IF I WERE APURON'S LAWYER

By Tim Rohr

If I were Apuron's attorney, I would not have let him make a public statement after his accusers dismissed their complaints and here's why.

Few people understand the whole picture, and even fewer would have understood the complexities of what a voluntary dismissal by a plaintiff means under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. 

On the surface, as the initial news reports demonstrated, and why the plaintiffs' attorney needed to make a clarification, it appeared that the accusations against Apuron had been proven false and the cases were dismissed. 

Had Apuron not said anything, at least not right away, more and more people would have accepted the first impression that the cases were dropped because they were proven false. It's a long shot, but he might have gained some traction with public opinion and maybe made some headway in getting his Vatican sentence lightened up if not overturned. 

But no, Jacque the trained lawyer, immediately trotted the "too old and sickly to testify" Apuron out in from the cameras, looking all spry and chipper, and had him run off at the mouth about his innocence while taking shots at his accusers, the media, public opinion, and anything or anyone else he could shoot at. 

Obviously this provoked an avalanche of counter-fire from JungleWatch, which averages approximately 8,000 views per day (there will be more this month), but more importantly it provoked a damning letter from the current Archbishop who functionally put Apuron back in the Vatican jailhouse and reminded everybody of why Apuron was kicked out of here in the first place:

"...it remains the fact that on 07 February 2019, he was found guilty of committing abuse against minors...Nothing about that determination has changed."

A really dumb move.