Washington Courts

Questions were asked of Mr. Fleck regarding Father LaVoy. He testified that he never saw Father LaVoy engage in any inappropriate conduct. He also testified that he never saw Father Joe Weitensteiner engage in any sort of inappropriate conduct. As to both men he testified that he had never heard of anyone saying that either Father LaVoy or Father Joe engaged in inappropriate sexual contact.

He talked at some length about Billy Knapton. He knew him well. Billy came in 1964; he may have left in 1968. He was small, young, like a child. He was the youngest kid at the ranch. The senior kids took him under their wing. It was made clear by the boys that Billy was not to be treated harshly because he was vulnerable. The rough stuff simply did not happen regarding Billy. There were 25 or so boys at the ranch at that time.

Mr. Fleck was asked how easy it was to keep a secret at the ranch. He said it would not be possible. The ranch was a closed society. The kids were together all the time. He said it would have been very difficult not to know any secrets.

During Billy Knapton’s testimony, a story was told about several boys who one day when they were supposed to be ill were punished when the counselors put stems of flowers in their butt cracks. It was told that a picture or pictures were taken and that the pictures circulated around the ranch.

Mr. Fleck was asked whether he knew of this story, whether he had even heard of the story, whether he had seen any pictures related to the story. In each case he clearly said no.

He spoke of many camping trips that Father Joe would take groups kids on overnight in and about the area near Morning Star Boys Ranch. He talked about sleeping out under the stars, about sleeping in war surplus, mummy sleeping bags.

Tim Kosnoff, the attorney for the plaintiff, did not particularly like what he was hearing.

Mr. Kosnoff wanted to show his negative response to Fleck’s testimony. He wanted to express his dismissiveness of the testimony in front of the jury. He made a snide remark about the use of mummy bags as if to say Fleck must not be telling the truth because war surplus mummy bags did not exist, that there were no such bags. Perhaps he was suggesting that mummy bags were only invented long after the war, maybe in Seattle.

Of course anyone age 60 today without much money in the 50’s and 60’s would have gotten his camping supplies at war surplus stores. As would Morning Star Boys Ranch. World War II sleeping bags were in great supply then. Many of the World War II sleeping bags were mummy sleeping bags. Down filled mummy bags were used by the 10th Mountain division. Wool blanket mummy bags were used by hundreds of thousands of other troops. Both such bags were also used during the Korean War and were available in surplus stores all over the nation.

Mr. Kosnoff attempted to be dismissive and somewhat snide with respect of Mr. Fleck’s testimony that Father Joe and the boys would sleep outside because they camped out when it would not rain. Kosnoff said something like “sure, it doesn’t rain in Spokane.”

Mr. Fleck said that the nights they went out on their night camping trips took place on nights when it would not rain. He said that if it did rain, everybody would just pack up, hop in the bus, and drive back to the ranch.

The Spokesman - Review headline to the Morning Star coverage on January 28, 2010 said “Witness says ranch knew of abuser.” The headline is inaccurate. The headline would of been more accurate if it had said “Ranch took immediate action to ensure abuser had nothing to do with ranch.”

The testimony of Rita Flynn, a mother of 11 children she and her husband Jim Flynn raised Spokane’s north side in Assumption Parish, was supposed to establish a connection between Patrick O’Donnell and Morning Star Boys Ranch. Instead, her testimony explained further and corroborated the testimony earlier given by Father Joe Weitensteiner that the ranch had taken immediate action to ensure O’Donnell had nothing to do with the ranch after he came back to Spokane from Seattle where he had gone for intensive treatment and where he had also secured counseling credentials.

Mrs. Flynn’s testimony also gives us an important understanding of how the Spokane Diocese leadership acted when it found out O’Donnell liked boys.

Here is how the testimony played out:

Mrs. Flynn found out that O’Donnell, the parish priest in charge of boys sports at Assumption School, would have the boys perform some sort of washing of genitals after games. There were no showers at the gym. Mrs. Flynn thought this strange and immediately got in touch with Father Skylstad, who was the Assumption Parish priest. Father Skylstad took immediate action and caused O’Donnell to stop.

Later, Mrs. Flynn found out from one of her children that O’Donnell got a kick out of having boys run around naked when he was on camping trips and outings. Again she contacted Father Skylstad. Again, Father Skylstad took action.

Later she found that one of her son’s friends had disclosed to her son that O’Donnell and he had engaged in a sexual act. Mrs. Flynn was able to get Father Skylstad on the phone and to have the boy talk privately with Father Skylstad.

Father Skylstad caused O’Donnell to be removed from the parish. The Diocese at that time sent O’Donnell to Seattle for treatment.

After some time had passed, Mrs. Flynn read in the Spokane Inland Register (a Spokane Catholic periodic newspaper) that O’Donnell was back in Spokane and was doing counseling. By this time, Father Skylstad was the Bishop for the Yakima Diocese and Bishop Welsh was the Bishop of the Spokane Diocese. Mrs. Flynn again got in touch with Bishop Skylstad. He asked her to immediately get in touch with Bishop Welsh. She did, but nothing came of it.

About this time, her husband, Jim Flynn (they were then separated), called her and said that he had heard that O’Donnell may have started doing counseling at Morning Star. She called Morning Star and asked for an appointment with O’Donnell. From this call she was able to conclude that O’Donnell may have connections with the ranch.

Next she called the United Way and told the United Way that there was a pedophile priest at Morning Star. Soon thereafter, Corky Braun of the Spokane Sheriff’s Department and a board member of Morning Star, called and arranged to meet with her in person at the Assumption parish parking lot at five o’clock in the afternoon.

A few minutes later, a man from the Chancery of the parish (the owners of the Spokesman-Review acquired the Chancery from the Diocese bankruptcy trustee  after the Diocese was plunged into bankruptcy due in large part to the conduct of Pattrick O’Donnell), a volunteer, got in touch with her. He said the matter had been taken care of and that the meeting did not have to take place. She thought it had been cancelled.

She found out that it had not been cancelled, at least as far as Corky Braun was concerned, because she got a call from Mr. Braun wondering why she did not come to the appointment. He had gone.

No further meeting was arranged. O’Donnell’s relationship with the ranch, if there was one, came to an immediate end.

The defendants, the state of Washington and the judges of the Court of Appeals, have filed their response to the plaintiff’s motion for partial summary judgment.  They have asked for summary judgment too, and dismissal of the complaint.  Here is the response — Defendant’s Motion to Dismiss, etc.

The motions will be heard this Friday at 9:00 am, February 5, 2010 in the courtroom of Judge Richard D. Hicks, Thurston County Superior Court, Olympia, WA.

The second to the last witness for the plaintiff, Kenny Putnam, was a man by the name of Douglas Poppen. Mr. Poppen was called to testify as to the appropriate standard of care regarding care facilities such as Morning Star Boys Ranch. He was called an expert witness. That is to say, after his credentials were established, after it was shown he considered many files and records of the defendant, and compared those files and records, and what they said with his experience of the files and records which should have been kept or could have been kept, he had a right to opine as to whether the defendant met what he considered in his opinion to be the standard of care in the circumstances of institutions like Morning Star Boys Ranch.

Morning Star Boys Ranch has trouble because of the testimony of Mr. Poppen. The jury seemed to accord respect for Mr. Poppen and showed interest in his testimony by asking several questions of him directed to him through Judge O’Connor. Mr. Poppen was well spoken and was able to either deflect or diminish questions about his review of Morning Star Boys Ranch or his lack of review and understanding of certain areas when cross examined.

His testimony was convincing. And, it all made sense – that counselors and children should not be one-on-one, that discipline had to be effective discipline, that there had to be an understood plan for how children were to be dealt with in such institutional and corrective settings, that staff should be well-trained, the members of the Board of Directors should play an active role in how such institutions should do their daily work, and so on. He was not at all impressed with the fact that the Catholic Bishop of Spokane ostensibly had final authority over all aspects of the Ranch. He said the Ranch did not meet his notion of what the proper standard of care was – then, at the time period in question.

Countering Mr. Poppen’s testimony, Jim King, the attorney for the defendants, showed that the ranch had consistently been licensed by the state of Washington and had consistently met the state of Washington’s requirements regarding organization, training and experience of personnel, daily operations, and so on. Mr. Poppen does not seem to have reviewed any of the state’s ongoing licensing and past reviews.

Nevertheless, the standard of care is going to be very much on the mind of the jurors when they decide the case. On the one hand, you have the standard of care mandated by the state of Washington for facilities like Morning Star Boys Ranch. On the other hand, you have Mr. Poppen saying the state standard of care was the minimum. He says that there is a higher standard of care in the industry and that morning Star did not meet that standard.

I wonder what the jury instructions given to the jury by Judge O’Connor before they begin their deliberations will say about this.

I think, and I think the jury must think, that state standards are minimum standards and that there is a higher standard of care which has developed as a result of institutional experience of many institutions which do essentially the same thing. The attorneys for the defendant, I think, will have to do more than say that Morning Star Boys Ranch was meeting the standards imposed by the state.

One was the left with the notion that this pleasant man thought Morning Star Boys Ranch in its early years in the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s should have been a better place than it was.

The second witness on Tuesday was psychologist Mary Dietzen. Ms. Dietzen is a pleasant pixie of a woman in her late 40s or early 50s. She is well spoken. She impresses one as thoughtful and sincere. She testified to the psychological and the emotional condition of Kenny Putnam. There is no doubt Kenny Putnam is a troubled soul. In her testimony she tried to connect Kenny’s present troubled condition with the so-called abuse he alleges in his complaint with respect of Doyle Gillum and Father Joe.

She testified to circumstances of a good deal of physical and emotional trauma of Mr. Putnam prior to the time he went to stay at Morning Star for a few months. Testimony was elicited about the terrible rejections Mr. Putnam went through at the hands of his mother, a drug and alcohol abuser of substantial success. And there was testimony of the physical and emotional abuse of him by his father Doyle Putnam – the man who married Putnam’s mother when he was five years-old. The impression one was left with was that Kenny Putnam had been deeply emotionally and physically abused by his mother and his father.

Ms. Dietzen, it was said, first met Kenny Putnam when attorney Kosnoff sent Putnam to Dietzen for therapy. After the therapeutic relationship was established, Dietzen then became a forensic psychologist with respect of Mr. Putnam. As I listened to this testimony, I wondered about the sequence. About this witness first being a treating psychologist and then later becoming a forensic psychologist with respect of the same person. I suppose I was wondering how one could have a therapeutic relationship where the relationship was based on personal loyalty and trust and then turn that relationship into a supposed objective relationship where the client was merely looked at in an objective manner. In my mind, this confusion of roles created a taint with respect of the testimony which was supposed to be objective.

Dr. Dietzen carried her notes and records regarding Kenny Putnam in a stack of loose papers held in her arms in front of her. I was reminded of former Spokane City Council woman Sherry Rogers walking around month after month with her stack of papers, notes, and other ephemera pertaining to her activities regarding Spokane’s River Park Square. She too kept her files in a stack held in front of her in her arms.

There were discussions between Ms. Dietzen and Jim King, the attorney for Morning Star, about the various tests Kenny Putnam took. These tests were for the purpose of giving people like Ms. Dietzen an understanding about Mr. Putnam. The tests were something like the tests we used to call the Minnesota multi phasic inventory test or something like that. In a whole series of questions, if answered candidly, a picture of the person taking the test would emerge. The tests Mr. Putnam took were to be sent back to the specialist company having to do with the test for what is known as scoring and interpretation.

Mr. Putnam took the main test on two occasions. The test was sent off for scoring. The interpretive results were sent back to Ms. Dietzen. In both tests, the scoring company determined that the tests taken by Mr. Putnam were not valid. There was something wrong regarding the whole list of answers provided. Strangely, Ms. Dietzen could not provide the interpretive results which were sent to her. The interpretations seemed not to be in her files. There was record of one, but as I recall, both were missing. She could not explain this even though it was her standard practice to retain the interpretive results.

There was another aspect of Ms. Dietzen’s testimony which was troublesome. This had to do with the supposed connection between Kenny Putnam’s allegations of sexual abuse and the condition he is in today. She testified that Kenny’s condition was the result of traumatic events in the past. She went through a whole host of traumatic events. She testified that many of these dramatic events, if not all of the dramatic events, related to Kenny’s condition today.

That was all well and good until she said that Kenny’s condition was tied to his allegations of sexual abuse. That simply defied logic. There may be a connection, but if the allegations were true, they simply could not be the sole connection. What became obvious was that Kenny Putnam suffered severe, traumatic, emotional and physical abuse at the hands of his parents when he was a very small child, years before he was rejected yet again, abandoned yet again by his mother and father, and had no place to go but to Morning Star Boys Ranch.

On Tuesday, the first witness on the stand was Bobby Hunter. Bobby is Uncle Mike Clarke’s buddy. They hang together. Bobby is about 24, Uncle Mike is about 44. Bobby works, when he works, sometimes at Uncle Mike’s car detailing operation. (One had to wonder whether the car detailing operation stays in operation while Uncle Mike is in attendance at the Airway Heights Correction Facility?)

Mr. Hunter appears in the proceedings to shore up Uncle Mike’s testimony that Father Joe gave him an envelope with $2000 in it as hush money.

Perhaps I have missed a few things, but it seems to me that Bobby and Uncle Mike’s stories do not really ring true. Bobby seems a little unclear as to when he ever met father Joe prior to the so-called money transfer at that very open public place at 29th and Grand called the Chalet Restaurant.

Bobby and Mike say they know Spokane’s South Hill, but are a bit unclear as to the exact location of the Chalet. Of course, to anyone who has any knowledge of the Spokane South Hill knows immediately that the Chalet is located behind the gas station in the little shopping center at the southwest quadrant of the 29th and Grand intersection.

The buddies are unclear as to whether the envelope was placed on the table, whether it was sealed or unsealed, whether anyone, by looking at the envelope sealed or unsealed, could know it contained $2000 in 20 bills of $100 each. (I wondered why so quick to say $100 bills were used?  Some people in Spokane are very familiar with the convenience of the $100 bill.)

There is a discrepancy as to whether the envelope was aggressively shoved across the table by Father Joe.

And here are presented the most suspicious aspects of the testimony of these two troubadours of the byways of Spokane:

•  why would anyone who is going to bribe another person go to a public place,
• meet with the person and another person whom he did not know,
• and in full view of everyone in the public place,
• deliver an envelope which appeared (according to the troubadours) obviously to contain many loose $100 bills?
• And, to top it off, why would such a person do so if he, himself, was well-recognized all over the South Hill, if not Spokane in general?

The testimony defies credulity.

The jurors were not present in the courtroom yesterday morning. This was the time for the examination Michael Clarke, the surprise witness Attorney Kosnoff wanted to call on behalf of the plaintiff, Kenneth Putman. The purpose of the Clarke testimony was, I thought, to determine whether Mr. Clarke, as a surprise, unidentified witness, could be allowed to be called as a witness to give testimony in court in front of the jury.

Judge O’Connor at 1:30 pm, after deliberating over the noon break and with the jury still outside of the courtroom, made her decision. Mr. Clarke’s testimony would be allowed. She put some minor limitations on the testimony. And, she put limitations on James King, the attorney for Morning Star. The limitations on King were that he was limited in disclosing to the jury a goodly share of evidence related to Clarke’s more than extensive criminal history.

Mr. Clarke has a history so rich in crime he has been able to attend all but one of the penal institutions in the state of Washington. Washington has a goodly number. From his testimony it looks like Clarke was only a student at these institutions. He has yet to matriculate, yet to get his degree that he has been corrected. He seems to be a person who enjoys being in prison.

In allowing Mr. Clarke to testify, Judge O’Connor apparently did not say anything about the fact that Mr. Clarke was a surprise witness. Interesting. She should have. She had to have some reason for allowing Clarke to testify at the last minute, but from what I am told she did not – she just allowed Clarke to testify. Her decision may be a trial error.

So what did Clarke say? He said – he went to Morning Star when he was about 13; that he engaged in fellatio on Father Joe; that it took place at the ranch, on a hike, and on Father Joe’s boat. He says he was close to Father Joe and that he never reported the alleged acts to anyone.

His reporting came about after his attorney informed Mr. King that Mr. Clarke may assert a claim against Morning Star. I do not recall that the claim, which was read in court, said anything about sexual contacts or Father Joe.

Mr. Clarke testified that he went to the Chalet Restaurant at 29^th and Grand with his friend, Bobby Hunter (who talks like Clarke, and says “absolutely” over and over again as an interjected adjective to float around in the words flung into the air of the courtroom). Bobby is a person he smokes “weed” with. He came along with Clarke in the Spring of 2006 to meet with Father Joe. Hunter and Clarke will say Father Joe pushed an envelope toward Clarke which had money in it. Clarke says the envelope was opened and had in it $2,000 in $100 bills. Hunter says the envelope was unsealed and that he could not see how much was in it.

(Hard to believe a person who is alleged to have wanted to buy Clarke’s silence would have given him a bribe in front of a another person he did not know.)

Clarke’s many crimes include counterfeiting and first degree theft many times. When sentenced for his various runs of lawlessness, his sentences were in the range of 2 to 4 years in prison. He also owes restitution in excess of $150,000.

He testified that he had met with Father Joe and one of the attorneys for Morning Star, Matthew Daley. He says he talked about the testimony Clarke would give and said to Daley that Father Joe had given him $2,000 for his testimony – he called it hush money. He said Father Joe gave him the money in front of his friend, Bobby Hunter.

Mr. Clarke says “absolutely” a lot when he answers questions. His answers often begin “absolutely” this or that.

Judge Clarke should probably not have allowed Clarke to testify yesterday and should probably have continued the trial so that Mr. King could prepare his defense to Clarke’s testimony. During the testimony, it seemed to me Judge O’ Connor was liberal in letting Mr. Kosnoff ask leading questions, questions lacking in foundation, and in allowing Mr. Clarke to testify as to a good deal of hearsay testimony. I do not know what to make of the liberality shown Mr. Kosnoff and his client. There may be good grounds for appeal. An appeal will surely be taken because of this if Morning Star loses the Putnam case.

Today, Clarke’s “weed smoking” buddy Bobby Hunter will come to the stand.

Then maybe, Matthew Daley, the attorney, who along with Father Joe, met with Clarke at his home.

It is important to note that Clarke has never said anything about being abused until now. It is also important to note Clarke has come forward with these allegations at the same time he had his attorney send a letter to Morning Star Boys Ranch attorney Jim King that he would be making a claim.

Sounds more like Clarke and Bobby Hunter are trying to create the illusion of a claim. In any event, what Clarke is saying is highly attractive stuff to the lawyers who represent the plaintiffs who are claiming they were abused at Morning Star Boys Ranch decades ago.

In jury trials, there is a certain form of evidence which I have come to call “gotcha evidence.” I use the term gotcha evidence in the sense that one attorney has gotten “evidence” before which plays on the irrationalities of human nature and does so for the benefit of his client’s cause.

Gotcha! He has just put a hook on the wall so that a jury can hang its hat of a decision on the hook. So that the jury can use the fact to reach a conclusion – a conclusion which has to do with the aura of the gotcha evidence and not the real facts of the case. A conclusion which is driven by emotion, by sensation – not hard reality.

An instance of gotcha evidence in Putnam v. Morning Star Boys Ranch is this: Tim Kosnoff, the attorney for Putnam, called Father Joe Weitensteiner to the stand. During a part of his examination, he had Father Joe look at a number of photographs and to identify where the photo was taken, who the people were in the photo, the time, and so on. This process went on for perhaps a half an hour, many pictures were examined. Innocent enough, no real surprises. Not one of the pictures was shown to the jury – except for the very last. This was a picture of a person who is generally known to the community as the “Pedophile Priest” – Patrick O’Donnell.

In fact, I think Kosnoff’s examination ended at that time – that is, with the picture of the Pedophile Priest, enlarged, projected onto a large movie screen directly across from the jurors.

Gotcha! There it was. The whole case sort of became tied into this one person, this one bad person. The person who perhaps has had more to do with the destruction of the Spokane Catholic Diocese and its many charitable programs than any other.

Kosnoff was calculating when he did this. He had to know there would be a subtle play on minds of the jurors. He had a right to do what he did, one supposes, because O’Donnell came up in the testimony as one who allegedly had sex with one of the witnesses, Billy Knapton. But, O’Donnell was not implicated with respect of Kenny Putnam.

The jurors were being subtly manipulated.

Gotcha! There is the picture of this bad man and it is associated with Morning Star and Father Joe because it is and . . . . The attorney is betting the picture will play well for his case. Yet, it is logically irrelevant to the claim Putnam is making. O’Donnell has nothing to do with the Putnam claim.

Something has been bothering me all day. The something is a dissonance in the Putnam v. Morning Star Boys Ranch case and the recently alleged facts. The alleged facts come from two sources – Kenny Putnam and Michael Clarke. When I say dissonance, what I mean is that the facts from Putnam and the facts from Clarke do not ring true. They are inconsistent, at least inconsistent from my perspective. Let me explain –

Putnam says Doyle Gillum (”Doyle” is also the name of Putnam’s very unloving and rejecting father and his brother) tried to suck his penis one night when he was in his room and was asleep. Gillum is dead. He was a young man who was on night duty in the dorm that night where Putnam had his room when he was at the ranch —  the night of the alleged sleepy fellatio.

Putnam says he and  Father Joe another boy were on Father Joe’s boat on Lake Coeur d’Alene and he was seasick (on Lake Coeur d’Alene?, – please give us a break, the lake is a lake) and in the front bow area. He says he woke up finding Father Joe trying to fondle his penis. He says he  fought him off and ran and jumped into the lake and was rescued by another boat and at the end of the day went back to the parsonage in Hillyard where Father Joe was living at the time because he was also ministering at the Catholic Church Parish in Hillyard with the other boy.  He again alleged Father Joe did something he should not have done. What he supposedly did is very unclear.  Again, he said he fought off Father Joe.  No word obout the other kid.

Putnam presents himself today as a sort of tough guy, a guy who knows his way around prisons, who knows nobody is going to mess with him. It is interesting that this is just how he describes himself when he was a kid — before, during, and after his stay at Morning Star Boy Ranch.  This is how his friend, Shane Mayfield, describes him.

So now in the 11^thhour, Michael Clarke —  a very surprise witness —  is presented. The court is having difficulty getting him to the courthouse because he is in prison at the Airway Heights Correction Facility.  Counsel for Father Joe, Jim King and Bob  Sestero, are surprised by all of this. The man was only mentioned in the testimony of Stephanie Miller, formerly Carl Smith. And now, just at the end of plaintiff’s case, Tim Kosnoff is going to call Mr. Clarke and he is supposedly going to say he groomed boys for Father Joe and that Father Joe paid him $2,000 cash to keep his mouth shut. At least that is what Tim Kosnoff, the attorney for Kenny Putnam, says he is going to say.

OK, I know your are saying – what?

Well, here is the dissonance. If Father Joe is the sort of man who needs to have boys who are groomed for whatever, why would he be forcing himself on Kenny Putnam? It simply does not fit. The behavior alleged by Clarke is completely inconsistent with the Father Joe behavior alleged by Kenny Putnam.  But there is more, more in the nature of common sense:

Do you, dear reader,  really think homosexual men go around trying to engage in fellatio while a person is asleep or worse . . .   sick?  Let me ask you, do you try to engage in such active sexual contact with your wife, husband, or loved one under such conditions?  I doubt it, I really doubt it.

Years ago when I practiced law in Seattle and was just starting my own firm after leaving Davis Wright Todd Riese & Jones at the end of 1974, I took a number of guardian ad litem appointments in juvenile court. Many of my clients were in detention or having trouble in foster homes. Doing this work brought me close to some of the court commissioners.

One day I was telling Commissioner Robert Dixon, who later became a Superior Court judge, of my concern for a 10 year-old boy on farm east of Redmond. My heart was breaking for the boy, for the trouble he was having, for the bad living conditions he was in. I said I could bring him to my house for a weekend every now and then. Commissioner Dixon talked with me awhile and then told me no matter how hard it was for the child, no matter how heartfelt my concern for the child, no matter how much good befriending the boy could be, I should not allow myself to have the child come to my home. He told me how often he had wanted to take one of the troubled children into his home, into his family. But he had always concluded he should not. He mentioned how heartbreaking the experience would be.

But now as I look back on it, in light of the Morning Star cases, there was another concern and that was how my good will and care, innocent and non-sexual as it was, could be turned into something else. How easily someone could make a comment and create suspicion.

I marvel at how much innocence and good will we have lost. And, how suspicious we are of priests, boy scout leaders, male school teachers, coaches, case workers – any man who cares for a child not his own. I think there is a tendency in our present culture to fantasize that all men who show care toward young people must have inclinations to sexual contact. I think this tendency is working in the background in the sex abuse cases which lawyers are now asserting 20, 30, 40, 50 years after the alleged facts in the Morning Star cases.

In fact, as I write these words, especially the first paragraph, I suspect that a good number of readers will immediately think I might be one of those bad people. So it goes. Should one be afraid to say what I have said? I suppose. There are bad, unreasonable, mean-spirited people among us.