by Steven Gore
This all came to light a couple of years ago when a friend of mine, who had spent his career working in the mental health field, reminded me of the concerns he had back in 1988 that X was pretending to be mentally ill, malingering, in order to avoid trial for the homicide. Indeed, the head psychiatrist at the out-patient facility that X was attending at the time of the crime had warned the staff prior to the murder that X was not mentally ill, but was a sociopath who was a danger to others at the facility.
My friend’s more general complaint was that since so many sociopaths claim mental illness to excuse their crimes, the public has come to believe that the mentally ill are more dangerous than everyone else. And this is not, in fact, the case.
After this conversation with my friend, I decided to find out what happened to X.
Because of medical and psychiatric confidentiality rules, this was not an easy task. The details of my investigation are unimportant, but in the end, I discovered that X was housed in a developmental center in a county far from the one in which he was arrested and being detained solely under a California civil code that allows developmentally disabled violent individuals to be held until a civil court determines that they no longer represent a danger to the community.
Based on information from those I interviewed in the course of looking for X, it seemed unlikely that X was developmentally disabled, since the symptoms first appeared, not when he was a child, but when he was in his twenties. And based on the fact of his transfer from a psychiatric to a developmental center, it was clear that state psychiatrists had already determined that the mental problems that had otherwise justified his detention had been resolved.
I interviewed X, who acknowledged to me that he had killed his neighbor. Although he referred to the crime as a “murder,” he offered a manslaughter defense: that he hadn’t taken his medications, that he was under the influence of drugs and alcohol, and that he had “blacked out.”
More likely than not, he went to his neighbor’s house to rob her of money to buy drugs. A felony murder and a capital crime.
X also told me that he had been advised by his attorney on the morning of our conversation that there was a good chance that the civil court judge hearing his case on the following day would grant her motion to set a date for his release.
I made sure that didn’t happen.
At X’s next hearing, I understand, the positions taken by the state and by his attorney reversed: the state arguing for his release from the center and his return to the county of his arrest for trial, and his attorney arguing for his continued detention.
As of this writing, no court has yet been asked to rule on whether X is currently competent to stand trial. I don’t know whether he is or he isn’t, but the integrity of the justice system requires an answer.
It then crossed my mind: What if one of the many criminal defendants in civil detention around the country was, unlike X, factually innocent of the crime with which he or she was charged?
As always, when the innocent have been wrongly prosecuted, the guilty escape punishment.
This suggested the idea of using the civil commitment of a mentally ill but innocent person as part of a cover-up.
At the same time as I had these thoughts, my wife was engaged in one of her numerous investigations on behalf of victims of Catholic-priest child molestations. Many of her investigations required her to locate witnesses and documents relating to incidents that happened as long as forty years ago. In the course of her work, and with the help of Catholics disturbed by the church’s defensive and immoral response to the allegations, she was able to develop contemporaneous evidence of the crimes.
In a separate context, and unrelated to the molestation cases, I was asked to investigate whether, and to what extent, there existed corporate and financial links between the Vatican and the church’s operations in various countries. I learned that the Vatican had structured itself in a manner to insulate it from liability for acts committed in the church’s name and had employed banks and private bankers in the main money laundering and tax evasion centers around the world in an attempt to do so.
In a very few instances, the church has accepted responsibility for not turning the guilty over to the criminal courts for prosecution and for reassigning molesters from one parish to another.
In many cases, however, representatives of the church destroyed personnel records containing complaints of abuse and the names of the victims and witnesses; spent tens of millions of dollars on teams of lawyers (it once sent five law firms up against a single plaintiff’s lawyer, and still could not prevent an adverse judgment); attempted to mislead judges, juries, and the public about the facts of the cases; and while building in Northern California the most expensive cathedral in the nation at a cost of nearly two hundred million dollars, complained that the plaintiffs were financially ruining the church.
There were, of course, many more victims of abuse than have come forward. Some declined out of embarrassment, some because they didn’t want to have their suffering reduced to a matter of cash value, and some because they didn’t want their lives flayed open by church lawyers.
And until the church begins to treat the abuse of parishioners as a matter of moral inclusion, rather than of legal combat, and fulfills the duty of confession that it imposes on its members, the number of victims will never be counted and justice will never be done, either in the United States or abroad.
At the same time, the church has no monopoly on the abuse of children. In the course of my work, which took me to many parts of the world, I interviewed victims of sex trafficking-Thai, Chinese, Indian, Mexican-and met those who were complicit in their abuse-business leaders, parents, smugglers, government officials, police officers-and I wanted to display the roles of at least some of these coconspirators in this story.
In particular, I made Sherwyn a medical professional not only because I knew of a molested child who was again molested by the psychiatrist to whom he was sent for treatment, but also because, like doctors who keep prisoners healthy enough to be tortured, there are doctors, particularly in the Third World, who assist sex traffickers by keeping children healthy enough to be abused.
Acknowledgments
An investigator’s task ends when the facts have been discovered. A writer, on the other hand, can’t leave well enough alone. It was during my migration from one to the other that I conceived this novel.
Helping me in doing so were: fishing and environmental writer Seth Norman, a master of character and meander. Rick Monge, a master investigator and barbecuer. Bruce Kaplan, whose “What about…” has made me a better writer. David Agretelis, whose keen hands are as deft with an editorial pen as they are on the keys of a saxophone and the grapes on the vine. Denise Fleming, who understands that the first fifty pages are a lifetime. Melissa Buron, European Art Curatorial Assistant at the Legion of Honor Museum in San Francisco, for help in locating the particulars of Goya’s “Hunting for Teeth” in the Los Caprichos etching series.
Special thanks to my editor, Gabe Robinson, whose insights helped me weave together the sometimes disconnected threads of my story; to Pamela Spengler-Jaffe and Wendy Ho, who have done such a magnificent job of introducing my books to readers; to Eileen DeWald, who guides their production; and to Eleanor Mikucki, whose last, careful reading of the manuscripts has been invaluable.
Thanks also to those whose good selves, great work, and useful lives have brought light first to an investigator’s life, then to a writer’s, spent too long in the shadow of evil: Gail Monge, Margie Schmidt, Judy Barley, Gary Cox, Jean Rogers, Julie Quater, John Beuttler, Barbara Marinoff, and Kristi Bradford.
I borrowed from my mother-in-law, Alice Litov, her use of spreadsheets to keep track of elderly or homebound members of her church for whom she organizes visits.
As always, I borrowed from my wife, Liz, her good judgment.
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