Editor:
Of all the horrors contained in the cover story “The Soeth Files,” the one that gobsmacked was District Attorney Maggie Fleming’s dismissal of Soeth’s assault on his 6 year old. Her response to the attack: “isolated incidents of parents slapping or spanking their children over their clothes … are generally not considered physical abuse” reveals a cowardly rejection of responsibility.
Soeth had already demonstrated a pattern and practice of abuse in his work. This man hurt his son intentionally, allegedly hitting hard enough to bruise face and buttocks. Bruising is not a product of “slapping or spanking.” Fleming’s use of the creepy “over their clothes” carve-out to shield the abuse from prosecution shows how one steeped in the language of the law can manipulate it.
Prior to reading “The Soeth Files” I believed that the law enforcement system, when faced with behavior as blatantly abusive as Soeth’s, would take corrective action. Now I wonder what would compel the law enforcement protection racket to abandon efforts to keep a lying child abuser on the job? Maybe if his body cam captured him when he was kicking his dog Yahtzee. You know he did.
Sheila Evans, Eureka
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The Soeth Files
This article appears in Summer of Fun 23.