In Search Of....

I could use a good solid opinion or two here, or even more.
I’ve begun receiving “hate” mail in the form of comments on my blogs and citizen journalism articles. The writer of this mails refers to himself—I assume the person is of a masculine persuasion—variously as “herbie,” “ herbster,” “herb ert,” “herbisism,” “ashan,” “proceed with caution,” “herbert slobodow,” and “herbie the jew,” among an assortment of other things.
The writer—sorry, but the seventh-grade teacher in me can’t help noticing this—seems unable to spell or capitalize his way out of a paper bag! Now that fact would make me consider the possibility that the writer is not Herbie Slobodow--Elsa Newman’s intelligent, kind, loving, gentle, musician and athletic son, now fifteen years old--but some other person who pretends to be “Herbert” or “Herbster.” I don’t know. But I cannot imagine any son speaking thus about his mother: “Your not my fucking mother, just a nasty place i crawled out of….” or “Shut the fuck up mom….you are a crazy bitch and you need some help, but your to crazy to get it, yeah make these bullshit blogs…,” “…my mom and her hitler way of the world….” And these are not the only such things he says. Nevertheless the person who leaves comments for me under these names, says these things about Elsa Newman. If this is indeed a child speaking about his mother, it is a strange thing indeed.
The only possibilities I see are these:
1) Herbert Slobodow has grown to hate his mother and does, indeed, spew such filth about her without conscience and without concern for the picture of himself that he is creating around the world;
2) the material is written, not by Herbie, but by his father, Arlen. Now you understand, Arlen Slobodow is a man who would very possibly consider himself well justified in referring to his former wife as a hole out of which his son had crawled. In addition to that, I have a certain feel for a writer that comes from all those years of teaching language arts. After years spent grading well over a hundred student papers per week, I find myself noticing small mannerisms, points of style, spelling techniques and inconsistencies, punctuation (or lack thereof) capitalization (or lack thereof), a certain turn of phrase typical of a particular writer—whether said writer is a student or a literary personage. And here are some things I know of Arlen Slobodow: he is a writer of scripts, which means that he is quite familiar with the process of putting words into other people’s mouths; is it just possible it could be this father himself, the accused pedophile, who is doing this writing? Arlen tends to write without capitals, without particular concern for punctuation and with little care for correct spelling. That is the second possibility I see.
3) Or there is a third possibility: the material could be written by some friend of Arlen Slobodow or some member of his family other than his older son. I have no particular reason to think this. However, I must acknowledge it as a possibility.
Soooo…what I’m asking here is that if you have read any of these comments, lend me a response. Tell me who you think is writing this garbage about Elsa Newman.
Garbage! Perhaps that is too high-class a name for what this person is spouting--as if Newman did not have enough suffering to do on her own, unjustly imprisoned for a crime committed by someone else, and partly for believing her sons when they said they were being molested by their father…for believing the physical signs of abuse physicians found on their young bodies. When a boy’s anus is stretched and broken and bleeding, Herbie, Herbster, Ashan, Herbie the Jew or whoever you are, it is a clear and documentable sign of sexual molestation, whether or not you choose now to admit to that problem.
And at the time that doctors verified this abuse, you, yourself, were clinging to tables or doorways or your mother—begging not to have to go visit your father, and being forced to leave your mother and go to your father anyhow. People who supervised visits can bear witness to that, Herbster or Herbert or sheepsunion, whoever you are.
And now…although I hate to break it to my readers…I have to tell you that that whole shebang above is merely a lead in to a different question. And that question is about slander.
If the person who calls himself by many names , also calls me many names, is that slander? Let me give you some examples, straight from comments left by the (young?) man(?) of many names.
1. “Ann brocken is just mom’s hired writer and so all these articles come from my mom and her hitler way of the world….” [Gee, I hate it when he says that! I have spent hours virtually every day for the past year working on getting to the truth of the matter, and the kid(?) says I’m being paid to write this.] As if Elsa Newman had some source of money when Arlen Slobodow has a judgement against her for something like two million dollars. Guess again, folks! Besides that, you couldn’t pay me for all this work. I write because I believe in Elsa Newman, because I believe Elsa Newman, because I believe the two little boys who said their father was molesting them and abusing them in other ways, because I believe the physical evidence from these boys’ past, and because I believe that this whole mess has been a horrible miscarriage of justice.
2. [Aine O’Brocken] “is just a sick sellout my mom pays to write articles for her. Oh, that’s a name for me, all right—sick sellout. Ptooie!
3. “by the way annie post a blog about why you choose to copy and paste stuff mom writes to you on the internet.” I can hardly do a blog on that, since your mother/ex-wife (or whatever she is to you, depending on who is writing this crud) has no access to the internet and cannot write to me except by snail mail.
4. “Shut the fuck up and leave my dad alone What about Washington dc, a bitch named anne cyber bullying, libel, and slander.” Bullying, libel and slander—hmmmmm. Sound more like I’m the recipient than the bullier.
5. “You are fucking discusting.”
6. [You are] “a psychopathic sexist working for a manipulative insane bitch.”
7. “ And don’t lie about yourself, your not little, you fat hell!” This, I suppose as a response to my calling myself a little, old lady. And as virtually anyone knows, being a little, old lady has absolutely nothing to do with being little or old or a lady; it’s a state of mind. I’ve been here for years.”
8. “Your one sick shit, no matter how much she pays you, look at what your writing! It’s fucking discusting. You know none of that shit exists.” Quite the contrary, actually. The more time I spend on this case, the more I believe Elsa Newman is telling the truth about everything.
9. “you are a sellout and a sexist…your are a sexist nutjob who has some crazy ideas of female supremacy.” Naw. Anybody knows that women are just a hole for the real humans to crawl out of, don’t they? NOT!
Anyhow, to sum it all up, I am asking two questions of my readers, if any of you will be so kind as to comment.
Question one: who do you think is writing this abusive material about Elsa Newman?
Question two: has herbie/herbster/ashan/herb ert/herbie slobodow (or whoever this writer is) has this person yet crossed the line into slander in his/her name-calling and vicious approach to this writer.

If you have been reading this blog at all, you have
probably noticed that I've been receiving some
rather insulting messages from one of Elsa Newman's
sons.

May I request that you either ignore the
boy's comments--or at least cut him some slack. The
boy in question has, in the past, disclosed that
his father is a pedophile, who abuses both of his
two young sons in virtually unspeakable ways.

There are many things that cause me to think positively
of this young man, despite the foul language and the
name calling in which he has indulged while he
addresses me.
1. Herbie, at a very early age, demonstrated an ability to
think for himself and to act appropriately.
2. Hebrie was a musician. He played the violin and
loved the instrument.
3. It was Herbie, who, when his Hebrew school made a
facsimile of the wailing wall, posted a note which read,
in part, "Dear God, Please let me live with my mother."
4. It was Herbie, who gained the attention of his teachers
intelligence, his performance and his artistic ability.
5. Perhaps this brilliant musician, this fasinating child
artist has gone from this world for a time--perhaps retreated into a worldwhere he cannot remember the horrible things that have happened to him.

BUT HE WILL RETURN. YOUNG MAN HAS AN ABSOLUTE INNTER STRENGTH, BASED ON HIS INTELLIGENCE, ON HIS LOVE FOR HIS MOTHER AND SIMPLY ON HIS WAY OF BEING IN THIS WORLD!

According to the Snopes site on the web, online petitions are virtually worthless. I can, however, tell you one for-sure thing that your signature on this petition will accomplish: IT WILL ENCOURAGE ELSA NEWMAN, the Maryland mother who is unjustly imprisoned for trying to protect her sons from a father whom they say abuses them sexually.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/js/widget.js?petitionID=260097654

The following is an email which I sent to the office of the Attorney General of the State of Maryland, Doug Gansler. This office has ignored previous emails from me. I finally got an answer, which I have added in blue after this copy of my email.

The subject line of my email read, “Another question…”

...about Elsa Newman.
In short, what I need to know is this: do I have an ice cube's chance in hell of success in asking you to revisit this case?

I have other questions as well: Does your office consider it within the realm of professional standards and ethics to call a defendant names such as "nuts" or "delusional witch," as did Katherine Winfree in referring to Newman?

Is it within the realm of professional standards and ethics for a State's attorney to comment about the decision of Maryland's highest court by saying, "They just released the woman who wanted to kill her kids!" I thought the office of a State's attorney would be interested in truth and justice, rather than sound bites.

Is it within the realm of professional standards and ethics for the office of the State's Attorney for Montgomery County to withhold boxes of evidence--over 2000 pages which might have cleared a defendant?

I have been researching the case for close to a year now. Absolutely everything I find leads me to believe that this woman is innocent of the charges in a case where your office, as then-State's attorney, persuaded a jury to find her guilty.

Jurors themselves went so far as to say, after the first trial, that they saw no evidence of child abuse, and had they seen such evidence, they would never have decided on a guilty verdict. And the reason they never saw any such evidence? Dr. Jill Scharff refused to open her records, citing physician-client privilege. People to whom Newman's children had disclosed abuse were ignored. Authorities in the fields of psychiatry and medicine were ignored. Other authorities in the field of medicine refused to report such things as a serious cut over a little boy's eye, received when his father "knocked him off the bed."

Did anyone every try to find Anders Arestad of northern Virginia--possibly Arlington--or elsewhere in the D. C. area. This is a cameraman who has worked on such things as Starquest II--or maybe just an apprentice cameraman. If anyone in the world can testify to the fact that Arlen Slobodow sexually abused his sons, this man can--unless, of course, he is afraid either of Slobodow or of the possibility that legal authorities might discover his own part in the abuse.

Is is standard and ethical practice for one police detective named Q. Edwina Wallace to hold Newman's children virtually captive in an interrogation room from which the younger child was released only because he was afraid to ask Detective Lewis if he could use the restroom, and thus emptied his bowels into his unwear.

Is it professional standards and ethics for Detective Wallace to hold the older boy captive longer--for six hours or more--until he was unable to deal any longer with her badgering and, shame-faced and humiliated, recanted disclosures he had made to others.

Prison is a terrible place for anyone. But for an innocent person, who knows she is innocent, but is unable to do anything about it, prison is pure hell.

Yes...this smacks of anti-Semitism. Just about the only thing they haven't done to Elsa Newman yet is to send her to the "showers" with no soap...no wash cloth...no water, and only gas from the shower heads.

When I made this comment to Jewish friends today, the response was, "well...or starved her." Now that's ironic, because one thing Newman has had trouble with in Maryland Correctional Institution for Women is receiving a special diet which she needs to maintain her health. Periodically that special diet is simply disappeared.

Oh...and do you remember hearing that in the death camps of Nazi Germany the Germans confiscated eyeglasses? That's another thing Newman has difficulty with. She is supposed to be getting new glasses. She has not received the glasses. She has not even heard about them, to the best of my knowledge.

In closing, I venture to ask the same question with which I started: Do I have an ice cube's chance in hell of getting you to revisit this case?

I dare to hope that you will find in yourself enough honor and concern for insjustice that you will attempt to answer all these questions, and especially that final one. I look forward to hearing from you.

Dear Ms. O'Broken, --[Please notice how carefully this woman perused my email—so carefully that when she copied my name, she managed to misspell it.]
Thank you for contacting the Office of the Attorney General. Your email has been forwarded to me for response. The Attorney General is the legal counsel for the State of Maryland. As such, this Office provides legal advice to state agencies, department heads, investigates and prosecutes crimes against the State. The Attorney General does not have authority or jurisdiction to intervene in matters as described in your email.

Although the Office of the Attorney General does not have jurisdiction over this matter, we are aware of the record, including that Ms. Newman's case was twice reviewed by Maryland [which vacated the guilty conviction in the first trial, saying there was NO evidence to tie Newman to any conspiracy. Thus Newman is batting at lease .250] appellate courts. The evidentiary issues that you describe were fully aired. [Pardon my uncouth expression, but bullshit! For just one example of an issue that was not dealt with—the name of Anders Arestad.] Ms. Newman was appropriately prosecuted and convicted after a fair trial. [More or less “ditto” the previous comment—except for the part about Arestad. This whole “fair trial” concept is BS. In a fair trial, the prosecutor would be interested in truth, not spending her time calling the defendant names.]

Peggie McKee
Citizen Response Coordinator

This business of writing letters to people who could/should be able to help Elsa Newman and her children is getting monotonous. I receive the same answer every time: nothing…nada…zip…zero…zilch.I wrote an open letter to Dr. Jill Scharff, who has records from a time when she was the treating psychiatrist for the boys. I suggested that if she would allow those records to be opened, she might be able to spare Elsa’s two sons a lot of pain and abuse. No response.

I wrote to Stephen Friedman, who perjured himself on the witness stand. No response.

I wrote a letter to Doug Gansler, Attorney General of the state of Maryland. I suggested that, in the interest of justice, it might be worth his while to revisit the Elsa Newman case. Finding and correcting an error in the justice system that he supervises could only make him look good, would it not?  No response.The same letter I wrote to Gansler, I copied to Katherine Winfree. No response.I have twice written to one Anders Arestad, a man whom I believe to be quite familiar with Arlen Slobodow. I suspect that Mr. Arestad, if he chose to do so, could have quite a bit to say about Slobodow’s sexual and other abuse of his sons.  There are some who go so far as to suspect that Arestad participated in sexual abuse of the boys. I, on the other hand, have heard that he protested the abuse…that even Arestad thought Slobodow had gone too far. No response.Why in the world won’t any of these people answer me? What does it take for a little, old lady to draw attention to an injustice in the state of Maryland and find someone who will remedy that injustice?Yoo-hoo! You out there! Is anybody listening? Isn’t anybody willing to do anything at all?   

Welcome, and I hope the greeting is appropriate, since I have asked Maureen to send this site address on to her friends...who will, I hope and plead, send it on to their friends...who will...again the same thing, on and on, until many people in the UK hear about this terrible and frightening case of Elsa Newman and her sons.

And that's all I have to say about that.