Monday, May 28, 2007

Father Peter on Tracey

Wednesday, October 11, 2006
The Rev. Val J. Peter On The Tracey Dyess Case

The Rev. Val J. Peter, in an opinion piece in this morning's Des Moines Register:

I challenge your Sept. 27 editorial, "Resist Call to Intervene in Tracey Dyess Case," which recommended that Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack take no action to lessen Dyess' 45-year sentence for voluntary manslaughter.

Dyess was the 17-year-old Griswold girl, sexually abused since age 4, who set fire to her house, resulting in the deaths of her younger brother and sister. She "couldn't take it anymore" and was trying to stop the abuse, she told a social worker.

First, my credentials. For 20 years from 1985 to 2005, I was executive director and now am emeritus executive director of Girls and Boys Town in Omaha, coming to the aid of young people like Dyess who are the road kill of molesters and abusers...

...Consider the mission of Father Edward Flanagan, founder of Boys Town... Flanagan was successful in Billy Meagher's case, a 15-year-old Denver boy charged with the slaying of his father. Pleading guilty to voluntary manslaughter, Meagher was paroled to Boys Town on March 6, 1937. Billy had seen his mother's back broken as a result of one of many savage beatings administered by his father.

Flanagan stood before the judge and said: "You and I, your honor, with our many years of experience behind us would have known how to answer that problem had we been confronted with it as Billy was. We would have known the proper sources of law to appeal to. But Billy is only a boy. He took what seemed the only answer to the staggering problem confronting him."

That sounds like the plight of Tracey Dyess.

When you see the governor, tell him the petition for clemency is coming and solicit his support. I am just pleading for, as Father Flanagan did, a young person who deserves a chance at a normal life, which she has never had.

And here are comments from blogger State 29, after citing Peter's letter:

Dyess's sentence is a travesty. This girl should have been allowed an insanity defense. What else can you call her mental condition after years of this kind of abuse? Tracey Dyess probably should have been institutionalized rather than thrown in prison. It's a wonder that this girl hasn't been found hanging from a bedsheet.

Although the Dixie Shanahan Duty case is different in nature, that case, along with the Dyess case, shows that women in Iowa who have been horrifically abused and who eventually cause the deaths of others get disproportionate sentences compared to a rich doctor's wife who stabs him in the heart after he announces plans for a divorce.

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