Page 12 - March 2018 FOP Newsletter

SecondVice President’s Report
The occasional feminist?
Letter poses tough questions for Invisible Institute, Alison Flowers
A letter sent by eight former Northwestern Uni- versity students and two would-be employees to the school’s Medill School of Journalism claiming “sexual harassment and assault” by a professor there got the media attention it was clearly aiming for.
The women claimed a long list of abuses by Medill Professor Alec Klein, who was named director of the Medill Justice Project by Northwestern in 1999. The allegations are disturbing: a professor at a prestigious university taking advantage of his position against young female students eager for good grades and
good references, as well as two others looking for work.
Klein denied the allegations, then took a leave from the school
pending the outcome of the university’s probe of the charges.
The signature of Alison Flowers on the letter raises another set of questions. Flowers is a prominent voice in the wrongful conviction movement, a movement claiming that police misconduct has led to the false conviction of many offenders. She currently works for an
organization called the Invisible Institute.
The Invisible Institute bills itself as a journalism production com-
pany on the South Side of Chicago, working to enhance the capacity of citizens to hold public institutions accountable. Among the tac- tics employed are investigative reporting, multimedia storytelling, human rights documentation, the curation of public information and the orchestration of difficult public conversations. According to its website, “Our work coheres around a central principle: we as cit- izens have co-responsibility with the government for maintaining respect for human rights and, when abuses occur, for demanding redress.”
One could imagine that Flowers’s complaints against Klein at Northwestern are an extension of her involvement in the Invisible Institute’s “orchestration of difficult public conversations.” And that would a good thing.
But there are serious gaps in the fight for fair justice for women in Flowers’s letter, given the larger context of her mission as a wrongful conviction advocate. Let’s take a closer look at Flowers’s troubling complaints against Klein.
Flowers was attending Northwestern (in 2008, according to her LinkedIn profile) around the same time that another troubling batch of accusations arose against a former professor, David Protess, who was Klein’s predecessor. Protess was accused of encouraging his young female students to dress in sexually provocative ways to elicit statements in wrongful conviction investigations and engag- ing in other wrongdoings, which ultimately led to his leaving the university.
According to the Chicago Tribune, “Prosecutors [on Feb. 20] un- veiled documents that suggested students and staff with North- western University’s Medill Innocence Project arranged a visit from a female student as a ‘treat’ for a prisoner, in addition to making unspecified promises, before he recanted his testimony in a 1993 murder and armed robbery case.”
And according to a federal lawsuit alleging abuse by Chicago Po- lice detectives, in which students working with Protess obtained witness statements, “Defendants also claim that ‘a substantial body of information has surfaced in the past several years concerning il- legal and coercive tactics that were routinely utilized by Protess and his designees to obtain information and recantations from witness- es in several cases, including Plaintiff’s case.’ According to defen- dants, ‘witnesses from whom Protess procured recantations in oth- er criminal cases have since come forward alleging that Protess and his team of investigators used coercion in various forms — dangling
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young female college students as sexual bait, impersonating movie producers, promising book/movie deals, making cash payments, and promising convicted murderers their freedom from prison — to procure false recantations from them.’”
Sexual bait to procure false recantations?
Is Flowers going to address these allegations of abusing young women by using them as “sexual bait” in wrongful conviction in- vestigations? Some of these allegations seem to have surfaced at the very time she was attending the school. Or does Flowers pick and choose instances of misconduct against female students?
Flowers, like the rest of the Invisible Institute members and the Chicago media in general, is largely silent about these allegations arising from Northwestern during the Protess era. None of them will tie the allegations against Alec Klein to those against David Protess, even though Klein was given his position at the school in the wake of Protess’s departure.
Apparently, for Flowers and the Invisible Institute, some discus- sions are more “difficult” than others.
This silence from Flowers fans out from the Protess cases into the entire mythology of the wrongful conviction movement, upon which so much of the Invisible Institute’s journalistic identity is con- structed. It asks basic questions about the human rights of many women.
Two men, Gabriel Solache and Arturo Reyes, for example, were convicted of murdering a couple in 1998 and kidnapping their chil- dren. Their conviction was vacated several weeks ago, amidst claims that they were coerced into confessing by dirty cops. But in releasing them, Cook County State’s Attorney Eric Sussman said he still be- lieved the men were guilty.
Well, are they? Isn’t this exactly the kind of “difficult conversation” about human rights that the Invisible Institute should be holding? Did Solache and Reyes repeatedly stab to death a woman who had just given birth to a child or not?
What about Karen Byron, gang-raped and severely burned in 1982 over the course of several hours in the attic of Stanley Wrice? Wrice claimed that he was coerced into confessing and got out of prison and his 100-year sentence. He went before a judge, petition- ing for a certificate of innocence. The judge rejected it, saying that he believed Wrice participated in the crime.
How about a “difficult conversation” on that case?
And what about the women who were burned to death in 1987 in an arson for which Madison Hobley was convicted and then exoner- ated? Did Hobley commit the arson, or was Governor Ryan, the man who pardoned Hobley and three other convicted killers, playing the system, since Ryan was facing his own 21-count indictment at the time?
Talk about a “difficult conversation.”
And what about the children?
What about Nicole Harris, who was convicted of strangling her
own child, and lost a federal lawsuit last year alleging that she also had been coerced into confessing to the murder of the child? Attor- neys representing the detectives argued in the trial that Harris was, in fact, guilty of the murder, despite her exoneration.
They won.
The truth is that there are a myriad of cases around the City call- ing for “difficult conversations” about brutal, cruel acts against in- nocent women and children. All of these cases have one simple, clear and compelling message to all “journalists” in Chicago, includ- ing Flowers and her Invisible Institute:
Me too. d
MARTIN PREIB