CDSA lawyer Saskatchewan can help a person with one’s Drug Treatment Court needs would include evaluating eligibility, advice during the entire program, and more. Most importantly, a competent CDSA lawyer Saskatchewan would make sure that the rights of the accused are protected during the whole process. Defence by a CDSA lawyer Saskatchewan ensures participation in teamwork that works closely with treatment providers, courts, and other stakeholders to bring out the best possible outcome for the clients.

In particular, a CDSA lawyer Saskatchewan will assist participants with an understanding of the different Drug Treatment Court program criteria such as frequent court appearances, drug testing, and adherence to treatment plans. With an experienced attorney busy handling all the complexities of the program, personal success is increasingly likely without any hassle.

Source URL: https://medium.com/@rcriminallaw/drug-treatment-court-regina-path-to-recovery-and-rehabilitat-1f5bc6de852d

[landllawgroups]

Facing Federal Drug Charges? Get Expert Legal Defense Today

If you’ve been charged with a federal drug crime, the consequences can be life-altering. At L and L Law Group, PLLC, our experienced federal drug attorneys are committed to providing aggressive and strategic legal defense. We understand the complexities of drug-related offenses and work tirelessly to protect your freedom, future, and reputation. Don’t face these serious charges alone—contact us today for expert legal representation across Texas.

[rainermartiniandassociates]

The right lawyer knows how to navigate the defence system and how to go for the tactics that can save you from probable effects of jail custody. Call 03 9879 5868 for all consultation enquiries.

[someone-will-remember-us]

In the four years after she discovered her husband had been drugging her and inviting strangers into their home to rape her, Gisèle Pelicot liked to walk to clear her head.

Striding through the countryside alone, she would throw the questions that tormented her to the wind: “Dominique, how could you have done it? Why did you do it? How did we get here?” Asked what she was doing when she was ­disappearing for hours, she would tell her three children: “I am talking to your father.”

From his prison cell, Dominique Pelicot, who has admitted orchestrating the rapes at the couple’s home in the Provençal town of Mazan, could not answer. Nor would he when facing his former wife across a crowded courtroom, except to say: “I am a ­rapist … like the ­others in this room.”

The 50 men who appeared alongside him, charged with aggravated rape and sexual abuse, have also failed to explain their actions.

Why, when confronted with the inert body of a drugged and unconscious woman, did these “ordinary men”, as they were described in court, with ordinary names – Laurent, Nicolas, Philippe, Christian, Hassan – not leave? Why did not one of them go to the police and put an end to the decade-long abuse of a woman that could have killed her?

“The question is not why you went there, but why you stayed,” one of Gisèle Pelicot’s lawyers, Antoine Camus, told the court.

Camus cannot imagine why the men, who he says represent a “­kaleidoscope of French society”, did so except for a lack of empathy towards their victim, who he says was treated as “less than nothing”.

As the trial enters its final days this week, the accused will be ­permitted a last word on Monday before the president of the court and five judges known as “assessors” withdraw to consider their verdicts and sentences. The public prosecutor has demanded a maximum prison term of 20 years for Pelicot and sentences of between four and 18 years for the 50 others.

Then, Gisèle Pelicot will walk out of court for the last time, flanked by her two lawyers, Camus and Stéphane Babonneau, who have protected her like praetorian guards every day. There will be a last round of applause and cheers from the crowd – mostly women – who have arrived at dawn to queue for hours outside the courthouse for a place in the hearing, and who have presented her with gifts and shouted “Merci, Gisèle!” as she left each evening.

A criminal trial aims to answer questions. During this three-and-a-half-month hearing, the accused have produced excuses but few answers.

Sitting in court, we listened to the men arguing that Pelicot had given his consent for them to rape his wife; that they had not “intended” to rape her; that what they had done was not rape; that they did not have the profile of a rapist and therefore were not one. That they believed Gisèle Pelicot was only pretending to be asleep. That they had too much testosterone – that it was their body, not their brain, acting. That they too were victims of her manipulative, perverse husband.

With Gisèle Pelicot unconscious and unaware of what was being done to her, the videos her husband recorded of the assaults were, as the public prosecutor pointed out, “worth a thousand words”. In them, we saw Pelicot directing his ­personal pornographic scenes, ­moving his unconscious wife – dressed in lingerie that was not hers and with crude messages written on her buttocks – into positions, holding her mouth open, whispering to his cast of naked strangers to “get on with it”, to do this, do that, or to get out if she so much as twitched. Defence lawyers tried to have those recordings struck out as evidence.

“It is evident that Mme Pelicot was not in a normal conscious state,” public prosecutor Laure Chabaud said.

“She was in a state of torpor closer to a coma than sleep. [This] didn’t seem to dissuade the participants, none of whom spoke to Gisèle Pelicot or sought her consent.”

Several of the accused did admit there was something bizarre about the scenario, as Pelicot instructed them to get undressed and warm their hands on the radiator because his wife was “sensitive to the cold”. But they stayed anyway. A few realised their “mistake” and were sorry. Others were almost defiant, shocked they were in court. Most deny rape.

Those facing the gravest ­accusations, of up to six counts of rape, sat in a second glass box on the left of the courtroom, stroking their chins, fiddling with their beards, bowing their heads or complaining to their guards that journalists were “looking at them meanly”. Those on bail and free to come and go went in and out of the courthouse with ­collars pulled up, hats pulled down and masks hiding their faces.

Giving evidence, the Pelicots’ younger son, Florian, dismissed the men as “not la creme de la creme”, but they looked ­ordinary enough in their jeans and leather jackets, anoraks, trainers and ­hoodies. Their backgrounds were varied and in other ­circumstances might have provoked sympathy – broken homes, childhood abuse, drug and alcohol problems – but there was no common thread. Many had no previous criminal record, although some were charged with possession of child abuse or ­bestiality images. They were all functioning adults, most with jobs, children and ­partners.

For Camus, their excuses are ­evidence of French society’s “­culture of rape” being played out in real time. “These absurd suggestions, prejudices, hypotheses, ­preconceived ideas … all deployed before our very eyes, and all at the expense of Gisèle Pelicot,” he says.

In court, she would stare at them or the ceiling, listen to their excuses, dismiss their ­apologies, her face impassive. “She is ­disgusted, appalled and indignant … but not surprised,” Camus adds. Her ­reaction was the same as it had been when she had first seen the videos in the run-up to the trial: how could they? “She was waiting for the explanations, some kind of exchange, and she has not had that.”

The depravity of what the world has seen and heard will not be ­easily erased from the memory.

“We thought we knew ­everything men were capable of inflicting on women but never imagined a ­husband drugging his wife and offering her up to dozens of predators for 10 years,” said one woman who has been attending court to support Gisèle Pelicot.

The case has also raised broader questions over the toxic ­masculinity riddling French society, how the police, courts and society treat rape victims, the use of drugs in rape, and, of course, consent, or the absence of the concept in French law. In France, rape is defined as “sexual penetration, ­committed against another person by violence, constraint, threat or surprise”. The Mazan rapes have been shoehorned into the “surprise” category – but feminist groups are divided over whether adding consent to the law would be a good thing or simply place undue focus on the victims.

Statistics from the Institut des Politiques Publiques in France ­suggest that over a 10-year period there were more than 400,000 cases of sexual violence in France, 86% of which resulted in no action and only 13% in conviction. There are about 700,000 cases of domestic abuse each year, only 27% ­ending in ­conviction. Campaigners are ­hoping the Pelicot trial will signal a ­watershed in a country where the #MeToo movement has struggled to maintain much impetus.

The case has been shocking because of its scale and ­perversity, but we have been here before. In 2018, as French women began to open up about sexual abuse in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein ­scandal, a collective of 100 women, including the grande dame of French cinema, Catherine Deneuve, wrote an open letter saying it had all gone too far and was stifling men’s ability to seduce.

Blandine Deverlanges, a teacher and founder of the local feminist group Amazons of Avignon, says the Pelicot trial is already encouraging other rape and sexual assault victims to speak out. “Gisèle Pelicot has offered us her story and it is our story. She has held her head high and in doing so encouraged other women hesitating over whether to report rapes to come forward.”

The Avignon trial lies on a ­continuum that began in France in 1974, in Aix-en-Provence, when another Gisèle, feminist lawyer Gisèle Halimi, represented Anne Tonglet and Araceli Castellano, two Belgian women who had been raped by three men while camping.

Like Pelicot, they also waived their anonymity and refused a closed-door hearing at a time when rape was treated as a public indecency misdemeanour under laws that dated back to the Napoleonic era. Halimi said at the time: “You must convict these three men, because otherwise you will condemn women to never again be believed.” The men were convicted and the trial led to a rewriting of France’s criminal code.

Agnès Fichot, a ­lawyer who worked with the late Halimi on the case, says attitudes have changed in the past 50 years, but there is “still a long way to go”.

Fichot argues the law does need a “consent” clause but that the ­burden of proof should be inverted. “It should not be for the victim of rape to prove she consented, but for the man to prove he had her express and clear consent,” she says.

Fichot has attended the trial and is astonished that none of the men recruited by Pelicot had considered reporting him. She is dismayed by their refusal to take responsibility for their actions. “Not one of them came out of that house and thought of going to the police to say there was a woman in danger, to tell of the horrors her husband was inflicting, so she could be saved.”

The videos ruled out ­suspicions, fostered by some defence ­lawyers, that Gisèle Pelicot had been ­complicit in the abuse. Still, they questioned her about her sex life – whether she was a swinger, an exhibitionist, an alcoholic, a manipulated and subjugated wife. One asked why she had not appeared angrier with her former husband, and why she had not cried more in court. As more videos were shown, the questions seemed as obscene as the images we were watching.

“I went to court hoping the [defence] arguments would be changed since the 1970s but they had not,” says Fichot. “The testosterone excuse was the absolute worst. It was the archaic argument that males, who have all the privileges and domination over women, have this weakness and we cannot blame them for it because they are male and have uncontrollable urges.”

It took four years after Pelicot, a retired electrician, was arrested in November 2020 for the case to come to trial. Until she walked into court in September this year, Gisèle Pelicot had not seen the man she once ­considered a “perfect, ­loving, ­attentive and caring” husband, father and grandfather, who she had been married to for 50 years, since he had been taken into custody.

On 2 November 2020, the couple left their neat home with a swimming pool, where they had intended to spend their retirement, to drive to the police prefecture in Carpentras. Six weeks earlier, Dominique Pelicot had been arrested for filming up the skirts of four women in the Leclerc supermarket. He had made a ­tearful confession to his wife, promised not to do it again and to seek medical help. He told her on this occasion they would be home by lunchtime.

But at the police station, a senior officer showed Gisèle Pelicot some photographs and told her what her husband had been doing to her for almost a decade. After the shock came the indignation that prompted the decision to waive her anonymity and insist that the trial – including appalling videos described by Roger Arata, the president of the court, as “particularly offensive to human dignity” – be held in public so that “shame changes sides”.

It was a decision that made the 73-year-old grandmother internationally recognised and gave feminists a new slogan.

“We warned her holding the trial in public would cause a storm, but it meant the outside world could look in and see exactly what had ­happened,” Camus says.

His fellow lawyer Babonneau says Pelicot’s determination that this should not happen to another woman is her driving motivation. “Normal people need to read about it to be aware it can happen. She was an ordinary woman, a pensioner living in the south of France … what could she expect from life: no trauma, no dramatics, a nice house in a nice village and she thought this would be her life for ever.”

Babonneau and Camus are struck not just by her former husband’s manipulation but his cynicism. The drugs he had been giving her had caused blackouts and memory loss. She had inexplicable gynaecological problems, and was convinced she had a brain tumour or degenerative neurological disease.

Her children had persuaded her to see specialists. She was ­accompanied by her husband, who did not once try to ease her fears.

“When she was tired, when she said she had gynaecological problems, Dominique would joke: ‘Gisèle, what are you doing at night?’ It is beyond belief. Disgusting,” Camus says.

He likens her betrayal to that of the moment in The Truman Show when the film’s main character discovers his existence has been a reality television programme. “He discovers that everything he believed was real is false … For Gisèle, it has been the same, except it was a pornographic film and the director was her husband.”

The trial will indelibly mark all those who spent time at it. Reporters who jostled for a seat in the small courtroom ­listened to Arata read the list of alleged crimes for each accused in a monotone, as if repeating a weekly shopping list: digital penetration, ­vaginal ­penetration, oral penetration, anal penetration, sexual touching. We would hear the most ­appalling ­evidence, see the most appalling videos and think nothing could be worse. Except the next day it often was.

Marion Dubreuil, court correspondent for the French radio station RMC, was there almost every day, live-tweeting and sketching those in the courtroom. “What saved me was documenting it,” she said. “I found sense in my work.

“I tell myself: this trial will change things. Rape is the most ­absolute crime; the most banal and the most common. Now we are ­speaking about it, people realise it is ­happening all the time. I see this in those around me. The trial has made them think.”

The public prosecutor, Jean-Marie Huet, who had originally wanted the case to be held behind closed doors, admitted to Gisèle Pelicot he had been wrong. “I salute your courage, madame, and your ­dignity ­throughout these proceedings,” he said. “We asked for a closed-door hearing without knowing the force of your character.

“In an incredible burst of resilience, you asked for a public hearing, and you were right, madame.”

Sitting in a local cafe, Camus taps the table irritably when reminded of the defence lawyers who have attacked Gisèle Pelicot.

“When people say she is not ­feeling enough hate, that she doesn’t cry enough … I ask, what do people want of her?” he says. “What do they expect her to do? Kill herself? That she is still standing is a testament to her amazing resilience.

“My preoccupation, my ­obsession since the beginning of this trial, is that she does not come out of it more damaged than when she went in and, in fact, I have the impression she has come out of it strengthened. She went into it very fragile with her head held high and she has come out of it … with a sort of pride.

“People will ­remember Gisèle Pelicot because there are many lessons to be learned from her and this trial. She is a monument, she raised her head, she lives, she refuses to be swallowed by the ­shadows or by hate.”

It is the job of courts to ask ­questions and dig out the answers. Reporters, too. In this instance, we have both failed. The question of how so many men were able to dehumanise Gisèle Pelicot will take psychologists and social anthropologists some time to unravel.

(archive)

[quasi-normalcy]

So, to summarise this case, for those who haven't been paying attention: Indigo is the major bookstore chain in Canada. It's billionaire owner, Heather Reisman (together with her husband, Gerry Schwartz, who's also a dick, but that's not important here) is the founder of a "charity" called the HESEG Foundation, which pays for foreign volunteers in the Israeli Defence Force to settle in Israel after their terms of service is up. Naturally, this attracted major political controversy and calls for boycott after the IDF started its genocide in Gaza last year. Last fall, a group of protesters defaced an Indigo storefront in Toronto with red paint and posters accusing Reisman of funding genocide. This was immediately and near-uniformly decried in the Canadian media as an "antisemitic attack", even though the posters did not even mention Reisman's Jewish heritage. The Toronto Police Department announced that it was investigating it as a "hate crime", and a few days later, 11 protesters, including several university professors, were arrested by more than 70 Toronto police in pre-dawn raids normally reserved for drug busts and organised crime. Since then, all charges were dropped against 4 of them, and the strongest charge, criminal harassment, was dropped against all of them (due, of course, to how utterly, obviously insubstantial it was); meaning that there's a massive, well-publicised trial complete with predawn raids and over 70 police officers, to hold seven people to account for public mischief.

Now it's come out that Reisman spoke to the Toronto police chief twice on the day of the attack, and the defence wants the police chief to testify as to what these conversations were about. They also want the court to order Reisman to produce records as to the exact nature of HESEG's activities. Naturally, her lawyers are now accusing them of trying to turn the trial "into a political soapbox".

Anyways, the long and the short of it is, billionaires can apparently just ring up the chief of police and get predawn raids by over 70 officers conducted in cases of misdemeanour defacement of property. Also, if you're in Canada and you're buying books for anyone this holiday season, for God's sake, get them at an independent bookstore.

[cameronspecial]

A New Kind Of Normal (Part 1)

Pairing: Dad!Rafe Cameron x Reader

Warnings: Drug Use, Swearing, Arguing, and Name Calling

Pronouns: She/Her

Word Count: 2.4K

Summary: Five years later, Rafe makes an unplanned stop at a diner that reveals a secret that Y/N has been keeping from him.

Masterlist

Y/N wipes the counter with a clean rag, looking up at the clock across the wall. Three more hours until Stella is dropped off from daycare. “If you think rubbing that spot over and over again will make a genie appear and you can wish for her to be here faster, then I’m sorry to say that you are going to be disappointed,” Harvey jokes, following her gaze to the clock. She stops cleaning, “Sorry, I just miss her so much. I think I’m PMSing.” “Sure, we can blame it on your period,” he laughs. Y/N pushes him over in annoyance, escaping to her back office to hopefully make the time go faster. 

She smiles at the picture of the grandma on the desk, settling on her chair to order more inventory. Her life plans weren’t exactly to take over the diner, yet it’s not like she was planning on having a baby at twenty either. Y/N was left the diner in her grandma’s will and she took it so that it could stay in the family. There are no regrets in either of those decisions. Sure, she didn’t get her big break in LA or New York, but she would never dream of trading her daughter for anything in the world. Stella Y/L/N is the light of her life, even if she is the spinning image of her dad. Stella is all Y/N’s and that’s all that matters. She may have Rafe’s eyes, but she has Y/N’s sense of humour. Her lips are the same as his, but she loves the same movies as her mom. Her hair colour may match his, but she also has the same bad habit of biting her nails as her mom. 

Y/N focuses on the words on her screen when Harvey comes running into her office. “A total hunk just came into the restaurant and I have been ordered by Patty to come get you. She thinks he can be your soulmate. Says to let you take his table,” he informs, pointing behind him with his thumb. Y/N shakes her head, “I’m the owner. I really should be the one telling you to take tables, but I won’t disappoint Patty. I’ll be out in a second.” Harvey nods and heads back out to check on his customers. She finishes up the order she was working on, fixing her shirt before heading out the door. 

The sound of a door opening draws Rafe’s attention and his heart stops at the scent of vanilla he hasn’t smelt in five years. Even if it was only one night, he has been haunted by the wearer of that scent for years. His eyes land on her and he can’t believe he gets to see her again. Her smile is still as brilliant. Y/N heads behind the counter to get an apron and his insides collapse in on himself as he watches her smile dim at his sight. He doesn’t know why she would be upset at him. She was the one who left in the morning without a word. Suddenly, the face on his watch needs to be constantly adjusted.

As Y/N exits her office, she has to stop herself from screaming at the man sitting in the booth. She could never forget him; a living reminder of him literally came out of her vagina almost four years ago. Fear creeps into her brain. The only possible reason he could be here after all these years is because of that living reminder.  With the resources he has, he would most certainly win custody over Stella and Y/N couldn’t allow that to happen. But maybe he doesn’t know about her. If he did, then wouldn’t it make more sense to bring a lawyer with him? She decides to find out why he is really here first before she goes on the defence as she walks over to take his order.  

“What are you doing here?” she grits through bared teeth. He gives her a confused look, “I had a meeting with clients. I thought I would stop to get something to eat before heading back to the Outer Banks.”

Her expression lightens up at his words. “So you aren’t here to see me?” His head moves from side to side, “No. I mean that night was amazing, but I wasn’t expecting to see you here. I’m just hungry.” He notices that her eyes keep glancing towards the clock and the nail of her thumb is being gripped by her teeth. He wonders why she looks so worried all of a sudden. 

“Okay, good. I mean cool. What can I get you? A burger? Salad? Pie?” 

“Woah, woah, woah. Slow down, Buttercup. Why are you in such a rush? Aren’t you going to get my drink order first?”

“Right. Of course. What can I get you to drink?”

“A coffee, please.” 

Rafe had never seen a woman run away from him so fast before and he has got to say that he is offended. He doesn’t know what he did to garner such a reaction from her, but he vows to make it up to her. His hand goes up to his mouth, so he can check his breath. Smells fine. The mug of coffee is quickly placed in front of him and she practically forces him to give her his food order right at this second. 

Y/N hands the order to Patty in the kitchen, “Pat, I need you to focus on this order, please. Get it out first and as fast as you can.” The older woman’s eyebrow shoots up. “That’s a little unusual, but I can do that for you, honey. Can you watch the other food then for me, please?” she asks. Y/N does as asks and makes sure the chicken tenders in the fryer don’t burn. Patty gets Rafe’s food done in a jiffy and Y/N takes it out to him. She stays behind the counter, looking between the clock and Rafe eating every so often. She swears she has never seen someone eat so slowly. He has to be doing this on purpose. He can feel her gaze on him and he has pieced together that something must be coming that she doesn’t want him to see. His curiosity gets the best of him, so he decides to make this lunch last.

The jingle of a bell above the door catches his attention. He turns to see a little girl run into the diner and round the counter to the woman standing behind it. “Mommy,” she screams, jumping into Y/N’s arms. With a clear view of the girl now that she is being carried by her mom, Rafe can now see her in more detail. 

The long locks that frame her face are the same muddy blonde colour as his. Her eyes match his ocean-blue ones. And she definitely inherited the shape of his lips. He tries to do the math in his head. He isn’t great at guessing kids’ age. She looks about three, maybe four. So four years plus the ten months of pregnancy, that child is almost certainly his. He feels like his world is falling in on itself. How could he not know that he had a little girl? Did she know she had a daddy? He promised himself if he ever had a kid that they would never feel the same way about him as he does about his dad. But he did one step worse by not even being in his daughter’s life. Anger starts to fill him and he knows he needs to find a way to manage it before he lets it out on the wrong person. 

“Stells, what are you doing back so early?” Y/N questions her grinning daughter, moving the hair out of the girl’s face. She nods along to the explanation about daycare ending early today, so Mrs. Winters dropped her off early. Her eyes are focused on Rafe and she watches as he pieces the puzzle together. She observes as he slaps money onto the table, quickly making his exit. “Shit,” the mother whispers. “Can you go to my office, please? Mommy will bring you a snack, baby.” Y/N makes sure Stella is making her way to the office before running after Rafe. Her feet slap against the concrete and she spots him entering his truck. She goes to chase after him, but he drives off in a blink of an eye.  

——

He had a daughter. He had a little girl that he could cherish and watch grow that she kept a secret from him. He doesn’t even know their daughter’s name. His anger fills him to the brim and he needs an outlet to get rid of it. The white powder in the small baggies calls to him, so he rushes to his coffee table. He draws the cocaine into lines and brings his nose down to snort the powder. The drugs start to affect him; his judgement starts to be clouded. 

He pulls his phone out of his pocket to dial a number, “Barry, I need you to find an address for me.”

——

“So how was daycare, Stella?” Y/N questions her daughter, cutting up a cucumber for a snack. Stella runs up to the counter, “It was good, Mommy. I got a rainbow sticker for being a good girl.” The girl pulls at the front of her shirt to show off the sticker on it. “That’s great, Baby. You must have worked hard today to be a good girl. I’m proud of the effort you put in. Now, why don’t you go get ready for your snack? Mommy is almost done getting everything ready,” she suggests, moving on to get the cheese cut. Stella yells an okay and runs to the bathroom. 

The hard knock on the door reverberates around the open floor plan of the small house. This stops Y/N in her tracks and she goes to answer the door. When she sees who it is, she tries to shut the door in his face, but his foot stops her. “How come you didn’t tell me I had a daughter?” he growls, pushing his way into her house. His force causes her to stumble backwards and luckily, she is able to catch herself before she falls on her bum like on the night they first met. She shuts the door, turning toward him, “I was going to tell you. But by the time I found out I was pregnant, I had already learnt the type of person you truly were.” 

“The type of person I truly was? What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” 

“Can you keep your voice down, please? She is just down the hall.”

“What do you mean?” he snarls, approaching her so they are chest to chest. The dark look in his eyes and the towering figure over her should’ve scared her. She can see the abnormal size of his pupils, so she knows he is high. However, she can’t stop thinking about the man that she met. Not about the stories of his anger issues or how he beats people to a pulp. Not about how he not only does cocaine but sells it at parties too. All she can see is the man who lost his button and ranted about how his father is an asshole. Passing the anger of her hiding Stella, she can see the sadness he feels about missing out on her life so far. Yet, the fact that he shows up at her house, high and yelling while Stella is there causes her to feel her own fury as her maternal side starts to show. 

She stands straight, taking a few steps forward that makes him walk backwards, “What do I mean? I mean that I found out that you not only do drugs, but you sell them. I found out that you beat people up who aren’t in the same financial circle as you. I found out that you have anger issues that you don’t seem to want to change. Rafe, you weren’t the type of father I wanted for my daughter.” Seeing such a sweet person say all those vile but true things about him sends a pang through his heart. 

“You never gave me a chance to change! I would’ve done anything for her if I knew she existed.” 

“Really? Because from where I’m standing right now, you are proving me right. Look what you did when you found out about her. You didn’t try to talk to me like an adult. You went out and got high then barged into my house demanding answers.” 

“You know what? All of you bitches are the same. You think that you are so much better than everyone because you don’t do drugs or get angry. Well let me tell you something, you are just a poor slut who got pregnant on purpose to have a permanent cash cow. You aren’t better than me. You are just better at hiding it than me.”

The volume she was about to talk at was not one she had ever used before, but she wasn’t about to let him talk about her or her daughter like that. “GET OUT! I NEVER WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN UNLESS YOU HAVE A LAWYER WITH YOU!” She storms toward the door and throws the door open. Rafe didn’t think someone with such a nice personality could be so loud. It helps bring him back to reality and he realizes what he just did. His shoulders relax with his anger. He looks at her sadly as he follows her pointed finger out of the door.

Y/N shuts it once he is out the door. She runs her fingers through her hair, giving a tug to the end of her roots. The frustrated sigh she lets out is the only sound in the room until a small voice catches her attention. “Mommy, are you okay?” Y/N turns to her teary-eyed daughter and concern floods through her. She rushes to her, bringing her up to rest against her hip. Her forehead rests against the younger girl’s temple, “I’m okay, Stells. Mommy isn’t hurt, just angry. Are you okay, Baby? I know hearing Mommy yell might have been scary. I’m sorry you had to hear that.” Stella’s arms circle her mother’s shoulders and she gives her mother a kiss on the cheek as comfort. “I’m okay, Mommy. The scary man is gone now. Who was he?” 

Y/N wishes she could pretend like there was no man, but Stella had obviously seen Rafe. There is no denying it. Y/N just has no idea who she wants Rafe to be to her daughter. 

Taglist: @loves0phelia @thelomlisrafecameron @wickedlovely121 @thepatriarchykeychain @drewsmusee @starkowswife @maybankslover @forstarkey @loving-and-dreaming @drewstarkeyswifehoe @kisstaya @magicalyoura @mp-littlebit @loverfu55ii

[mariacallous]

Women who are raped are in many countries – perhaps in most – violated and abused again by the legal system. And yet during her reckoning with the crimes of her husband and 50 other men, all now found guilty in a historic set of verdicts, Gisèle Pelicot seized control of the narrative, becoming a hero in France and around the world.

After she discovered her husband had been drugging her and offering her up online to strangers to come and rape while she was unconscious, Gisèle left her home, her marriage and the story she had told herself about her life, and spent some time in seclusion.

When she emerged, she made two key decisions that transformed her into a feminist hero. The conviction of her rapists and the husband who orchestrated them is justice of a sort (despite some of their sentences seeming shockingly short), but it could all have taken place in the context of the same old story: the shaming, blaming and bullying of a woman in court. She broke that story, and wrote her own instead.

One decision was practical: to waive her right to anonymity and go public. Her lawyer, Stéphane Babonneau, said that had she kept the matter private, “she would be behind doors with nobody but her, us, perhaps some family, and 51 accused men and 40 defence lawyers. And she didn’t want to be jailed in a courtroom with them for four months, her on one side and 90 other people on the opposite benches.”

It was a bold decision, and one that meant, ultimately, that even if 90 people were on the opposite benches, millions who support women’s rights were with her, offering her flowers, cheers and support as she entered and exited the court day after day; demonstrating in her name, demanding France come to terms with its rampant misogyny. These actions represent another verdict - one that is perhaps even more powerful than the court’s.

This huge public response is a result of Gisèle Pelicot’s other moral and psychological decision: to reject shame. Rape victims are often privately and publicly shamed at every stage after the sexual assault – by the rapist, his lawyer, the police, the court system, the media. They are blamed for what happened and told it was their fault; upbraided for their past sexual activities, their choice of clothing, their decision to be out in the world, to interact – if they did – with the rapist, to not fight even if they were threatened with death. They are routinely discredited if the trauma of the event scrambles their memory. They are told they are not believable, that they are vindictive or unreliable or dishonest. Often the shame that is so prevalent in this society is internalised at the outset, repeating what rape itself does: disempowers, silences, traumatises.

It is against this backdrop that Pelicot��s story electrified women all over the world. She came and went from the court with dignity, accepting her visibility as lines of supporters began to form to cheer her on and brought her flowers. She showed no desire to hide. She declared: “I want those women to say: ‘Mrs Pelicot did it, we can do it too.’ When you’re raped there is shame, and it’s not for us to have shame, it’s for them.” For the rapists, she meant, not the raped.

Many women decline to press charges because of a reasonable fear of these consequences. This is not a problem of the past. As recently as 9 December, a woman dropped a federal lawsuit for sexual harassment she had filed against the former governor Andrew Cuomo, who resigned after an inquiry found that he sexually harassed multiple women in 2021. Gothamist reported of the former staffer: “Charlotte Bennett and her lawyer, Debra Katz, accused Cuomo of weaponizing the discovery process by making ‘invasive’ requests that were designed to ‘humiliate’ her, including demands for documentation from gynecologist visits and other medical records.” (Cuomo’s lawyers claim Bennett withdrew “to avoid being confronted with the mountains of exculpatory discovery … that completely refute her claims.”)

France has long offered refuge to Roman Polański, who fled the US after pleading guilty to unlawful sex with a 13-year-old he had also drugged. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was in 2011 the managing director of the International Monetary Fund and a prominent member of France’s Socialist party, was accused that May by a New York hotel cleaner of sexual assault. He denied the charges and she was disbelieved and discredited brutally by much of the press and Strauss-Kahn’s powerful friends, her history as a refugee who had suffered female genital mutilation combed over, while conspiracy theories circulated which exonerated Strauss-Kahn. (The charges in the criminal case were dropped in 2011 with the prosecutors citing substantial credibility issues with the maid’s evidence. The civil claim was settled out of court in 2012.)

France is a country where accusations of male sexual crimes have long been ignored; the accused excused or even celebrated by conflating being libertine with being liberated. Will that change now? Some, I hope; not enough, I expect.

Gisèle Pelicot’s heroic boldness in facing the horrific things that had happened to her – in rejecting shame, in standing up for her rights – is admirable. It’s also not a response available to all survivors. Not every case is so clearcut and so well documented that the public and the law have no doubts about the guilt and innocence, the right and wrong. Not everyone will have the excellent lawyers and public support that she has – in fact most won’t, and more than a few will receive death threats and harassment for reporting sexual assault, as some of Donald Trump’s accusers have. I don’t know that Gisèle Pelicot hasn’t received threats, but I do know she has received an unprecedented amount of support. Despite this support, lawyers for the rapists have made familiar accusations – that she’s vengeful, an exhibitionist for allowing the videos to be shown in court, insufficiently sad (rape victims are always supposed to walk the fine – or nonexistent – line between not emotional enough and too emotional).

What I have written is what a lot of people have written about this case: Mme Pelicot has been extraordinary; Frenchwomen have poured out to support her; women around the world have followed the case, discussed it, thought about it. But have men? Until men engage earnestly and honestly with the pervasiveness of sexual assault and the aspects of the culture that celebrate and normalise it, not enough will change.

Many of Gisèle Pelicot’s rapists denied they were rapists, assumed that her husband was entitled to give them permission to assault her while she was unconscious, and all of them demonstrated that they were eager to have sex with a drugged, unconsenting older woman while her husband watched and recorded their crimes. Their sentences may instil fear of the consequences of committing sexual assault, but will they change the desire to do so?

The criminal justice system cannot change culture and consciousness; that happens elsewhere. Feminism has done astonishing work in changing the status of women these past 60 years, but it is not women’s work to change or fix men. And while many men are feminists, far too many men are immersed in the kind of rape culture on display in this trial. One can at least hope that the Gisèle Pelicot case is an occasion and instigation for this work, these conversations, this transformation.

May her example give weight to those trying to change the culture, may the convictions of her assailants serve as a warning, may her dignity and poise inspire other victims and, most of all, may there be fewer victims in a better culture.

Those are the things I can wish for. It will take the will of many and the transformation of institutions to reach those goals. But the example of Gisèle Pelicot offers inspiration – and hope.

[damnfandomproblems]

Fandom Problem #6275:

A show recently premiered in my country. It's based on a true story. The showmakers used the real people's names, the real places, the real dates, everything so no one can defend it by pretending it's fiction.

The true story went like this: two high school students were dating. Their relationship was secret because her parents wouldn't approve. She got pregnant. She knew her parents would find out about the boyfriend, so she accused her least favourite teacher of raping her. He was arrested and tried, and only acquitted because the girl finally admitted she lied and explained she'd accused him out of personal dislike.

The show goes like this: the teacher really is a child molester. He really does rape the girl. His defence lawyer drugs her and makes her confess to lying while she's high-I wish I was making this up. The teacher's acquittal is portrayed as a dreadful injustice.

Yeah. Unsurprisingly, the teacher's family and everyone who remembers the real case are furious about it. I find it incredibly depressing. It shows that once a man is accused of rape, it doesn't matter how much evidence he has to prove his innocence. The accuser can publicly admit her whole story was a lie and years later someone will come along, rewrite history and make her an innocent victim.

[morbidology]

Jonathan Hoffman, a 17-year-old senior at Farmington Central High School, resided with his grandparents, Sandra Layne and Fred Layne, in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan. This arrangement came about as his parents, Michael and Jennifer Hoffman, navigated a divorce in Arizona, where they had relocated approximately a year prior.

Opting to remain in Michigan for his final year of high school, Jonathan had recently received acceptance to Eastern Michigan University. Upon the completion of the divorce proceedings, Jennifer intended to return to Michigan to reunite with her son.

Jonathan had had several minor run ins with law enforcement. On the 17th of March, 2011, 17-year-old Jonathan was pulled over in Farmington Hills and ticketed for possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia in the form of a grinder. He received a 93 day suspended sentence and was placed on 12 months’ probation.

Then on the 21st of March, West Bloomfield Township police responded to complaints outside the home. When they arrived, they found Sandra and Jonathan outside the home arguing. Jonathon told police that he was angry over a text message that his father had sent him. When Jonathan calmed down, police left and no arrests were made and no citations were issued.

At around 5:30PM the 18th of May, 2011, a 911 call was placed to West Bloomfield Township police.

The phone call was placed by Jonathan. He said that his grandmother had shot him in the chest and he was going to die. Around three minutes into the phone call, Jonathan is heard pleading “no grandma” before exclaiming to the dispatcher that he had been shot again. At one point in the phone call, a woman can he heard shouting: “Let go, let go. You’ve got to let go!” Towards the end of the phone call, the same woman can be heard calmly saying: “I will get you a drink of water.”

As officers pulled up to the upscale condo, they heard several more shots. They found Sandra standing behind a screened door. She was holding a .40-caliber handgun but placed it on the floor when ordered to do so by police. She came out of the door, raised her hands and screamed: “I murdered my grandson!”

Upstairs, the officers discovered the lifeless body of 17-year-old Jonathon Hoffman. He had been shot 5 times with 9mm glock. He was shot in the upper right armpit area, in the upper right chest, in the left arm near the shoulder, in the left lower chest and on the left side of the abdomen. Four of the shots had been close range. He was rushed to Botsford Hospital where he was declared dead.

According to Sandra’s attorneys, there were problems in the home and Sandra was afraid of her grandson. One of the attorneys, Mitchell Ribitwer, told reporters outside that drugs and drug paraphernalia was discovered inside the home that belonged to Jonathon.

He also said that in March, police had responded to a domestic disturbance call at the home. According to defence Ribitwer: “I spoke to the officer who responded, and he indicated this young man was totally out of control in the street. He was derogatory to his grandmother. He was yelling and shouting and almost got into it with police.”

Sandra said to detectives that Jonathan had been taking the synthetic drug, K2, and that it changed his character. She said he had become increasingly violent after taking the drug and purchased a gun because she feared that he would kill her. After Jonathan had been ticketed for marijuana possession and drug paraphernalia, the court had ordered him to undergo alcohol and drug treatment which was monitored by random testing.

According to Sandra’s lawyers, Jonathan had violated his probation on the day of his murder when he tested positive for the K2 drug. They claimed that this led to an argument during which Sandra had feared for her own life. However, Jonathan's autopsy showed that the drug was not present in his urine.

During the trial, prosecutors said Sandra had followed her grandson to the bedroom loft after shooting him once. But before this, she had gone into the basement, walking through Jonathan's blood, to retrieve more ammunition, showing intent.

Ultimately, Sandra Layne was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 20 to 40 years in prison, as well as an additional two years for using a firearm in the commission of a felony.

[reginacriminallaw]

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[maximoff-forevermore]

Memories

Summary: You and your fiancé, Frankie "Catfish" Morales, get into a car accident.

Warnings: No use of Y/N, mentions of SA, child abuse, child SA, mentions of abusive relationship (not between Frankie and reader), mentions of drug use, allusions to murder (self-defence), mentions of military, mentions of divorce, mentions of depression, mentions of suicide, mentions of anxiety, drugs, no happy ending, barely edited, I think that's all? If I've missed something, let me know

A/N: I kind of stole this idea from a friend of mine, @/ramblers-let's-get-ramblin. She said she sort of dumped all of her trauma into a google doc and made it a fic, and I did the same thing. This is kind of a mopefest, and I've never written anything and posted it before, so I hope you enjoy, as much as you can, anyway.

Word Count: 2.5k

Pairing: Frankie “Catfish” Morales x F!Reader

You remember sitting in front of a fireplace.

Winter had come in the lashing of wind on the windows, glass shaking and a roof made of heartbreak and filth barely withstanding the cold it had withstood many times before.

You had held your sister close, your blood, your only love, to your chest, whispering in her ear as she cried over her first breakup.

When her sobs had eased, and the spot of your skin her shoulder dug into had grown numb, you whispered, “You will find the right one.”

You whispered those words a lot.

Whispered them into your pillow, into the mirror, into your own hand to muffle your cries as the second, then third and fourth stepfather took what he wanted from you.

You needed to remember those words.

If you were being completely honest, the first time you let a man put a ring on your finger, you knew he had not been the right one.

You knew because you did not know him.

All you knew was that he had a house without the echo of your mother’s vicious screams and a bed for you to sleep in that would not be tainted with the hands of men who never asked.

At least marrying him was something akin to permission.

At least a wedding ring would stave anyone else off.

And so, you married him.

The man you did not know, the man who believed to love you but truly wanted to possess you, you married him.

With time, you came to love him.

Professionals would have called it something like Stockholm Syndrome, but for you, then, it had been love.

You never left the house—simply were not allowed to.

You studied online, but only in the dark, hiding your laptop screen from the man you loved.

You justified it, merely saying he would support you when the time came.

He worked, he slept, he ate, he fucked, though not always you, and it hurt when it wasn’t you, but in the darker part of your mind, you knew it was best.

You forgot what it was like to leave the house, to live under a sun and to live with love and laughter and friends.

Your sister stayed in touch, but she was the only one.

Eventually, through a sequence of unspeakable events, of bruises all over your body and blood on a nightgown that barely fit, you would sit in a courtroom for months, and, finally, listen to the judge call it “self-defence”.

The judge said a lot of things, as did the lawyers.

You didn’t listen to any of them.

There was this harrowing silence within you, it drew in the things of everyone around you, melting them, turning them into puddles of distance, where their faces blurred and their words, sometimes accusations and sometimes comforts, fell on ears that weren’t yours because surely if they were yours you would be able to use them?

You had thought, during those months, that perhaps no pain or silence would ever live up to that.

You had been wrong.

Now, you lie in a hospital bed, a few years later.

Years spent healing, loving, learning, studying, and now, finally, dying.

Your sister had said it with such relief.

“You won’t die. You’re going to be fine.”

No. Lie.

You were dying. That’s what this feeling was.

It had to be death.

You had not answered, staring ahead, waiting for one person to step into your line of vision.

Frankie. Your Frankie.

It was a coma.

Your Frankie locked in a coma.

How he would hate to ever be such a thing.

You knew it, because you knew him.

Loved him, as he knew and loved you.

You had healed together, learned together, loved together, grown together.

You had met when he and a horrid, filthy drug pierced his system, and he needed it to.

You had “cut right through his bullshit”, as he always said when he told the story, refusing to go out with him.

He always said he changed because you didn’t ask him to.

You had not given him conditions, you had not asked him to grow or be someone new, you had looked at him, seen him for what he was, and denied him.

You had needed him to be someone he wasn’t, so you had said no, instead of asking him to be different.

And thus, he had changed.

Changed because he had needed you, exactly as you were, and would not stop until you could be his as much as he was already yours.

He joked in the years after the first kiss, joked that his heart had buried itself behind your ear the first time his fingers had brushed yours as he handed you a drink.

For Halloween, you had asked to go as Morticia and Gomez Addams.

“It fits us,” you said, grinning broadly, wooden spoon in your hand as you stirred his favourite.

You always made his favourite, he always whispered that anything you made was his favourite, so maybe you were cheating.

But still, it was his favourite.

That was all that mattered.

Frankie shook his head. “No.”

You were dumbfounded. He never said no to you.

The first few months you’d scolded him for it, telling him he needed to tell you when he wasn’t okay, when he needed to say no.

He promised he would, but he never said no.

This might have been the first time, so you nodded. “Okay. Sure.”

He shrugged, moving around the kitchen island, coming up behind you, his arms like puzzle pieces fitting around your waist.

Perfect.

The two of you were perfect together.

He pressed a kiss to the back of your head. “I just think we should save Morticia and Gomez for when we get married.”

You leaned back into his words, smiling a smile you thought your lips would never be capable of. “When we get married?”

“When,” he promised into your scalp, smile matching yours.

The ring wasn’t on your finger now.

Someone else was keeping it, you weren’t sure who, but it wouldn’t fit on your left hand, aching and swollen and bandaged.

The doctors would not say anything to you at first, then they said he was in a coma.

When they finally told you his condition, you had screamed.

Screamed so loud you knew the sleep of some of the other patients had been disturbed.

You had sobbed and wailed and one of the nurses had tried to calm you, explaining that the vicious pain all throughout your torso was from your injuries, but you deserved it.

Deserved the cuts and scrapes and stabs and stitches because you were here and he was not and there was nothing that could right that wrong but the pain of your body was a step.

Eventually, they called your sister, and your other sister who was not yours by blood but yours all the same and they had held you.

Flowers sat at your bedside table, flowers for the wounds, oh, but the wounds meant nothing.

Nothing next to the pain inside.

The injuries, you supposed, were a happy coincidence.

Because they kept you bedridden, and the only thing that had kept you from suicide was the fact that you simply had not the muscles nor movement to do so.

The nurse had come in later, when the tears had stopped but not dried, when the screaming had stopped coming from your mouth but still echoed in your mind, and told you to sleep.

You didn’t.

Your eyelids were so heavy, your body so stiff, your head aching.

You didn’t close your eyes, lest you miss it.

People talked about hallucinations, about losing a loved one and seeing them afterwards.

So you kept your eyes open.

Waiting. Looking. Watching.

You needed to see him.

You needed it.

Craved it.

But he wasn’t there.

And that wasn’t fair.

You had been through so much, so many hands, so many locked doors, so many tears, surely you were insane?

Surely you saw things that weren’t there?

He wasn’t here.

So you had to see him.

You didn’t, though.

You didn’t see anyone.

Your sisters came again the following morning, with soft smiles and softer words and the softest hands.

They said your mother wanted to visit.

Your chest was too tight to say anything, but your sister who shared your soul and not your blood touched your hand—not gripped it, for fear of broken bones and split skin—and promised she would never let that happen.

Frankie’s brothers, his military brothers, came to visit you, too.

You cried when you saw them, they cried with you.

Santiago had sat next to you as everyone else began to filter out.

He’d opened his mouth, and you knew what he’d been about to say.

“Don’t,” you whispered, tears burning their way up your throat. “I don’t care. I just—I can’t, please. Not—not right now.”

He had nodded, tears in his own eyes, holding you to his shoulder carefully as sobs so violent they ripped stitches wracked your broken body.

Santiago had gone with Frankie that day, many days ago, now, to change his will and leave everything to you.

Frankie and Santiago had both thought it a secret, but Frankie’s beautiful, little girl had come running to you, and you had known for months.

You didn’t want to hear about the will. Not now.

Not ever.

You talked about it often, the money Frankie had come into when his absent, Scrooge McDuck–type of father had died, and, for some unknown reason, left it all to Frankie.

It was a running joke; the rich, older man you’d swindled, the money you’d ultimately have because of the ring he was always planning to put on your finger.

Truthfully, the money had always meant shit to you.

Growing up poor as dirt, money had been a luxury, and you would never take it for granted.

But around Frankie?

Money meant nothing.

There was no richness to compare to the richness of the laughter he gave you when you cracked a foul joke, no amount of swimming in pools of gold to compare to swimming in pools of water with his arms around you and your legs around him.

Money was four letters short of happiness, because you needed nine letters to spell Francisco.

When Santiago left, Frankie’s ex trundled in, having stayed good friends with Frankie after the divorce and hitting it off with you.

There had been something special about it, exchanging stories and tears and memories with her, while Frankie’s daughter napped with her head painfully digging into the ruin the car had left of your thigh.

Then the nurse had ushered them out, and you’d asked if your sister could come back.

The nurse couldn’t say no, not to you, not with a ruined body and a worse heart, so your sister had come back briefly.

You had asked her to bring your laptop.

“You can barely type,” she had said.

You shook your head. “I need to. Please. Please let me put this somewhere.”

Your words slurred, either from the drugs coming through the IV in your hand or the cuts on your face.

Your sister had nodded, kissing your forehead, avoiding your damage, and the nurse handed you the laptop about an hour later.

She was right.

You could barely type.

Still, you had to write something.

Something broken. Something unfinished. Something sad. Something lonely.

Something like you.

Writing was never your thing, it was just something you did.

In your room, in between school and homework and nights you didn’t speak of, you wrote.

You wrote a lot in the time you spent locked in a house with a ring on your finger and not a soul who knew you but a sister you couldn’t see.

You’d lost it, getting out, turning to studies that consumed your time, turning to Frankie.

You found it again now, with hands that can barely type, a body in pain but barely noticeable.

You know you don’t really feel it.

Not yet.

The realising will come later.

You doubt you’ll survive.

You won’t have to leave the hospital, not for a good long while, and that’s the biggest relief you could possibly get.

You don’t have to eat. You don’t have to think.

You can just lie here, pain eating away at every muscle you own, half-curled into yourself as your tears refuse to let your pillow dry, thinking about Frankie.

Every memory you have, every smile he gave you, every moment, you lie there and stare at nothing while you think about him.

You may never think about anything else ever again.

You don’t know if you have the strength.

Everyone around you is waiting for you to snap. For the ball to drop and for you to start screaming and throwing blame.

You can’t.

Anger takes energy, anger requires for there to be something within you.

There’s nothing left.

You’re a hollow shell of a creature, the only thing you’re capable of doing is remembering.

You messaged a few friends online. You’re grateful for all of them. There’s this understanding between you, that you’re going to act like a normal person with a normal life, and they’re going to let you. They don’t avoid it, but they don’t mention it, not unless you do.

That means more than they think. For them to let you pretend, for them to pretend with you.

Sometimes they help bring you back to reality, telling you it’s going to suck and nothing will feel right.

That helps.

You don’t know what else could possibly help you, but you think you might have a suspicion.

So you get someone to bring you a pillow, put it on your lap and place your laptop on top, like a makeshift desk.

You start typing.

Stories, memories, Frankie.

You’ve heard of people who avoid the names of their spouses but you can’t. Won’t.

You can’t stop saying it, writing it.

He needs to be alive, he has to be, or else whatever remains of you will fade into nothing.

He has to be alive somewhere.

So you write.

Tomorrow, you don’t think you’ll have the energy to do such a thing.

You find you don’t have much energy, not anymore.

For now, you write.

It’s all you can do.

Someday, what’s left of your resolve will drip away into the hollowness of where Frankie should be.

Then you’ll wither away into a shadow, into a broken doll forgotten under the bed.

Either that shadow will regrow into a person, or it won’t.

You have no idea which it might be, and you’re scared.

You wrap yourself in memories and tears so you might continue to feel, but wrapping yourself is so tiring.

You’re so tired.

You’ve been hospitalised for four days, awake for two, maybe three.

You have no idea how you’re supposed to live past midnight tonight.

Maybe you won’t.

Maybe your injuries and your hurt and your hollowness will carry you away in the night, never to be seen again.

Maybe all that’s left of you will be the words on paper that you give to Frankie.

Maybe that’s all you want.

To be with Frankie.

Whether in his arms, or two words on a page, or in the ground, you just want to be with him.

Maybe you’ll live.

Maybe you won’t.

The doctors had come into your room three times.

The first, they refused to tell you anything.

The second, they said he was in a coma.

The third time—

True happiness was nine letters long, while death only four.

But four had been enough.

Tags: @planet-marz1 @catchallfangirl @pamasaur @janaispunk

[warningsine]

They are young, old, burly, thin, black and white. Among them are firefighters, lorry drivers, soldiers, security guards, a journalist and a DJ.

These are the 50 men accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot at the behest of her husband, Dominique Pelicot, 72, who drugged her for a decade with prescription sleeping pills.

The fact they broadly represent a microcosm of French society means they have been dubbed Monsieur-Tout-Le-Monde (Mr Everyman).

Next week they are due to be sentenced, at the end of a trial that started in September. If found guilty, collectively they face more than 600 years in jail.

A few of them act defiant, but they mostly look down as they answer questions from the judges, looking up occasionally to catch their lawyers' eyes for reassurance.

Warning: You may find some of the details of this story disturbing

Most of the 50 all come from towns and villages in a 50km (30-mile) radius of the Pelicots' own village of Mazan.

Some defence lawyers have seen in their ordinariness a valuable line of defence. "Ordinary people do extraordinary things," said Antoine Minier, a lawyer representing three defendants.

"I think almost everybody could end up in a situation - well, maybe not exactly like this one - but could be susceptible to committing a serious crime," he told the BBC.

'My body raped her, but my brain didn't'

Prosecutors have based their sentencing demands to the court on aggravating factors. How many times the defendants came to the Pelicot home, whether they touched Gisèle Pelicot sexually, and if they penetrated her.

Joseph C, 69, a retired sports coach and doting grandfather, faces four years in jail for sexual assault if found guilty. That is the most lenient sentence requested by prosecutors.

At the other end of the scale, is Romain V, 63, who faces 18 years in prison. He was knowingly HIV-positive and is accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot on six separate occasions without wearing protection - although his lawyer told the court he had treatment for several years and couldn't have transmitted the virus.

Prosecutors have been able to go into this level of detail because, unusually for a rape trial, there is a staggering amount of evidence, as the alleged assaults were filmed over almost a decade by Dominique Pelicot.

He has admitted all the charges against him and has told the court all 50 of his co-accused are guilty too.

All the video evidence means none of the men have been able to deny they ever went to the Pelicots' home. But the majority vehemently contest the charges of aggravated rape that would incur hefty sentences.

France's rape law defines rape as any sexual act committed by "violence, coercion, threat or surprise"; it has no reference to any need for consent.

Therefore, they also argue they cannot be guilty of rape because they were unaware Gisèle Pelicot was not in a position to give her consent.

"There can be no crime without the intention to commit it," said one defence lawyer.

"My body raped her, but my brain didn't," insisted volunteer firefighter Christian L, in an example of the convoluted reasoning offered by some of the men.

The one man of the 50 who is not accused of raping Gisèle Pelicot is Jean-Pierre M, 63, who has been dubbed Dominique Pelicot's "disciple".

Having learned how to drug his wife in order to abuse her, he did so for five years and admits it.

He blames his crimes on meeting Dominique Pelicot, who he says was "reassuring, like a cousin". Prosecutors are seeking a 17-year jail term.

'Manipulated and tricked by Pelicot'

Ahmed T, a 54-year-old plumber who has been married to his childhood sweetheart for 30 years, said that if had he wanted to rape someone, he would have not chosen a woman in her 60s.

Redouane A, an unemployed man aged 40, argued that if he had set out to rape Gisèle he would not have allowed her husband to take videos.

Some also say they were intimidated by Dominique Pelicot, who one lawyer told the BBC, was an "abominable character".

In tears, male nurse Redouan E told the courtroom he was too scared of him to leave the bedroom. "Maybe you can't tell from the videos, but I was really terrified!" he told judges.

Others maintain they were offered drinks that were spiked with drugs and therefore cannot remember the encounter, although Dominique Pelicot has denied ever doing this.

The majority, however, maintain they were manipulated or tricked by Dominique Pelicot, who convinced them they were taking part in a sex game with a consensual couple.

"They were put in a situation where they were scammed," Christophe Bruschi, Joseph C's lawyer, told the BBC. "They were taken for a ride."

But Dominique Pelicot has always said he made it abundantly clear to the men that his wife was not aware of the plot.

He gave them instructions to avoid waking her up or leaving traces that they had been there – such as warming their hands before touching his wife, or not smelling of perfume or cigarettes, he said.

"They all knew, they cannot deny it."

Families scrambling for answers

Since September, the 50 men have appeared, one after the other, in front of the court in Avignon.

Usually in rape cases character investigations can take several days.

In this trial, because of the sheer number of defendants involved, they have been condensed into a few hours at most. Their lives have been dissected at record speed, often turning the court session into a litany of stories of abuse and trauma.

Simoné M, a 43-year-old construction worker, said he was raped when he was 11 by a family friend who employed him to look after cattle in the French overseas territory of New Caledonia.

Father-of-four Jean-Luc L, 46, told the court how he and his family had left Vietnam on a dinghy when he was a child and lived in a refugee camp in Thailand for several years before moving to France.

Fabien S, a 39-year-old man with several previous convictions including drug dealing and sexual assault of a minor, was abused and beaten by foster parents from a very young age. Like several others, he said he only realised during psychiatrist appointments ordered by the court that his hazy, painful childhood memories actually constituted rape.

Many wives, partners and family members of the defendants were called up to give character statements. They, too, scrambled for answers as they sought to understand how the men in their lives could have ended up "caught up in this kind of situation", as one woman put it.

"I was shocked, it doesn't sound like him at all. He was the joy of my life," said the elderly father of Christian L.

The firefighter is also being investigated for possessing child abuse imagery, as are four others, and faces 16 years in jail. "Something must have happened, he must have become depressed," his father wondered aloud.

'I will always be there for him'

Corinne, the ex-wife of 54-year-old Thierry Pa, a former builder, said he had always been "kind" and "respectful" to her and their children and appeared to leave the door open for a reconciliation him.

"When they told me what he was accused of I said: 'never, that's impossible... I don't understand what he's doing here at all.'" She believed it was the death of their 18-year-old son that had led her ex-husband to fall into a deep depression, start drinking and eventually make contact with Dominique Pelicot.

"I will always be there for him, whatever happens," said the ex-girlfriend of Guyana-born Joan K. At 27, he is the youngest of the defendants and a former soldier in the French army.

He has denied raping Gisèle Pelicot on two occasions. While he knew she would be unconscious, he said he had not realised she had not given her consent.

In floods of tears, a woman called Samira said she has spent the last three and a half years "looking for answers" as to why Jérôme V had gone to the Pelicots' six times.

"We had daily intercourse, I don't understand why he had to go look elsewhere," she sobbed. She is still in a relationship with Jérôme V, who was working at a greengrocer's at the time of his arrest.

He is one of the few who have admitted to raping Gisèle, saying he liked the idea of having "free rein" over her – but blamed it however on his "uncontrollable sexuality".

Gisèle Pelicot: They raped me in full conscience

Many former and current partners of the defendants have undergone tests to see if they too had been drugged like Gisèle. One woman said she would "always have a terrible doubt" that the "respectful, thoughtful, sweet man" she knew had abused her too without her knowledge.

Since the start of the trial, much has been made of the need to find an element that ties all these men together.

A common denominator – beside the fact that all the men went to the Pelicots' of their own free will - "remains nowhere to be found," Gisèle's own lawyers have said.

But there is one factor all the defendants indisputably have in common: they all made the conscious choice not to go to the police.

Firefighter Jacques C, 73, said he had considered it but "then life just carried on", while electrician Patrice N, 55, said he "didn't want to waste the whole day at the police station".

In the early days of the trial, Gisèle Pelicot was asked whether she thought it was legitimate to think the men had been manipulated by her husband.

She shook her head: "They didn't rape me with a gun to their heads. They raped me in full conscience."

Almost as an afterthought, she asked: "Why didn't they go to the police? Even an anonymous phone call could have saved my life."

"But not one did," she said after a pause. "Not a single one of them."

[mywingsareonwheels]

Here be yet more Fred Thursday musings ;-)

[Long post and spoilers for all of Endeavour here.]

So, I was thinking yet again (for the billionth time ;-) ) about Fred Thursday and the three people we see him kill over the course of Endeavour while trying to save someone else:-

Mrs Coke-Norris

Ludo Talenti

Raymond Kennitt/Peter Williams

The show seems to be pointing us into believing that the third of those is somehow much, much worse than the first two and I... have a problem with this.

I mean, in all three cases Fred was responding to an immediate threat to life (of someone he cared about, and in the second and third cases also Fred himself). In the case of Mrs C-N Fred was officially on duty which gives him some extra legal cover, but I'd say no extra moral cover.

I'm no legal expert, but from what I understand, under English-and-Welsh law, none of the three were murders; you're looking at manslaughter at worst, at best a good case for self/other-defence, which... is a grey area but certainly a decent defence lawyer could have had a good go.

(It is worth noting, of course, that this is the morseverse and this is Fred Thursday; he's made so many enemies both in the criminal justice system and among criminals, mostly through doing actively good things, that his chances of either a fair trial or then surviving prison are basically non-existent. I think we have to weigh all of Morse's decisions in "Exeunt" with that in mind because there's no way Morse isn't aware of it. Sam's chances of surviving prison for drug-dealing I think we can assume would also be remote, again due to the enemies Fred has made. And I think again, we have to weigh both Fred's and Morse's decisions with that in mind.)

So... yeah. I think there are only three things that you might consider as making the killing of Raymond Kennitt worse than that of Ludo Talenti or Mrs Coke-Norris:-

the use of the knife rather than a gun, which makes it theoretically possible that Fred could have found a way to end the fight that didn't involve killing Kennitt. That does strike me as something that's probably easier to see from a backseat than if you're Fred in the middle of what's happening, but still.

we know Kennitt's horrifying backstory (not that Fred does), and so feel huge amounts of compassion for him even though he's obviously awful in the "present", and sympathy for the grief that Jakes would feel if he knew what had happened. That's inevitable I think, but, well. Can we be sure that Mrs C-N and Ludo aren't child abuse survivors too? (We do know that Fred and Charley both are, though not the details.) All in all, I think this is a show that wants us to feel compassion for as many characters as possible, and I don't want to assume that Mrs C-N and Ludo didn't end up Like That for no reason.

the fact that Fred kills Mrs C-N and Ludo in defense of Morse (the protagonist, Fred's protege, and a character we all love) and kills Kennitt in defense of Sam (a more minor character, and Fred's son). I would hope that Morse wouldn't see it like that and that neither does Russell Lewis because obviously that's a dreadful position to hold, but... yeeeah. It would annoy me a lot if that's part of the reasoning of the show, but protagonist-centered morality is a flaw in an awful lot of fiction, and while Endeavour mostly doesn't give into it, I don't think any writers are immune. So I do have a horrible suspicion that this is the bit that makes the actual difference, even though I really think it shouldn't be. If Fred had killed Kennitt to save Morse rather than Sam... would we as an audience feel differently? (I ask that of myself as well as of anyone else who wants to ask it of themselves! And honestly, I probably would feel better about the killing if it was for Morse, even though rationally I know it's no different!)

I'd actually say that in the case of the killing of Kennitt there are a couple of minor mitigating factors that the first two lack:-

Fred is in the worst state mentally we ever see him in "Exeunt", and is completely falling apart; earlier in the day he had some form of heart episode or possibly severe panic attack. At any rate: he's going through hell and he is ill as a result.

I can't actually remember if he has his gun with him during the fight with Kennitt, but he certainly isn't willing to use it given the situation; the knife is Kennitt's not his, and a weapon you aren't intending to use is for practical purposes not here, so he's... taken on an armed man while essentially unarmed. Fucking berserker that he is. Rather than two people with guns going up against each other.

you can see a moment of decision in Roger's face for the killings of both Mrs C-N and Ludo; by Fred's own account to Morse (which I think we can take as honest) he didn't make any conscious decision to kill Kennitt (see above re awful mental state).

Honesty? I think that killing in immediate self-defence and/or defence-of-other is however as close to necessary and justified as killing ever gets, and I'm inclined to be extremely forgiving about all three deaths. I'm not sure Fred had a real choice in any of the three cases.

What Fred does do in the third case that really is different of course is the cover-up, in misleading everyone, in being an absolute arsehole to Morse when he comes to check on him that night. In all of it it's massively, massively understandable (as he's a) ill, b) still trying to protect Sam). Morse's sense of betrayal though is also massively understandable. Ugh. My heart hurts. *shakes fist at Russell Lewis, and also at Roger and Shaun for being so amazing*

Anyway. Do I have an overall point? Probably: Fred Thursday is a complicated character and I love him and I want to hug him and also throw things at him. He has horrible violent tendencies but he isn't a murderer under English-and-Welsh law, and I don't think s9 makes sense unless we interpret him as very mentally unwell by the end of it. Also: Morse and Thursday both need different jobs, holy shit. Also also: I reckon Morse ended up forgiving Thursday and being in touch with him, because he is pretty fair when given time to process things, and he doesn't have Morse-centered morality. Also also also: Russell Lewis is a meanie and I want more fix-it fics. ;-)

[zot3-flopped]

Why do people like that Annie freak think Maya's father works for the drug cartels?

Because Annie is deeply stupid and knows nothing about the legal profession.

Maya's father is a personal injury lawyer. A personal injury lawyer is a lawyer who provides legal services to those who claim to have been injured, physically or psychologically, as a result of the negligence of another person, company, government agency or any entity. Personal injury lawyers primarily practice in the area of law known as tort law.

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › P...

The drug cartels hire lawyers who specialise in criminal defence not personal injury. Why would a dealer or drugs boss need to claim for personal injury? They need a lawyer who can negotiate a reduced prison sentence or similar.

[humanrightsupdates]

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: EXECUTION SET DESPITE UNRELIABLE TESTIMONY

Brent Brewer is scheduled to be executed in Texas on 9 November 2023. His 1991 death sentence was overturned in 2007, but he was resentenced to death in 2009. In 1991 and again in 2009, the prosecution relied on unscientific and unreliable, but influential, testimony of a psychiatrist who asserted that Brent Brewer would likely commit future acts of violence, a prerequisite for a death sentence in Texas. Nineteen years old at the time of the crime, Brent Brewer is now 53. He has been an exemplary prisoner, with no record of violence during his three decades on death row.

Brent Brewer was sentenced to death after being convicted of the 1990 capital murder during a botched robbery of a 66-year-old man. He was fatally stabbed in his truck as he was driving 19-year-old Brent Brewer and his girlfriend (“KN”), 21, who had asked him for a lift. Weeks before the crime, Brent Brewer had been committed to a state hospital with depression and suicidal ideation. There he had met KN, who was in the hospital for drug rehabilitation treatment. In 1992, KN pled guilty to capital murder in the stabbing and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

In 2007, Brent Brewer’s death sentence was overturned because of inadequate jury instructions at the 1991 sentencing. At the 2009 resentencing, the defence put two mitigation witnesses, the defendant’s sister and mother, on the witness stand for a combined 28 minutes. A psychologist, who had been involved in the case on appeal in 1996, provided a report to the post-2009 appeal lawyers on mitigating evidence that could have had been presented in 2009. At the time of the crime, he wrote, Brent Brewer “suffered from major depression, severe anxiety,” and “substance abuse, tied to his history of neglect, abuse, and family dysfunction”. He “suffered from brain dysfunction,” which the jury did not learn about, that represented a critically important mitigating factor concerning Mr Brewer’s judgment and decision-making capability. Abandonment fears were of particular importance in understanding Mr Brewer’s behavior at the time of the offense, as was his dependent relationship with his co-defendant, [K.N.]”. Their relationship “helped to undermine his judgment and increase his impulsivity”.

In Texas, a prerequisite for a death sentence is a jury finding that the defendant will likely commit future acts of criminal violence. At Brent Brewer’s resentencing, the prosecution presented a psychiatrist (Dr C.) who testified he would likely commit future violence, the same as he had said at the 1991 sentencing. In 2009, he added that despite Brent Brewer’s lack of violent conduct during nearly two decades on death row, he still believed he would commit such acts in the future. As was the case in 1991, Dr C. had not met or evaluated the defendant. He testified by responding to hypothetical scenarios set by the prosecution, and opined that the defendant had no conscience, violence “doesn’t seem to bother him”, he would join a gang in prison, and had a “preference for a knife”.

As long ago as 1983, the American Psychiatric Association (APA) informed the US Supreme Court (USSC) in a Texas capital case that “the unreliability of psychiatric predictions of long-term future dangerousness is by now an established fact within the profession”.

TAKE ACTION: WRITE AN APPEAL IN YOUR OWN WORDS OR USE THIS MODEL LETTER

PREFERRED LANGUAGE TO ADDRESS TARGET: English. You may also write in your own language.

PLEASE TAKE ACTION AS SOON AS POSSIBLE UNTIL: 9 November 2023