What a bastard monster, low life this guy is! I hope he rottens in jail.
QUOTE |
The family is now urging a judge to send the man, 66-year-old Robert Hale, to prison for a long time. Sentencing was set for Tuesday. Hale was convicted of sexually assaulting an adult daughter. His plea agreement calls for a sentence of about 14 years. Hale and his family first came to prominence in Alaska during a feud with the National Park Service. Family members used a bulldozer without permission to clear an abandoned mining road to get to their land. National land rights advocates rallied to their cause and stories featured their plight as a case of big government vs. simple God-fearing, music-loving, live-off-the-land folks. But that rustic image was a facade, Hale's wife testified Monday during a sentencing hearing. Fighting back tears, Kurina Rose Hale compared the family to a city -- beautiful to outsiders but plagued on the inside by bad water and barren ground. Robert Hale ruled his family by fear and abuse, she said. "I've never been able to say these things in his presence without objection and the possibility of a threat, and it scared me," she said. Hale forbid his children to marry and would not allow his sons to cut their hair or beards. He refused to allow his children to learn how to read, she said. Patriarch of a family of 17, Hale insisted that he had a perfect spiritual understanding, his wife testified. "This is how he justified all his immoral activity," she said. Hale was accused of persuading one child that she was a "special kind of daughter" and that she must have sex with him. Kurina Rose Hale said she was wracked with guilt for not taking steps to stop the abuse. "I can see how wrong I was for not finding help," she said. Joseph Hale, the oldest son, testified that his father made his five oldest sons sleep together wearing only underwear into their teens. There was sexual abuse among the brothers, he and others said. When his father found out, he beat the five oldest boys, requiring them to stretch out over a "beating barrel" and administering lashes with a three-cord riding crop. "He beat us unmercifully for that for months," Joseph Hale said. He testified that he initially could not believe that his father had been sexually assaulting his sister because the boys had been beaten so severely for their transgressions. "He constantly lied to me and his older boys when we confronted him," he said. |
International Level: International Guru / Political Participation: 1089 100%
UPDATE: Papa Pilgrim dies in jail, unrepentant and alone
QUOTE |
ROBERT HALE: Family patriarch was serving 14 year term for abuse. He came to Alaska at the head of a sprawling, picturesque clan -- the last true wilderness family, as he put it when he battled the local park rangers. Robert Hale presented himself as a pious, Scripture-thumbing patriarch who just wanted to raise his 15 children far from the sin and temptations of the modern world. He settled in the mountains near McCarthy and called himself Papa Pilgrim. Robert Hale said God directed him to lead his family to live at a remote homestead. He used to pray with his family that they all would die together. It was his "number one prayer," the children testified in court. Acquaintances once worried the prayer foretold a horrible cultlike suicide pact. But on Saturday night, Hale died alone in an Anchorage jail. He was just months into a 14-year sentence for rape, coercion and incest. Hale, 67, had been in poor health for years, and went into more rapid decline after his arrest in late 2005. At his sentencing last November, Hale's lawyer said he was being treated for advanced cirrhosis, diabetes and blood clots. The family, now living in the Palmer area, is thriving in work, school and marriage. Hale died about 9 p.m. in the medical segregation unit of the Anchorage Correctional Complex, where he had been in hospice care, according to the state Department of Corrections. |
From the sounds of everything I am glad that he has died. That is one less cruel man in this world. My thoughts now turn to the boys raised by him. Are they going to turn out to be like him in some ways?
I know that the boys have struggled and mentioned "problems" in the past because of all the boys being kept in one room or several together in 2 rooms.
I hope they will be able to be survivors of the abuse and not continue the cycle.
They are very gentlemanly and hard workers. I don't really think they had a choice to work or not, but that is a good thing--hard working teens are a hard find these days among all the technology we have to keep them busy.
International Level: New Activist / Political Participation: 17 1.7%