Sicilian sexual mores and Chicago judge

["Oddone Virginio" <oddovir@xxxxxxxxx>]

I sent a note on the matter on Sept. 12; I can now say something more.

The story was originally diffused by the Chicago Tribune on Sept. 11, taken
by the Italian press agency ANSA and rediffused to Italy, where all
newspapers published it on Sept. 12. On Sept. 12 the same Chicago Tribune
published the news that the Chief Judge of the Neglect Division requested
transcripts of the judge comments on the matter; on Sept. 17 the same
Chicago Tribune wrote that Judge Fe Fernandez was being transferred to the
First Municipal District and "get some 'mentoring' about avoiding ethnic
generalizations"

According to this quotation, it seems that Judge Fe Fernandez has been
transferred for reasons of political corretecdness (something I deeply
dislike), not for the two real and most relevant facts, namely:


a - The assumptions she held were false;

b - She should have checked those assumptions with proper sources (after
all, Chicago has one the world finest and most famous Sociological
Schools).


In such matters only facts should be relevant.

Can somebody help me in getting the original case and the decision?

By the way, the consequences of cultural conditioning could a subject of
future attention, discussione and research. We do have - in Italya and
elsewhere in Western Europe - the problem of "infibulation" (I don't know
if it is the right term in english: it is a massive sexual ritual
mutilation done on girls either at very early age or about at 8 or 9),
still practiced in many migrant families from the Horn of Africa (Ethiopia,
Erithrea, Somalia) and neighbouring countries (Sudan). In a very
interesting decision, a French court a few years ago sentenced the parents
at a very light sentence (with cultural conditioning regarded as a
mitigating circumstance), for the crime of voluntary maiming. It was a
twofold message: we do not want to be too harsh, but that is a criminal
behavior anyway. What's happening elsewhere and in the USA?

Virginio Oddone




Virginio Oddone