Jill Stanek’s house vandalized by pro-aborts. She’s not about to quit.

Pro-life activist Jill Stanek’s house was vandalized by pro-abortion cowards.  The story is HERE. One of them threw a brick through her window with the note: “Quit the pro-life bulls**t.”

It’s in a Target sack.   I’ll take Irony for $1000, Alex.

Stanek’s reaction?  She is more convinced than ever.  Also, she asked for the brick.

Police are filing a report, calling this “biased” vandalism. [Doesn’t hate crime apply?] Just before they took the brick away for evidence, Jill asked if she could have it back. One policeman was rather surprised, asking, “For what, a trophy?” Ever the dedicated go-getter, Jill replied, “Yes, actually.

Fr. Z kudos to Jill.

I say, si vis pacem para bellum.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
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15 Comments

  1. NBW says:

    What happened to Jill IS a hate crime. I hope they catch the coward that did it and charge him/her for a hate crime. The double standards in this country are ridiculous.

  2. benedetta says:

    The police took the report? Fascinating.

    It really becomes so much easier when you contemplate the babies who are being saved every day through the efforts of prolifers.

    I’ll bet as well that the brick thrower was not a woman. Just saying. The true face of the pro aborts who do criminal things to disrupt, vandalize, and harass is overwhelmingly privileged male. Just saying.

  3. Tony Phillips says:

    The notion of ‘hate crime’ is really disturbing. A crime is a crime.

    We shouldn’t be attempting to prosecute people for their emotions. In the UK it’s gone crazy–some woman was prosecuted (and convicted!) for sending a letter and a Jack Chick tract to the head-teacher of a Moslem girls’ school. Instead of putting it in the bin, which would be the sensible thing to do it she didn’t like it, she called the police. Positively Orwellian.

  4. Cantor says:

    Brick by brick…

    [Heh.]

  5. Prayers for Jill, and the offender.

  6. Justalurkingfool says:

    Cowardly.

  7. cheyan says:

    Tony Phillips:
    The notion of ‘hate crime’ is really disturbing. A crime is a crime.

    It’s just a way to measure the severity of a crime. If I spray-paint a smiley face on the wall of a business owned by a Jewish person, that’s a nuisance. If I spray-paint a swastika, that’s at best an implicit threat (“guess what could happen to you again”). The government has an interest in treating threatening behavior differently than nuisance behavior.

    Similarly, if I put a brick through Jill’s window because I’m playing baseball with a brick, the government has an interest in treating that differently than if I throw one through with a threatening note, and if that threatening note is because of her religious beliefs or her political behavior, it becomes something the government should take very seriously.

    I’m glad this isn’t just being treated as a nuisance – that note didn’t teleport onto the brick by accident.

  8. benedetta says:

    Exactly ^ because also behind such activity are organizations, and criminal racketeering, groups who terrorize domestically because they can’t deal with the possibility of some children being allowed to live, or with the possibility that people reasonably disagree, or because they hate people of faith, or women, or children, and there is also the likelihood of money, a lot, because generally actions of this sort require some sort of compensation, and it’s also good for the government to understand people who will organize acts of hatred. A crime is a crime, but some crimes require a different sort of investigatory follow up than others.

  9. frjim4321 says:

    Violence is never the answer.

  10. WYMiriam says:

    Good on you, Fr. Jim! That’s precisely why abortion is never the answer, either.

  11. wanda says:

    I’m so sorry to hear what happened to Jill and her family. How frightening to think that someone who obviously hates what you do knows where you live. Very disturbing. It’s odd isn’t it that pro lifers are accused of violence and harassment? Prayers for Jill and her family. God bless her for standing up for the babies. St. Michael, defend her in battle.

  12. robtbrown says:

    When John Senior was teaching at KU, a brick was once thrown through his window.

    From among his students came two bishops, one abbot, about 15 priests, and two nuns.

  13. Tony Phillips says:

    Cheyan, the way to measure severity of a crime is the amount of physical damage done. When you start attempting to punish people for their ideology or for ‘causing offence’, you’re going down a very slippery slope. Here in the UK, where apparently people stopped reading ‘1984’ around 1984, we’ve slipped very far down that slope indeed.

  14. Dr. Edward Peters says:

    Hate crimes make bad law. Sentencing guide lines (whcih offer ranges of punishment) should cover the difference between painting a smiley-face on a church and painting a swastika. Neither requires mind-reading or moves us closer to punishing thought.

  15. iamlucky13 says:

    “The police took the report? Fascinating.”

    As far as I know, most departments have a policy that if a citizen wants to report a crime or even a suspected crime, the officer is required to file the report. Not allowing the officer to refuse to do so helps, if only to a small degree, reduce bias in law enforcement.

    There is still, however, discretion in whether officers actually investigate a reported crime, and how seriously they do so.

    “If I spray-paint a smiley face on the wall of a business owned by a Jewish person, that’s a nuisance. If I spray-paint a swastika, that’s at best an implicit threat (“guess what could happen to you again”). “

    Aside from the sentencing guidelines Dr. Peters referred to, that distinction is already covered by harassment laws, which have provisions to distinguish harassment from materially similar but lesser offenses by the intended effect towards the victim. With those provisions, a jury can discern that a swastika connotes a well known act of systematic violence against Jews, and therefore a Jewish person would have reasonable cause to be fearful if somebody painted a swastika on their house, while a similar connotation does not exist for most other forms of graffiti. Therefore, the swastika would constitute harassment, while the smiley face (or other graffiti) would constitute mischief.

    In my own state, the laws use the term “malicious harassment” instead of “hate crime,” which differs from regular harassment only by involving a crime directed against a protected class, such being motivated by the religion or sexual orientation of the victim.

    The problem here is justice stops being about the what the perpetrator did or intended to do to the victim, and instead becomes about an arbitrary list of features of the victim. It is not possible for justice to be arbitrary. An employee who crosses strike line and comes home to find a brick thrown through his window with a message slurring scabs has been harmed just as significantly and has equally as much cause for fear as a student who tells classmates they’re gay and comes home to a brick thrown through their window with a message slurring gays, yet the first perpetrator can only be charged with a misdemeanor, while the latter can be arbitrarily be charged with a felony.

    All that said, in my state at least, the crime against Jill Stanek would probably not be ruled a hate crime because it appears to have been motivated strictly by her pro-life activism, not over her Christianity. The arbitrary list of protected classes does not include either the unborn, nor those who defend them, and the note would not be proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the crime was motivated by her religion.

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