Set-asides: Culture of welfare for women and blacks? After reading “Lone Ranger” [April 11], I wondered how Bob Dean can be portrayed as a heroic figure. What are contract set-asides other than legalized discrimination against white males?
Look at black culture, where working hard takes on the negative connotation of “acting white.” Members of such a culture are not going to be able to compete against members of a culture where hard work is valued.
And why should there be set-asides for women? During summer breaks from college I poured concrete foundations. I don’t believe there are any females who could do that type of work, lugging around 100-pound forms for 10 to 12 hours a day in the summer sun. Why should white males who work their way up from the bottom in the construction industry have to watch a woman, who’s probably never gotten her hands dirty, be handed a contract?
Bob Gross
Garfield Heights
Bob Dean wades through muck like a champ: Thanks for your article about screwing black workers. Sometimes one person can truly make a difference. Although it takes support to change things, that one person’s death threat or resignation was needed to place things in motion. It’s not easy to unveil muck and mire, but neither is living in poverty. Thanks, Bob Dean.
Sharon Thompson
Cleveland
Abusing Medicine
First, do no harm — then, don’t play God: We are another one of those families Dr. Steiner is going against [“Guilty Until Proven Innocent,” April 18]. Our beautiful six-month-old girl accidentally fell out of my husband’s arms onto a carpeted floor. It was an accident. There was no abuse.
But Dr. Steiner always says otherwise. He is not a god, and we will find another specialist to look at the medical records and state the truth: that my baby girl’s injuries could have happened from a fall.
Dr. Steiner has his reputation to maintain. He does not care whose lives he ruins. He always says 100 percent abuse, ruling out the possibility that it could have been an accident. My baby was not crying, and my husband did not get mad. She simply wiggled out and fell.
We are not minimizing shaken baby syndrome — Steiner did not even diagnose that. He called it “abusive head trauma.”
Dr. Steiner has seen real cases of abuse, but he does more than err on the side of caution. He rules out the possibility of it ever being an accident. He always blames the parents, but he has never met us. We are loving, wonderful parents, and now our children are separated from us.
The truth will come out. And Dr. Steiner, who I think is Jewish like me, will have to answer to our God. How does this man look at himself in the mirror?
Anna Milholland
Stow
The personal toll of medical arrogance: Thanks for publishing such a great article. We were falsely accused of shaking our baby more than 10 years ago, and it’s still a mystery why this happened — the CAT scans show not one shred of medical evidence.
We spent thousands on an attorney and still lost custody of our older son because of some doctor who obviously did not have expertise in reading brain scans (she was a cardiologist). Thankfully, our case was dismissed and never went to trial, but the damage was done.
Just like the victims of a terrorist attack, the falsely accused will never get over it. If authorities are so concerned for children and families, why did they not offer any help and support after they found they were wrong? It’s doctors like Steiner who need to get in touch with the science swirling around SBS. There are plenty of peer-reviewed articles available. Do your research.
Belinda Moran
Apopka, Florida
Steinerism — a worldwide phenomenon: What a great article. When our 10-week-old daughter died over five years ago in the United Kingdom, my husband and I were accused of murder. He was charged and I was not, due to the fact he was with her at the time she stopped breathing. After two and a half years, the case went to trial. Six weeks into the trial, the judge threw out the case.
That, you would have thought, would have been the end of it; but social services, having found us very tricky customers, decided on a trial in family court. Not surprisingly, my husband lost.
Over five years later, my husband is still not living with us. Tired of the continued pressure, the children and I came to live in New Zealand.
What these doctors do to families comes from a fixed mind-set and an unwillingness to accept the still-unknown areas of medicine. It would seem that when babies and toddlers are involved, and no cause can be found, the only cause can be abuse.
Prosecution medical experts are paid for their opinion in court, but that’s all it is — a doctor’s opinion. When asked to back up their opinions with medical fact, they refer to other experts with the same opinions. It seems that if you are a medical expert, your opinion, if said enough, turns into fact.
It’s a shame the same is not the case for falsely accused parents of SBS. We keep saying it is wrong, but yet we keep getting persecuted. Some child protection, eh?
Sharon Latta
Auckland, New Zealand
For some, justice; for others, uncertainty: I am so thankful for this article. There are many of us out here who have been falsely accused. Some of us have been cleared, some haven’t. Those of us who haven’t are just waiting, not knowing what our future holds.
I wonder many times what it’s going to take to get doctors and laypeople to realize that there can be many reasons for injuries like this, not just child abuse. For those of you who are finished, praise God. For those of us waiting, keep praying.
Kathy Hyatt
Macon, Mississippi
This article appears in May 2-8, 2007.
In regards to a response in the Letters (May 2) section that took an anti-affirmative action stance and said that hard work is considered ‘acting White’ by the Black community. I must say I have never heard an actual Black person say that, only White conservative talk radio hate shows, because they feel ashamed and guilty that’s it’s a product of their own culture so they pretend it’s a pillar of black culture to distract attention from their own setbacks. For those of us who attended mostly White schools, we know that hard work is hardly instilled in White families. If a White student is smart he is ostracized from his peers and bullied or maybe even worse. And you can forget about Tyler the computer geek finding a date to prom, because intelligence is somehow considered less of a man in these circles.
As horrible as this country is to Black people, Whites should be all the luckier that the only thing they are asking for is a chump change settlement like affirmative action, when they should be overthrowing the entire US Treasury. While it may be true that Blacks are often their own worst enemy crime wise, White on White crime is sky high as well, so the pot shouldn’t be calling the kettle black. Whether it be slavery from the past or embezzlement and fraud of the present, the laziness and scheming attitude of White culture has hurt us all and is what led to the current decimation of the entire USA economy.
Thanks to White males union-bullying corporations into paying them exorbitant wages for clicking boards and demanding eight hours pay for four hours labor, corporations are escaping overseas to hire foreigners who know the value of a dollar and are actually willing to work for it. Imagine that, actually working for your income! It is hysterical that some White males think they can trick people into thinking that they didn’t get their jobs just because they are White. For if we went through and cherry picked out all the White guys who got their jobs just because they are White, we could loose 50% of the undeserving American workforce.
Another innocent 56 year old grandmother is sent to prison for 15 years to life by Dr. Steiner in the case of Marsha Mills in Tuscarawas County, Ohio. In a June 2007, trial that the prosicution proved nothing, but what they speculate could have happened, the jury found Marsha Mills guilty of all charges. This verdict has the community in an uproar beleiving she was “railraoded”. Marsha was babysitting two of her grandchildren and a freind’s two children when Noah, (two year old freinds son) fell down the back porch steps and hit his head on the cement patio knocking him unconcience. Detective Hootman with New Phila. Police Dept. investigated and closed the case that day calling it a “freak accident”. Dr. Steiner does not beleivie accidents happen. It’s true, Dr. Steiner calles 100% of children injuries, child abuse. My advise is go to any other hospital with your child or you will surely end up with your children taken away, in prison or both.
Here in the UK, it’s easy to jail parents and childminders for allegedly killing children in their care.
Lawyers don’t seem to look at the Office for National Statistics data at electoral ward level which shows that the babies were all from electoral wards with high infant death rates.
Robert Ward got four years in Dec 2004 for manslaughter of his 8-week-old son, but jury unaware that Malinslee ward has the highest infant mortality rate in the Borough of Telford & Wrekin, which is downwind of Ironbridge Power Station.
Aaron Brooks got three years three months in DEc 2007 for manslaughter of his daughter and their high infant mortality electoral ward was St Ann’s, Nottingham, which is also adjacent to Sherwood ward, the one with the highest rate and forming part of a wedget-shaped block of high infant death wards downwind from Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station.
I’d never heard of Kathy Hyatt until today, ie 20 DEcember 2007 when she was named in The Times newspaper in respect of the jailing of Keran Henderson of Iver Bucks, who was jailed for shaking baby Maeve to death. Baby Maeve’s family are from a high infant death ward in Slough which is near a crematorium and also an incinerator.
Kind regards,
Michael Ryan,
Shrewsbury
UK