What bothers me the most about people's reaction to the story of a ten-year-old girl needing an abortion is that the vast majority of those, like Ms. Young, who doubt it happened base their doubt on the erroneous belief that the idea of a ten-year-old getting pregnant is so unlikely.
I have been a county-level prosecutor for almost thre…
What bothers me the most about people's reaction to the story of a ten-year-old girl needing an abortion is that the vast majority of those, like Ms. Young, who doubt it happened base their doubt on the erroneous belief that the idea of a ten-year-old getting pregnant is so unlikely.
I have been a county-level prosecutor for almost three decades, recently (mostly) retired. The last few years I was practicing full-time I specialized in child-maltreatment cases, primarily sexual assaults. Over the course of my entire career I have been assigned literally hundreds of child SA cases. I also spent two years as our county's juvenile court prosecutor.
In that capacity I have worked closely with prosecutors around my state who also specialize in these cases, Forensic Nurse Examiners (nurses who conduct physical examinations of children who report being sexually or otherwise physically abused, looking for evidence of abuse), law enforcement officers and social workers. Anyone who has worked in this field for any length of time can easily come up with dozens cases they themselves handled where there was a very young victim of sexual assault. It is also not very rare anymore for girls as young as nine to get their first period.
Over twenty years ago when I was in juvenile court we had a 13-year-old runaway who was pregnant with her second child.
A few years ago I prosecuted a case where the child victim was vaginally raped by a cousin when she was ten years old. She was afraid she might be pregnant because she had gotten her period a few months earlier (she wasn't.)
I had another case a few years ago where the victim had been raped by her stepfather and stepbrother--repeatedly. She was seven when we interviewed her but according to the brother (he confessed) the assaults had been going on since she was four or five.
I am happy to report that all three of these guys were convicted.
I have no idea whether this Ohio/Indiana case is accurate, but I can say that based on my experience and the experience of those with whom I have worked over the years, it is extremely plausible.
Thank you. I knew the story was true. Children are violated by adults more often than any of us wants to think about. I was 10 when my neighbor raped me. I was afraid to tell anyone. I was just lucky I did not get pregnant but after all these years, I remember every hideous detail. I was happy when I learned he died several years later. As an adult I finally fell in love with a man who I thought felt the same. He pressured me relentlessly into an abortion and later I got pregnant again with this same man. I refused to have another abortion and he left me. Thrilled to have my beautiful daughter, but single parenthood was hard. We were poor and it took years to get back on my feet. Being and feeling victimized is unpleasant, but all any of us can do in this life is have a little compassion for these young victims. Abortion is a painful issue but if it is necessary, it should be safe and done in a medical facility. Stop make legal obstacles regarding medical and intensely personal decisions.
In 2001 my C of C class interviewed a juvie judge who told us he would have to stop proceedings due to his own break downs from listening to cases. Most were about child abuse in 21st century Arkansas. I imagine it hasn't got better.
" those, like Ms. Young, who doubt it happened base their doubt on the erroneous belief that the idea of a ten-year-old getting pregnant is so unlikely. "
That is not an accurate account of the basis of her doubt as she explains it. The main basis of her skepticism is that the story as reported lacks the standard foundation of journalistic reliability, since it rests solely on one person's word, and the lead reporter "did not respond to a query asking whether additional sourcing was obtained."
If the reporter wants to assure people that her story is well founded, she should provide some basis to be confident that she has more than one person's word for it.
Demonstrating that it COULD have happened does not establish that this particular case actually did happen, and nowhere does Cathy say the story is impossible. Rather, she points out that the reporter provides insufficient basis to accept this specific case as factual without a doubt.
I'm fairly certain that the people who find her question about sourcing outrageous would be highly skeptical of a story based entirely on one person's word if that story served the agenda of their political opponents.
Oops. That is the very close to the argument made by people STILL believing Trump's Big Lie--just because the vote frauders did such a good job of covering their tracks doesn't mean the election wasn't stolen.
If the reason the story cannot be confirmed is to protect the child, that is a very good reason, but then the reporter who broke the story was irresponsible. It is possible to verify the story without outing the child.
Please. SCOTUS is not "now targeting contraception." ONE out of NINE justices mentioned revisiting Griswald v. Connecticut in a concurring opinion which no other justice joined. Even then if Griswald was reversed, the issue would simply go back to the states and how many states would pass a law banning contraception? I'm guessing none.
You are missing my point. A reporter being unable to verify a story doesn't mean it did not happen cannot be the standard for journalism. Right now there is some wiggle room because of the circumstances of the story. It is irresponsible to print a story for its political value. It also needs to be true. It may well prove to be true. We'll see. What is true is that the governor of South Dakota danced around the question of whether a 10-year should be required to carry to term. The interviewer sought repeatedly to get a straight answer, and finally got a version of "Two wrongs don't make a right." In other words, yes, the child would be required to carry to term.
I will add that there are any number of reasons why there are no public records of prosecution to confirm the story.
In order to file a complaint, you must be able to name a defendant. She may not know the name of the person who impregnated her. There may be more than one person who could have impregnated her and she's not sure who it is. She may be afraid of disclosing the person's identity (think Mom's boyfriend or her dad.) She may not be willing to say that she "had sex" with anyone. (We had a case in my town several years ago where the defendant was caught on Walmart security cameras assaulting boys and the boys denied any such thing had happened to them-- even after they saw the video.)
If the person who impregnated the girl is a minor, the case would go to juvenile court where the proceedings almost never get into the public domain.
It may be that law enforcement is waiting for DNA samples from the fetus in order to try to identify the person who impregnated the child.
What I'm saying is that just because so little about the case has made it into the public domain does not, given the circumstances, make the story less plausible if you are familiar with how these cases work.
Scott, my understanding is that Kessler was not checking for a police report or court records, but for a report to child welfare services, which would be filed regardless of whether there was an arrest, a prosecution, or a named perpetrator.
In fairness, I can see why most people would find the story implausible: they don't live in a world where grown men, or anyone else, rape little children; nor do they toil in the field of child sexual assault, as I do.
What really does infuriate me is when people like Ms. Young and others opine with such assumed authority in such a public manner on things about which they know so little.
I have spent time in ERs on a few occasions (minor stuff). On a few occasions one would see a young woman and lots of whispering. Was it about no insurance? Or a pregnancy? Or both. I never knew but... unless the columnist wants to visit an ER undercover she might want to learn to keep her mouth shut.
Honestly, I find it ironic. Ms. Young and Mr. Kessler (and many others) accused the original reporter of sloppy journalism because they wrote the story based on a single source. But it seems pretty clear to me that the journalist critics themselves did virtually zero research to see if such a story could be true.
I mean how hard could it be to pick up the phone and call, say the Cuyahoga County DA's office and ask to speak to one of their prosecutors who specializes in child maltreatment cases for strictly background general information and explicitly not about any specific case?
When I was in fulltime practice reporters would call for that information and I ALWAYS took it as an opportunity to educate the reporter, to help them make sure they were looking for information in the right place and keep their facts straight.
I was counsel for FCCS in the ‘80s, and you and I both know they can’t confirm anything. What was inexcusable to me is that the doctor confirmed the procedure and the journalists pooh-poohed that.
Cathy, if a report to CPS (Child Protective Services) was required under the circumstances, and I assume it was, I would be astonished if the laws of the applicable states would make such a report discoverable to anyone without a "need to know"-- law enforcement, social services, possibly the courts, the appropriate prosecutor's office. It would most definitely NOT be available to the press-- ie, the general public. Even as a prosecutor I often had to go through "back channels" to get reports from CPS on a child or family that landed on my caseload.
Bottom line, no reporter could-- or should-- get access to those reports. That Kessler, you or any other journalist was unable to does not at all mean that they don't exist.
Let me please add here that it really torques me off when people who don't really understand much about that on which they are venturing an opinion in such a public manner as you and Mr. Kessler do so without trying to talk to someone -- like me-- who has some familiarity with what amounts to some relatively specialized knowledge.
Scott, I think you are right on. And I appreciate your sharing your specialized knowledge and experiences. From my vantage point, there are multiple very good reasons why this story couldn't be fact-checked or verified in the typical manner. Additionally, I taught elementary and middle school for fourteen years, and girls beginning menstruation at nine/ten was not at all uncommon. If I read correctly, Mr. Kessler followed up with only the largest jurisdictions in Ohio, but why would we assume the case comes from one of them?
Scott fully nailed it. I’m literally shocked that Cathy continues to argue about this. If you doubt the story Cathy, do the work to disprove it. Do the work to understand the potential issues that Scott is highlighting. Dont continue to bring up random issues, ask him to explain it, then ignore his explanation
But once again, no one is asking for a copy the report to be made available to journalists. All that would be needed is to say "Yes, this case is under investigation. We have no further comment." In fact, it sounds like the response Kessler (or his staffers) got was "We don't have such a case," not "We can't comment."
I really appreciate your work in this difficult field, Scott, as I'm sure we all do. But I notice that none of your examples include a pregnant 10-year-old. And again, I'm not saying that it's impossible, just very unlikely.
You really fought hard to defend a lie. This is not a good sign. And given how new the story really way - you should have let the matter go. Now that the story has been proven true you need to go back to your desk and think of all those who lied to you. It was not the pro-abortion folks by the way.. but the gleeful folks thinking that they had a gotcha moment.
Also add in that the Dr in Indiana can't disclose who the patient was, or any other identifying details - HIPAA. Kessler's reporting ("declined to identify") implies that Bernard had a choice in the matter. She didn't. She could easily lose her license to practice.
Let's also understand why these non-disclosure laws exist - so that these victims names don't get plastered all over the internet and follow them for the rest of their lives.
And yet you made a conclusion in the article about this. You have no idea whatsoever and are just a culpable as the people you are criticizing for spreading misinformation here.
What bothers me the most about people's reaction to the story of a ten-year-old girl needing an abortion is that the vast majority of those, like Ms. Young, who doubt it happened base their doubt on the erroneous belief that the idea of a ten-year-old getting pregnant is so unlikely.
I have been a county-level prosecutor for almost three decades, recently (mostly) retired. The last few years I was practicing full-time I specialized in child-maltreatment cases, primarily sexual assaults. Over the course of my entire career I have been assigned literally hundreds of child SA cases. I also spent two years as our county's juvenile court prosecutor.
In that capacity I have worked closely with prosecutors around my state who also specialize in these cases, Forensic Nurse Examiners (nurses who conduct physical examinations of children who report being sexually or otherwise physically abused, looking for evidence of abuse), law enforcement officers and social workers. Anyone who has worked in this field for any length of time can easily come up with dozens cases they themselves handled where there was a very young victim of sexual assault. It is also not very rare anymore for girls as young as nine to get their first period.
Over twenty years ago when I was in juvenile court we had a 13-year-old runaway who was pregnant with her second child.
A few years ago I prosecuted a case where the child victim was vaginally raped by a cousin when she was ten years old. She was afraid she might be pregnant because she had gotten her period a few months earlier (she wasn't.)
I had another case a few years ago where the victim had been raped by her stepfather and stepbrother--repeatedly. She was seven when we interviewed her but according to the brother (he confessed) the assaults had been going on since she was four or five.
I am happy to report that all three of these guys were convicted.
I have no idea whether this Ohio/Indiana case is accurate, but I can say that based on my experience and the experience of those with whom I have worked over the years, it is extremely plausible.
Thank you. I knew the story was true. Children are violated by adults more often than any of us wants to think about. I was 10 when my neighbor raped me. I was afraid to tell anyone. I was just lucky I did not get pregnant but after all these years, I remember every hideous detail. I was happy when I learned he died several years later. As an adult I finally fell in love with a man who I thought felt the same. He pressured me relentlessly into an abortion and later I got pregnant again with this same man. I refused to have another abortion and he left me. Thrilled to have my beautiful daughter, but single parenthood was hard. We were poor and it took years to get back on my feet. Being and feeling victimized is unpleasant, but all any of us can do in this life is have a little compassion for these young victims. Abortion is a painful issue but if it is necessary, it should be safe and done in a medical facility. Stop make legal obstacles regarding medical and intensely personal decisions.
Thx for your story.
Scott- I am hoping that you will update your post based on the fact that an arrest was made in Ohio of the perpetrator who raped the 10 year old girl.
From the start, you stated that the cause was plausible and indeed it is.
Thank you for sharing your expertise, it was needed.
Wrong, though. https://twitter.com/lbischoff/status/1547255609539575808?s=21&t=BZTFbSe3dNBdArAgdR6vxg
The doubt is based on the complete lack of any reasonable evidence that should exist of it having actually occurred.
"Evidence" that YOU or anyone else in the PUBLIC have no right to access.
Journalists are required to properly source stories.
Did the article not provide a direct quote from the Dr in Indiana? Is that not a "proper source?"
Kessler - and you - are basically saying the Dr is lying.
Yet you have no "proper sources" to make that conclusion, no?
You and your colleagues are doing good work. Bless you!
In 2001 my C of C class interviewed a juvie judge who told us he would have to stop proceedings due to his own break downs from listening to cases. Most were about child abuse in 21st century Arkansas. I imagine it hasn't got better.
God bless him for doing such difficult and necessary work!
" those, like Ms. Young, who doubt it happened base their doubt on the erroneous belief that the idea of a ten-year-old getting pregnant is so unlikely. "
That is not an accurate account of the basis of her doubt as she explains it. The main basis of her skepticism is that the story as reported lacks the standard foundation of journalistic reliability, since it rests solely on one person's word, and the lead reporter "did not respond to a query asking whether additional sourcing was obtained."
If the reporter wants to assure people that her story is well founded, she should provide some basis to be confident that she has more than one person's word for it.
Demonstrating that it COULD have happened does not establish that this particular case actually did happen, and nowhere does Cathy say the story is impossible. Rather, she points out that the reporter provides insufficient basis to accept this specific case as factual without a doubt.
I'm fairly certain that the people who find her question about sourcing outrageous would be highly skeptical of a story based entirely on one person's word if that story served the agenda of their political opponents.
I am not impressed by the depth of fact checking here.
First of all, I'd not expect the governor of the state to know about cases of child abuse being investigated.
These investigations are highly confidential and not shared with reporters or other curious members of the public.
And in most states the child protective services are organized by county. They contacted authorities in a few large cities.
And even if they contacted the correct jurisdiction, I just cannot imagine anyone divulging such sensitive information.
I'm inclined to take Dr. Barnard's word.
Oops. That is the very close to the argument made by people STILL believing Trump's Big Lie--just because the vote frauders did such a good job of covering their tracks doesn't mean the election wasn't stolen.
If the reason the story cannot be confirmed is to protect the child, that is a very good reason, but then the reporter who broke the story was irresponsible. It is possible to verify the story without outing the child.
It's also not true that "thousands of women" were dying of illegal abortions before *Roe* -- in the 1930s and 40s, yes, but not by the 1970s.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/29/planned-parenthoods-false-stat-thousands-women-died-every-year-before-roe/
Please. SCOTUS is not "now targeting contraception." ONE out of NINE justices mentioned revisiting Griswald v. Connecticut in a concurring opinion which no other justice joined. Even then if Griswald was reversed, the issue would simply go back to the states and how many states would pass a law banning contraception? I'm guessing none.
You are missing my point. A reporter being unable to verify a story doesn't mean it did not happen cannot be the standard for journalism. Right now there is some wiggle room because of the circumstances of the story. It is irresponsible to print a story for its political value. It also needs to be true. It may well prove to be true. We'll see. What is true is that the governor of South Dakota danced around the question of whether a 10-year should be required to carry to term. The interviewer sought repeatedly to get a straight answer, and finally got a version of "Two wrongs don't make a right." In other words, yes, the child would be required to carry to term.
That's an excellent point, Terry, about the governor of South Dakota.
Powerful moving stuff. Glad to be in the company of people who bring us hard truths.
I will add that there are any number of reasons why there are no public records of prosecution to confirm the story.
In order to file a complaint, you must be able to name a defendant. She may not know the name of the person who impregnated her. There may be more than one person who could have impregnated her and she's not sure who it is. She may be afraid of disclosing the person's identity (think Mom's boyfriend or her dad.) She may not be willing to say that she "had sex" with anyone. (We had a case in my town several years ago where the defendant was caught on Walmart security cameras assaulting boys and the boys denied any such thing had happened to them-- even after they saw the video.)
If the person who impregnated the girl is a minor, the case would go to juvenile court where the proceedings almost never get into the public domain.
It may be that law enforcement is waiting for DNA samples from the fetus in order to try to identify the person who impregnated the child.
What I'm saying is that just because so little about the case has made it into the public domain does not, given the circumstances, make the story less plausible if you are familiar with how these cases work.
Scott, my understanding is that Kessler was not checking for a police report or court records, but for a report to child welfare services, which would be filed regardless of whether there was an arrest, a prosecution, or a named perpetrator.
They’re confidential, and not just in Ohio. Journalists are supposed to research laws like that.
https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2022/07/13/columbus-man-charged-rape-10-year-old-led-abortion-in-indiana/10046625002/
I hope Bulwark readers can count on an apology and retraction.
Well, that would be nice.
In fairness, I can see why most people would find the story implausible: they don't live in a world where grown men, or anyone else, rape little children; nor do they toil in the field of child sexual assault, as I do.
What really does infuriate me is when people like Ms. Young and others opine with such assumed authority in such a public manner on things about which they know so little.
I have spent time in ERs on a few occasions (minor stuff). On a few occasions one would see a young woman and lots of whispering. Was it about no insurance? Or a pregnancy? Or both. I never knew but... unless the columnist wants to visit an ER undercover she might want to learn to keep her mouth shut.
I'm glad they caught the guy.
Absolutely!
I said the same thing. We should probably not hold their breaths.
Honestly, I find it ironic. Ms. Young and Mr. Kessler (and many others) accused the original reporter of sloppy journalism because they wrote the story based on a single source. But it seems pretty clear to me that the journalist critics themselves did virtually zero research to see if such a story could be true.
I mean how hard could it be to pick up the phone and call, say the Cuyahoga County DA's office and ask to speak to one of their prosecutors who specializes in child maltreatment cases for strictly background general information and explicitly not about any specific case?
When I was in fulltime practice reporters would call for that information and I ALWAYS took it as an opportunity to educate the reporter, to help them make sure they were looking for information in the right place and keep their facts straight.
No, they did much worse than that.
They - for all intents and purposes - said the Ohio doctor was lying.
"It's was single sourced! There's no report available to the public! It must not be true!"
The ONLY logical conclusion from that line of thinking is that the doctor WHO WAS QUOTED/SOURCED was lying.
I was counsel for FCCS in the ‘80s, and you and I both know they can’t confirm anything. What was inexcusable to me is that the doctor confirmed the procedure and the journalists pooh-poohed that.
Cathy, if a report to CPS (Child Protective Services) was required under the circumstances, and I assume it was, I would be astonished if the laws of the applicable states would make such a report discoverable to anyone without a "need to know"-- law enforcement, social services, possibly the courts, the appropriate prosecutor's office. It would most definitely NOT be available to the press-- ie, the general public. Even as a prosecutor I often had to go through "back channels" to get reports from CPS on a child or family that landed on my caseload.
Bottom line, no reporter could-- or should-- get access to those reports. That Kessler, you or any other journalist was unable to does not at all mean that they don't exist.
Let me please add here that it really torques me off when people who don't really understand much about that on which they are venturing an opinion in such a public manner as you and Mr. Kessler do so without trying to talk to someone -- like me-- who has some familiarity with what amounts to some relatively specialized knowledge.
Scott, I think you are right on. And I appreciate your sharing your specialized knowledge and experiences. From my vantage point, there are multiple very good reasons why this story couldn't be fact-checked or verified in the typical manner. Additionally, I taught elementary and middle school for fourteen years, and girls beginning menstruation at nine/ten was not at all uncommon. If I read correctly, Mr. Kessler followed up with only the largest jurisdictions in Ohio, but why would we assume the case comes from one of them?
Scott fully nailed it. I’m literally shocked that Cathy continues to argue about this. If you doubt the story Cathy, do the work to disprove it. Do the work to understand the potential issues that Scott is highlighting. Dont continue to bring up random issues, ask him to explain it, then ignore his explanation
But once again, no one is asking for a copy the report to be made available to journalists. All that would be needed is to say "Yes, this case is under investigation. We have no further comment." In fact, it sounds like the response Kessler (or his staffers) got was "We don't have such a case," not "We can't comment."
I really appreciate your work in this difficult field, Scott, as I'm sure we all do. But I notice that none of your examples include a pregnant 10-year-old. And again, I'm not saying that it's impossible, just very unlikely.
You really fought hard to defend a lie. This is not a good sign. And given how new the story really way - you should have let the matter go. Now that the story has been proven true you need to go back to your desk and think of all those who lied to you. It was not the pro-abortion folks by the way.. but the gleeful folks thinking that they had a gotcha moment.
Also add in that the Dr in Indiana can't disclose who the patient was, or any other identifying details - HIPAA. Kessler's reporting ("declined to identify") implies that Bernard had a choice in the matter. She didn't. She could easily lose her license to practice.
Let's also understand why these non-disclosure laws exist - so that these victims names don't get plastered all over the internet and follow them for the rest of their lives.
Thank you for your comment, I agree.
And yet you made a conclusion in the article about this. You have no idea whatsoever and are just a culpable as the people you are criticizing for spreading misinformation here.
Thank you for your comment, I support it.
Don't really 'Like' this Scott but can't argue with your point. It's a sad commentary on our society.