Due Process be Damned – NY NOW Leader Marcia Pappas on the Warpath
His continued presence in the Legislature “is an affront to all the women who work there,” said Marcia Pappas, president of the National Organization for Women’s New York chapter.
Due Process of Law? Equal Protection of the Laws? Fair treatment by the New York State Legislature? Nah. Not for Marcia Pappas, president of the New York State chapter of the National Organization for Women.
Pappas was talking about the case reported here of New York State Senator Hiram Monserrate of Queens (The New York Times, 3/25/09). He's been indicted on six counts of assaulting his girlfriend. Apparently he cut her face with a broken glass. He says it was an accident and so does she.
Democratic Senate colleagues say Monserrate's case should be handled by the courts and that, until he is convicted of an offense, the presumption of innocence should hold sway.
But Pappas seems as indifferent to the presumption of innocence as she is to the rules of the New York Senate. They hold that, if Monserrate is found guilty of a felony he'll be expelled, but not until then. But Pappas wants him out now - no trial, no hearing, no opportunity to assert his innocence. The man that the people of Queens apparently want as their representative in Albany must go, not because he's been adjudicated guilty, but because he's been accused.
So the presumption of innocence, equal protection of law, the right to a trial, the right to confront one's accusers, the right of citizens in a republic to elect their representatives - little matters that have taken western civilization much blood and many centuries to establish - to Marcia Pappas are so much fluff. To her, all that must fall in the face of a woman injured by a man.
And speaking of women, Pappas, who claims to be their champion, thinks nothing of ignoring the one in this case whose word would seem to make all the difference - Monserrate's girlfriend. According to the article, she says the accident was just that, an accident, unintentional, and apparently has said so all along.
But even the word of a woman must stand aside for the radical orthodoxy of DV. For the likes of Marcia Pappas, the word of Monserrate's girlfriend is untrustworthy. She's apparently under the sadly misguided impression that sometimes men accused of violence against women are innocent. Silly girl.
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