The police have convincing evidence that Michael John Anderson killed Katherine Ann Olson, but they can’t explain why. That’s what the headlines on the front page of the Minneapolis Star Tribune said on Halloween 2007. I doubt that the police do not have good guesses as to why.
I have guesses. There are several possible scenarios. One is that Anderson planned to rape Olson and then kill her. The other is he planned to rape her but not to kill her. The third is he planned to rape her, she resisted, and he shot and killed her. Of course, rape might not have been his motive at all. He could have wanted what he thought would be the intense pleasure of killing a woman. Anderson said a friend killed Olson because the friend that it would be funny.
Rape is a likely motive because Anderson’s bed and the walls of his bedroom were splattered with Olson’s blood. That Olson resisted is a likely scenario because she was shot in the back and there was no sign of sexual assault. He might have tried to rape her but could not because he had no erection. Anderson probably escorted Olson to his bedroom under the pretext that the child she was to care for was there, or he could have forced her there at gunpoint. Anderson had gotten Olson to his home through posting an ad for a child care job on Craigslist, a well-known website.
Anderson may have gotten emotional and sexual gratification out of planning the attack. He may have thought about raping and possibly murdering a woman long before he actually did it. He may have enjoyed the planning more than the attack itself. When fantasy became reality, he could not do what he had given him such intense pleasure for so long. Many rapists can't get erections after months of fantasyzing about rape.
Rapists often fantasize about rape as a joyful, intensely pleasurable event. Anderson probably imagined that the woman he actually raped would welcome his sexual desires, get a beatific smile on her face, and tell him he was the most fantastic lover ever. He may have imagined she would fall in love with him and they would become a couple.
When his fantasy did not pan out and she ran from him, he may have gone into a rage. With a gun at the ready, he shot and killed her. Then he was in trouble big time. He had to get rid of the body. He dragged Olson down the stairs, tied her with twine, and dumped her body in the trunk of her car. He drove the car a few blocks away to a park reserve. He walked back home.
Anderson supposedly had two close male friends who are now in shock. “I’m just blank,” one said. “He would never raise a fits to anybody.” Both friends maintain that Anderson was never violent and never showed interest in women.
They did not know who they were dealing with.
The scanty biography published in the newspaper suggests that all was not well with Anderson. At 19, he was a high school dropout who also apparently had dropped out of auto mechanics school. He was working nights and told one of his friends that he now was back into the routine of sleeping. With these two friends, he would play video games, type not stated. The newspaper account also labeled him a “paintball fanatic.” His friends said that they used to tease Anderson. They claimed he was good-natured about it.
Anderson had not seen his two friends in about a month. There is no information of whether he had isolated himself this past month, or years. There is no information about what he did during that time. There is no information about what he had thought about during that time.
What is known is that he planned an attack on a woman. It took planning to place an ad on Craigslist for a babysitter and forethought to disguise that he was 19 years old. He posed as “Amy.”
Anderson is locked up with a million-dollar bail. He no longer can harm young women. I hope the police study this case intensely and then publicize what they find. We can learn a lot about prevention of violence if they do this.
A case study of Anderson would involve a neurological exam that would investigate whether he had a neurological vulnerability to emotional and cognitive dysregulation. Dysregulation means racing thoughts, emotions, and often agitated behaviors and rapid heartbeat, among other things.
A brain scan might be able to pinpoint neurological issues. Depression, bipolar disorders, and hyperactivity/impulsive disorders are usually detectable through brain scans. Did Anderson have sleep deprivation? Did his night job isolate him from enjoyable activities? Sleep deprivation and social isolation could aggravate an underlying neurological vulnerability and contribute to dysregulation.
The brain scan could provide evidence that he may have experienced dysregulation. If he did, then the examiner would ask him how he handled these racing thoughts and emotions. Did he use violent fantasies to deal with them?
Did he talk to anyone about his racing thoughts and emotions, or his violent fantasies? Did it help to talk? Did he ever talk to anyone about painful events in his life? Everyone has these kinds of events. The question is how Anderson dealt with them.
Did Anderson have long-term friendships? What did he talk about with these friends? Did they know what was in Anderson’s heart? Did Anderson feel connected to other people whom he admired, who were doing well in life, and who he wanted to be like? What kind of persons did Anderson admire and want to be like?
It would be important to know what traumas Anderson may have experienced. Some people are masters at covering up the effects of trauma. Something as simple as teasing by friends could be traumatic. Anderson may have seemed to have laughed off the teasing of friends, but how did he really feel?
Another part of the exam would involve how Anderson dealt with problems in his life. Did he consider many different possible solutions, seek the advice of others, anticipate the consequences of the various solutions? This part of the exam involves what is called executive function, which is about how people think.
People who commit the kinds of violent acts that Anderson appears to have committed have tunnel vision. They do not think through the consequences, either for themselves or the people they want to harm. They are only looking at what they think are the immediate rewards. One they have committed the violent acts, then they snap back into realizing that they have done something seriously terrible. It’s too late.
It’s not too late for the uncounted potential victims of persons who right now are getting emotional and often sexual gratification out of harming other people. If we can commit the time and resources to understanding what is going on for people who commit these acts of violence, we are on the road to effective prevention.
How are you celebrating Halloween today?
I ate almost a whole back of Hershey nuggets. I even had them for breakfast on Halloween. No more nuggets for me. I'm also thinking about my mother who died a year ago and a friend how died about 15 months ago. In addition, to my chagrin, I'm thinking of someone who I had once loved and who is no longer in my life because of his unkind deeds and cover-ups.
The best case scenario for survivor recovery from child sexual abuse is the caring, supportive response of their families and friends. Children recover well when children are surrounded by people who love them, believe them when they say someone abused them sexually, and do not blame them. Children’s recovery depends upon empathy, understanding, and education about the true nature of child sexual abuse.
Another important aspect of recovery occurs when others hold perpetrators responsible and accountable for their own behaviors. Accountability means that perpetrators take responsibility for the abuse, accept the consequences for their actions, seek the help they require to stop themselves from sexually abusing again, and apologize to the children and any other persons they have harmed.
Such actions are rare, but when they do happen, children’s recovery is given a huge boost. Child survivors are relieved from the guilt, shame, and stigma that are part of being sexu8ally abused. The adults in their lives have evidence in the words and actions of perpetrators that perpetrators alone are responsible, not the children, and that the perpetrators’ behaviors hurt the children.
Children can and do recover when perpetrators do not take responsibility, but the road to recovery is made more smooth when they do.
When perpetrators take responsibility, the possibility that they can change their behaviors opens up. They then can report their behaviors truthfully to law enforcement and the courts, can hear what survivors and others whom they have hurt have to say, they can engage in sex offender treatment, therapy, and they can accept the consequences of their behaviors. When they plead guilty, they relieve survivors of the difficult task of testifying court and enduring cross-examinations.
This is no easy thing for perpetrators to do, but those who take responsibility and stick with it have reason to hope that they can get their lives back and be in a better place. Sadly, some abusers swing back and forth between taking responsibility and blaming others. This hurts survivors and themselves. Such wavering also puts them at high risk to sexually abuse again.
Yes, the Constitution is always right. The values and principle embedded in the Constitution promote the well-being, equal opportunity, and equal treatment of every U.S. Citizens. It sets up a system of checks and balances among the U.S. Congress, the courts, and the executive branch, or the presidency.
The U.S. media are often called the fourth estate because the media are the watchdog over these three branches of government. Each US citizen can vote. Voting is the basis of the U.S. democracy. The media and each U.S. citizen have the right to object to or praise each of the three branches of government when the principles of the Constitution are violated.
Like any document, people interpret the Constitution in their own ways. There is legitimate and healthy debate over what the Constitution means, at least within certain bounds. Certain principles and values are inviolable and self-evident, among them “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Personal freedom ends when it infringes on the freedom of other people. Therefore, no one is free to murder, prevent others from voting, or deny educational opportunities. These are just some of the limits on personal and institutional freedoms.
Some public officials ignore the Constitution. When this happens, every U.S. citizen has the right to protest and to bring the matter before courts and legislatures. Organized groups often exist to protect the Constitutional rights of citizens.
The U.S. Constitution has allowed the U.S. government to be a world leader in many different arenas, including the conduct of war, the ethical treatment of prisoners of war, and freedom of speech.
The U.S. has lost its world leadership precisely because elected officials have violated the values and principles of the Constitution. Elected officials, such as the presidency, have ordered the detainment of citizens of other countries, denied them the Constitutionally guaranteed right to counsel and trial, and has tortured them. In some cases, these officials have ordered the abduction of citizens of other countries.
In regard to U.S. Citizens, the office of the presidency has infringed on Constitutional rights of privacy by permitting eavesdropping on citizens without a court order. In cloaking themselves in the rhetoric of patriotism, these elected officials have engaged in hypocrisy of a most serious kind.
In summary, the Constitution is always right. There is room for legitimate debate about what the Constitutions means. Certain rights and values are self-evident and inviolable.
I’m worried. The Bush administration defies the law. The California governor defies the law. If elected officials do not obey the law, what’s next? Lawlessness? I have visions of armed men taking over governorships, tanks rolling down Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C., and the next elected president with a gun against her temple being escorted out of the Oval Office because she did something someone else did not like.
I am afraid the United States will descend into chaos, where anyone, including those elected to powerful public office, will do whatever they please regardless of the law. Citizens who break the law are subject to arrest. What about elected officials?
How is it that the president of the United States can order the abduction and torture of citizens of other countries and get away with it? How can the governor of California enforce a law whose implementation the California Supreme Court has ordered to be stayed?
How is it that a man who was arrested for urinating under a bridge 22 years ago is a registered sex offender and is arrested under order of the governor of California? Yes, that is what happened. This man is a registered sex offender because he peed outside 22 years ago and was arrested this week for not letting police know where he lives.
There’s something rotten in the United States.
Finish this sentence: "I am glad to say that I have never ___." said no to a hot fudge sundae.
Submitted by chl*.
Harry Dent was a hatemongering racist. No question. He helped construct the “Southern strategy” where politicians use code words like “states rights” and “law and order” to signal to white voters that they will not enforce laws granting voting rights and equal opportunities to black people. They suggest they might even roll back the laws that are on the books.
This strategy won Southern states for successful presidential candidates such as Nixon, Reagan, and Bush father and son, got Strom Thurmond elected to the U.S. Senate for decades, and has helped many other politicians, local and national, get into office.
Dent worked for Thurmond for several years and then worked in the Nixon White House helping to solidify the advantages won by the Southern strategy. He showed mastery of the cover-up when he said the Southern strategy redresses the wrongs done to white people who are left out because of affirmative action and governmental aide programs.
Later in life, Mr. Dent became a church deacon and helped build orphanages in Romania. He had regrets. He said, “When I look back, my biggest regret now is anything I did that stood in the way of the rights of black people, or any people.”
Hooray for Harry Dent. He did wrong. He committed unkind deeds and cover-ups. He realized what he had done. He acknowledged what he had done. He changed his ways. In his accountability, Harry Dent is a model for us all. His unkind deed was egregiously harmful to millions. In that, he is no model.
Unkind deeds and cover-ups are burning up cyberspace once again. This time it is the Hill-Thomas firestorm, the sequel.
He started it. It was a dead or semi-dead issue. Then he brought it up on national U.S. television this week. He talked about it in his freshly published memoirs. She stood up for herself with an article in the New York Times a few days later. Did a judge of the U.S. Supreme Court sexually harass another attorney when both worked for the U.S. government more than 30 years ago? Professor Anita Hill said he did. Justice Clarence Thomas said he didn’t.
Is Justice Thomas taking advantage of a controversy to sell books? Or is he really that wounded that he is still trying to convince people that he did not sexually harass Professor Hill more than 20 years ago? What was Justice Thomas thinking when he stirred up this she said-he said game that most people on the planet never heard of?
Whatever Thomas’s motives, Hill responded. In her own words, she refused to let him “reinvent” her. On national television, Thomas used words that throughout history have silenced women: “touchy” and “sensitive to slights.” He also said she is a hypocrite in her religious beliefs, and said she was incompetent enough to be “let go” from a law firm. These words distract listeners from the main point, which is whether or not Thomas sexually harassed Hill. Distraction, name calling, and protestations of innocence are classic cover-ups.
Thomas said all of this with an ironic smile on his face and in a gentle tone of voice as if everyone knows this is true of Anita Hill. In the New York Times article, Hill denied this depiction of herself his and presented convincing evidence that Thomas’s words are untrue.
If Thomas’s words are untrue, then Thomas has committed unkind deeds and cover-ups. Rather than admitting that he was misguided as a young man about how to express romantic interests in a woman—or how to convince her to sleep with him, he smeared her character. If this is what happened, this is a classic case of being a shit, which is defined as committing unkind deeds and cover-ups.
Let’s watch those books sales.
