Watts Pleads 'No Contest' on Harassment Charges...

The justice system in Van Buren County, Arkansas, is failing to protect women from domestic violence and rewarding the men who perpetrate the crimes; confidential informant gets a free pass from law enforcement to brutalize anyone he wants.

I really wish I did not feel compelled to make the following assessment of the alleged) 'justice system' that my daughter Shalom and our family (including myself) have endured since April of 2007.

To my first hand experience now suffering the boon of hindsight, from the moment our lives were threatened by my daughter's jilted boyfriend last March and we went to local law enforcement seeking help, our family's life has been hellacious.

Repeatedly and redundantly we have been treated with disdain and pandered to (by 'officials' of our 'justice' system); our time has been wasted by (alleged) investigators who (of their own admission) started looking into the facts of the case l-o-n-g AFTER charges had been filed and so (we were told) it was not possible to prosecute these violent wrongdoings to the full extend of the law which, by legislated definition, convicted Daniel Watts of First Degree Stalking (Class B Felony) and Terroristic Threatening (Class D Felony)and potentially a whole lot more.

Consequences of conviction on these charges demand at least 2 to 8 years imprisonment and up to a $10,000 fine.

Instead, because of blatant incompetence and/or what certainly seems now to be willful collusion the on the part of law enforcement and prosecutorial officials to 'protect' a local 'snitch', Daniel Watts was charged only with Harassment (Class A Misdemeanor) and 'got off' with a 'no contest' plea-agreement which will cost him $100 per month for the next 5 months.

Pretty cheap dues for fully-vested membership in the 'good ol boys' wife-beater club. And it is not just my family being terrorized by 'the criminal justice system' this way: It is all of us.

By divine providence we were (on Friday, November 2, 2007, during open court) given a living illustration of the outrageousness of the arbitrariness (and complete indifference to 'women as human beings') that was upcoming in Shalom's case in an unrelated yet factually similar matter that came before the bar preceding the (pretense of the) 'trial' of Daniel Watts.

The culprit in this other case was also facing harassment charges brought against him by a woman he had, from what seemed self-apparent, at one time had some sort of substantive relationship with. Announcing that a 'plea agreement' had been reached by all parties, DPA Acklin and Judge Aldworth together, mirroring each other's sentiments, addressed the victim: "Do you agree with the conditions of the plea?"

"Reluctantly," the woman stammered as a look of dejection mixed with resolute perseverance grimaced her whole countenance.

Notice that this woman was never called to the stand to testify and thus denied her day in court. Consequently she was prohibited from reciting for the record the list of grievous causes which led to the present circumstance.

Procedurally, she and her complaints were relegated to the land of 'persona non gratis' it being emphatically illustrated that what she had to say really didn't matter; her will (and the real harm done to her) was to be ignored.

Given by 'her' attorney (aka: the Prosecuting Attorney who is paid at OUR collaborative expense) only one option (which amounted to letting the man who violated her sanity off the hook with a teeny slap on the wrists) she was doing as she had been told she must do. Instructed that there was no other recourse (aka: daddy knows best), she resigned herself (as all women too often do -- because we have been subjugated and battered into reluctant servitude of our authoritarian-relegated fate) to the 'voluntary' sacrifice of her honor.

She wanted the offender hung by his nuts, I'm sure, so that he would experience some sense of the brutality he had inflicted upon her. Not literally, of course, but in the emotional vein I guarantee you that she wanted him to 'feel' the pain he had unabashedly thundered on her. She wanted the abuse she'd suffered at his rage to be made public knowledge, so he would be scorned by his peers, segregated from society, interdicted from brutalizing others like he'd brutalized her.

She wanted vindication but probably more she wanted the court to order him to get some psychological help... so that he would be able to see that what he had done was 'criminal'; she wanted him to be called into accountablity for his actions... to earnestly apologize and make amends.

Still, even though the man's vile nature was self-evident as he angrily stormed from the courtroom and slammed-open the door, she got not a micron of satisfaction. And when Shalom's time came, the story was exactly the same.

The jackal Watts (age 29) presented himself before Judge Aldrich's bench with a swagger. As a plea of 'no contest' was entered on his behalf this sociopath who threatened the lives of myself and my children, promised to burn our house down, terrorized both of my daughters (age 14 and 18) by attempting to ram his big pick-up truck into their tiny little car, and endeavored to coerce sexual favors from a girl barely 18 years of age on threat of doing all this to her and more (and doing it 'quietly' with 'insider connections' so that no one would ever be able to convict him of any crime), turned his eyes toward my daughters with a sickly malevolent smirk.

We watched in silence as this arrogant jerk and his smug demeanor got off essentially scot-free, even though this was his second 'conviction' as a brutalizer of women (and in the first instance -- the woman has now reportedly gone missing), Jail time and all but $500 of his fine were suspended. No order was made by the court for mandatory 'anger management' counseling nor for the man to publicly apologize for the emotional rape and battery he'd inflicted on all of us.

Factually, this tiny slap on the wrist actually earned 'bragging rights' for this vile coward amongst his chauvinistic clan, at the same time renewing his confidence that his 'insider connections' ensure a 'get out of jail free pass' for whenever he decides to brutalize women again.

All of which of course is horrendous enough in its own right, but now consider that since this whole thing started it has become an openly established fact that all the while Daniel Watts was voraciously terrorizing us he was a Confidential Informant in the employ of the Van Buren County Sheriff's Office. And that everybody from Sheriff Scott Bradley to Judge Aldworth to DPA Acklin knew (or should have known) this fact... yet rather than throwing the book at this evil f*ck and making an example of him so that others never dare to follow suit, our 'law enforcement system' is PROTECTING him and thus sanctioning his abusive, terroristic, domineering and violent behavior as 'the way we do things around here'...

Frankly, this whole thing sucks and I am not alone in my disgust for this malevolence. Take a look at what other have to say about Confidential Informants and notice that not a word of it is good. Then get in touch with The Committee For Honest Law Enforcement in Van Buren County and join our crusade for the revival of a genuine justice system to aggressively interdict and incarcerate all VIOLENT CRIME OFFENDERS and at the same time end the use of Confidential Informants forevermore. ~~~

Christine L. Beems is the editor emeritus of Gozarks.com and also co-founder and acting chair of The Committee For Honest Law Enforcement.