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Wisconsin Judge Prosser Assailed on Child Molestation

The new ad against Walker

  • (supports Walker) - A fair attack

    Votes: 2 16.7%

  • (supports Walker) - A character assassination

    Votes: 4 33.3%

  • (supports Walker) - I don't know / Not sure

    Votes: 1 8.3%

  • (opposes Walker) - A fair attack

    Votes: 4 33.3%

  • (opposes Walker) - A character assassination

    Votes: 1 8.3%

  • (opposes Walker) - I don't know / Not sure

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    12
danarhea

danarhea

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Democrats are running this ad against David Prosser, who is up for reelection for the Wisconsin State Supreme Court:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWif64wiTjY&feature=player_embedded

The 2 kids involved are suing the Catholic Church in Wisconsin for hiding the priest who molested them, and molested others after Prosser refused to prosecute them.

But, from Prosser's perspective, here is the deal:

1) Times were different back then. Prosser says that the reason he did not prosecute the pedophile priest was to spare the kids the emotional stress of taking the stand. He had no knowlege that the priest was a serial molester. The villain here was the Bishop, who hid the priest, which enabled him to continue molesting kids.

2) Prosser is not Catholic, and so is not involved in a conspiracy to hide the priest.

3) Prosser did make a ruling a few years ago that the Catholic church can be sued.

From the Democrats' perspective - Because Prosser did not prosecute the molester, he enabled him to molest more kids, before he was finally prosecuted in 2004.

This is a difficult subject. Also, since the outcome of this election is going to help decide the Constitutionality of Walker's union busting, and also help decide redistricting in Wisconsin, it is an extremely hot-button topic. No doubt, the Democrats are jumping all over this for partisan political purposes, and if Prosser were a Republican, they most likely would be defending him, as Republicans are, at the moment.

Here is the issue in my poll - Many judges make bad decisons, without meaning to, and go on to distinguished careers. Is this the case with Judge Prosser? Does he deserve to be voted out, or is this just a power play by Democrats? I am categorizing the choices according to who and who does not support Walker's term as Governor of Wisconsin, so we can see how much of the issue is doing to divide along partisan lines.

NOTE: If you are against Walker, do NOT make inflammatory statements against Walker. State why you believe as you do. If you are for Walker, please do the same, instead of name calling too.
 
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Most likely this is a made up issue. I can't imagine a judge ignoring child abuse that he really though was a possibility. If they can prove that he went against his better judgement for money or something like that then prosecute the bastard and give him jail time but other than that this is just politics. Judge's can't be perfect.
 
danarhea said:
1) Times were different back then. Prosser says that the reason he did not prosecute the pedophile priest was to spare the kids the emotional stress of taking the stand. He had no knowlege that the priest was a serial molester. The villain here was the Bishop, who hid the priest, which enabled him to continue molesting kids.
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WTF... that's the worse, most pathetic excuse ever.

It isn't his choice to decide if the children are capable of taking the stand or if they can't handle the emotional distress.

I wouldn't vote for him. He should have thought about the consequences of not giving the victim a chance to prosecute the priest back then. Not only did more children get hurt, he might lose his job, and he should.
 
danarhea said:
Democrats are running this ad against David Prosser, who is up for reelection for the Wisconsin State Supreme Court:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWif64wiTjY&feature=player_embedded

The 2 kids involved are suing the Catholic Church in Wisconsin for hiding the priest who molested them, and molested others after Prosser refused to prosecute them.

But, from Prosser's perspective, here is the deal:

1) Times were different back then. Prosser says that the reason he did not prosecute the pedophile priest was to spare the kids the emotional stress of taking the stand. He had no knowlege that the priest was a serial molester. The villain here was the Bishop, who hid the priest, which enabled him to continue molesting kids.

2) Prosser is not Catholic, and so is not involved in a conspiracy to hide the priest.

3) Prosser did make a ruling a few years ago that the Catholic church can be sued.

From the Democrats' perspective - Because Prosser did not prosecute the molester, he enabled him to molest more kids, before he was finally prosecuted in 2004.

This is a difficult subject. Also, since the outcome of this election is going to help decide the Constitutionality of Walker's union busting, and also help decide redistricting in Wisconsin, it is an extremely hot-button topic. No doubt, the Democrats are jumping all over this for partisan political purposes, and if Prosser were a Republican, they most likely would be defending him, as Republicans are, at the moment.

Here is the issue in my poll - Many judges make bad decisons, without meaning to, and go on to distinguished careers. Is this the case with Judge Prosser? Does he deserve to be voted out, or is this just a power play by Democrats? I am categorizing the choices according to who and who does not support Walker's term as Governor of Wisconsin, so we can see how much of the issue is doing to divide along partisan lines.

NOTE: If you are against Walker, do NOT make inflammatory statements against Walker. State why you believe as you do. If you are for Walker, please do the same, instead of name calling too.
Click to expand...

I support Walker. I also think this is fair information to get out there. I don't see anything wrong with it. Is it prejudicial? Of course! But as long as the ads are truthful, then I fail to see a problem with them. Hopefully, he will be able to provide a satisfactory explanation. If not? Why should he be a member of the Supreme Court?
 
One of the two vicitims indicates that he belives the ad is just an inaccurate smear.

Victim upset with new SC ad

Todd Merryfield issued a statement in response to the ad, saying he is upset to see his court case being used as a political tool against Prosser. Merryfield goes on to say he finds the ad to be offensive, inaccurate, and out of context. Merryfield says he hopes the Greater Wisconsin committee will remove the ad, and hopes Prosser's opponent, Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg will encourage the organization to pull it.
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Prosser, has responded that the evidence at the time was insufficient. Additional evidence came out 25 years later which allowed for prosecution.
 
I'm for Walker and said it was a fair attack. However, my opinion is, it's somewhere in between a fair attack and character assassination.
 
buck said:
One of the two vicitims indicates that he belives the ad is just an inaccurate smear.

Victim upset with new SC ad


Todd Merryfield issued a statement in response to the ad, saying he is upset to see his court case being used as a political tool against Prosser. Merryfield goes on to say he finds the ad to be offensive, inaccurate, and out of context. Merryfield says he hopes the Greater Wisconsin committee will remove the ad, and hopes Prosser's opponent, Assistant Attorney General JoAnne Kloppenburg will encourage the organization to pull it.
Click to expand...
Prosser, has responded that the evidence at the time was insufficient. Additional evidence came out 25 years later which allowed for prosecution.
Click to expand...

In my best liberal voice: The victim is obviously being manipulated and coached by the vast right-wing conspiracy! Pay him no heed.
 
buck said:
One of the two vicitims indicates that he belives the ad is just an inaccurate smear.

Victim upset with new SC ad

Prosser, has responded that the evidence at the time was insufficient. Additional evidence came out 25 years later which allowed for prosecution.
Click to expand...

According to this article:
In 1979, then Outagamie County District Attorney David Prosser told a mother he did not want to prosecute a Green Bay priest who had abused her sons because "it would be too hard on the boys," newly released documents indicate.
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So it doesn't matter what the kid or Judge Prosser says, if it is documented that this is the reason why Prosser did not prosecute. However, I strongly feel that Prosser was not supporting the priest, which is why I view it as a character assassination. You have to look at the Democrats' motives. Why is this only finally, after many years, being brought out now, during an election campaign, and not before?
 
danarhea said:
According to this article:

So it doesn't matter what the kid or Judge Prosser says, if it is documented that this is the reason why Prosser did not prosecute. However, I strongly feel that Prosser was not supporting the priest, which is why I view it as a character assassination. You have to look at the Democrats' motives. Why is this only finally, after many years, being brought out now, during an election campaign, and not before?
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If his character is assassinated by making this decision public, he assassinated his own character when he made it in the first place.
 
I think the ad is fair, I don't know how it's not fair...
 
SheWolf said:
I think the ad is fair, I don't know how it's not fair...
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If the ad is truthful, then it's fair in my opinion. Suppose Judge Prosser was liberal, what would those who say it's unfair say then? :roll:
 
It's being used for partisan reasons, but if it's accurate information, then even if the Democrats' motives are suspect, their target deserves every bit of scrutiny the public has to offer.

Letting child molesters off the hook is very difficult to excuse. Even if he claims it was for the sake of the children, that sort of thing isn't his decision to make.
 
The consequences of David Prosser's decision not to prosecute were devastating for decades afterward; not the kind of sound judgment precedent one looks for in a supreme court judge.
 
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“In a fit of temper, you [Justice David Prosser] were screaming at the chief; calling her a 'bitch,' threatening her with '. . . I will destroy you'; and describing the means of destruction as a war against her 'and it won't be a ground war.'

“In my view, a necessary step to address the dysfunction is to end these abusive temper tantrums.”

— e-mail, Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, Feb. 18, 2010​

Whoa! Justice Prosser appears to be approaching the Dan White-level of self importance and social imbalance. No Twinkies for you, David!

Excerpted from “Supreme Court tensions boil over; Prosser says he was goaded into insulting chief justice” By Patrick Marley of the Journal Sentinel, Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel, March 19, 2011
[SIZE="+2"]P[/SIZE]rosser acknowledged the incident recently …

He said the outburst came after Abrahamson took steps to undermine him politically and to embarrass him and other court conservatives.

"In the context of this, I said, 'You are a total bitch,' " Prosser said.

"I probably overreacted, but I think it was entirely warranted. . . . They (Abrahamson and Justice Ann Walsh Bradley) are masters at deliberately goading people into perhaps incautious statements. This is bullying and abuse of very, very long standing." …
Click to expand...
 
Chappy said:
The consequences of David Prosser's decision not to prosecute were devastating for decades afterward; not the kind of sound judgment precedent one looks for in a supreme court judge.
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Yeah.. I'd say the ad is pretty damning, but I wouldn't be surprised if he was reelected...
 
danarhea said:
Democrats are running this ad against David Prosser, who is up for reelection for the Wisconsin State Supreme Court:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWif64wiTjY&feature=player_embedded

The 2 kids involved are suing the Catholic Church in Wisconsin for hiding the priest who molested them, and molested others after Prosser refused to prosecute them.

But, from Prosser's perspective, here is the deal:

1) Times were different back then. Prosser says that the reason he did not prosecute the pedophile priest was to spare the kids the emotional stress of taking the stand. He had no knowlege that the priest was a serial molester. The villain here was the Bishop, who hid the priest, which enabled him to continue molesting kids.

2) Prosser is not Catholic, and so is not involved in a conspiracy to hide the priest.

3) Prosser did make a ruling a few years ago that the Catholic church can be sued.

From the Democrats' perspective - Because Prosser did not prosecute the molester, he enabled him to molest more kids, before he was finally prosecuted in 2004.

This is a difficult subject. Also, since the outcome of this election is going to help decide the Constitutionality of Walker's union busting, and also help decide redistricting in Wisconsin, it is an extremely hot-button topic. No doubt, the Democrats are jumping all over this for partisan political purposes, and if Prosser were a Republican, they most likely would be defending him, as Republicans are, at the moment.

Here is the issue in my poll - Many judges make bad decisons, without meaning to, and go on to distinguished careers. Is this the case with Judge Prosser? Does he deserve to be voted out, or is this just a power play by Democrats? I am categorizing the choices according to who and who does not support Walker's term as Governor of Wisconsin, so we can see how much of the issue is doing to divide along partisan lines.

NOTE: If you are against Walker, do NOT make inflammatory statements against Walker. State why you believe as you do. If you are for Walker, please do the same, instead of name calling too.
Click to expand...

I'm not involved in Wisconsin politics, so I can't really say if I support or oppose him.

However, I believe he was seriously negligent in his duty as a prosecutor to not order the police to investigate the priest once allegations were brought up.

In my mind, it's understandable to not prosecute someone accused of child molestation. The main reason for this is because there is a lack of evidence from an investigation to support the prosecution of that person. After all, anyone can make allegations of sexual abuse against anybody else. However, people are innocent until proven guilty and there has to be strong evidence that they committed this crime in order to prosecute them.

However, what disturbs me is that he didn't even push the investigation of the priest by the police to decide whether or not there was any evidence to the allegations. If he was a competent prosecutor, he would have had the police investigate a bare minimum to see if there was anything to the allegations. But he didn't even do that. Which, in my mind, makes me think that he's really bad at his job.

And because of that, he shouldn't be a judge.

Now if he had pushed for a police investigation and the police didn't find enough evidence even though the priest was guilty, I could forgive Prosser of that. DAs have limited resources with which to pursue cases, and they can only go after charges where there's a high likelihood of getting a conviction. But the fact that he didn't even ask the police to investigate is what makes me distrubed about him.

And I"d have this opinion of a judge no matter what his political leanings are.
 
Per PolitFact-Wisconsin, "barely true" following has been snipped from link at bottom:

[Re the advertisement run disparaging Prosser] So, where does all of this leave us? The Greater Wisconsin Committee [the group running the ad] claims David Prosser didn’t ask police to investigate a mother’s report that a 30-year pedophile priest had indecently touched her two sons, then refused to file charges him and participated in a cover-up of the priest’s acts.

The committee’s TV ad uses generally factual statements to make its case, but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. By using information that only became known later, it suggests more information was available to Prosser at the time than really was. For instance, Prosser didn’t know that the priest had a long history of molestation -- that came out 14 years later. And it wasn’t until 14 years later that one of the brothers made the most serious allegation against the priest.

Finally, the two brothers have condemned the ad as "offensive, inaccurate and out of context."

Finally, we rate the claim as barely true.
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PolitiFact Wisconsin | Greater Wisconsin Committee says Supreme Court Justice David Prosser mishandled allegation of sex abuse by priest
 
pbrauer said:
If the ad is truthful, then it's fair in my opinion. Suppose Judge Prosser was liberal, what would those who say it's unfair say then? :roll:
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I wouldn't condemn a liberal prosecutor for not pursuing charges when there wasn't much evidence. Especially when looked at in the context of what was occuring back then. Priests were not known for molestation in the early/mid 70's. It's very easy to look back at that time with our modern lenses and think that you'd be silly not to pursue charges. But this was an unknown back then.

Now, I can't speak for the other conservatives, I can only give my thoughts on the subject.
 
danarhea said:
Here is the issue in my poll - Many judges make bad decisons, without meaning to, and go on to distinguished careers. Is this the case with Judge Prosser? Does he deserve to be voted out, or is this just a power play by Democrats? I am categorizing the choices according to who and who does not support Walker's term as Governor of Wisconsin, so we can see how much of the issue is doing to divide along partisan lines.
Click to expand...

Past rulings for a judge are certainly fair game for political ads. It is up to the judge to be able to defend his record. In this case it was a decision while the DA, but the same holds true. Imagine if I had come out and said running ads about the past two supreme court nominees and their actions had been unfair.

Now, looking at the politifact page on this add, I would say that the way the decision was framed in the add was unfair and highly misleading. However, it is painfully hard to legislate something like that. I don't like it, but it's not going to change.
 
PROSSER EXCUSE #1
Prosser says he did not know about the extent of Feeney’s crimes at the time
No one has claimed Prosser knew about all of Feeney’s crimes, only that a mother told him about her two children being assaulted. What Prosser neglects to say is that in 1978 he had knowledge of a third victim of Feeney. While the third victim was refusing to testify in court, the knowledge that there were at least three victims of Feeney should have alerted Prosser to investigate more closely. In 2002 when the Outagamie County sheriff’s department did launch a full-scale investigation of Feeney, they systematically contacted people in the different communities where Feeney served and developed leads about possible victims and uncovered numerous victims. Those same investigative techniques could have been used in 1978 if Prosser had been committed to the case. As with most serial offenders, all of their crimes are usually not known at once, but it requires investigative work to uncover them. In this case, Prosser dropped the ball even though he was personally aware of three victims.



PROSSER EXCUSE #2
Prosser says the crimes weren’t severe enough to warrant prosecution, claiming falsely, that it was not first degree sexual assault.
Prosser is alarmingly trying to minimize the severity of the crimes. It is true that he did not know about the abuse in the confessional, as the victim did not disclose that until 2003, but the other charges did include first degree sexual assault. According to the 1979 police report: “Fr. Feeney then slipped his hand down and under his pajama bottom.” In 2004, Feeney was convicted of three counts of first degree sexual assault and one second degree. These charges included both the attack in the children’s bedroom, which Prosser knew about, as well the second assault in the confessional booth. The crimes could only be charged the same way that the laws were when the crime happened, so it must have been first degree sexual assault back in 1978 when the assaults occurred. This is part of a pattern of Prosser trying to downplay the seriousness of the crime.



From this link


Beginning to change my mind now.
 
Like I said before, even though the attack was done for the sake of a character assassination, it still raises some serious questions. An interesting fact I found was that Prosser was running for election during this time. I could certainly see this influencing his decision (either because he didn't have enough time to properly investigate the matter or because he didn't want to bring forth such a controversial case right before an election).
 
does anyone think this ad would be running in a normal election year?

somehow i highly doubt it. this isn't an ad to protect kids; it's an ad to attack Walkers union bill. like all the Republicans who are suddenly sure that Congress Has To Have An Official Declaration Of War For The US To Engage Militarily, this moral charge isn't actually believed by those putting it out; it's merely a weapon.
 
cpwill said:
does anyone think this ad would be running in a normal election year?

somehow i highly doubt it. this isn't an ad to protect kids; it's an ad to attack Walkers union bill. like all the Republicans who are suddenly sure that Congress Has To Have An Official Declaration Of War For The US To Engage Militarily, this moral charge isn't actually believed by those putting it out; it's merely a weapon.
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But here is the point - If Prosser did do what he is accused of, you don't think it's fair game? If the shoe was on the other foot, you can bet your bottom dollar that Republicans would gangbang the hell out of a Democrat in the same position.
 
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