Stranger Than Fiction
BY ROGER HANNEY
Truly horrible’.horribly true
Two years ago in Philadelphia, 14-year-old Daniela Kelly ‘ a girl living with cerebral palsy ‘ died from starvation and maggot-filled bedsores.
Her mother has been charged with murder and her estranged father with child endangerment. In a knock-on suit, the parents are now suing a number of public servants and the Departments of Human Services and Public Welfare.
The thrust of the parents’ case seems to be that these departments are responsible for the girl’s death because they did not take her away from ‘ wait for it – her parents.
Sadly, there are currently a number of Australian children no longer with us whose parents might want to shortly try the same tactic.
Associated Press quoted Assistant District Attorney Ed McCann, head of the city’s Homicide Unit as saying, “I think it’s an obscenity. I cannot imagine that people in that situation who did what they did to their own daughter are attempting to profit from it”.
The Kelly’s lawyer rejected this assertion, insisting that any financial victory would be for the good of the Kelly’s remaining children.
All eight of them.
Lesbians lose lawsuit
In late July it was reported that three residents of the Greek island of Lesbos had become so fed up with jokes about their heritage they filed suit with an Athenian court asking that gay women no longer be called lesbians.
The judge denied their request and ordered that they pay ‘230 in court expenses ‘ essentially for the frivolous and time-wasting nature of their claim.
“This is a good decision for lesbians everywhere,” Vassillis Chirdaris, a lawyer for the Gay and Lesbian Union of Greece, told Reuters. “A court in Athens could not stop people around the world from using it [the term lesbian]. It was ridiculous.”
According to reports, a number of residents testified that the island of Lesbos had benefited from name-recognition and an associated increase in tourism over the years.
The island’s town of Eressos was the birthplace of 7th century poetess Sappho, who idealised female love’long before some genius worked out that people would pay $6.95 for a 30-second video of it on their mobile.
