The police officer who used the word "tickle," testified that he did so with a clear sense of euphemism....

Note: to understand how Cheit is ignoring the real issue here -- namely that he is incorrect about the "tickling" incident, please read the relevant section of my article. He states in his article that the Lanesboro police failed to investigate a complaint about Halsey and in fact, there was a cover-up. The police reports show he's wrong.

Cheit’s police officer is a figment of his imagination....

The bus company owner is testifying on the pages in question, not a police officer. None of the police officers who testified in this trial, testified about the “tickling” incident, euphemistically or otherwise. The owner complained that the police hadn’t told him any details of the incident, so he felt he didn’t know what his bus driver had even been accused of. (1754-56)....

It’s true that the police chief suspected more......

The bus company owner used the word tickle “euphemistically.” The police chief said Halsey could “get ten years” for what he did to the girl. But Halsey was quietly transferred and the children were told he was on “sabbatical.” Ms. Manning adamantly denies all of this, employing words like “imaginary” and “figment of imagination.”

Page 1755 of the trial transcript contains these precise quoted words from the chief: "He could do ten years for what he did" to the little girl in question. Ms. Manning claims that these words are a "figment of imagination."

Page 1756 of the trial transcript contains the bus company owner's testimony that he used the word tickled "euphemistically." That is his word, Ms. Manning claims there was no such testimony, "euphemistically or otherwise."

Cheit's Error

My article at www.crimemagazine.com:

Shugrue also corrected 7-year-old Monica Kelly, who testified that "the first day" she saw the guns and knives on Halsey’s bus, she told her parents at that time and they even had a conversation about it.

My article on this website:

M.K. damages her credibility again on cross-examination, when she discusses the guns and
knives that she allegedly saw on the bus. (1071- 1074) She says “when the first day I saw
them, I told my parents.”

“The first day that you saw them?” asks the defense attorney.
“Yeah, I told my parents.”

Twice Halsey’s lawyer asks her if she means that she told her parents back in kindergarten, a year and a half ago, that she saw guns and knives on the bus. She says yes.

She goes on to say that her parents asked her, “What did he do with the knives and guns?” to which she replied, “Nothing.”

She adds that when her grandmother came to pick her up at the bus stop, she pointed the guns out to her grandmother, as well.

(My article then describes how Shugrue got up and told her that she really meant she'd told her parents more recently.)

(Ms. Manning) argues that M.'s credibility is damaged because "she had to be corrected as to when she told" her parents. Ms. Manning supports this claim by a gross misrepresentation of the testimony. Rather than rely on the actual testimony, Ms. Manning summarizes a few lines of testimony as follows: "Shugrue also corrected [M.K.] who testified that the first day she saw guns and knives on Halsey's bus, she told her parents at that time and they even had a conversation about it"

But here is the actual exchange

Q. Did it hurt?
A. Yes.
Q. Now, did you tell your mom or anybody else about that right away?
A. Yeah, my grandma first and then my mom and dad....

Shugrue's clarifying question did not contradict the earlier testimony; it tried to provide an explanation for those, like Mr. Manning, who would analyze children'stestimony in a rigid and over-literal fashion.... It reads too much into the words of a seven year old to think that "grandma first and then my mom and dad" necessarily means the same day. that obviously is not what she meant -- nor is it what she said, Ms. Manning's text-emphasized error notwithstanding.

Cheit is confusing M.K.'s testmony on direct with her testimony on cross-examination and re-direct. He seems to have overlooked the cross-examination.

She did indeed, specifically state that the very day she saw guns and knives on Halsey's bus, she told her parents and they had a conversation about the weapons.

In Manning Debunked.org, Cheit doesn't specify between my 11 page article for crimemagazine.com, and the scholarly article I wrote in response to his "Legend of Robert Halsey." He only mentions the crimemagazine article. He appears to have been supplied with a copy of the first version of my scholarly article. This first version was never published, the second version is published only on this website. He quotes from it but doesn't otherwise acknowledge its existence.

"Jason," the elder twin by five minutes, testified first. He claimed..... Halsey had been driving them for about a week when he detoured one day to Nobody's Road, drove over some concrete barriers and took them into some secluded fields, and pulled out his .38. He made the children hold up targets, which he shot at.

But when Justin took the stand, Shugrue had trouble pulling the same story out of him. He introduced the target shooting testimony with, "Could you tell me, at some point in time did things become not okay with Bob?"

Ms. Manning claims the prosecutor had "a hard time pulling the same story" out of W. [3] That is utterly false. W. testified on direct for 112 pages. Click here for the full testimony. Ms. Manning uses the earliest minutes of that testimony to mischaracterize the hours that followed.

By using the phrase, "same story," I am referring to the initial, target shooting incident, and the child's testimony about that story -- I am not describing his entire testimony. In that case, I would have used the phrase, "same stories."

Libelous Remark #1

The Great Beavis and Butthead Controversy

I wrote that Beavis and Butthead first appeared on MTV in 1992. Cheit says it was 1993.
Furthermore, he says I "fabricated" the 1992 date and refers to it a "falsehood."

Rather than assume I was in error in some way, Cheit informs his readers that I lied.

The fact is, as a biography of the show's creator explains, the duo debuted:

"(I)n the 1992 short "Frog Baseball", with the crude and clueless pair in a game of amphibian bashing. Featured on MTV's "Liquid Television", it proved impressive enough to land the fictional teens their own series (in 1993)."

So the characters did debut in 1992, and got their own show in 1993. I have amended the phrase "television program" to "television characters" to clarify this point.

The Beavis and Butthead link I provided was not to demonstrate when the show debuted, as Cheit claims, but to illustrate, for those readers unfamiliar with the cartoon characters, that Beavis and Butthead are obsessed with bottoms ("My bunghole will speak now!") and they also exhibit cruelty to small animals. I find the parallels between Beavis and Butthead, and the behavior of the children, as well as the animal torture accusations brought against Halsey, to be remarkable.

My implied point was that the children could have been exposed to vulgar language in many places, including the schoolyard or television, and it would be erroneous to assume that Halsey is the only possible person who could have taught the boys to swear.

Libelous Remark #2

The concrete blocks -- I did not "lie with photos."

The concrete barriers on Nobody's Road One child witness says that Halsey drove OVER these blocks. (Halsey drove a Chevy Suburban). I never said it was impossible to drive AROUND the blocks.

Three large concrete blocks lie across the secluded road which leads to the fields where Halsey allegedly molested children. Cheit says that I used a picture of the blocks "apparently to support my assertion that it was an "impossible feat" to get around the three concrete barriers." (emphasis added) To illustrate this, he provides more pictures, links to a map, and court testimony. A lot of effort on his part, but....

Nowhere do I assert that Halsey could not have driven around them.

In fact, I point out that even the defense did not make this claim.

What I actually said was, one child testified that Halsey drove over the blocks. That was the "impossible feat."

So did anybody say the van couldn't get around the blocks? Yes, in fact. One of the children. (917-919)

Here's the exchange between Halsey's lawyer and young "W" one of the two chief accusers:

"Now, when you went up that first day, were they blocking -- were those cement blocks, were they in front of the road?"
"Yeah."
"Were you able to drive around them, or how did you get through?"
"We had to park the bus, and then we had to go walk up into the fields."
" I see. So the bus could only go up to the cement blocks, but it couldn't get around them?"
" No."
" And you had to walk up to the field?"
" Yeah."
" I see. So Bob made you get off the bus?"
" Yeah."
" And he made you walk up to the field?"
" Yeah..

I accept Cheit's correction that the blocks are three feet tall, not four feet. Perhaps instead of measuring blocks, he could carefully re-read my essay and thus avoid making libelous remarks.

My quote in its entirety:, "A.W. testified that Mr. Halsey drove over the dividers to get up to the fields where he molested them. (561:8) But no such impossible feats are required to deal with the medical evidence."

 

Erroneous and misleading references to the children's testimony:

One of the weapons in the "vast array" seized from Mr. Halsey when he was arrested, was a pocket knife.

Cheit writes: "The children provided far more specific detail than Ms. Manning acknowledges -- and their testimony was cross-corroborative. All of the children described Halsey's red pocketknife (A. at 569; W. at 850; 862; L. at 1023; M. at 1060; and I. at 1086)."

This pocket knife appears to be a Swiss Army-type pocket knife. All the children agreed that they saw it on the bus or on Halsey's person. The oldest child testified that it was on his key chain. (Cheit says on ManningDebunked, that she testified it was in the glove box. That is incorrect.)

When Halsey was arrested, the police seized a pocket knife from his key chain. Mrs. Halsey says the knife was about four inches long, and was on his keychain which he wore on his belt, because he had too many keys to fit in his pants pocket.

The younger children's "descriptions" of the pocket knife are not descriptions by any stretch of the imagination, and serve only to damage their credibility if they are talking about a knife that Halsey habitually wore on his keychain, not kept in the glove compartment.

(Incidentally, it's important to note that Halsey was not accused of molesting all five of these children. Two of the five alleged sexual assaults. Some children testified to seeing knives and guns and tape and two alleged physical assaults).

A.'s at 569:

not a description at all

pocket knife introduced into evidence at 611

Q. And did you see -- what else did you see? You said you saw knives?
A. Yes.
Q. What kind of knives?
A. Some pocket knives, some big, big knives, some boot knives he had on his boot.

Q. Did you ever see this?... Do you know what this is, first off?
A. Yes, a pocket knife....
Q. Can you tell me when he would show it to you, what was he doing?
A. He was hanging it in front of us, and he had the blade open.

W.'s at 850-51

Not an identification of " the" pocket knife. The red pocket knife is exhibit #28, not #36.

W. at 862

another identification, not a description

Q. I want you to look at Commonwealth's Exhibit No 36. Do you know what this is?
A. Yeah.
Q. What is it?
A. A knife.
Q. And what, in particular, am I holding up?
A. A pocket knife.
Q. And where did you see this?
A. On his belt.
Q. Is there a belt loop on here?
A. Yeah.
Q. What color is the knife; do you remember?
A. No.

Q. Do you recognize this?
A. Yeah.
Q. What is this?
A. A jackknife.
Q. Could you tell us what's on this jacknife?
A. Scissors and a knife.
Q. Did you ever see him use this knife
A. Yeah.
Q. Where was it kept?
A. In his pocket.
Q. Tell us, how did it come about that you saw these scissors and this blade?
A. He was cutting his hair with it, the scissors.
Q. Then did he show you the blades?
A. Yeah.
Q. And what happened when he showed you this stuff? What was going on?
A. He was putting it to our heads.
Q. And did he take the scissors to your head?
A. Yeah.
Q. Did he do anything with them?
A. Yeah.
Q. What did he do?
A. Tried -- cut our hair.

L.at 1023

not a description

also note this
cross-examination at 1031-32

Q. Did you ever see him tickle anybody?
A. Yes.
Q. Who did he tickle?
A. [M.]
Q. Did you ever see anything in the glove box?
A. Yes.
Q. What was in the glove box?
A. Pocket knives and sometimes guns.

Q. Did (the prosecutor) show you pictures of knives?
A. Yes......
Q. .....And when he would show you those things, he'd ask you some questions about them; is that right?
A. Yes.
Q. He'd ask you if you remember them?
A. Yes.
Q. Did he ask you if you ever saw them on the bus?
A. Yes.

M. at 1060

almost a description

Q. Could you tell me, did you see some other things on the bus?
A. Yeah.
Q. What else?
A. Guns in the back and the knives in the back and pocket knives in the glove box.
Q. What did you see in the glove box?
A. Pocket knives.
Q. What did they look like; do you remember?
A. No.
Q. Do you remember how big they were?
A. About this big [indicating]. That would be the biggest.
Q. Do you remember if they had any colors or anything?
A. Red and silver and brown.

I.'s (the oldest child's) description at 1086

A description of a pocket knife on Halsey's keychain that probably hung in plain sight from his belt every day. It was removed from his keychain by the police when he was arrested.

Q. Now did you see anything else besides (knives in the back of the bus) -- strike that. Did you see knives anywhere else in the bus?
A. No.
Q. Okay.
A. I saw the red pocket knife that had scissors, a beer bottle thing that you opened beer with, and things you clean your nails with on his key chain. And it was like red, and it was like that big.
Q. Okay. A pocket-type knife that was on his key chain?
A. Yeah.

The medical evidence

In my article, I ask how is it possible for a child to have a scar involving one half of the anus, without anyone noticing the injury when it was incurred? (One possibility is that the "absence of rugae" described by the pediatrician, was not a scar but was a normal variation).

Cheit says: "Ms. Manning also claims that 'a wound that size (that is, involving half of his anus) would leave a child screaming in pain and bleeding profusely.' But Ms. Manning provides no citation or authority for this assertion. The claim that such abuse would necessarily main or severely injure a child is utterly fantastic."

Huh?

A moment earlier, he asserted that the boys had "multiple lacerations inside their anuses."

Is Cheit saying this is a scar that never felt a wound? Surely he jests.

A final note

In his original article, Cheit decries the use of "loaded adjectives" by Halsey's supporters and notes that "the use of powerful adjectives instead of facts is reminiscent of Senator Joseph McCarthy." Cheit more than once refers to his ideological opponents as making "strident" and "hysterical" arguments.

I invite you to read my article, then visit www.ManningDebunked.org and judge for yourself who is "strident."