The Elsa Newman Story—
Did this mother’s devotion to her children and her attempt to protect them from sexual abuse actually play a role in her being sentenced to prison?
I think so…
Part I: An Introduction
Elsa Newman. Please remember this name. She is in prison. She is in prison, and her children are in the hands of a man whom physicians and psychiatrists have told her is a pedophile, her former husband, and the father of the children.
Well…of course you don’t believe me! Or at least I suspect you doubt. I’ve met doubt at every turn:
“How can I help a woman who is in prison, when I believe her to be innocent?” When I posted this question to a popular question site on the web, one of the answers I got was this: “Stop thinking with your d***,” and yes…that is a precise quote, except this rather rude responder used the word instead of the asterisks. The primary problem with the answer is that I am a nearly-seventy-year-old retired seventh-grade teacher—a woman, and I lack the particular aspect of human anatomy that I was accused of thinking with.
So you see, I do deal with doubt, and deal with it in a variety of forms.
After all…Elsa was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder—plus a bunch of other stuff—was she not? The American justice system doesn’t make that kind of mistakes, does it?
Yes…it does…and frequently. I have read that as many as one in every seven people in prison is innocent. I suspect that is a bit high, but it certainly seems to me to be within the realm of possibility. If you are dubious, google the words “Innocence Project,” and read about the people who have been found innocent through DNA testing–while they were on death row.
Elsa is not on death row. She is in prison for the so-called “conspiracy” mentioned above. There is a serious problem with this “conspiracy” concept, however: no conspiracy ever existed.
While Elsa was out of town, attending her niece’s wedding, a family friend, Margery Landry, broke into the house of Elsa’s estranged husband, planning, she says, to look for evidence of child pornography. She is the godmother of Elsa’s children and she believed—with Elsa, as well as with a variety of medical and psychiatric professionals—that the boys were being sexually abused by their father.
[Some accounts say she was carrying samples of child pornography and intended to plant said items in the house, where, supposedly, anyone who searched on behalf of the children would find them. I don’t know which version is true. I have read that Landry herself testified that she was “looking” for child pornography.]
Landry has said repeatedly that she did this entirely on her own. She has said repeatedly that Elsa didn’t even know she (Landry) was planning to break into the home. She has repeatedly refused a reduction in her own sentence in exchange for testifying against Elsa. She has gone so far as to say, “I wish I could blame this on someone else. But the blame is entirely mine.”
Elsa likewise asserts that there was no conspiracy, that she had no idea about Landry’s plans, that she had, in fact, told her to “keep away from” the children’s father. Elsa also refused a reduction in sentence if she would appear sorry for the crime. Elsa also refused to lie, even though it cost her added years in prison and added time away from her children. She says she could not be “sorry” for a crime that she did not commit, a crime that, in fact, did not even exist, since there was no conspiracy.
I’ve said all that by way of introduction. The second part of this article was written by someone else, a professional of considerable stature and co-author of the book, The Hostage Child. In this excerpt from a letter to me—via email–Michelle Etlin will tell you about how she met Elsa Newman and why, with a selection of her observations on Elsa and on the children.
