LET A JURY DECIDE  (A quick look at some of the central points in my parent’s “Brief of Appellees” to the Superior Court of Pennsylvania.   The text in bold is quotes from the brief.  The other text is my comments.)   “Proof of causation in a case such as this can never be more than tenuous.  Any number of things in the Plaintiff’s adult life could have produced her distress.  Indeed, after the passage of so much time, it is impossible to plausibly connect Plaintiff’s distress with anything the Defendants did or did not do during her childhood.” Nonsense.  Let’s let psychiatrists and mental health professionals testify and then let a jury decide.   “Forcing the Defendants to dredge through their own long lives and the Plaintiff’s, as well, in defense of a claim which can never be proven, is fundamentally unfair.” No, it’s fundamentally unfair to be sexually abused by one’s father.  Most cases that go to trial can never be proven scientifically and without a doubt.  That is why a jury determines who is telling the truth.  Why not let a jury decide this case?   “The magical accrual of such claims after years of dormancy would be wholly within plaintiffs’ control, and defendants, like the Holzingers here, could be called on decades after the fact to recall events and refute allegations from the far distant past, eons after relevant and exculpatory records and witnesses have vanished from the earth. There are no “records and witnesses” in this case that could have vanished from the earth.  My parents know damn well whether they abused me or not.  Let them testify and let a jury decide.  In the Brief  it also asks the court to “dismiss her meritless Complaint “  Why don’t you tell those individuals who have sued and are suing the Catholic Church that their Complaints are meritless.  My case is no different from their cases.  Let a jury decide.   DALRYMPLE v. BROWN (Pa. 1997) (This is a Pennsylvania Supreme Court case/decision that is the governing precedent on repressed memory and tolling the statute of limitations in Pennsylvania.)       “Under application of the objective standard it would be absurd to argue that a reasonable person, even assuming for the sake of argument, a reasonable six year old, would repress the memory of a touching so that no amount of diligence would enable that person to know of the injury.”     I counted and this case is cited exactly 30 times in my parent’s Brief of Appellees filed with the Superior Court of Pennsylvania.  There is one problem with the above.  Ninety-nine percent of psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and mental health professionals would disagree with the above statement.  In fact, no mental health professionals testified in the case of Dalrymple v. Brown. The judges took it upon themselves to make their own personal assessment of repressed memory and rule on it without any professional input.      Also quoted in my parent’s brief is this, again relating to Dalrymple v. Brown, “As Justice Newman observed in her concurring opinion, the ‘Majority has established a rule of law forever foreclosing application of the discovery rule to cases of alleged repressed memory.’”   I didn’t think there was such a thing as “forever,” especially in law.     There are suggestions written as to why repressed memories return to some people when they do.  Major life changes are often cited or feeling safe with your situation in life. But that’s not it with me.  I know exactly why they came back.  An alarm clock went off in my head almost exactly twenty years to the day that I made a certain promise.  It will be included in the story “Charlie’s Promise.”    TOO MUCH   “For instance, Plaintiff’s father, who is an anthropologist, was occasionally out of the country during her childhood.  It is important for him to know when the alleged events took place so that he can ascertain his own whereabouts at the time Plaintiff contends he was at home in Lancaster engaging in child abuse.” (From the Brief of Appellees filed with the Superior Court on January 6, 2005.)   I sent this letter to a friend regarding the above, “What a howl!  I guess 365 days a year for 18 years wasn’t enough time.  And it wasn’t “child abuse” it was sexual abuse/incest.  My father may have been out of the country once before I was 18.  He went to Africa for several weeks to visit my brother who was living there.  That is the only time I remember him being “out of the country” let alone out of the state!  The anthropologist part is ironic on so many levels.  I gather anthropologists don’t molest their children and occasionally travel out of the country.  My father sat in a chair and drank beer and said, ‘Men are the hunters and gatherers.’  They are grasping at straws on this one.”       Perhaps my father should look up the definition of anthropologist.  They study cultures and families.  Apparently he doesn’t think it odd that his one son is a pedophile who molested his other 13 year-old son and his “foster” son.  Apparently he doesn’t think it odd that two of his daughters, both in their fifties, have never married and rarely dated.  Apparently he doesn’t think it odd that I have to worry that my own brother may have molested my son.  He’s not an anthropologist – he’s a criminal.