Don't you know that freedom of speech doesn't apply to the other guy?

That's what my Lovely and Brilliant wife said when I told her about this. Anybody who questions a news report, she points out, is accused of violating the freedom of the press. That's what seems to have happened here.

A priest who has defended Jim West against unsubstantiated allegations is himself now being tarred with the child-abuse brush.

Michael Ross and others are demanding that the Rev. Joseph Weitensteiner, longtime ranch director, be removed from that post after a newspaper this week published allegations that he had a long history of striking boys with paddles or his fists.

The newspaper in question (surprise, surprise!) is the Spokesman-Review, which has been gunning for West since last fall when he didn't play ball with the paper's owners on a real estate deal.

Does anybody remember Pastor Robbie Roberson, during the Wenatchee sex-rings witchhunt? He spoke up to say that the charges against some of his church members were highly unlikely (read: stank like an old flounder), and the next thing he knew, he was arrested himself. This is from an AP report of 11/7/95:

The nine remaining cases are pending, including the trial, starting Tuesday, of Robert "Roby" Roberson, pastor of the Pentecostal Church of God House of Prayer in East Wenatchee, where authorities say one of the rings was based.
According to affidavits from children and statements from adults who confessed participation, parents and children would gather in the church basement to sing and listen to Scripture. The adults would then order the children to undress and have sex with them, the documents indicate.
The statements further allege that Mr. Roberson, 50, used sermons to whip his flock into a sexual frenzy and once called a teen-age girl to the altar and had sex with her there, telling the faithful he was driving out the devil.

Of course, all those convictions were eventually overturned, but the families were broken up permamently as children were adopted out and parents had to prove their innocence. When a priest (or a pastor) is targeted for retaliation for speaking up, who will speak up for him? And when the primary news outlet in the city is doing the retaliating, how can anybody speak up at all?

Steven Smith makes me ashamed to be a journalist.