Exonerated Father Awarded $9 Million after 20 Years in Prison on False Sex Abuse Charges

Clyde Spencer, center, and his children,
Kathryn Tetz and Matthew Spencer,
who testified in defense of their father.

(A father) who spent 20 years in prison based on sex abuse evidence fabricated by two former Clark County, WA, sheriff’s detectives was awarded $9 million by a federal court jury that ruled that the authorities violated his constitutional right to due process.
The jury verdict in the civil rights case was the latest in a series of exonerations for former Vancouver, WA, policeman Clyde Ray Spencer. He had been sentenced in 1985 to two life terms plus 14 years on false charges that he sexually abused his daughter Katie Spencer Tetz, then age 5, son Matt Spencer, then age 9, and stepson Matt Hansen, then age 5. The Governor commuted Spencer’s sentence in 2004, and his conviction was subsequently thrown out.
Sex and ambition “This case is so incredibly simple,” attorney Kathleen Zellner told the jury during opening statements. “It has to do with the deliberate fabrication of evidence” by former sheriff’s detective Sharon Krause and her boss, former detective sergeant Michael Davidson. Krauss and Davidson were both held liable. “The motivation was sex an ambition.” Zellner, of Downers Grove, IL, is a member of the National Trial Lawyers.
Spencer asserted that the false evidence was a moving force in his entering an “Alford” or no contest plea to the charges. It is treated as a guilty plea, but maintains a person’s innocence while acknowledging that a jury could find him guilty. While in prison Spencer wrote letters saying he was not guilty of molesting his children and stepson.
After 13 days of testimony in court in Tacoma, WA, from 25 witnesses — several key factors led to the on February 3 jury verdict:
Spencer’s wife, who called policed about the abuse claims, was secretly having an affair with Sgt. Davidson, who led the investigation of Spencer. This was not revealed until after Spencer was in prison. Spencer’s natural children Matt Spencer and Katie Tetz testified that they were never abused. The stepson maintained that we was abused. However, he has a long criminal record for crimes including burglary and forgery. The authorities reduced his sentence in exchange for his testimony against Spencer. The detectives concealed medical exams showing that Spencer’s son and daughter were not abused. They also fabricated polygraph test results to make it look as if Spencer was lying when questioned about the abuse claims. Deputy prosecutor James Peters made a video showing that he coaxed Spencer’s daughter to say her father abused her. The video, which undermines the prosecution’s case, was not found until 2009 in Det. Krause’s garage. Det. Krause held unorthodox meetings with the Spencer children, interviewing them in unrecorded sessions, buying them gifts and candy. She told the children their father was “sick” and that they they could heal him by accusing him of sexual crimes. Attorney Zellner charged that Det. Krause was motivated by advancing her career, and that after she started working in the field the conviction rate in child abuse cases rose by 800%. She had been a hotel clerk and met police officers who came to the hotel bar. She joined the Clark County Sheriff’s Department and became a detective investigating child sex abuse, even though she had no training in the subject area.
“Justice was served, even though it took 30 years,” Zellner said. “We were able to prove they framed him. We’ve proven the evidence was fabricated. And, after 30 years, that’s remarkable. Justice is alive and well in Washington.”

Nothing throws out #Chivalry like #fascism and #genocide: #Assad to be protected by #women

It's come to this. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has run out of men to protect him. So now he's going to be protected by women.

Dressed in fatigues and armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles, the female recruits – the “Lionesses for National Defence” – are part of a new paramilitary force. They have already been deployed in Homs, where they have been spotted guarding areas where residents still largely support the regime. Videos from both opposition and pro-government sites purport to show members of the all-female unit in action.

The women are part of the recently formed National Defence Force (NDF), which appears to be a key component of the Syrian state’s counter insurgency strategy. The regime is struggling to gain the upper hand in the street battles that have devastated large areas of the country’s cities and killed thousands of its soldiers. Rebels are holed up in several neighbourhoods of Homs and the capital’s southern suburbs.

Abu Rami, a spokesman for the Syrian Revolution General Commission in Homs, first saw the female recruits about five days ago at Tadmour Circle on the outskirts of an Alawite area, before another activist returned to film them. The shaky video, which appears to have been filmed secretly, shows around half a dozen armed women guarding a major intersection.

“I was very surprised, it’s the first time we have seen this,” he said. “I think it’s an excuse to make the FSA [Free Syrian Army] kill women and then show the world as propaganda, but anyone with a weapon is a legitimate target.”

He said the women were also seen in the Wadi al-Dahab area, where some 500 recruits are reported to be receiving training at a military base.

In scenes reminiscent of parades by former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s female bodyguards, a video uploaded on to a pro-regime YouTube channel at the beginning of the month shows about a hundred women marching in front of a portrait of the president. The NDF, which includes male recruits, is expected to have 10,000 members.

 I'm sure Asma al-Assad is thrilled.

via israelmatzav.blogspot.com

Hitler was progressive with gender opportunities too

War On Men

(Fox) The battle of the sexes is alive and well. According to Pew Research Center, the share of women ages eighteen to thirty-four that say having a successful marriage is one of the most important things in their lives rose nine percentage points since 1997 – from 28 percent to 37 percent. For men, the opposite occurred. The share voicing this opinion dropped, from 35 percent to 29 percent.
Believe it or not, modern women want to get married. Trouble is, men don’t.
The so-called dearth of good men (read: marriageable men) has been a hot subject in the media as of late. Much of the coverage has been in response to the fact that for the first time in history, women have become the majority of the U.S. workforce. They’re also getting most of the college degrees. The problem? This new phenomenon has changed the dance between men and women.  
As the author of three books on the American family and its intersection with pop culture, I’ve spent thirteen years examining social agendas as they pertain to sex, parenting, and gender roles. During this time, I’ve spoken with hundreds, if not thousands, of men and women. And in doing so, I’ve accidentally stumbled upon a subculture of men who’ve told me, in no uncertain terms, that they’re never getting married. When I ask them why, the answer is always the same.
Women aren’t women anymore.
To say gender relations have changed dramatically is an understatement. Ever since the sexual revolution, there has been a profound overhaul in the way men and women interact. Men haven’t changed much – they had no revolution that demanded it – but women have changed dramatically.
In a nutshell, women are angry. They’re also defensive, though often unknowingly. That’s because they’ve been raised to think of men as the enemy. Armed with this new attitude, women pushed men off their pedestal (women had their own pedestal, but feminists convinced them otherwise) and climbed up to take what they were taught to believe was rightfully theirs.
Now the men have nowhere to go.
It is precisely this dynamic – women good/men bad – that has destroyed the relationship between the sexes. Yet somehow, men are still to blame when love goes awry. Heck, men have been to blame since feminists first took to the streets in the 1970s.
But what if the dearth of good men, and ongoing battle of the sexes, is – hold on to your seats – women’s fault?
You’ll never hear that in the media. All the articles and books (and television programs, for that matter) put women front and center, while men and children sit in the back seat. But after decades of browbeating the American male, men are tired. Tired of being told there’s something fundamentally wrong with them. Tired of being told that if women aren’t happy, it’s men’s fault.
Contrary to what feminists like Hanna Rosin, author of The End of Men, say, the so-called rise of women has not threatened men. It has pissed them off. It has also undermined their ability to become self-sufficient in the hopes of someday supporting a family. Men want to love women, not compete with them. They want to provide for and protect their families – it’s in their DNA. But modern women won’t let them.
It’s all so unfortunate – for women, not men. Feminism serves men very well: they can have sex at hello and even live with their girlfriends with no responsibilities whatsoever.
It’s the women who lose. Not only are they saddled with the consequences of sex, by dismissing male nature they’re forever seeking a balanced life. The fact is, women need men’s linear career goals – they need men to pick up the slack at the office – in order to live the balanced life they seek.
So if men today are slackers, and if they’re retreating from marriage en masse, women should look in the mirror and ask themselves what role they’ve played to bring about this transformation.
Fortunately, there is good news: women have the power to turn everything around. All they have to do is surrender to their nature – their femininity – and let men surrender to theirs.
If they do, marriageable men will come out of the woodwork.

War On Women ...Maybe

I keep on hearing about this war on women, but the only war I see going on is women fighting with themselves... it's almost like they wish we really were the bad boys and we were doing it for them... ain't that vain?

(New Scientist)two studies have confirmed it: bad boys get the most girls. The finding may help explain why a nasty suite of antisocial personality traits known as the "dark triad" persists in the human population, despite their potentially grave cultural costs.

(What if They Threw a War on Women and Nobody Came?American Thinker)
I knew I had to adjust. I learned political correctness and did my best imitation of Phil Donahue. I got in touch with my inner female. I was chauvinist no more.
That didn't work.
I was accepted by the gender, but as a second-class entity who was tolerated so long as I toed the line. Bras were burned, Birkenstock shoes were worn. Enticing clothing was replaced with army fatigues. Makeup was banned. The garden was a relic of the past.
Then the war took a more acceptable turn: the Sexual Revolution. Hey, nurture was out, but sex was a damn good substitute, at least before the climax. There were no more double standards. Women could hook up and make out totally without guilt. Once again I had to adjust. The sensitive guy always became a friend; the Bad Boy got laid.
This is where the confession comes in. I became the man they speak of. I declared a war on women. I didn't do it out of disrespect or anger or ignorance; I did it to get laid. Women may not always know what they want, but they still have hormones just like I do. (MORE)

Here is the reality. The guys don't even really want to deal with the hassle of being a bad ass. It's all show. If some dude is writing about it... like above... then you know it is a setup. What he is saying is true. We do act out to get the girls... but most men are past that point. We really are too lazy to really give a flying fart about women and their hormones. Perhaps that is the real libidinal problem?