O-SenseRemember the game of “Telephone”?
That is where a bunch of people sit in a circle and then one person whispers something the person next to them which is whispered to the next person and that person whispers to the next and so forth. Finally, the last person in the group announces to all what he or she believes was the original message which is, usually, wildly off base.
That is what happen this past week when the Twin Falls area was rocked by a story that went viral nationally, eventually being posted on the Drudge Report with the headline, “Syrian Refugees Rape Little Girl at Knifepoint in Idaho”.
What happened? Here’s what we know.
Boise television station KIVI 6 late last week interviewed an 89-year-old woman identified as “Grandma Jo” who discovered the incident at the Fawnbrook apartments in Twin Falls (view the storyhere).
She was walking past the laundry room and observed a boy taking pictures outside the complex’s laundry room.
She opened the door to the laundry room and observed a 5-year-old girl without any clothes and two boys, 7 and 10. The little girl said, “Please grandma help me,” and Grandma Jo reached down to pick the girl up. She noticed that the girl was covered in urine.
She called the police and kept the kids in the room until law enforcement arrived.
The boys, including a 14-year old who presumably was the one taking pictures, are originally from the Sudan and Iraq. The two oldest, ages 10 and 14, have been placed in juvenile detention.
The incident was picked up by a blog known as Treasure Valley Refugee Resettlement Facts, which ran the headline, “Twin Falls child sexually assaulted by Muslims/Police and Media cover-up . . . .” You can view the initial story here. The blog asserted that “Syrian refugee” youths had sexually assaulted a small child, there had been no arrests, and that the sealing of the case by a 5th District judge amounted to an attempt to sweep the matter under the rug. The claim was made that the boys were still running around the complex.
Recently-defeated Idaho State Sen. Sheryl Nuxoll (R-Cottonwood) weighed in through a post on the blog (view here), claiming that the boys were still running around the complex, that two Middle Eastern men had threatened the mother of the girl, and that the police department and county prosecutor had not acted in a timely fashion to protect the victim. She also claimed that 5,000 refugees from Iran and Iraq have settled in the Magic Valley area since 1984. (That is simply untrue. That figure is the total number of refugees from around the world that have resettled there since 1984.)
Nuxoll’s post also contained a purported photo of the mother of one of the boys, loading or unloading things from a white van while dressed in Muslim dress and another photo of family members of the boys outside the local juvenile detention facility. That seems to imply that someone tied to Nuxoll was stalking these people.
Nuxoll (presuming the photos were part of her post and not added by the blog), the blog and the picture taker or takers are all potentially liable for a claim of invasion of privacy. In Idaho, that amounts to prying into someone’s private affairs in a way that is offensive to a reasonable person. Hoskins v. Howard, 971 P.2d 1135 (Idaho, 1999). Taking pictures of someone without their permission would, in my opinion, rise to that level.
The above-noted blog later ran a letter from a Twin Falls “citizen” claiming the girl was raped by Syrian refugees, that she was taken at knife point, and that the father of one of the boys was on tape “high-fiving” the boys for their actions. You can view that posthere. It further claimed “[m]any people in this community are in awe, and outraged that no consequences are being served to these boys nor their parents for this vile incident.”
After the claims went nationally on the Drudge Report, Twin Falls County Prosecutor Grant Loebs issued a statement to the Twin Falls Times-News: “There was no gang rape, there was no Syrian involvement, there were no Syrian refugees involved, there was no knife used, there was no inactivity by the police.” He noted that the two older youth were in custody and there was no evidence of the alleged “high-fiving” incident. He also pointed out that criminal cases involving juveniles are customarily sealed.
The Twin Falls City Council last week held a public meeting on the incident and the public comments seemed to be rooted in something besides police action in this matter. The Times-News story can be viewed here.
For instance, Vicky Davis of Twin Falls told the City Council: “The nation of Islam has declared global jihad on us. And Obama, this administration, is bringing them in as fast as he possibly can. They’re on your head, your head, your head, yours, yours,” she said as she pointed at each council member, according to the Times-News. Ms. Davis has written for TVOINews, a website with ties to the John Birch Society.
Prosecutor Loebs himself linked the matter to an earlier failed signature-gathering effort by local activists to shut down the College of Southern Idaho Refugee Center through an initiative: “There is a small group of people in Twin Falls County whose life goal is to eliminate refugees, and thus far they have not been constrained by the truth.”
It is clear that the incident in the laundry room was awful. If the facts are as they appear, the youth involved deserve harsh punishment. The Fawnbrook apartment complex is in the process of evicting the families of the boys.
But, it appears to me that anti-refugee activists shifted the focus from the victim to their own ideological agenda and were willing to spin fact-free yarns to inflame the situation.
Idaho deserves better. We need more folks like Grandma Jo who are willing to step in and actually protect the vulnerable and fewer who use such incidents for perceived political benefit.
Steve Taggart is an Idaho Falls attorney specializing in bankruptcy (www.MaynesTaggart.com). He has an extensive background in politics and public policy. He can be reached atThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .
