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Woman who called in transphobic bomb threat that locked down Children's Hospital gets three years probation
By adamg on Tue, 07/23/2024 - 11:18am
A federal judge last week sentenced Catherine Leavy, 37, of Westfield for calling in a bomb threat that locked down Children's Hospital and part of the Longwood Medical Area at the height of an online lie campaign to whip up fury over the hospital over procedures it wasn't actually performing.
Leavy pleaded guilty last September to one count of making a false bomb threat and one count of intentionally conveying false or misleading information that a bomb was on the way.
In addition to probation, US District Court Judge Leo Sorokin also ordered that Leavy "must participate in a mental health treatment program as directed by the Probation Office" and to take periodic drug tests - up to 104 a year.
Sorokin issued his judgment after Children's Hospital filed a victim statement in which it said it believed Leavey was honest in her remorse, that throwing her in prison would not help anybody and that if anybody should be blamed, it's Chaya Raichik's Libs of TikTok and other online hate spewers who managed to get others to do their dirty work for them, in this case, "a young woman who has faced significant challenges in her life and was manipulated by the instigators' online disinformation campaign."
In February, a Texas man got three months in federal prison for threatening a doctor at Fenway Health who works with transgender patients - in phone calls he made the day after Leavy made her call.
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Comments
I'm not for throwing people
I'm not for throwing people in jail... BUT this is basically domestic terrorism and/or a hate crime.
Just saying.
It is, and...
...if you read the details of the case, there is no benefit to anyone in putting this woman in jail. That is my very reluctant conclusion.
... but I did read it.... and
... but I did read it.... and... like I agree there is no benefit to putting people in jail. BUT I think that "blame the person who put these ideas in her head" isn't quite best solution either. She did pick up the phone and threaten some prettttttyyyyy serious things and got like basically zero consequences. I'm not in the law & order business, so I'm not the expert on what the fitting sentence should be.
Just sayin
I have to disagree
She made threats that she had no ability or intent of actually carrying out. Her victims could not know that, and neither could any queer people in the community for whom this was another terroristic threat targeting them, so this wasn't harmless. But it's also different from a threat made with means and intent to carry it out.
This woman has seriously diminished mental capacity. She's not driving her own bus. Three years' probation and a criminal record is not nothing, and I predict it's going to be a struggle for her. While under probation, she will have to undergo mandated mental health treatment, and get regularly tested for drug and alcohol use. She will have to meet regularly with a probation officer, and will have to pay a monthly fee. People think that "probation" means that you just get let out with no restrictions, but I doubt you'd enjoy it.
Sure there is
The phones in the jailhouse are monitored.
Word...
...
The conclusion of many...
...is that she ain't gonna do this again. Do you disagree? If so, why?
She'll do it again
Because she did it once, and I'm not convinced that the response she's getting (probation) is a deterrent.
Phoning in a bomb threat to a hospital is a completely unforced error. Have you seen those memes where it reads:
No one:
Absolutely no one:
Person: (text)?
All this woman had to do was shut the (expletive) up. She could have done literally anything else with her time that didn't involve threatening to blow people up. If you don't want to jail her, great! I like Libertarian ideas; I'm completely on board with not sticking her in a cage for an extended period.
The underlying problem is that this woman has a serious problem with impulse control. This isn't a teenage boy making a crank call, this is a grown woman who, somehow, managed to get to the age of 37 thinking that this was acceptable behavior. I'll leave mental health diagnoses to mental health clinicians, and it's okay that she's sick, but we can't have her sneezing all over the salad bar, either.
Are there any pain points for this woman? Can she be coerced into staying out of trouble? "You'll go to jail, and you won't see your family?" I'm having a difficult time squaring my desire to not force things onto people with the need to protect everyone else from her.
At least she's only 37. If she were two decades older, I'd deem her irredeemable. She's lucky the feds didn't lock her up, and she's extremely lucky that the hospital is benevolent. Let's see what she does with the house money.
So...
So, you didn't bother to learn anything about the case. You didn't read any of the statements. Yet you assert with supreme confidence that "Because she did it once, she'll do it again."
Oh for the confidence of...never mind.
Crime Stats
Couldn't just about every crime be considered a hate crime?
No.
No.
But you knew that when you made your comment.
Stealing bread from a shopkeeper
I don't hate the shopkeeper, I just don't want to starve to death.
Nah
You hate that he has food and you don't...
So...
...you not only don't understand the concept of "hate crime", you stubbornly refuse to accept an explanation when it's given to you.
You could have spent two minutes with Google and educated yourself. The fact that you didn't tells me that you just don't want to accept reality.
Google Truth
The definition is pretty broad and includes much more than just ethnicity and sexual preference. Examples include age, language, political view, disability, membership in certain social groups or even being rich or being poor. So based on the broad definition my statement stands.
If you spent a few minutes with Google you could also educate yourself. The fact that you didn't tells me that you just accept the narrow definition to fit an agenda.
It doesn't, though.
It doesn't, though. If you're hungry and you steal bread from the store, your motive is to eat, not to harm the store owner. With hate crimes, the motive is specifically to harm someone because they are a member of a group that you despise. See the difference?
Lol. You're so full of it your eyes are brown.
Stooge
This stooge hasn’t learned a thing. Absolutely should have done time. What a loser.
37 is "young"? I guess in the
37 is "young"? I guess in the grand scheme of things it is, but it's certainly more than old enough to know better.
Libs of Tiktok is no more responsible . .
for these bomb threats - individual criminal acts -
than the New Republic is responsible for the attempted murder of Trump because it portrayed him as Hitler over a "American Fascism" headline,
or Joe Biden is responsible by saying "It's time to put Trump in the bullseye," although the latter is arguably more directly inciting.
CH trying to play a long game by suppressing criticism on social media.
"Stochastic terrorism" is a canard.
Wut?
Trump is an American Fascist, dear.
That isn't calling for his murder. That is stating basic facts in abundant evidence.
Calling him out for what he is and says had zippo to do with a deranged young man with gun access bent on headline grabbing suicide.
You need to rearrange your moral compass and stop making excuses for your fellow transphobic terrorists bent on state control of people's bodies.
Perhaps your phone should be traced - how many docs have you threatened in your pedophiliac obsession with the purity of children's genitalia?
Libs of Tiktok didn't call for bomb threats either . .
what it did was republish CH's own videos to a wider audience. That's not even opinion like "Trump is a fascist like Hitler," that's a fact.
Perhaps your phone should be traced . . . I can only read those words in the voice of Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds.
Libs of tic Tok
They didn't call for bomb threats, but they didn't just post the hospital's videos.
Are you really trying to claim they didn't say anything, just posted the videos? They knew exactly what they were doing and even after repeated threats to the hospital with kids undergoing all kinds of treatment, they did it again and again.
They got the response they wanted.
jesus christ
this is so incredibly disingenuous
You can always be counted on
You can always be counted on to stand up for the overdog.
Yet propaganda will move people to violence
Edgar Maddison Welch fired bullets into Comet Ping Pong pizzeria because he believed what he heard on social media. He had no evidence. The claims were a lie. But he acted due to what he heard.
The question is whether a person (or group of people) can be morally culpable for inciting violence. The answer is easy: Yes.
If a person yells fire in a crowded theater and the result is a panic which result in harm will that individual be legally responsible? Bet your sweet buppy. What if a Mafia don instructs a soldier to murder a competitor? Murder 1. Ask John Gotti (well, can't now; he's bought a one way ticket not to Heaven). Ask Charles Manson (well, at least via a Ouija Board). He was never convicted of actually killing anyone. But he was convicted of Murder 1 because he inspired the actual murderers.
So yes Libs of TikTok and any other propagandist (including religious thugs who preach hate from the pulpit) who pushes people to strife, chaos and rage can be and deserve to be convicted and sent away for a long, long time.
"Fire in a crowded theater" lol
There's always someone who brings that up in a discussion of free speech. It's an indication of their ignorance of the history and law of the First Amendment.
Police officers have been assassinated just for being police.
Does that make any reporting of , opinion, or protesting police brutality incitement? If I paint ACAB on a wall, is that "pushing people to strife?"
The Nashville school shooter who shot three children and three adults wrote that he or she (I'm not sure what the choice was that day) wanted to "kill all you little crackers" with "white privlege."
Other killers have targeted white people for being white.
Does that mean that the phrase "white privilege" or discussion of white racism is incitement?
You will not answer these questions.
As for "fire in a crowded theater," that was used in a Supreme Court case in which Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote it was ok to send an anti-war activist to prison for handing out leaflets against the draft in World War I, because it was like shouting fire in a crowded theater.
Idiot
This is profoundly stupid and it’s hilarious you think you said something interesting here.
Try it
If you can point to one instance in the United States of white people being targeted indiscriminately by a mob that was whipped up by a demagogue talking about "white privilege", I'll be willing to consider it.
Unworried white person here.
Come on
I’ve said this repeatedly about this case but it really emphasizes the vastly different way different groups are treated by the legal system. A white woman gets the benefit of the doubt that she isn’t actually responsible for her terrorist actions and gets probation, meanwhile Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been given the death penalty (despite most MA residents opposing it in general and in this specific case as well) for participating in terrorism he was influenced to participate in by his brother.
Genuinely and vastly different legal systems for white people compared to everyone else.
Also genuinely and vastly different cases
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was influenced by his brother, but he actually carried and actually set down and actually armed a bomb that killed some people and permanently injured many. That's an important difference.
Thumbs up for that one lbb
Comparing this case to the Marathon bombers and claiming the judgment and sentence on Joker is a product of racism is truly deranged.
on my general point, since Tsarnaev said he was motivated by the US's wars in/on the Middle East, does that mean that writings, protests, agitation, and opinion on social media and elsewhere opposing those wars and exposing atrocities were "stochastic terrorism?" Of course not.