Warm Hearts and Cool Heads for Justice
BY: VISNUGADA DASA
Jul 23, PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA, USA (SUN) — In his last posting, "When the Courts are Not Perfect", Kapila prabhu, referring to the CPO's conviction of Vakresvara Pandit (VP), wrote: “Now I can’t claim to know more about the case than others do, but I have always understood that the case was taken forward with good reason and that the CPO conviction is solid.” Judging from his statement, it is hard to tell whether Kapila prabhu has looked into any of the specifics of the case at all. I urge Kapila to do so. I suspect most devotees think like Kapila and uncritically accept VP's guilt based on nothing more than faith in the CPO. I certainly did. But after studying the case, speaking to the defendant, and speaking with some of those who were instrumental in convicting him, I changed my mind. If Kapila prabhu wants to have faith in the CPO, fine. I request him to make sure his is not blind faith. His faith in the CPO does not make VP guilty. My conclusion after careful study of the case: the CPO blew it.
Some have suggested that the VP decision is just an isolated case of a poor CPO decision. If VP’s were the only bad decision I had come across, I might have been able to shrug it off and chalk it up to Krishna teaching VP a lesson for something else, or to VP’s bad karma. The trouble is, I have looked carefully at other CPO cases before and after his. What became crystal clear is that the other cases were plagued with the very same problems as the VP case. Our team cited those very same problems in our GBC proposal, "2009 Mayapur GBC Proposal: Temporary Suspension of Child Protection Office and Re-organization", and in previous articles:
In summary, those problems are: the use of bogus science, evidence kept secret from the defense, failure to consider the accuser’s possible ulterior motives, the functions of the prosecutor, judge, and jury all rolled into one, and not allowing the defense to cross examine witnesses. With these fatal flaws, how can the CPO arrive at the truth?
I have no special veneration for the civil child protection and justice systems. I work with them every day advocating for abused children. I am well aware of their failings and imperfections. On the other hand, from my work with both systems it is clear the CPO investigation and judicial systems are substantially more flawed than even their civil counterparts. That is, the CPO arrives at more wrong verdicts than even the civil system. We Hare Krishnas tend to think we do better than others in whatever we do. Then why did it take us so long to recognize child abuse taking place in our midst? We were at least ten years behind the rest of the country in recognizing the problem. We are similarly lagging in acknowledging false convictions. Here’s a typical tale of a pre-school teacher, Kelly Michaels, falsely convicted and jailed in the 1980’s for sexually abusing 20 children. She was later cleared of all charges.
I urge you to also take a look at this link to a Harvard Law School symposium which illustrates how the civil system has recognized its mistakes with the overzealous and false convictions of the 1980’s and is taking steps to set the record straight.
I found some statistics that roughly 10-20% of legal convictions are reversed on appeal based on mistakes in the regular courts. The number of CPO cases reversed on appeal? My information indicates there have been none. Given all the problems with the CPO, the likelihood that there have been no reversals defies common sense. If we were to use the same 10-20% ratio found in the regular courts with the over 300 CPO cases, we’d arrive at 30-60 falsely convicted devotees. Given the CPO's lack of procedural accuracy, the number of false convictions is likely much higher. What about the Vaisnava aparadhas committed against these devotees? How can we stand by while Godbrothers and sisters are made to suffer unjustified humiliation and ostracism meted out by our own system?
Kapila prabhu tries to attribute my “attack on the CPO" to hot-headedness resulting from frustration with the VP case. I deal with child abuse cases every day in the professional world and I know the importance of keeping a cool head. What Kapila doesn’t know is that our team has raised the very same concerns to the GBC since the CPO's creation in 1998. I wrote the article "Snake Oil, Scape Goats and the Hare Krishnas" in 2005, before I became interested in the VP case. Any frustration is due to the fact that after all these years, the CPO still doesn’t seem to understand the basics of fair procedures. I respect the current CPO directors, Tamohara or Mahavishnupriya prabhus’ dedication. They are good devotees, and I totally support their prevention and education efforts. However, they inherited a bad system and are holding onto it.
The CPO just doesn’t have the tools or resources it needs to fairly investigate and adjudicate. So what is my motive? As a practicing child psychologist, child welfare is part of my field of expertise. I am trying to utilize my training and experience in Krishna's service as Srila Prabhupada encouraged us to do. I would be remiss not to speak up, to sit silently by as the injustices pile up. Of course, it’s much simpler to label me a hot-head and dismiss what I say. Call me what you want, but before you do so, why not handle a few child abuse cases yourself to understand the whole picture.
Kapila rightfully shows empathy for actual victims of child sexual abuse and sexual assault, and mentions how they often hesitate to come forward due to fear of the perpetrator or of having their backgrounds exposed during a trial. He argues that using the CPO system is a more humane alternative for victims than the civil system. A problem with this line of reasoning is the assumption that all those who present themselves as victims are telling the truth. One should not assume the reason for a person not wanting to go to the legal system is out of fear of mistreatment. Anyone with experience can relate examples to the contrary. Courts routinely investigate motive, because it is not unusual that there are other motives for claiming sexual assault. For example, I received the following true story from a temple president:
"A young woman devotee was engaged to be married. While staying in the temple, she became involved with another devotee who was already married. She and the married devotee ended up on lover’s lane having sexual relations. When the news became public, she claimed she was raped. Despite her hesitation, I immediately took her to the police station. The officer on duty interviewed her privately and said he would present the information to the DA. Two days later, I was informed that the DA refused to pursue the case because another officer had questioned the two on lover’s lane earlier in the day while they were having some sultry activity. He had asked the girl if she was OK. She emphatically said yes. The officer had warned them to go somewhere else and watched them until they left. The police had information I would never have had access to otherwise. They were in a better position to determine whether there were grounds for rape charges. They concluded she claimed rape to save face and to save her relationship with her fiancé. My instincts and reason have always obliged me to refer criminal cases to the U.S. justice system because ISKCON, in my view, does not have jurisdiction in criminal cases, nor does it have the means to investigate such cases properly.”
This intelligent president understood that the secular system is better equipped to handle such claims. Why try to outdo the police and the courts? In another case, a 17-year-old woman devotee had a sexual liaison with an adult male while her parents were away. She was in therapy and told her therapist that the involvement was consensual. The parents returned and found out. The woman told her parents she had been raped by the adult male. The parents called the police. The police made a report and asked the woman if there had been any witnesses, or if she had told anyone of the incident. She said she had told her therapist. The police then got a court order for the therapist’s records, which revealed that after careful discussion the woman had indicated the liaison was consensual. That therapist happened to be me. The accusations against the man ended there. I believe the CPO procedures would likely have found the above two men guilty.
I work at an agency that provides psychotherapy to children, sometimes in their homes. There was a discussion recently about the possibility of assigning a male therapist to a teenage girl client. It was acknowledged that there wasn’t a single male therapist in the agency who would take the case. Although I already knew the reason, I wanted someone to state the obvious, so I asked. The answer? No male therapist would take the risk of getting their lives or careers ruined by a teenage client who might get mad at them for some reason and then falsely accuse them of sexual abuse. Why did they all have the same reluctance? Another obvious answer: They’ve seen it all too often.
So false accusations are not rare. It is noteworthy that many of the accusations the CPO handled, including the VP case, have actually come from adults with an agenda against the accused for other reasons. For example, some false accusations have come up in the context of custody battles between parents who are inimical to each other. The assumption that all alleged victims do not want to use the real legal system only to avoid embarrassment is misguided. Experience indicates that in certain cases they may also want to avoid having their own falsehoods and the truth uncovered. And that truth can often be quickly discerned by the involvement of the more experienced and resourceful legal system.
If I wanted to make a false accusation of abuse to settle a grudge, I would definitely use the CPO rather than the real legal system. Unlike actual courts, the CPO has no scope to levy repercussions if a person is found to have made a false accusation. The CPO, with its naïve acceptance of most of what the accuser says, high conviction rate, no reversal on appeal, secret evidence, and no repercussions for false accusations is certainly a no-risk alternative and the way to go for someone who wants to harass another.
While the CPO might provide a modicum of protection for the devotee community, a real abuser is usually still free to prey on the public at large. A conviction in a real court of law would provide more complete protection to the devotee community as well as to everyone else, by locking up the offender. After release, he or she would be put on a national watch list. The real legal system can more reliably lock up the offenders and free the innocent whereas the CPO can’t really tell the difference between the two. Rather than the CPO being more humane, I would argue that the real court system is the more humane alternative for both alleged victims and alleged perpetrators because there is a greater chance that the truth will come out, and there is no justice without the truth prevailing.
Lastly, it has been said that ISKCON had to set up its own courts, the CPO, since the statutes of limitation had run out for many of the sex abuse cases. However, the CPO tried some cases even when the statutes of limitation had not expired. The files I’ve seen don’t even show an attempt by the CPO to determine what the statute of limitations is for a particular case in a particular state. In addition, is the CPO even aware of the "window legislation", which provides a one or two-year period for adults who were sexually abused as children to sue (with certain limitations) a sexual perpetrator in several US states even after the statute of limitations has expired? Such a law was first passed in California in 2002. New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Oregon, etc. have now either passed or are in the process of passing similar laws. If the CPO doesn’t keep abreast of laws regarding statutes of limitations, how can they know which cases to refer to the authorities? Remember, as I detailed in my previous article, there are good reasons for statutes of limitations, not the least of which is that important evidence is often spoiled over time due to distortions of memories. What is the CPO's procedure to deal with these distortions?
My point is that it is hot headed and cold hearted to continue to falsely convict devotees and to continue punishing devotees who have been falsely convicted based on makeshift CPO procedures. Abusing adults is not a remedy for the past abuse of children.
If you have interest in this matter, you’re welcome to write me at vpjustice@live.com.
