Former 6th grade teacher admits sex with boy
From Elwyn Lopez, CNN
updated 12:20 PM EDT, Sun June 16, 2013



"Malia Brooks has a mental illness," says her attorney, Ron Bamieh.

The mother of two is likely to get a six-year sentence, the district attorney says
She pleaded guilty to three counts of lewd conduct with a child under 14
She'd been consistently evaluated as an exemplary teacher, school district says
(CNN) -- A former sixth-grade teacher and mother of two pleaded guilty to having sex with a student, Southern California authorities said Friday.
Malia Brooks, who taught at Garden Grove Elementary in Simi Valley, pleaded guilty Thursday to three counts of lewd conduct with a child under 14, said Ventura County Deputy District Attorney Erin Meister.
The judge indicated that Brooks will likely receive a six-year prison term when sentenced on August 23, Meister said. Bail was set at $2 million for the 32-year-old Brooks, who remains in custody.
"Malia Brooks has a mental illness. For 31 years, she was a law-abiding citizen," her attorney, Ron Bamieh, said. "Something had to occur for her to drastically change who she was. It's not like she is attracted to 12 year-old boys."
Brooks agreed to the plea deal because she did not want to put the victim through a trial, Bamieh said.
A police investigation into allegations that Brooks carried on an inappropriate relationship with a male student began in February. Authorities say the relationship occurred during a four month period in 2012.
Brooks, who had been on administrative leave, resigned from the Simi Valley Unified School District earlier this month.
She was arraigned on charges Wednesday and plead guilty on Thursday, Bamieh said.

NYC police: Teacher accused of raping 10-year-old student
By Chris Boyette and Leigh Remizowski, CNN
updated 10:30 PM EDT, Wed June 19, 2013



New York (CNN) -- A Bronx public school teacher has been arrested and charged in the alleged rape of a 10-year-old student, according to NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne.
Anthony Criscuolo, 40, was arrested on Wednesday after the alleged victim's mother called police, according to NYPD detective Marc Nell.
Criscuolo was charged with first-degree rape and predatory sexual assault of a child, Browne said. The charges stemmed from an purported incident on Monday in the teacher's car, Browne said.
Criscuolo, who taught fifth grade special education at PS 386 in the Bronx, was immediately reassigned away from the school and any students, Connie Pankratz, a spokeswoman for the city Department of Education, said later Wednesday.
The department is now seeking his termination, she added.
Criscuolo began working in the New York City school system in 2002 as a substitute teacher in the Bronx. In his most recent position at PS 386, was paid $72,990, Pankratz said.
After his arrest, Criscuolo was jailed at the Bronx County courthouse pending an arraignment, which could take place on Thursday. It could not be determined Wednesday night whether Cruiscuolo was being represented by an attorney.
Richard Riley, a spokesman for the United Federation of Teachers, said regarding the charge against Criscuolo, "The matter is under investigation." The union represents approximately 75,000 New York City public school teachers, according to its website.

She pleaded guilty to three counts of lewd conduct with a child under 14

 Ouze wrote:
Should, yes - I'm speculating not because I haven't been able to locate anything one way or the other concrete on that so I'm assuming she skated on that as part of her plea bargain, but I could be wrong.. she probably has not been sentenced yet. Perhaps lets omit that element for now, until we know for sure.

 Ouze wrote:
My tie-in to feminism is that as a society we need to accept that if women are equal, some of them will be as equally predatory; and should be treated and sentenced the same. If a man did what Kilkrazy states happened, you know damn well he wouldn't have gotten 6 years. Unfortunately we seem not to see these women as "just making mistakes" and so on, in need or protection even, instead of as the sexual predators they are. Chances are; she won't be on a sex offender list, and the coverage never even uses the word "rape". This is wrong and men and women both should be unhappy with this.


Anyway, I'm off the soapbox. I'm not one of those men's rights guys, and this isn't some crusade I follow; I just thought it would make for today's interesting OT discussion because, as I said; both stories were literally linked on the same page on CNN and the situations were in many ways so similar.

A massive twit-storm washed over your humble columnist yesterday, set off by our Wall Street Journal op-ed defending an Obama nominee and the rights of criminal defendants. To recap briefly: Sen. Claire McCaskill has placed a "permanent hold" on the nomination of Gen. Susan Helms to be vice commander of the Air Force Space Command. McCaskill is punishing Helms for having granted clemency to an officer under her command, Capt. Matthew Herrera, who was convicted of aggravated sexual assault.

We reviewed the facts and concluded that Helms was correct in holding that the prosecution case was so weak as to make the conviction unjust. (Herrera did not escape punishment: He pleaded guilty to an "indecent act" and was involuntarily discharged from the service.)

Our argument infuriated feminists, yielding hundreds of tweets and perhaps a dozen posts on various leftist websites. Particularly noteworthy was a tweet from @Invisible_War, which promotes a documentary described as "a groundbreaking investigation into the epidemic of rape in the US military." The tweet read: "Appalling: @WSJ's @jamestaranto thinks we're criminalizing male sexuality by prosecuting military rape."

That is an utter falsehood. Our column discussed sexual assault but made no specific mention of rape, a distinct and more serious offense under military law. Herrera was not accused of rape. We sent a corrective tweet to @Invisible_War, but no correction has been forthcoming. Readers are left to draw their own inferences as to the film's credibility.

Enlarge Image

Getty Images
The falsehood that we were somehow defending rapists was propagated widely. At Salon, Katie McDonough published a piece titled "Five Easy Steps for Becoming a Rape Apologist: James Taranto's editorial provides a handy guide for blaming the victim." (Amusingly, McDonough faults us in Step 3 for using the "gendered" word "histrionic." She must imagine that it has an etymological commonality with "hysterical." In fact they come from different languages: hystera is Greek for "womb," but histrio is Latin for "actor." Remember when that municipal worker in the District of Columbia got fired for saying "niggardly," which a coworker mistook for a racial slur?)

Some of the comments were just abusive. At the website of Cosmopolitan magazine, Natasha Burton called us a "freaking jackass." Victoria Lee tweeted: "why is it always guys who look like Taranto, the ones who know crap about women, ... try 2talk abt women." We contrasted that tweet with one from Jessica Valenti (who was not referring to us): "Calling a feminist 'ugly' is generally the first response of humdrum misogynists and the last resort of covert ones."

Sauce for the goose, we suppose. (Though we now need a gender-specific phrase for an argumentum ad hominem against a man, the male equivalent of the argumentum ad feminam.) But then Lauren Rankin replied: "good god, man. that's not a comment on your attractiveness; it's a comment on your white, male privilege." Rankin thinks she's defending Lee by construing her comment as racist.

Related Video


Best of the Web Today columnist James Taranto on Lt. General Susan Helms, a victim of Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill's war on men. Photos: AJ Mast

The feminist website Jezebel featured a piece by Katie Baker (last seen lashing out at Susan Patton) calling us "a prolific woman-hating troll," "the worst" and, for good measure, "THE WORST." We'll give her "prolific." Then she wrote: "I'm not interested in engaging with Taranto, because he's a cockroach." As we've noted before, describing one's adversaries as vermin is a rhetorical trope of the genocidaire.

All this viciousness was in the service of denying that there is, as we wrote in yesterday's article, a "war on men." Well, imagine if a prominent feminist journalist wrote about the "war on women" and dozens of conservative male writers responded by subjecting her to similar verbal abuse. Would that not be prima facie evidence that she was on to something? If the answer is yes--and we'd say it is--then either the same is true in our case or the sexes aren't equal. (Select one or both of the above.)

We can take the abuse. In fact, in this instance we delight in it, not only because we see the humor but because it proves us right.

But the underlying subject matter is far from funny. The objective of these ideologues is to destroy the lives of men. Some such men are serious criminals who deserve severe punishment. But others are victims of false accusations or overzealous prosecutors. Some were involved in ambiguous situations in which a fair trial cannot establish their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Herrera clearly fell into at least that last category.

Everyone accused of a crime, even the guilty, is entitled to the basic protections of due process, including the presumption of innocence, the right to a fair trial, and the right to appeal a guilty verdict.

One way of responding to our op-ed would have been to concede that Taranto has a point about the Herrera case and McCaskill's treatment of Helms, but to argue that sexual assault in the military is nevertheless a serious problem that requires new administrative or legal remedies.

We can imagine being persuaded to agree with such an argument. But we haven't seen anybody make it. The tweets and articles quoted above are typical of the response from the feminist left. The few who've deigned to discuss the facts of the case at all--Slate's Amanda Marcotte and TalkingPointsMemo's Catherine Thompson among them--have distorted them beyond recognition, obscuring the questions about the credibility of Herrera's accuser that led Helms to reject the court-martial verdict of guilty.

This appetite for punishment regardless of facts, this contempt for the rights of the accused, is worthy of a lynch mob. That is an inflammatory analogy, but we employ it advisedly. The victims of lynching were not infrequently men accused of sexual violations.

 Ouze wrote:
So, it's pretty simple to pick out the rapist, looks like. It's the one with the penis

 kronk wrote:
Do those google searches at work on a shared computer for good measure.

 Monster Rain wrote:

 kronk wrote:
Do those google searches at work on a shared computer for good measure.

Or if at home leave it up for a spouse to find.

 kronk wrote:

 Monster Rain wrote:

 kronk wrote:
Do those google searches at work on a shared computer for good measure.

Or if at home leave it up for a spouse to find.

Leave duct tape and a ski mask next to the computer. And a post-it not that simply says "soon".

 kronk wrote:

 Monster Rain wrote:

 kronk wrote:
Do those google searches at work on a shared computer for good measure.

Or if at home leave it up for a spouse to find.

Leave duct tape and a ski mask next to the computer. And a post-it not that simply says "soon".

 Monster Rain wrote:

 kronk wrote:

 Monster Rain wrote:

 kronk wrote:
Do those google searches at work on a shared computer for good measure.

Or if at home leave it up for a spouse to find.

Leave duct tape and a ski mask next to the computer. And a post-it not that simply says "soon".

I recall getting an eyebrow arched at me when I had been researching "spousal rape" for whatever damn reason. I assume it was OT related.

 Alfndrate wrote:
Nothing about Lewd conduct in California seems to match what this woman did.

288. (a) Except as provided in subdivision (i), any person who
willfully and lewdly commits any lewd or lascivious act, including
any of the acts constituting other crimes provided for in Part 1,
upon or with the body, or any part or member thereof, of a child who
is under the age of 14 years, with the intent of arousing, appealing
to, or gratifying the lust, passions, or sexual desires of that
person or the child, is guilty of a felony and shall be punished by
imprisonment in the state prison for three, six, or eight years.

 whembly wrote:
Another worthy discussion topic?
Sex, Lies and the War on Men

Spoiler:

A massive twit-storm washed over your humble columnist yesterday, set off by our Wall Street Journal op-ed defending an Obama nominee and the rights of criminal defendants. To recap briefly: Sen. Claire McCaskill has placed a "permanent hold" on the nomination of Gen. Susan Helms to be vice commander of the Air Force Space Command. McCaskill is punishing Helms for having granted clemency to an officer under her command, Capt. Matthew Herrera, who was convicted of aggravated sexual assault.

We reviewed the facts and concluded that Helms was correct in holding that the prosecution case was so weak as to make the conviction unjust. (Herrera did not escape punishment: He pleaded guilty to an "indecent act" and was involuntarily discharged from the service.)

Our argument infuriated feminists, yielding hundreds of tweets and perhaps a dozen posts on various leftist websites. Particularly noteworthy was a tweet from @Invisible_War, which promotes a documentary described as "a groundbreaking investigation into the epidemic of rape in the US military." The tweet read: "Appalling: @WSJ's @jamestaranto thinks we're criminalizing male sexuality by prosecuting military rape."

That is an utter falsehood. Our column discussed sexual assault but made no specific mention of rape, a distinct and more serious offense under military law. Herrera was not accused of rape. We sent a corrective tweet to @Invisible_War, but no correction has been forthcoming. Readers are left to draw their own inferences as to the film's credibility.

Enlarge Image

Getty Images
The falsehood that we were somehow defending rapists was propagated widely. At Salon, Katie McDonough published a piece titled "Five Easy Steps for Becoming a Rape Apologist: James Taranto's editorial provides a handy guide for blaming the victim." (Amusingly, McDonough faults us in Step 3 for using the "gendered" word "histrionic." She must imagine that it has an etymological commonality with "hysterical." In fact they come from different languages: hystera is Greek for "womb," but histrio is Latin for "actor." Remember when that municipal worker in the District of Columbia got fired for saying "niggardly," which a coworker mistook for a racial slur?)

Some of the comments were just abusive. At the website of Cosmopolitan magazine, Natasha Burton called us a "freaking jackass." Victoria Lee tweeted: "why is it always guys who look like Taranto, the ones who know crap about women, ... try 2talk abt women." We contrasted that tweet with one from Jessica Valenti (who was not referring to us): "Calling a feminist 'ugly' is generally the first response of humdrum misogynists and the last resort of covert ones."

Sauce for the goose, we suppose. (Though we now need a gender-specific phrase for an argumentum ad hominem against a man, the male equivalent of the argumentum ad feminam.) But then Lauren Rankin replied: "good god, man. that's not a comment on your attractiveness; it's a comment on your white, male privilege." Rankin thinks she's defending Lee by construing her comment as racist.

Related Video


Best of the Web Today columnist James Taranto on Lt. General Susan Helms, a victim of Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill's war on men. Photos: AJ Mast

The feminist website Jezebel featured a piece by Katie Baker (last seen lashing out at Susan Patton) calling us "a prolific woman-hating troll," "the worst" and, for good measure, "THE WORST." We'll give her "prolific." Then she wrote: "I'm not interested in engaging with Taranto, because he's a cockroach." As we've noted before, describing one's adversaries as vermin is a rhetorical trope of the genocidaire.

All this viciousness was in the service of denying that there is, as we wrote in yesterday's article, a "war on men." Well, imagine if a prominent feminist journalist wrote about the "war on women" and dozens of conservative male writers responded by subjecting her to similar verbal abuse. Would that not be prima facie evidence that she was on to something? If the answer is yes--and we'd say it is--then either the same is true in our case or the sexes aren't equal. (Select one or both of the above.)

We can take the abuse. In fact, in this instance we delight in it, not only because we see the humor but because it proves us right.

But the underlying subject matter is far from funny. The objective of these ideologues is to destroy the lives of men. Some such men are serious criminals who deserve severe punishment. But others are victims of false accusations or overzealous prosecutors. Some were involved in ambiguous situations in which a fair trial cannot establish their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Herrera clearly fell into at least that last category.

Everyone accused of a crime, even the guilty, is entitled to the basic protections of due process, including the presumption of innocence, the right to a fair trial, and the right to appeal a guilty verdict.

One way of responding to our op-ed would have been to concede that Taranto has a point about the Herrera case and McCaskill's treatment of Helms, but to argue that sexual assault in the military is nevertheless a serious problem that requires new administrative or legal remedies.

We can imagine being persuaded to agree with such an argument. But we haven't seen anybody make it. The tweets and articles quoted above are typical of the response from the feminist left. The few who've deigned to discuss the facts of the case at all--Slate's Amanda Marcotte and TalkingPointsMemo's Catherine Thompson among them--have distorted them beyond recognition, obscuring the questions about the credibility of Herrera's accuser that led Helms to reject the court-martial verdict of guilty.

This appetite for punishment regardless of facts, this contempt for the rights of the accused, is worthy of a lynch mob. That is an inflammatory analogy, but we employ it advisedly. The victims of lynching were not infrequently men accused of sexual violations.

 Monster Rain wrote:

 Alfndrate wrote:
Nothing about Lewd conduct in California seems to match what this woman did.

288. (a) Except as provided in subdivision (i), any person who
willfully and lewdly commits any lewd or lascivious act, including
any of the acts constituting other crimes provided for in Part 1,
upon or with the body, or any part or member thereof, of a child who
is under the age of 14 years, with the intent of arousing, appealing
to, or gratifying the lust, passions, or sexual desires of that
person or the child, is guilty of a felony and shall be punished by
imprisonment in the state prison for three, six, or eight years.

I think that covers it, don't you?

 Alfndrate wrote:

The problem that I find with this is that Lewd Conduct explicitly says a person under the age of 14, the subject was 14 years old, which would fall under California's Statutory Rape law that mentions under 18.

her attorney, Ron Bamieh, said. "Something had to occur for her to drastically change who she was. It's not like she is attracted to 12 year-old boys."