Law And More

Empathy for Serial Rapist - What Gives "Law & Order SVU" Its Depth

Finally, after decades, serial rapist Infinity is captured. Meanwhile, an oddball who revered him commits a copycat rape.

Part of the depth of "Law & Order SVU," detective Olivia Benson reflects on the reality that the original Infinity who had victimized more than 20 women was himself a victim. When a child he witnessed his brutal father raping his mother. In his twisted mind, he positioned and packaged the law enforcement official who was obsessively pursuing him as a kind of father figure. 

The meme - hurt people hurt - has become commonplace, of course, in spiritual programs. It's through that mindset that those in emotional distress are supposed to come to forgive themselves - as well as those whom they perceive did them wrong.

Sometimes that works.

In last night's episode, the prosecutor is able to forgive his father. It was that father who missed his child's baseball games and other important events because he was consumed, in "Moby Dick" fashion, with catching Infinity. 

That frees the prosecutor to get out of himself and reach out to others. At the end of the episode he comes over to play baseball with Noah, Olivia's son. The child's biological father, a criminal, is not in his life. 

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"O" The Oprah Magazine - January 2019 Edition Focuses on Suicide

The January 2019 special section on suicide in "O" has this takeaway: Talk.

The simple act of one distressed human being opening up to someone, anyone who listens, can prevent suicide.

Those who didn't talk were the ones in the magazine who discussed their attempted suicides. Part of the mission of "O" is to also remove the stigma associated with suicide attempts. Putting them out there could help someone considering suicide. Here a digital copy of that issue can be ordered.

Fortunately, there are volunteers willing to listen. Many nations, including the U.S., have free confidential 24/7 hotlines. Among them is Samaritans. 

Lawyers or law students who call the Samaritans (212-673-3000) can feel immediate relief. The person who answers the phone is totally present, with no agenda. He or she is low-key but what is palpable is the deep listening.

As the conversation proceeds the trained volunteer will ask questions. That's not only to know you better but also to diagnose how serious is your intention to take your own life. If it's assessed as serious you could be talking for hours. Hopefully, during that time the channel in your head will switch to hope.

As "O" points out, there has been little research on suicide. That might be a blessing. We all have to pull together and do the human (versus the scientific) thing to help each other when life no longer seems worth living.

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Aging Workforce - Japan v. U.S.

The aging.

Are they a challenge to developed economies or a catalyst for GDP growth?

In the U.S., those over-50 continue to be positioned and packaged as a problem demographic.

Not only are Millennials grousing about aging workers blocking the paths to promotions and then eventually sucking up entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare.

In addition, aging professionals themselves live in high angst about their ability to continue to land high-paying employment. That worry frequently evolves into a fear about getting any work. 

In Japan, the phenomenon of The New Aging is playing out very differently.

It's by hiring and re-hiring the elderly that the nation is, as The Wall Street Journal reports, generating its "second-longest economic expansion since World War II." 

Like many developed economies, Japan is experience a birth famine. Rearing children is expensive. Women are finding great satisfaction through careers. And the social pressure to be married-with-children is becoming totally 20th century.

There are fewer traditionally aged workers. That could have left myriad industries short-handed. Japan figured out that gap can be filled with the over-60 employee. They are both provided with incentives to not retire and to return to the workforce after having retired. 

How Japanese companies are recruiting and managing an aging workforce can provide models for human resources leaders in the U.S.

The New Aging story in America is a mixed bag.

On the one hand, some companies are creating strategies to retain skill sets and institutional knowledge which can exit through retirement.

On the other hand, they are perceived as forcing out the over-60 because of their high salaries and/or their alleged decreased productivity.

Also, they are seemingly playing dirty tricks in recruitment. Among the growing number of lawsuits had been the class action filed against Darden for alleging discriminating against hiring older wait staff. That had been settled with the restaurant chain for millions of dollars.

As The Wall Street Journal documented last month, almost eight million older Americans who want to work are jobless or are stuck in what could be called "the gray ghetto" - that is, low-paying/low-status jobs.

No surprise, those rejected begin to participate in creating their unmarketability. They become breeding pools for dysfunctional mindsets.

Here, free to download, is my book on those monsters of the mind - and how the aging can slay them. Too often, the aging shoot themselves in the foot.

The new game, at least in America, is to embrace the realities of aging and figure out how to transcend them in a search for not only work but better and better opportunities. Here is my book, also free to download, about the rules of that new game Download Outwitting ageism

Get amazing results through out of box communications strategies/content. Complimentary consultation janegenova374@gmail.com. I help, not sell.

The Peril of Not Likely Yourself - Lesson from "Bohemian Rhapsody" for Lawyers

Freddie Mercury, who became lead singer in British band Queen, was filled with self-hate.

The meme of how not liking yourself is so destructive permeates the smash hit film "Bohemian Rhapsody."

Mercury grows up in England in an immigrant family from Pakistan. The father is rigid, especially in his religious beliefs and notion about how an ordinary life should be lived. Of course, that clashes with the creative spark in the young son. 

As with so many creatives, the son follows his dream of artistic performance, despite the father's disapproval. But, as we all know who have taken the road Mercury traveled, there is hell to pay. The undertow of confusion is hard to shake.

Mercury gets lost in sex, booze, and drugs. It will be AIDS which shortens his life. 

But late in his life he does find the ability to love himself. He forms a lasting bond with the man who told him to only come around after he learned to like himself. And his performance is brilliant at the Live Aid concert.

This movie should be shown in rehabs and at recovery meetings. There's not enough of a conversation among the addictive about how self-hate probably got them into that pickle. 

It should also be showcased by the American Bar Association. Lawyers are notorious for self-destructive behavior. The cause could simply be they don't like themselves. 

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Pedophile Nuns - Latest Chapter in Roman Catholic Church Alleged Sexual Misconduct

Those of us who has attended Catholic school are not surprised by media reports of what is being labeled "pedophile nuns." Those "brides of Christ" had enormous power over students back in the 20th century. 

CBS focuses on the alleged sexual abuse of Trish Cahill.

At the age of 15 she confided to Sister Eileen Shaw alleged sexual misconduct by a priest who was also her uncle. Part the alleged way Shaw comforted her included alcohol and instructions on how to have sex with a woman.

Eventually, Cahill reported the situation to the Sisters of Charity of St. Elizabeth. The Church settled with Cahill out of court for $70,000.

So far, almost 20 others have stepped forward to contend they were also sexually abused by nuns. I have a hunch this is the beginning of yet another major scandal associated with Catholicism.

Among the current lawsuits is "Joseph McLean, et al. v. US Conference of Catholic Bishops." The litigation leverages the argument that the Catholic Church caused a public nuisance. 

But, sexual abuse was only the tip of the iceberg related to how nuns allegedly used their power to damage young people.

In 1963, I arrived at all-women's Catholic college - Seton Hill, Greensburg, Pennsylvania. It was founded by the Sisters of Charity and named after now-Catholic saint Mother Elizabeth Seton. 

I was one of those classmates who were sitting ducks for allegedly being tormented by the nuns.

From the mean streets of Jersey City, New Jersey (pre-gentrification), I was the first in my immigrant family to become college-educated.

My mother was a cleaning lady at my public high school.

My father out started out making his living cleaning railroad cars.

In addition, I was already battling clinical depression, an eating disorder, and sub-zero self-esteem. In 1970, I had a nervous breakdown.

One day soon after arrival at Seton Hill I was pulled out of the Freshman Composition class by the head of the English department. That was Sister Miriam Joseph Murphy.

She reamed me out for talking too much after a reading on campus by a local poet. Murphy kept hammering that I had ruined things for everyone there and that Seton Hill professor - JoAnne Boyle who later became  a Seton Hill president - had baked cookies for the special event.

Talking too much and homemade cookies ... Even though I hadn't had a college education yet my mind questioned the connection with my behavior and the cookies. 

When the verbal flogging was over, I went to my dorm room sobbing. To this day, I wonder what prevented me from jumping from that fourth-story window. 

That hurt, as usual, hardened into rage. Too many opportunities in my life had been derailed by  extreme anger. 

Since 2013, I have been leveraging mindfulness to manage it. Underneath rage is always hurt.

Over Thanksgiving 2017, I traveled to the Seton Hill graveyard housing nuns and the institution's presidents. I had to verify that those who had broken me were indeed dead

Had I come from a privileged background with a father who was a lawyer I would have been informed that I could have sued for alleged intentional infliction of emotional abuse. That I didn't find out about until I attended Harvard Law School around 1985.

BTW, The Horror replicated itself in a different manner in 2014. Here is that story. And here is the story of the public nuisance type Christmas letter.

Mindfulness impresses on those meditating the importance of forgiveness. I am a long way from ready for that. 

Out of the Box Communications = Unexpected Results

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Dane Anthony Smith - 5th Chicago Police Officer Commiting Suicide in Past 6 Months

Why are police officers in Chicago killing themselves?

Most recently, Dane Anthony Smith, age 36, took his own life. It was through a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He was the 5th officer to commit suicide in the past 6th months.

A Department of Justice study of Fraternal Order of Police statistics found that the rate of suicide among police is 60% higher than the national average. Here are more details from the Daily Mail.

One way of explaining the tragedy is through the phenomenon of "copycat" or "cluster suicides."

The idea of taking one's own life can be contagious. There had been cluster suicides among middle aged trial lawyers in Kentucky and, more recently, among New York City taxi and black limo drivers.

There has been speculation about motivation for the cluster phenomenon.  Kay Jamison's classic book on the subject "Night Falls Fast" discusses the romantic notions which can be associated with suicide that makes it seem like a noble idea within some groups. 

Another explanation can be the extreme conditions human beings find themselves in.

After all, lawyering involves tremendous pressure. The game is adversarial. You either win or you lose. If you lose, your brand takes a hit. And your confidence can be shaken. Meanwhile, the hours are horrendous. 

In the taxi business, Uber and other ride-hailing services have pushed traditional drivers into debt. They aren't able to pick up enough fares to make ends meet. And the medallions they invested in have lost so much value. The financial ruin is real. Despite the ongoing suicides relief isn't on the way. 

In Chicago, the business of law enforcement is a grim affair. That is depicted in the movie "Widows." Murder is a way of doing business. Corruption seems to represent the rules. There are no safe havens. 

As the film plays it out, anyone who attempts to play a traditional law-abiding game is a fool. The four main characters were once "good girls." That got them nowhere.

As bandits, who collectively commit 3 murders in a heist, they become financially secure. Also, the aura surrounding them is one of empowerment.

During these uncertain economic times, the notion of suicide could also catch on among both the working class and professionals who fear losing it all. Or who actually do.

That doesn't have to happen.

The little we do know about suicide is that it tends to be an impulsive decision. Those who feel driven into that emotional corner have free, 24-hour, confidential resources.

There is the Suicide Prevention hotline 800-273-8255.

Also, there is Samaritans 212-673-3000.

During the long long holiday season - which began before Thanksgiving - a relative called Samaritans twice. It could have saved his life. In my family there seems to be a suicide gene. After he decided to put off killing himself he contacted me. He wanted me to describe how I remember his childhood.

Was that a step in a healing direction? We don't know, do we. What appears to be healing could be simply acquiring the cognitive ability to put together and implement a suicide plan. 

This blog extends deep sympathy to all the families in Chicago who have lost those they love to suicide. 

Family Court on Trial - Ayhan Aytes' Suicide/Murder

Family court has been the third rail in the U.S. legal system - in terms of the perception of justice, how it puts all parties through the emotional wringer, and, of course, the cost.  Here is just one analysis of the problems of family court. 

Those problems have gone high profile with the suicide of Ayhan Aytes and his murder of his daughter  Ela.

In a Tampa, Florida suburb, Aytes left a six-page note about not being able to endure the custody battle with his estranged wife Laurel Friedman. They had filed for divorce last January.

In family court, the judge denied Aytes' request to take his daughter for a visit to his homeland - Turkey. A communications professor, he was a permanent resident of the U.S., with a green card. Friedman feared he would not return from Turkey with the daughter. 

As the Daily Mail reports, there were reports of Aytes' behaving erratically. His mental health might have been declining. Yet, he was allowed to continue to have shared custody. Friedman contends the family court system failed to protect the daughter. During a welfare check, she was found dead in bed, he hanging with a plastic bag over his head.

This tragedy might be the flashpoint which generates a systems study of family law issues and how the state courts operate. The media, as a public interest matter, might provide more information about meditation versus the adversarial family court approach. 

Interestingly, in a recent rerun of "Dateline," the wife was convicted of doing a for-hire murder of her husband. She contended she took that course of action because she feared that she would lose custody of her children in a divorce. At the time she was involved in an affair and assumed that would be held against her in family court. 

Out of the Box Communications = Unexpected Results

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Lonely Lawyers - Catch a Re-Run of "Law & Order SVU" or "Criminal Minds"

According to Cigna's study, 56% assess that the people around us aren't really with us. Also, 54% of the folks in our little lives, we are convinced, really don't know us. Here are more details from Fortune.

Of course, there is no shortage of opinion put out there about the causes of this loneliness epidemic. Fingered is everything from too much screen time to working such long hours we have nothing left for building relationships. 

However, loneliness is not a 21st century phenomenon. Before Marissa Mayer and Mark Zuckerberg made nerdiness cool, we eggheads (as we were called back then) were segregated from much of social life. In addition, as Betty Friedan pointed out, many stay-at-home mothers were plenty lonely. 

Then, as now, some of us lonely souls bonded deeply and well with fictional characters.

I made it my business to get to the public library to check out the latest Nancy Drew mystery novel.

Although Nancy had a sometimes boyfriend, he didn't seem important to her - at least not as important as solving a mystery. So, I figured we were soulmates. Had we actually talked, I knew Nancy would understand me. 

Isolated housewives could feel companionship with any of  the diverse crowd on the soap operas.

Today, we have Olivia Benson on "Law & Order SVU" and David Rossi on "Criminal Minds." They are open systems. They could take us in fully and, yes, understand exactly what we were all about. 

No surprise, the re-runs of both shows are popular. No matter what is going on in my day or how alienated I feel from "normal people," if I invest an hour with a re-run, I will feel whole again.

Overall, we might feel less lonely if society gave the okay to our developing deep relationships with fictional entities. I have always had a hunch that those real relationships are over-rated. 

It was in my junior year in college that I finally had real relationships. There were two classmates who let me into their lives and seemed to care about me. They were female. At the time it was an all-women's institution of higher learning - Seton Hill.

That was then.

Not long after graduation one of them refused to talk with me. She believed, and was probably right, that I didn't understand what she was going through during her nervous breakdown. It was straight out of Mary McCarthy's "The Group." 

When I called the other, she told me that I had always been a "pain in the ass." That was that.

Later, I made a whopper of a mistake assuming I could conjure up human closeness from College Past. Here is that saga of extreme horror.

Do we just have an illusion of intimacy?

All New Year's Eve day and all New Year's day, there will be re-runs of "Criminal Minds." Those folks constitute my social network.

So, no, I won't have to be lonely in the final days of this holiday season. None of you will have to. Just turn the television channel to ION.

Out of the Box Communications = Unexpected Results

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2019 Year of Well-Being in Legal Sector - Sounds Great

The year 2018, Scott Flaherty hammers in Law.com, was characterized by lack of well-being in the legal sector.

The tragic symbol of that had been the suicide of 42-year-old partner Gabe MacConaill. 

So, it's predictable that the powers that be in the business of law are championing initiatives to address mental illness, substance abuse, and no work-life balance. Indeed, some already are labeling 2019 the Year of Well-Being. 

All that sounds great, of course. However, the business of law and the tasks involved in practicing law are configured to cause or to worsen all sorts of aberrant mindsets and behavior.

That's just the way it is. The rooms of recovery are filled with former lawyers. They had to put together another way to make a good living in order to stay alive. 

For well-being to become part of the culture of the legal sector many of the systems have to change. And change most firms won't do until they are forced to by the Invisible Hand, that is, the dynamics of the marketplace. 

Ironically, this focus on well-being will likely inflict on junior members in the profession the need to pretend to be okay. After all, in 2019, they will be more closely watched. That can ramp up the stress level. 

Litigation Communications

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Blue-Collar Version of #MeToo Movement: Film "Widows"

The 2018 "heist" film - "Widows" - essentially lifts four law-abiding women out of their comfort zone. And into a totally criminal world in today's Chicago. 

Overall, "Widows" is a darker version of the television show "Good Girls." In both, the catalyst for this transformation is an urgent need for big money. In both, the plot twists and acting are extraordinary. 

Three of the four women are supposedly widows whose husbands had been involved in a theft that goes very wrong.

However, among the plot surprises is that one of the women - Veronica - finds out that her husband Harry Rawlings is actually alive. He had betrayed his fellow criminals and his wife. He is living with the white widow of one of that crew. Veronica is black. 

After the deaths, a Chicago thug who is also running for office -Jamal Manning - demands that Veronica pony up the $2 million that Rawlings was supposed to have given him for the campaign.

Manning means business. He offs Veronica's driver.

Veronica comes up with the heist plan, based on Rawlings' OCD-kind of "red book" of past, present, and future crimes. She picks up one of the latter. Of course, the widow Rawlings is bunking with doesn't accept her invitation to join the gang. That space is filled in by a tough but honest hustler who works several jobs. 

All four had emotionally gone through the wringer.

Veronica has lost her son. He had been gunned down by two Chicago police officers.

Alice had been abused by both her dead husband and all-too-alive mother.

Linda's store is taken away from her by her dead husband's reckless spending.

That's the heart of the matter. The money from the heist will give all a fresh start. Their former lives had either been an illusion or as horrific as the ugly underbelly of Chicago. 

Things don't go as planned. Two people get murdered. Alice is shot. Rawlings turns up to collect the money. He's the third to be murdered and it's by Veronica.

But, all's well that ends well. The money is theirs. Veronica contributes some for a school library. Alice has a shot at self-esteem. Linda gets the store back. And the hustler leaves a bag of money for one of her former employers. 

In a sense, this film is as much about female empowerment as the #MeToo movement. These four women overcome the power of self-absorbed males and a corrupt system.

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