Andrew Vachss's Blog, page 3

Florida's Department of Children & Families...

From a 1990 interview with Andrew Vachss: "Are [court-appointed advocates, such as guardians ad litem, useful in protecting a child's rights and guarding against what might be called judicial child abuse]? The answer is, they can be. Are they ever a substitute for actual representation by lawyers? No. Underline no. Repeat, NO. ... There are states—and Florida is an excellent example—where a child who is the victim of abuse will not be represented by a lawyer but will be represented by a 'court-appointed special advocate' [CASA]. These people are not lawyers. Because they're not lawyers, they can't represent a child in terms of the totality of that child's needs. They can't file a motion. They can't argue before a court with any kind of force. ... You look at a state like Florida that could provide a stream of attorneys for a Ted Bundy and can't provide one attorney for an abused child. I think there's such a moral difficulty with that, that it's unresolvable." Now, from a story in this week's Miami Herald, we see the very real consequences of Florida's failure to hire lawyers for child-abuse victims: State agency had many warnings during abused girl’s life

Attorney General Eric Holder...

Eric Holder was appointed U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia by Bill Clinton. He was later elevated to Deputy Attorney General in 1997 ... and, thus, was in office when Clinton shortened the sentence of Mel Reynolds, who sexually assault/abused a 16-year-old campaign volunteer. When Clinton suggested a pardon for Marc Rich—who fled the US after being convicted on 65 counts of tax evasion—Holder's response was "Neutral, leaning towards favorable."

And now? For two years (and three budgets) Holder's Justice Department has refused to so much as ask Congress for the full funding of law enforcement authorized under the PROTECT Act of 2008. How do you convince Congress of the urgent need for child rescue funding, when the Obama administration doesn't even care enough to ask for it? Here's what Grier Weeks writes, in his piece in The Daily Caller:

Congress needs to fully investigate what the Justice Department knew and when it knew it. It needs a full accounting of what evidence resides in Justice Department-sponsored databases that could locate both child predators and their victims. It needs to demand that the full resources of the federal government are immediately deployed for child rescue in every community across the U.S. Every child victim who has been, or can be, identified should be brought to safety now, before they come to further, grievous harm.

Go read Mr. Weeks' entire article ... his call for justice from Attorney General Eric Holder and his U.S. Justice Department.

Bullies and Pain Management

We made one statement——about people in absolute agony getting babble about "the war on drugs" instead of pain relief——in Pain Management . And anyone who has read Heart Transplant knows how we feel about bullies. So here's a story——an important story——that brings those two elements together. Siobhan Reynolds founded the Pain Relief Network, a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of pain patients and physicians, when her late ex-husband Sean was denied pain medication for his congenital connective tissue disorder. Her advocacy has earned her some seriously dedicated fans ... and the scorn of the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. Laws that were established to protect people like Reynolds are being used to instead silence her. And the result is that these bullies are going to bankrupt her nonprofit. Read the whole story here.

"Am I shocked that the NAMBLA bulletin called me a fascist?

No. But do I think they're objective reviewers? Of course not. Any more than I think most book reviewers could be objective, I don't know how they could be. The whole concept of book reviewing is, 'You people are a bunch of sheep and I know what's best and I'll point you in that direction.' What are the qualifications for being a book reviewer?"

That's just one quote from Andrew Vachss' interview with Rob W. Hart. Click here to read the entirety of Rob W. Hart's interview with Andrew Vachss, published by The Cult, the official website of Chuck Palahniuk, on December 15, 2010.

The whisper-stream...

Andrew Vachss wrote about Columbine in 1977. "I didn't predict anything," he told the New York Post. "But I had talked to plenty of kids who, that was their dream."

Since that time, there have been numerous items that hit the news after they appeared in Andrew Vachss' books. Click here to read some recent examples.

Technology is neutral....

"Across the globe criminals are using technology to facilitate the sexual exploitation of children. Police are overwhelmed and outnumbered. These Oak Ridge scientists are the good guys we've been waiting for. Their computers will become child-rescue engines." That's Grier Weeks, Exec. Director of Protect. And this is what he--what all of us are excited about.

Behavior *is* the truth

...and one person can make a difference.

The goal of Heart Transplant is—always has been, since Andrew, Frank and Zak conceptualized it—to recode the cultural software as it pertains to bullying. It's an effective tool for doing that, and the timing couldn't be better. But any tool left in a drawer can't get the job done.

We're not asking anyone to buy a copy. What we are asking you to do is make a bigger commitment than that. We want you to go to your local public library and ask to speak to the person in charge of purchasing books for the library. Ask that person if they were offered Heart Transplant; give them a copy of this brochure; then check in with us to let us know who you contacted and what they said.

Here is a list of those who have checked back in to let us know they got their local library to carry Heart Transplant—a list of people we respectfully call Heart Donors:

# Stephanie Bixler
# C. Dionysios Dionou (who's also with us in boycotting Yahoo! email addresses, and whose memoir about transcending childhood abuse will be coming in the next year)
# Ed Haggerty [Nashua (NH) Public Library]
# Saffron Kathryn Loynd Hall
# Barney Holmes
# Colleen J. Johnson
# Bracken MacLeod [Cambridge (MA) Public Library]
# Roland Murphy [Phoenix (AZ) Public Library]
# Tim Niland [Old Bridge (NJ) Public Library]
# Adrian O'Leary [Pikes Peak (NY) Library District and Hooked On Books]
# Thomas Pluck
# Muriel Schnierow [River Forest (IL) Public Library, and she's now working on Oak Park and Forest Park]
# David Stevens [Norfolk (VA) Public Library]
# Paul Thomas

Ken Bruen and Andrew Vachss had a conversation...

and you get to be a fly on the wall. Click here to read the transcript.

A new short story

"A dog is like a person—he needs a job and a family to be what he's meant to be." Mullholland Books—a new crime-fiction imprint at Little, Brown and Co.—is offering free on their website a new short story by Andrew Vachss. Read "As the Crow Flies" by clicking here. Andrew Vachss

Congratulations to Frank Caruso!

His art was selected for the Ink Plots exhibit at the School of Visual Arts' gallery (601 W. 26 Street, New York). Some of his original art for Heart Transplant is (rightly) hanging alongside the works of Will Eisner, Edward Gorey, Burne Hogarth, Harvey Kurtzman, Gary Panter, Jerry Robinson, and Art Spiegelman. If you're in New York between now and November 6, you'll want to check it out! Heart Transplant