| The road to Hell: Douglas Perlitz |
Between colonizer and colonized there is room only for forced labor, intimidation, pressure, the police, taxation, theft, rape, compulsory crops, contempt, mistrust, arrogance, self-complacency, swinishness, brainless elites, degraded masses. –Aimé Césaire
Not every gift is a blessing.
Not everyone lending a hand wants to help.
Not every smile is benevolent.
Not every friendly person is a friend.
Case in point:
A Colorado man was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison Tuesday for sexually abusing children for more than a decade at a school he founded in Haiti, including some who faced him in the courtroom and testified that he threatened to put them back on the streets if they did not submit to his advances.
Ring a bell?
Judge Janet Bond Arterton called Douglas Perlitz a serial rapist and molester as she imposed the sentence in New Haven federal court. She said she believed he would commit the same crimes again if he were in a similar position.
Perlitz admitted in August that he engaged in illicit sexual conduct with eight children who attended the Project Pierre Toussaint School for homeless children in Cap-Haitien. Prosecutors said Perlitz gave the children money, food, clothing and electronics and threatened to take everything away and expel them from the program if they told anyone.
Here's what he had to say for himself:
I began losing my head. I was using you. I mistreated you because you were afraid. Perhaps you were confused. Perhaps you thought, 'How could this man, Douglas, who's protecting me, be touching me like this?' I wasn't thinking about you or your feelings or how my actions would affect you. I'm asking for forgiveness.
The judge believes that Perlitz may have had 16 or more victims. Several of his victims spoke out:
"He always told me, `Don't tell anybody about it. If you tell anybody about it, I will put you out on the street,'" one victim said through a Creole interpreter. He said Perlitz first abused him in 1998 and once sodomized him after plying him with rum.
Another victim said Perlitz started abusing him on his 14th birthday in 2004. He said he struggled with feelings of shame and thought about suicide, especially when he read the Bible.
"I am here today to tell the truth. Because of the truth, I can find justice," he said. "He hurt us a lot."
Perlitz blames his abusive behavior on the abuse he suffered as a child at the hands of a Catholic priest. That religion had a deleterious effect on both the abuser and his victims is quite telling.
This situation cannot come as any great shock. For this how the colonizer always regards the colonized:
I wasn't thinking about you or your feelings or how my actions would affect you. I mistreated you because you were afraid.
From Christopher Columbus to Phillip Bleicher, not a damn thing has changed but the names of the participants.