Once again, we are looking at the allegations which Virginia Roberts ("Jane Doe #3") has made against Alan Dershowitz -- allegations which Roberts has repeated in a recent filing. Here's a juicy tidbit:
“Dershowitz was so comfortable with the sex that was going on that he would even come and chat with Epstein while I was giving oral sex to Epstein.”Dershowitz calls Roberts a "serial prostitute" -- and please note that he always uses the present tense, even though there is no evidence that she has ever practiced that trade except (arguably) when she was a young victim of the heinous Jeffrey Epstein.
When Local 10 News reporter Bob Norman pushed backed against Dershowitz’s characterization of a child molestation victim of Jeffrey Epstein as a “prostitute,” Dershowitz responded, “She was not victimized … she made her own decisions in life.”This, of a woman who was used as a "sex slave" from the age of 15 by Dershowitz' friend and client, Jeffrey Epstein. Remember, Epstein is a man who, according to published reports, has molested girls who were younger still.
(Some of them came from Eastern Europe, and one wonders about the legality of their travel arrangements. Incidentally, the Mann Act is still in force -- and I have no idea how Epstein managed to escape prosecution on that score, since he moved his underaged harem around constantly.)
The first -- and weakest -- section of the Electronic Intifada article deals with Dershowitz on what we may call "men's rights" issues. The stronger arguments come further on. I distinctly recall being quite appalled by Dershowitz' attitude toward child pornography when he first started to discuss the matter in public.
In 2002 — a time when, according to Jeffrey Epstein’s housekeeper, Dershowitz frequently stayed at Epstein’s Palm Beach mansion where the rape of children was taking place daily and in his presence — Dershowitz took up the cause of child pornography viewers. In his column for the magazine Penthouse, Dershowitz invoked the language of individual rights to argue that watching “kiddie porn” doesn’t make one a bad person and therefore should not be a punishable offense.
In 2005, after three teenage boys were convicted of statutory rape for receiving oral sex from a 15-year-old girl at the Milton Academy, a ritzy Massachusetts boarding school attended by Dershowitz’s daughter, Dershowitz slammed Massachusetts’s statutory rape laws, a fair argument considering the close ages between the boys and the girl (the boys were between the ages of sixteen and seventeen and the sex was consensual). But that wasn’t all. Dershowitz went even further, agitating for the state to “considerably” lower the age of consent, which was sixteen years, The Boston Globe reported at the time.
In the weeks leading up to the 30 December 2014 court filing that named him as a rapist in Jeffrey Epstein’s sex slave scheme, Dershowitz was trying to overturn the guilty verdict of convicted child rapist and award-winning Hollywood director Roman Polanski. It was one of the few times he failed.Near as I can tell, the "extortion" charge against Roberts is also a lie. There can be no extortion without a demand for money, goods or services. If Roberts has made such a demand, Dershowitz has not revealed it.
Before that, Dershowitz was busy protecting Hasidic Brooklyn cantor and child molester Baruch Lebovits from punishment by defaming the father of one of Lebovits’s victims.
Lebovits was convicted in 2010 on eight of ten counts of child molestation and faced up to 32 years in prison. That conviction was overturned on a technicality after Alan Dershowitz joined his legal team. Dershowitz declared at the time, “our client was a victim of an extortion plot,” a foreshadowing of his response to rape allegations against himself. “I’m an innocent victim of an extortion conspiracy,” Dershowitz has insisted.
In Lebovits’ case, the extortion claims advanced by Dershowitz turned out to be a lie.
In the Lebowitz case, there was an allegation that Sam Kellner, a father of one of the victims, made a demand for money. Though the charge was completely false, Kellner was indicted.
Alan Dershowitz played a central role in spreading the smear against Kellner, which was crucial to Lebovits’ defense. Though the charges against Kellner were eventually dismissed after it was determined that the accusation was fabricated, Dershowitz has continued to promote the wild falsehood against Kellner, whose reputation and family life were nearly destroyed by the episode.The article then discusses Dershowitz' work on the Epstein case, in which the famed lawyer assiduously dug up every possible speck of dirt on the young girls victimized by that very sick billionaire.
In a letter from Dershowitz to the Palm Beach police chief, obtained by The Guardian, Dershowitz attached a copy of the girl’s MySpace page, noting “her apparent fascination with marijuana,” and expressed fears “that she, an accomplished drama student, might try to mislead [the private investigators] as successfully as she had misled others.”I'd like to add one more thing.
Many people forget that the court documents which describe Dershowitz as having sex with "Jane Doe #3" do not constitute any kind of legal charge against Alan Dershowitz.
The case was filed against the U.S. government.
The government stands accused of offering Epstein an extraordinarily lenient plea deal and making sure that the details of this deal were kept secret from the victims. This secret deal was not only unethical, I believe that it violated a law called the Crime Victims Rights Act.
Although the government is the party being sued, it must be understood that the "secret deal" was worked out between Dershowitz and some all-too-compliant government officials. Thus, Dershowitz bears no small amount of moral responsibility for that deal.
In all of his fulminations against Virginia Roberts, not once (to my knowledge) has Alan Dershowitz addressed the substance of her claim that her rights as a victim were violated. Roberts says that Dershowitz' secret deal violated the CVRA. I have not heard him say one word to the contrary.
His silence on that issue says much.
15 comments:
"Serial prostitute"? As opposed to what - a concubine, a slave, a wife? Or is Dershowitz threatening to name other abusers (lessees, part owners, clients)?
I'm not completely sure what the phrase "serial prostitute" is supposed to mean, but I think that it is meant to refer to someone who keeps falling into and out of and back into that life.
There's no evidence that Roberts has turned tricks.
I think you've misquoted the article. he cals her a "serial liar" and "prostitute". Though if he's claiming that her period of prostitution was when she was underage he's only diggng himself in deeper.
Regardless of whether they receive money for the transaction victims of human trafficking are (in right-minded states) exactly that 'victims' and as such will not be proescuted as perpetrators of a crime. An underage child will, quite obviously, have the same guidelines applied. I would think that unless he has evidence she acted as a prostitute outside of any period _that did not begin_ when she was underage, by calling her a prostitute he has opened himself up to very clear slander charges. Though perhaps the US is less stringent about such things than other countries.
Damn...my mistake, I see elsewhere in the article he also used the phrase "serial prostitute". Apologies, though that would seem to be an even harder allegation to substantiate, requring evidence that she repeatedly left and entered prostitution (again, barring the time when she was underage).
There's a good case against Dershowitz, none of which is even hinted at in that awful article. You see, you make a case against someone with evidence of wrongdoing, all that article provides is evidence that he disagrees with some feminist dogma and that he, as a defence brief, associates with some unpleasant people. None of that tittle-tattle has any sort of probative value or provides any further information on the accusations made.
Bran, if you Google the phrase "serial prostitute" in quotes along with Dershowitz' name, you'll see many examples.
Stephen, I intentionally left out what you call the "feminist dogma" part of the article, because things like the Kanin study do open up huge areas of controversy. I've wandered into that particular controversy in a previous post.
But I did distinctly recall reading an LA Times opinion piece in which Dershowitz took a weirdly accepting view of kiddie porn (as long as everything was photoshopped). It disturbed me at the time.
I'd never heard of Alan Dershowitz when he walked into a bookstore where I was reading in the winter of 2001-2002 and he started expounding very articulately on the need for extraordinary measures to keep us safe from terrorists. I regret to say that at the time, he was very persuasive to me.
Later, looking back, I was shocked to realize that already at that early date he was invoking the "ticking time bomb" scenario.
Anon -- and I hope you can offer up some kind of nick next time -- I'm with you. I used to admire Dershowitz. And I still agree with his basic take on the OJ case. (Dersh has hinted, without baldly stating, the the OJ case may have been a case in which the cops framed a guilty man. Seems about right to me.)
But the guy has definitely turned, like overripe milk, and I'm not just talking about his writings on Israel. Something seems to have happened there, and I'm not sure what.
By photoshopped do you mean child porn that wasn't made by actually abusing children, but just by drawings and photoshopping pictures of children onto pictures of porn stars and the like? I don't mind that. Disgusting, of course, but I don't see any reason why it ought to be prohibited.
It's getting more difficult, in this case, not to wonder what the parallels are between the Epstein case and the Marc Dutroux crimes in Belgium and the Westminster pedophile ring. BTW, this site is doing first-rate work on the Westminster cases: http://www.exaronews.com/channel/uk
The passenger lists in the flight records of Epstein's private "mile high club" jet, show numerous flights where Dershowitz was on board with members of Epstein's harem.
Hadn't realized myself that the UK royals still retain a veto power over laws they don't like. Andrew, at least, is unlikely to ever see any real repercussions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAY46NW7EDo&feature=youtu.be
Why does anybody give any credence whatsoever to a civil suit? A lawyer can say anything in a civil action because it is privileged. Pay attention to what Dershowitz says about this crap suit. He knows what he is talking about, and I hope he succeeds in getting this woman's lawyers disbarred. Lies were leveled at me when an attorney made shit up in order for his client to get a settlement. That's what is going on here. It happens all the time in civil cases because the goal is not a trial but a pretrial settlement. This plaintiff will get her pile of money, and nobody will hear about it again.
OTE, your argument would be more compelling if the complaint were filed against a private party, but it isn't. It was filed against the U.S. government. So there can be NO pretrial settlement; the very foundation of your argument is based on a false premise.
The charge here is that the US attorneys who cut a deal with Epstein have, in essence, broken the law. The victims were not apprised of the details of the deal.
And they are not seeking money from Epstein. This is all about the ridiculously lenient sentence he received.
There simply is no money involved!
You seem to have been hurt deeply in a case in which you were involved. I sympathize, and I know that such things do happen. But this is different.
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