New Netflix documentary: "The Keepers". Anyone else watching this? Spoilers are likely.

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@mikecurtis

Beverly Wallace one of the attorneys in the '94 suit says it in ***the Keepers. ***Apparently 30 witness were called at the trial,

No, there weren’t. They spend half of episode four lamenting that there was no trial, remember? The case was dismissed before it got to trial. And yes, I knew the source of the “30” quote. For what it’s worth, I wasn’t asking to be argumentative or to score some rhetorical point. I asked because I wanted to know if there was yet another number being thrown around that I missed, because in 1995, the number quoted to journalist Paul Mandelbaum was seventeen: Doe, Roe, and 15 others. The number repeated in The Keepers (attributed to the plaintiffs’ attorneys) is 30. Maybe she was just giving a general number that includes people who reached out anonymously and people they didn’t actually have a face to face consultation with, rather than the actual number of people they spoke with directly, but they could have been a bit clearer on what that figure meant.

The Keepers wants to convince us of Maskell’s guilt and it bandies about these large numbers as “proof”, so the numbers matter. If the filmmakers were playing fast and loose with these details, that’s another hit to their own credibility.

So. because she didn’t remember everything that happened to her over twenty years prior right away her entire story is suspect?

Yes, that’s exactly what it means. When the ONLY evidence is witness testimony, that testimony must be thoroughly scrutinized. And “not remembering everything right away” is NOT what she was claiming: she was claiming to have repressed these memories (of the more severe abuse) - that is, total amnesia - then “recovered” them in 93 and 94. This was crucial to their case; they argued that the repression (not merely forgetting) should be grounds to extend the statute of limitations.

As far as i can tell she has always said"I always had a memory of the first couple times with Maskell and what he did with the douche bags and enema bottles and the raping. But yes, at the time, in ’94, I woke up in the middle of the night screaming because I remembered the rape at the rector’s office. I started remembering other things then, too." seems pretty straightforward to me.

And yet again, you’re mistaken. It seems so bizarre that you’ve been replying to my posts but you don’t seem to have actually stopped to read them first, because I addressed this very thing. As I said before, NOW she is saying she always remembered rape. But in 1994 she was saying otherwise. Back then, her testimony was that she remembered some of the abuse all along but the worst of it - including the rape memories - had only been recently “recovered”. Her specific claims are preserved in the court documents (including the excerpt from the appeal, which I’ve linked in at least two of my earlier posts) and reflected in the summaries. As I said, she is changing her story after the fact. Feel free to go back and re-read my earlier posts; I posted specific quotes and linked to the source.

I don’t know what they used to come up with their determination, but here’s what the Archdiocese says:

Then what were you disputing?! I’ve already read the statement from the Archdiocese, that’s what I was commenting on in my earlier post. For your benefit, I’ll reiterate: “If his inclusion on the list resulted from accusations arising from recovered memories; if they make the same logic mistake as this series, thinking the number of accusers means the claims themselves are credible, he probably shouldn’t be on that list.”

but he goes to great lengths to point out there is no physical evidence to back up that claim,

He does no such thing. They only discuss lack of evidence in the context of a conspiracy.

Scene cuts to one of The Trusted (i.e. Gemma Hoskins, Tom Nugent, Abbie Schaub, Jean Wehner, various others) asking for documents at the police station or courthouse and finding they aren’t available (while somber music plays in the background), or one of the former detectives saying he doesn’t know why the department would have no reports on Maskell “unless the reports were just made to disappear”, or the clip of Detective Childs seeming annoyed when he learns that Baltimore City Police lost the Cesnik letter; etc etc etc; constantly hinting at or talking about a cover up, shaking their heads in disgust about the suspicious loss of evidence.

Bemoaning the loss of evidence (which is unfortunate, but not so unusual for a 50 year old case) and suggesting a cover up is a far cry from going “to great lengths to point out there is no physical evidence to back up that claim”.

You keep trying to make the case that Ryan White handled this series in an honest, balanced way, and at this point the facts don’t support that. We’ll have to agree to differ.

[mikecurtis]

From a 1995 article God Only Knows about the trial in Baltimore Magazine; they call Doe “Jennifer” and Roe “Tracy”

Unlike Jennifer, whom she claims never to have met, Tracy says she has always remembered some of her encounters with Maskell but that certain graver abuses she recalled only recently. But even the things she says she’s always remembered were bad enough that, for part of her adult life, she kept track of Maskell’s whereabouts with the thought of killing him. . .

Tracy claims Maskell hugged her and told her that, although he wasn’t supposed to touch the girls, they found it calming. He pulled his chair around to the front of his desk and allegedly removed her clothing, piece by piece, until she was completely naked, she says. The priest then massaged her breasts and asked if her boyfriend touched her similarly, she claims. Allegedly, Maskell reassured her: “I am touching you in a Godly manner.”

This session led to a series of meetings in which, Tracy claims, she was naked, sometimes sitting on his lap. On one occasion, she says, her friend Lisa was present while Maskell conducted an explicit anatomy lesson with Tracy as the model. (Baltimore magazine’s efforts to contact Lisa have been unsuccessful, though Tracy’s attorneys say Lisa corroborates their client’s account.)

Maskell also took Tracy to a gynecologist, Tracy asserts, and watched her examinations. When the doctor prescribed a thrice-weekly douche, Maskell offered the private bathroom adjoining his office for that purpose. She claims the priest watched her administer douches, as well as enemas. . .

**They called Tracy to the stand, where she carefully recited her old, then new alleged memories of Maskell. **

It’s a very long article but it gives a fairly unbiased view of the “trial”. In this article Jennifer (Jean) comes across as an unreliable witness, and Tracy (Theresa) as only saying she has recovered memories to cash in on the lawsuit. The judge probably made the right decision at the time to not allow the recovered memories, which then disallowed the older memories from being considered. I distinctly remember the “Satan Day Care” case and the controversy of recovered memories. The statute that says that children only have til age 25 to sue for abuses that happened in childhood forced their hand, but the lawyers for Doe and Roe relied too heavily on the memories of Jean. They picked the wrong plaintiff to bet the entire case on.

AS for Maskell being on the list of abusers, I defer to the wisdom of the people whose job it is to determine who belongs on that list; that they are relying on more than just hazy recovered memories. I don’t presume to know based on a mini-series and a few magazine articles.

I guess I give the series a little more slack than you do. Of course it’s gonna play up the connection between the abuse and the murder. It’s sensational, it gets the asses in the seats. But if their goal was to prove that the two events were actually connected, then they failed.
I saw it as the story of these separate groups of people and how their lives are forever connected through this one woman; Sr Cathy Cesnik.

mc

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@mikecurtis

From a 1995 article God Only Knows about the trial in Baltimore Magazine; they call Doe “Jennifer” and Roe “Tracy”
It’s a very long article but it gives a fairly unbiased view of the “trial”.

Yes, that’s the exact same article I linked above, by Paul Mandelbaum. Did you notice that the number quoted at that time was seventeen? Do you wonder at all about the high numbers being thrown about in The Keepers?

In any case, it was a hearing, not a trial.

The statute is seven years, so yes, that means for someone who was wronged in childhood, after reaching the age of legal adulthood they have seven years (age 25) to come forward and make their case. If they are harmed later in life, they have seven years from the time the violation (whatever it may be) ends.

The Keepers shows victims scoffing and becoming indignant as if having such statutes at all is a personal slight to them. They embarrass themselves when they behave like that. Seven years is not a short time. It is a reasonable and necessary time limit meant to reduce the likelihood of intentional or unintentional false accusations and all the damage that goes along with that (including wrongful imprisonment), as well as prevent expensive trials where the truth can never be determined because the relevant evidence is long gone.

In one of your earlier posts you asserted that Jean was the only one who had recovered memories. I assume you’ve conceded now that Teresa Lancaster also recovered the “more severe” of her own memories, and since you read the article, you also know Donna Vondenbosch (Eva Nelson Cruz in the article) recovered hers. As I’ve said, as you begin to investigate, you find that several, and perhaps all of the survivors featured in the Keepers are basing their accusations on recovered memories.

In this article Jennifer (Jean) comes across as an unreliable witness, and Tracy (Theresa) as only saying she has recovered memories to cash in on the lawsuit.

Jean comes across as unreliable because she IS unreliable, and Mandelbaum’s piece is a lot more honest than Ryan White’s docuseries. Teresa’s testimony is unreliable either way you look at it – she either lied to cash in on a 40 million lawsuit, or she DID recover memories, which means her claims, too, are suspect for the same reason Jean’s are.

the lawyers for Doe and Roe relied too heavily on the memories of Jean. They picked the wrong plaintiff to bet the entire case on.

And see, that’s just it. They are lawyers. They talked to seventeen people, and Jean and Teresa had the strongest claims. Even with their best witnesses, the stories did not hold up under questioning.

I guess I give the series a little more slack than you do.

Amazing. You tell me I “clearly don’t care about facts” (and you were wrong: my facts were spot-on, thank you very much) but the high profile series that implicates people in horrific crimes while omitting significant details and misrepresenting other ones, THAT you’re blase about? Of course I don’t give this series any slack. The Keepers markets itself as a documentary, a balanced look at facts and evidence, and people believe that. It’s having a tangible and significant impact on real people, and might continue to do so for quite some time.

As you yourself pointed out, 50-yr-old cases have been re-opened due to public pressure generated by this series. The reckless and irresponsible way they presented recovered memories is also likely to have an impact on mental health care, empowering the ill-informed and incompetent practitioners who still practice those types of therapy. The series also denigrates the statute of limitations and people nationwide are rallying to abolish them. They do this with the senseless notion that it “protects” or helps victims somehow, but it does not – in the name of “helping” victims they’re creating a situation that is even more unjust.

[DrDeth]

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As you yourself pointed out, 50-yr-old cases have been re-opened due to public pressure generated by this series.

Not only old cases, old* bodies*. They dug up Fr Joseph Maskell , who has been dead since 2001. :eek::rolleyes: Nothing was found.

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@DrDeth

Not only old cases, old* bodies*. They dug up Fr Joseph Maskell , who has been dead since 2001. :eek::rolleyes: Nothing was found.

Finding nothing is PROOF of the conspiracy! :eek:

I do wonder what The Keepers fans will do if, after new leads and suspects have been investigated, and new (and old) evidence sifted through, LE turns up absolutely nothing. Jean Wehner said she is still recovering memories, so fans and supporters will likely have an endless stream of new material to speculate and theorize over.