Child Sex Trafficking Allegations Ignored by Police in US & Canada

Ragebunny disapproves, because I have
no self-frowns.

I just want to take a moment in advance of the body of this article to thank everyone for their patience. I'm all settled in (more or less) at the new house and getting ready for the Great Big Move. Thanks to everyone who wished me well on the project.

Recently, as in, a few weeks ago, a story surfaced alleging heavy prostitution on shipping vessels in Thunder Bay, Ontario that service ports in Michigan. The story largely came and went - the police departments in the communities involved essentially went 'well, we've never seen a prostitute on a boat, so it must not be happening'.

Then, yesterday, the CBC ran the article again - this time with an actual victim of the relevant sex trade to corroborate the story. The woman, named Bridget Perrier, recounted a 20-year history of being involved in this trade, mostly against her will, and beginning from the age of 12.

I do want to point out that persons below the age of consent can't be sex workers. Anyone engaged in that particular activity at that particular age are victims of statutory rape. So, by extension of the police not investigating the prostitution allegations, they're also not investigating the statutory rape allegation.

I know a fair amount of mothers (and possibly even some fathers) read this, so what I have to ask you, is whether or not you would be understanding of the police not wanting to investigate your child's allegations that someone had raped them.

The actual details of the trade, as set out, are stunningly dark, so I encourage you to actually read the full article.

One of those involved, a seargent in the police of the American town involved, is skeptical of the claims because "I can look over the hill and see the ships out in the bay, they're not parked at the docks like they used to be." I can't even figure out where to start with such a mind-numbling dumb assertion; is it more relevant that the prostitution is likely occurring aboard the ships, or that prostitution and people-smuggling aren't the same trade?

Sometimes, all I can do is shake my head at the vast incompetence of law enforcement. It seems like the older I get, the more frequently it happens. Don't even get me started on the time I was told I must have robbed myself.

Thank God for Small Favours

Today, I'm especially thankful that my initial interest in law and policy did not flourish to the point where I immediately pursued a career in either field. The Supreme Court of Canada heard arguments today in a case involving a man named Hassan Rasouli, an Irainian-Canadian who had an operation for a brain tumour. As a result of the surgery, he suffered an infection that caused catastrophic damage to his brain tissue - enough to render him in a vegetative state. After long months, he has recovered to the point of minimal consciousness.

The case considers the sticky issue of who makes the ultimate decision in removing life support for those in clinical brain-death: the doctors or the family. The case has remarkable complexity, such that I can only barely wrap my head around the questions being asked by it, let alone hope to answer them in a manner consistent with the law of the land and the obligations of the state.

For the one thing, there's the obvious question about whether or not it is ever right to withdraw life-support unless a person specifically requests it - in fact, I know a few people who would say that even requests by the patient for the removal of life support should be ignored. I find that those people in particular have a bad understanding of how life support works. To go further,is this even the right "test case" for the issue itself? Where Mr. Rasouli is experiencing slow improvement in his condition, many vegetative patients do not. What about them? Suppose it is mandated that the will of the family substitutes for the will of the patient in these cases - who will pay costs associated with long-term life support?

The issue for me, I think, is wrapped up in something more fundamental than ethics, what constitutes brain death, or whether the withdrawal of care should be left to family or the professionals. It's a question, really, with how we define death.

Now, there are a number of really easy ways to decide someone is dead. If their heart is no longer beating and they are not drawing a breath, they're dead. Fortunately, many people who are "dead" in this way can be recovered, often with brain damage associated with hypoxia (the loss of oxygen flow to the sensitive tissues of the human brain), but sometimes without, even hours afterword (this is particularly true in cases where death could be most closely linked to hypothermia - almost as if the tissues are preserved by the lower temperature). Obviously then, having your heart stop beating is not a good metric for death.

Now, from what we know of the human condition through rational observation and testing, the brain is the seat of the human consciousness. We can argue till the cows come home about how that works (personally, I believe that a soul is responsible for personality and decisions - the part of us that passes on - which interacts with the more mechanical brain), but the fact of the matter remains that without the brain in proper working order, the mind simply doesn't work properly. For this reason, most clinicians now use the idea of brain death - an absence of electrical activity in the brain - to define final death. While we can restart the heart.... we can't usually restart a brain once it's actually come to a stop.

But this is too simplistic. Even in a vegetative state where no response to any stimulus comes from the patient, often there is brain activity remaining. This person is dead to the world - nearly literally - yet clinically "alive".

I hope to God I'd never have to make this particular decision for anyone. I certainly hope I'd never find myself in Mr. Rasouli's position. This sort of thing I have actual nightmares about. Loss of proper brain function terrifies me on a level that almost nothing else can compare to.

I almost never do this, but please pray for the family in this case, for the patient, for the doctors, and for the Justices who must now decide it. May they all find peace in this decision, and may the decision reflect what is best for the world.

You couldn't pay me enough money to be the one to decide it... or even to be one of the nine who do.

Auditing Assisted Suicide

Even though this originally came up a few weeks ago when the Supreme Court of British Columbia ruled that  the status-quo prohibition of Physician-Assisted Suicide was in violation of the Constitution Act (in not one but two sections of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms). Unfortunately for you, perhaps, I chose to stay out of the matter. The date that the ruling was handed down was surprisingly close to my recent birthday, the stress of work was mounting, and wading into a topic as controversial here as abortion is in the United States wasn't high on my priority list. Fortunately, now that I'm back up to my fighting weight, I've been given a second shot because the Vancouver Sun is now reporting that Ottawa will appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Better part of half a decade ago, now, I took my first formal course in Canadian Law, through my high school. The teacher was lively, and often deliberately induced class debate, particularly on issues related to the Charter specifically or to the Constitution in general. One of those issues was assisted suicide, specifically the case of Sue Rodriquez, pictured left, who won a battle in her lifetime to earn the right (it would seem temporarily) to end her life with the help of her doctor.

Now, the exact specifics of her case elude me at the moment, but I remember arguing rather vociferously that she should be allowed to do so. I used s. 7 as the cornerstone of my argument, which reads:

7. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

As I recall, my argument chiefly revolved around the idea of life and liberty. I argued that the only way you can have a right to do something was also to have the right to refuse it, otherwise your "right" was more of a mandate and in that case the Charter wasn't as useful a document as one would hope.

Times have changed a bit since then, however. For one thing, I no longer feel the need to come down on the liberal side of every issue on-spec. I've also learned to separate my issues and prioritize them.  In much the same way as governments in a federal system divide powers along federal, provincial, and municipal lines, I divide my opinions on law and morality. They aren't the same, but for wishing making it so. As I've written before, what is just is not always legal, what is legal is not always moral, and morality, no matter how objective we insist on it being, is subjective, and you need look no further than any argument on any moral point ever to see that.

The Catholic Church teaches that assisted suicide (what it refers to erroneously as Euthenasia in the Catechism) is morally unacceptable on the basis of  an equation to murder that is not-well cited, and before you try to point out that it DOES have some form of scriptural support, that citation simply isn't made available in the supposedly "complete and updated" version of the catechism I was given by my sponsor when I was baptised late last year.

Now, I could wrap myself up in my usual arguments: as a Heisenburg Christian (that is to say, uncategorised), I don't necessarily consider the Catechism to be binding to everyone. I could also give the "assisted suicide =/= murder" speech, on the basis of consent. I'm getting quite good at those arguments. The problem is, I can't put real conviction behind either argument. Believe it or not, at the age of 22, I don't have a solid opinion on every subject in every field any more. I miss and regret the teenage years of absolute certitude because I miss the feeling that I know everything, a feeling which went out the window at the moment I realized I didn't.

Now, am I saying assisted suicide is therefore moral? No - I just finished saying I don't have a coherent position on that particular subject. The deeper question is whether or not a ban on purely moral grounds is constitutional. As I've mentioned in previous posts on abortion, I don't believe that my morality should be allowed to set public policy guidelines. Some morality requires going above-and-beyond the call of the law - ask anyone who keeps kosher or halal, chooses to be a vegan, or chooses to dress or act in a certain way on the basis of their religious beliefs. If this was a question of politics, there would be some merit to putting my shoulder behind a party that would respect my moral views on the matter.

This isn't a question of politics, either, but the constitution. There's nothing to do now but pray, I suppose, for the mental clarity and wisdom of the Justices of the SCC. Whether you're for or against assisted suicide, I'm sure you agree that these are attributes the ultimate legal authority in this country would need in spades.

World Wednesday: Luka Magnotta

So, a few of you abroad might have heard by now about government offices in Canada receiving human body parts by mail a short while ago. Before long, the victim was identified, and shortly after that, a suspect was pretty clearly identified. His name was Luka Magnotta, a model and gay porn actor who filmed his murder of Jun Lin, a Chinese national studying at a university in montreal, and the subsequent dismemberment.

Now, I'm not going to tell you where to find the video, but I'm sure you could if you looked hard enough. I haven't watched it, and I don't intend to. What I find interesting, however, is that a number of high school teachers are on suspensions from their positions at the moment because they DID view it... along with their classes. The general narrative on these stories is that the teacher puts it to a vote, the class votes unanimously (or dissenters, if the minority, are allowed to abstain), and then they watch the video before discussing it as a class.

My question is, if you were an instructor, of any subject, do you feel there is anything to be gained by your students watching the video? And if so, do you feel that the same objective you couldn't be met by simply discussing the circumstances of the video?

The Penalty for Slave Trading in Canada?

Toronto Star Image

We've come a long way from The Underground Railroad.

This is Ferenc Domotor, a Hungarian-Canadian man who today was sentenced for having lead what was called by the CBC "The leader of what has been called the largest proven human smuggling ring in Canadian history", along with his wife and son, who helped him orchestrate the slavery of 19 Hungarian men. They were held against their will and forced for years to work for table scraps, under threat of violence to their families back home in Hungary. The family and twelve fellow gang members essentially helped ruin the lives of these men and their families for years at a time.

Domotor was given a nine-year sentence for his part in the crimes, which, less time served (and sundry other deductions) means he'll be spending another four and a half years in federal prison, which is where I come in.

Quebec Religious Ethics Classes Constitutional: Supreme Court of Canada

Students in Quebec public schools take courses in Religions and Ethics that include study of numerous world religions. A couple challenged the law, claiming that the class infringed on their religious rights with regards to their children, which they wanted to use to restrict their child's own religious freedom to whatever their household faith was. The Supreme Court ruled against on Friday, saying that the course did not pose an impairment to the right to freedom of religion.

In writing the descision, Chief Justice McLachlin wrote:

Although the sincerity of a person’s belief that a religious practice must be observed is relevant to whether the person’s right to freedom of religion is at issue, an infringement of this right cannot be established without objective proof of an interference with the observance of that practice.  It is not enough for a person to say that his or her rights have been infringed.  The person must prove the infringement on a balance of probabilities. ...    L and J have not proven that the ERC Program infringed their freedom of religion, or consequently, that the school board’s refusal to exempt their children from the ERC course violated their constitutional right.  They have also shown no error that would justify setting aside the trial judge’s conclusion that the school board’s decision was not made at the dictate of a third party. Decision Text at Lexum.org

Essentially, the argument was that exposure to new/different religions did not constitute a restriction on religious freedom. One of the appellants offered the CBC a statement.

"My son is in fourth grade and he already asks questions about his own religion and I find it sad that it's happening at such a young age," said S.L., the mother who can only be identified by her initials, because of a publication ban. CBC.ca

 Personally, I don't grant her premise. Questioning your religion is the only way to increase your understanding of that religion, and, more importantly, to build your own spirituality. Doing something "because that's the way it's done" is not a valid motivation. For faith to be sincere, it must be hard-won, through experience and analysis. If I am not mistaken, a child at the fourth grade is old enough for confirmation and first eucharist. I believe we call that the age of reason, do we not?

Frankly, I think just about everyone on earth would benefit from exposure to new and different faiths. I'm sure others will disagree.

Man, 52, Gets 5 Years in Record Child Porn Bust

Original Article with the CBC

As I was cruising the news this morning, I decided to avoid the usual subjects that were titillating the class, most of which involved the birth of babies in less-than-ideal circumstances, to put it lightly and mildly. I was reading about the eviction of the Occupy protesters from their park in New York, when a New Brunswick headline caught my eye.

Douglas Stewart, a 52-year-old man from Moncton (which is about two hours or so from home), was sentenced either this morning or yesterday evening after having plead guilty to the collection, access, and distribution of the largest collection of child pornography ever ceased by law in Canada. He was given 5 years for the collection, and four and a half years each for the other two offences. That's 14 years total, which at his age would leave him 66 and in dire need of an identity transplant.

The thing is, the judge in question ordered that the sentences be served concurrently... meaning he'll only actually spend five years in jail. Hardly a fitting punishment, considering the crime. While I am aware that such crimes are often punished by the guilty's prison-mates, I do not condone that sort of behaviour, nor do I consider it justice.

And, while crimes against children generally make me incandescent with rage, I'm afraid there is a larger issue at hand here, something which runs a little deeper than a mentally-ill man being overly coddled by the state. The majority Conservative government lead by Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently enacted legislation that amended the Criminal Code, the federal crime laws. In particular, the amendment framed changes to drug legislation that included longer sentencing for trafficking in narcotics, including marijuana. Under these new rules, it's possible to spend longer in jail for possessing less pot than you could smoke on a sunny Friday afternoon than for holding a child pornography collection including 4.5 million explicitly sexual images of children, some of which are as young as two years old.

I'm not advocating that anyone smoke marijuana or make use of harder drugs, but it seems surprising to me that the political party which brands itself as Canada's moral pulse cares more about people trying to tune out for a few hours than little girls being sexually exploited. Now, admittedly, that argument is a bit of a strawman, but I think it is a relevant one. If the drug problem in Canada is as problematic as everyone seem think it is, it still can't possibly be more of a crisis than child pornography. To amend the Criminal Code to stiffen penalties for one without even addressing the other sends a very different message.

And before anyone asks, I'm not a Liberal. I'm not a Green, either, or a New Democrat. I'm not a member of a political party or especially strongly aligned with any particular one. I'm what you might call an independent. I vote the issues that matter to me. This isn't about the Conservative Party. This is about the balance of the law in Canada, and the things we seem to consider just. If anyone believes, for even a moment, that a collection of pornography of that size and grade could be collected without harming the children involved, I would suggest that person does not know nearly enough about the issue, and should consider an education on the matter. And if anyone believes, for even a moment, that the drug problem is a bigger problem than taking care of children in this country, than we as a society need to examine our consciences.