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Anonymous ID: 84d323 June 18, 2019, 5:33 p.m. No.6784271   🗄️.is đź”—kun   >>4289 >>4292

Multnomah County judge sentences former Disney vice president to nearly 7 years in prison for child sex abuse

 

By Jayati Ramakrishnan | The Oregonian/OregonLive

 

EDITOR’S NOTE: A correction has been appended below.

 

A former Disney executive was sentenced Friday to nearly seven years in prison for sexually abusing a girl in Portland a decade ago, when the girl was 7 years old.

 

Michael Laney, 73, will serve 81 months for four counts of first-degree sexual abuse. Judge Benjamin Souede had previously acquitted Laney of three counts of first-degree rape and three counts of first-degree sex abuse.

 

Laney’s attorneys, Stephen Houze and Jacob Houze, on Thursday asked the court to postpone enforcing any part of his sentence that would send him into custody while Laney appealed part of the sentence. In a supporting statement, Jacob Houze said the claims against Laney were contradictory and inconsistent, and that there was no physical evidence.

 

“The character of the evidence is just stories, and the strength of those stories is exceedingly low,” Houze wrote in a statement.

 

Laney’s attorneys also cited some of Laney’s personal circumstances, noting that he is the caretaker for his wife, who has Parkinson’s disease.

 

“Sentencing Mr. Laney to any amount of incarceration, much less an actuarial true life sentence, disproportionately impacts him more than a defendant without those personal characteristics,” they said in a statement.

 

Laney’s wife’s doctor, Blain Crandell, submitted a letter on Laney’s behalf, saying his wife “could be expected to suffer serious consequences to her health and well-being” without an in-home caregiver, a role her husband had been filling.

 

In a response to Houze’s statement, Multnomah County Deputy District Attorney Charles Mickley called the claims “peculiarly offensive and insulting.”

 

"Defendant wholly ignores the compelling evidence of his guilt presented at trial, including the evidence of his longstanding sexual interest in children,” Mickley wrote.

 

Laney was also sentenced to 120 months of post-prison supervision, minus time served, and was ordered to pay a $4,000 fine.

 

Court documents state that Laney is a resident of Bainbridge Island, Washington.

 

CORRECTION: This story was updated to reflect the correct prison sentence length.

Anonymous ID: 84d323 June 18, 2019, 5:46 p.m. No.6784465   🗄️.is đź”—kun

https://www.jfklibrary.org/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/american-newspaper-publishers-association-19610427

 

The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know.

 

…

 

Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match.