Thank you everybody. Welcome. Welcome back to Vermont House Judiciary Committee and we are considering our deliberations on S3. And I would now like to welcome Kelly Carol to share her her story with us and miss Carol I'm sorry that you that you had to wait to testify but I'm very glad that you're here. Thank you and I hope you can hear me okay. Absolutely and and as you know we do stream on YouTube so we have no idea who's who's watching it very likely the press could be watching. So make sure you were aware of that and thank you so much. Maxine we're not live yet. Oh I see actually I see it on mine. Oh I don't have it on mine. We are interested. Huh. Okay. Yeah. Okay. All right. Great. So, so welcome. Thank you for being here. Thank you. And I, and I want to thank everyone on the committee for allowing me to participate and share Emily's story. And I know that a certain incident or a certain case cannot determine law, but Emily's murder highlights a lot of the disconnects that were spoken about earlier this morning and actually thank you for letting me attend that because I found it quite informative. I just want to make sure that everyone knows that I firmly believe that, you know, when we talk about the people that we're talking about in S3. And I'm not really even sure of the correct term to use if it's mental health illness or mental health status or, or, you know, what the correct term is but I honestly believe when you talk about people that do have mental illness, that it is a very very small percentage of the population that is violent. I believe the majority, the vast majority of them are nonviolent. I believe that people belong in our community. But I do also think that there are the top I guess there's two lists of 10 or 12 laws where there are some violent offenses and I think that those need to be handled differently. I just want to explain to you what happened to Emily, what I've learned and I'm not a lawyer. There's a lot I have to learn I've been learning a lot. But I know that I still have a lot to learn so basically on the morning of January 18 that was Martin Luther King's day in downtown Bennington. And I'm not sure if you're all familiar with downtown Bennington but there's a little Riverwalk pathway by the Bank of Bennington. And it also goes by the Wulumsak housing apartments which has about 50 units for seniors. And it was 11 o'clock on a Monday morning and there was a home health nurse that was coming out of the side door of the Wulumsak apartments on the Riverwalk pathway. And she saw somebody suspicious hanging around in the tree areas and he scared her. So instead of walking down the path which she would have had to have gone to get to her car the bank was closed so her car was in the bank parking lot. She walked down the snowy grass into the backside of the parking lot got in her car called her parents and told her parents what was happening and said what should I do and her parents advised her to call 911. So she was on the phone with 911 explaining this when my daughter went walking up the walkway. And she watched who we now know to be Darren pronto. Stand up, pull up his baggy pants, run after my five foot to 120 pound daughter and he's probably about 510 511 goes a couple hundred pounds. But he ran up on her he tackled her from behind, he slit her throat, he got up, he ran away, and this was all narrated by a witness on a 911 call there was another witness in the area that heard Emily screaming and saw it. It was recorded on the Bank of Bennington video surveillance. It was recorded on a home surveillance surveillance and because of the 911 call one of the BPD officers was on his way to the call and actually caught Darren pronto a couple of minutes from the murder scene covered in Emily's blood with the knife with Emily's blood on it, bragging to the cops that yes he did what he did to Emily Grace and he can get away with it. And BPD came to the house to tell us and right from the get go and even in our conversations with state's attorney's office we were told to not expect jail time with him, even though you would think two eyewitnesses caught at the scene, covered in blood on video surveillance, but he is going to get away with premeditated murder. And like I said I had no idea who he was so I started to look into him. And when you have something like this happen it impacts your whole community so people from the community started to tell us stuff. One of the first things I learned was that in November of 2020, which was about two months before he murdered Emily. He had made a video on Facebook, laughing and claiming he's a murderer and he can get away with it. Laughing about the laws laughing about the police officer laughing at all of us. He's right he can he can get away with it because in 2015 he was arrested. And I learned this I thought he'd only been arrested arrested a couple of times, but I was fortunate enough to testify on the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, and Senator Sears read his police record. So in 2015 he was actually arrested. And the charge was false information which we all know was probably modified from something else. And he was released with mental health conditions to UCS. In 2016, he was arrested for domestic assault and released with mental health conditions to UCS. In 2016, he was again arrested for another domestic assault and released with stricter mental health conditions from UCS. And then in 2018 there was another incident, which he ended up going into the state hospital and you can't really find anything on that because of HIPAA. And let me just say I work in healthcare and I fully understand HIPAA and I respect HIPAA and I and I get while why we have HIPAA but that whole danger to self or others I do think needs to be at least a topic of conversation. In 2018 he was released from mental health from the state hospital. And again you can't find it except when you live in a small town like Bennington, you can find the victims and you can find out what happened. He was having a fight with his mother apparently one day and punching holes in walls and scared his neighbor. And the neighbor could hear through the walls all the arguing and the F bombs and everything and the mother pleading with him to stop punching the walls. And she got scared. So she waited she didn't call the police right away. She talked with one of the other neighbors they waited a couple of days and they called the police and the police came and they spoke with Darren Pronto and the mother outside. And the mother declined or denied everything not declined denied that anything ever happened said the neighbors would just we're just out to get them and the police officer left. Well, after that, he went over to the neighbor that called not the one the lady originally but the couple that was living next door. This is also reported in the paper somewhere. But he went over to them, and was yelling outside for quite a while threatening to beat the FNS out of them and calling him a lot of names and telling the man to come outside and they didn't they had called the police to come back. And during that time that it took the police to get there he was getting more and more angered and he actually broke in the door and he did it so violently that he knocked the door right off of the hinges. And he was in there assaulting them and threatening to kill them and threatening to slit their throats when the police came so they actually came and saved them, but there wasn't anybody there to save Emily. He went into the court system he went into the Department of Mental Health. This was when he got his first not competent finding or label or and again I'm not quite sure of the term and I don't want to misspeak, but anyway he got that first not competent. And he went into Department of Mental Health custody. And then he was basically released back into the community with nothing to just go and terrorize the community and he did. And he was terrorizing he made that video in November of 2020 and for months he had been terrorizing the new neighbors, and they had been calling the police. I know one couple actually called the police, the state police four times they only showed up twice. Some of this is hard to find but again small town I know his mother. And I'm not sure what's coming forth coming when things are happening like this because people are afraid that all of these disconnects in their system are going to bring him back to our community. So her son and his girlfriend actually had to go and get a stocking order on him. So he's out with mental health conditions. There's absolutely no follow up there's no requirement for him to continue with medications. He gets to self medicate using crack.  He's just allowed to continue. And for I don't think that whatever, you know, I hate to play the what if game, you know what if this issue had been addressed a couple of years ago, whether it be legislatively, or through corrective health, but you know he, he was allowed to deteriorate and get increasingly more violent and threaten more and more people in our community, and it's all documented you can find it you can check either some of the the online newspapers or the banner, but he terrorized people when he lived in Bennington, he terrorized people when he lives down in Poundall, and he's basically a domestic terrorist because there's no political agenda, but there's a disconnect there that we need to do. We didn't do the right thing for my daughter, and we didn't do the right thing for the people in Poundall. And we're not doing the right thing for the people in Vermont because there's other cases like this that are happening. Now granted they may not be murders and again, I firmly firmly believe that people that have mental illnesses, it's a very very small percentage that are violent. Most people don't go around slitting people's throats, but we've enabled him, we have empowered him and we have enabled him to get more and more, more violent because there are no interventions that are that are working. So I want you to get in touch with BPD and watch the video. Like I said I've learned a lot I watched the Senate hearings. I watched and I know I'm not going to pronounce this right and I apologize but I believe it's Mr. Valerio, our defender general had testified and, and he had talked about things that the Vermont Supreme Court says about civil liberties and again I'm not a lawyer, but I'd like to know what the Vermont Supreme Court would have said to my daughter at her funeral about her civil liberties, don't they matter. Does the public not have a right to public safety, because if someone is a danger to themself, I would suspect that it would be easy to get them treatment but I know from some issues that we had with my daughter and her depression and suicidal thoughts that that's not always easy to get those services so, but I would like to know what he would say about or the Supreme Court would say about that with civil liberties I have to have some for protection and you know and I heard about constitutionality on the hearings and I heard that the attorney general and the defender general don't necessarily agree on some things as far as constitutionality and that's not for me because I'm not a lawyer and there's a lot of committee who are much better to answer that question but one thing that struck me that Mr. Rubin said was that he had looked at some other states and nobody else was really doing anything like this. And I just have to say that doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong. I really don't think there's anything you know wrong with Vermont being a leader. If you look nationally, these issues are becoming more and more common or maybe not more and more common maybe more and more reported on. But there's there's disconnects and we did not do the right thing we didn't do the right thing for the people in the state or the community. I think that we need to take a look at that and I really hope that that S3 gets some serious consideration and it does get get to a vote because it's not going to get any better and you know there's there's mention of that psychiatric or the Connecticut psychiatric security review board. And the great thing about that is that it's multidisciplinary. You know this is not a problem that one agency or one department can can solve and you know if you look at Department of Mental Health, they're looking at people and they're looking at getting people better. And if you look at the Department of Corrections, they want to keep people safe. And I really think that these departments and include dial or Vermont Care partners or anyone else that you want these agencies need to partner together because this, they're not geared to solve this individually. They're not going to do this without legislation. It has to be addressed and S3 isn't perfect. There's a lot of people that are going to come up and say you know there's an issue with this and that, but it's at least a start, because right now, these departments are allowing people to sometimes take advantage of the thing you know we're going to talk about getting a court ordered evaluation, you know, in a non competent. It's my understanding that the defense attorney can go and get somebody to evaluate and get a not competent prior to a court ordered evaluation. They have to just go with the first one they can get a couple two, three, four, however many they get until they get the result that they want. And I know that in the last hearing the defender general said that this bill gives the prosecution the ability to go shopping around for an expert. But it's my understanding that the prosecution only gets to get one one and done, they get you know one and they have to tell the defense. So if this is the case then maybe the defense attorney should just be able to get one and have to tell them, you know if we have something serious medically. Chances are we're going to go and get a second opinion there's nothing wrong with getting that in a court I think we owe it to the Vermonters in our state I think we owe it to public safety and I think we owe it to the people that are not getting the proper analysis through the Department of Mental Health. And one thing that I did learn was that there was a significant difference somebody had asked and I apologize I don't remember the names but somebody had asked about contracts for profit nonprofit services. Well, my understanding for my care partners overseas a bunch of individual contractors, but services are not the same and Erica Marthage testified that if she has somebody in Manchester that has mental issues mental health issues. And I'm going to Rutland because Rutland has a team. If somebody's having an issue, two people will come to the house. There's a shield an example of a woman there whose son has PTSD and, and he needs to stay medicated the mother has a hard time with him he gets violent. And the Rutland team did have to come and take him into protective. And I don't know like custody or what again I don't have great terms for a couple of days, and he takes his medicine and now she just has to say don't you know do I need to call your case worker and he'll comply and take the medicine and then he's doing better. And she's safer and net net the community safer, but we don't have that in in Bennington. And one thing that this bill will do with the forensic groups and stuff is it will take a look at that, because you should, as you know, we're paying for it taxpayers. We should have consistent services and we should have accountability for those services. dmh isn't handling it they can't handle it. It's too much for them and that's proven you take a look at my daughter's case. You know, he's got a lot of mental health conditions and he continues to get worse and worse and worse without intervention so it needs to be a cross collaboration. And maybe, maybe for profits the way to go, as opposed to nonprofit because if you have somebody that's for profit, and I'll be full disclosure I work for a food contract management company, but if I don't hold up my end of the contract. We are done and some of my clients will push us harder for results, as opposed to somebody who's nonprofit so regardless of what you do on that end, you need to take a look at those nonprofits, you need to hold them accountable. And I think looking at the services and seeing what's different, whether it's within the prisons, or without in the in the community. I think having better services in the prisons is going to help lower some of the. I think it just provides mental health services to some people who need it and I think that's a significantly lacking area so anyway, I just, I wanted to, to thank you for your time. I just wanted to leave you with a thought about perception and reality. I very, very, very much appreciate the opportunity to come here but when I look at Darren pronto's history. And I look at things like the Novak Novak case, I think it was where there was a couple of troopers, and the state had to settle for time served and probation. I don't agree with that on a couple of different things I think that number one, if, if Mr. Novak needs services he should get them. And the public needs to be safe and I think that that's just an example of where mental health DOJ can just collaborate and do better for us all so my perception has been that this issue has been spoken about and spoken about and spoken about. I spoke with a couple of people from Leahy's office, Senator Leahy's office, and they told me that everybody talks about all the lack of services down here but nobody does anything about it so you have the opportunity to do them.  Every day, we see Emily's picture instead of Emily, you have the opportunity to fix that because S3 is not going to do anything for me or my family, but hopefully, it will help people to understand whether it's the people that are struggling with the illness, or the people that the victims that if I am a victim I'm a little confused on that today, but anyway, thank you very, very much for hearing me out I do appreciate the opportunity and I thank you for everything that you do to help you Vermont safe I hope you pass S3, and I hope that everyone on the committee makes a commitment to public safety and mental health. Thank you. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for sharing your story and course we are all so sorry for for your loss and and I also really appreciate your, your ideas, your thoughts your, your really thinking about it as you said in your letter last night when we were who are going back and forth with our emails that you want to be part of a I can I see that and I and I really do do appreciate that and we'll be taking testimony this afternoon on Friday, we'll be spending quite a bit of time on this bill as well as will other committees so I do very much, very much appreciate your, your testimony. Are you, are you willing to take questions. If anybody has questions. I really want to be part of the solution I know people might not like what I have to say at times but I really do want to be part of the solution. This has been a, this has been a horrific experience for us the more that we find out the more frustrating it absolutely. Absolutely. And again one case should not define law, but one case can definitely highlight a lot of those disconnects that need to be addressed and and I just hope that this year. Unlike, you know, last year because of COVID and I really hope that some things addressed for future people, if not, there's going to be I guarantee you, he's going to get out, because there's nothing in the law that says that he can't. And when he gets out, I guarantee you there's going to be more bloodshed, there's going to be more violence, there's going to be more victims because he can, and we've empowered him. So but I'll take questions if anyone has one. Thank you. Not just check. I'm not seeing anybody. Thank you. Great. Thank you. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Okay, Joanne Courtney Dick, I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing your name correctly. Yeah, that's correct. Can you hear me. Absolutely. Welcome. Thank you. I can't, I don't can't I can't get the video. Okay. That's okay. I'm not sure. Anybody have any suggestions or would you have a little extra. Oh, okay. I had, okay, I got a little, I got something here now. Okay, here I am. Hello. Hello. Nice to see you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Good. Thank you. My name is Joanne Courtney Dick, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak in front of you today. I don't know if you all have seen my family statement or aware of my sister's case. That statement was written by my cousin and I, at the time, my sister's killer died. She was killed. She, my sister was resident of Burlington, Vermont. And she was very active in a community. She was a social worker. She worked at Howard Center. She worked with refugees. She was a single mom and an artist. She had a connection with a person who killed her, but it was a friend of hers. And she was brutally murdered in a house. Intrusion in 2010, and he came in and he tied her up, gagged her, ended up slitting her throat, stole her car and abandoned it in a state preserve somewhere I can't remember exactly. And she was, she wasn't, because she was a single mom single person, she was not found for several days. Because she did not show up at work on the Mondays when a check was done on her, a safety checked, and her body was found. She was later arrested on associated charges on break-ins. And he, when he was, when he was apprehended, they were able to get his computer on which he had, they showed that he had done searches for the knots that he used to tie her up. He had done a search of the obituary columns to see if her name had popped up. And that was at a time when nobody out, nobody, but he knew she was dead. So, I mean, it's clear from all the facts and is that this was a very deliberate action. And he knew what he was doing before and after the crime. So, it's kind of difficult to describe the whole thing because it was such a long process. It was over a period of nine years that he bounced from the correctional system into the mental health system. And eventually, because he ended up dying because he had physical issue. And so that's when the case disappeared. So we went through many, many iterations of the competency, non-competency issue with him. The reason I'm wanting to testify is I feel like I really understand what, how difficult this process is for victims to walk through. I am a lawyer and I have a cousin who's a lawyer who was also involved in looking at this case and following it all the way through. And I have a brother who was a correctional officer. So we understand a lot of the different nuances, whereas a lot of people who are victims have no way of understanding or knowing how to navigate the system. So my feeling is I want to do, as Kelly explained in her situation, as much as I possibly can do to help other people who are similarly situated. So any improvements in the victims rights area are very important for those people who are in our situation. My situation is quite different, think Kelly, because it went on for so, so many years and there were just so many different nuances going. The problem with this particular defendant was he was very high. He didn't have a lot of aspects to him that he was able to operate pretty in a normal capacity in a lot of cases. So he had a very high understanding of the legal system, and he used all of the disconnects that are present, some of which have to be because of the nature of the mental health situation. But he was very aware of what he was doing and how he handled his case all the way through. And once he got into the mental health system, that became much easier for him. And so I am really wanting to outline here a couple of the things that we observed over that time period, where we think there could be improvements that could help particularly in the case of like this, where the person is really highly has high abilities. And I'll say this because if you look at the history of how this evolved over the years, examining psychiatrists, treating psychiatrists, and even the judge at the competency hearing questioned continually whether his failure to cooperate was due to his deliberately trying to cooperate versus actually having a mental condition that caused him to be unable to aid in his own defense. So that was the problem we were getting reports that he was competent and then they would be prosecuted would bring in another expert who would say that he wasn't. And we just it just went on and on and on. I would encourage you to look at the entire statement because it'll give you a better idea of what we went through during those during that almost decade. And here are a couple things that I really wanted to point out. And some of this was mentioned by Kelly and her testimony. I think one of the big issues is when that person is moved into the mental health system that there are disconnects between the two systems, and that the focus and the mental health system is purely on giving the individual who has the mental health condition. And then on the other side, the, the, I'm sorry, I'm having a little migraine here right now. This is all very stressful, I'm sure you can understand. But so the disconnects are exacerbated by the fact that the communications are really cut off when someone goes into the mental health system. So it seems like the mental health system is doing what it wants to do to help the patient. And then the criminal side is inactive during that period because they aren't able to be active and they are not really hearing about what is going on on the other side. And so that's why I think the provisions of the bill that emphasize the communication and notice, not, not just to the victims but also the communications between the two systems that there could be a lot of corrections or improvements. We as victims only get at the communication that through the prosecutor's office through the state's attorney. And when the person is moved into the mental health system. We just don't hear anything. And, and you can imagine how it would be if something like this happened in your family, where you have your sisters been brutally murdered or your loved ones been brutally murdered. And all you know is the person who did it and there's quite a bit of evidence in and which came out when he was first ordered into the hospital that he clearly was the killer and, and also, obviously, as one of the representatives in the their discussion of the bill. The person is not convicted at that point but there's enough evidence to show that they're a harm to others that they are then hospitalized, which was the case with our, my sister's killer alleged killer. So, I'm sorry I can. So anyway, my point being is I feel like the more notice the more information that's flowing between the two systems, the better. And I know there are privacy issues here. I know there's hip issues here. But I feel like there's so much pushback whenever somebody is in a situation that almost anything that you would say about them or what's going on with them would be defended by we will give you that information because it's hip protected. So, I feel like this bill is really important step in the right direction. I really feel particularly for people like Kelly where the person was released and their notices were not given that we don't we weren't in that situation. Although he was released at the end of his life to go into the hospital and and there was no notice given to the public safety people when that happened or to us. So there are even even with these raw laws in place I feel like there can still be missteps, but I think feel like the more we communicate between those systems is going to see improvements with respect to getting that person actually to trial. And that's my second point. And that is as that I can see any effort at all on the mental health side to restore competency for the individual who is deemed incompetent. It is really only a focus on making sure that they are properly medicated, and that they. And then that there was a question there too of whether they want to be or not, or not want to be medicated, but it seems very little is is if anything is given to actually getting that person restored to that can return to try to be tried for their crime. And I know one of the representatives was a little confused about the two things but when someone is found non competent until they're found competent again they cannot still stand trial for their crime. We don't know in this case whether an insanity defense would ever been brought, but because and we waited nine years to see if that could happen, but it never did. So I feel like we talk, we're talking a lot about public safety and we're talking a lot about the interests of the accused, particularly those who have mental illnesses, but we don't talk about the interest of the family of the victim and the public in general to bring the accused to trial and particularly once they get caught up in the mental health system that just disappears. So, for us that was a long journey. And we never saw the end of it because of her staff, which gave us some. I'm not going to say relief because you know this incident never goes away. We never saw justice for her. But we're hoping that if some of these things are considered in the system. And especially on the mental health side, and if victims are given more of an opportunity to voice their concerns in the processes, I, I totally understand the privacy issues. But there was big there are other issues at in play here, not just not just this just defendants privacy issues. So I think that the section of the bill so the two things I really think the notice provisions are good. I think they could be even more strengthened more. But I know they'll be pushed back from a lot of different areas on now but I feel like if there's any information that could be given to victims during the process particularly when it goes on as long as it with our family that it could. So that would encourage the evolution of this legislation, not saying we can do it all at once but I think little pieces are good. I think the section on the forensic care working group event identifying the gaps between the two systems and looking at other states models is excellent. I really encourage that that there are two victims, witnesses, or excuse me two victims representatives now on that. In that bill it wasn't there when the bill was originally drafted. I will tell you I've been following this bill for two years. I testified last year in front of the Senate Committee on this bill it was set up bill 183 last year. And I think it's improved this year actually I think there's some things in here that really will be helpful to victims. But I so I encourage you got to as a good start to move forward with this. I feel like the one one thing that could be done with respect to the section of the bill that sets up the forensic care working group would be to also emphasize not only the treatment but the interests of the accused. And the interest of public safety but the one thing that I, we were so frustrated with which is the interest of the victims and the public in bringing the accused to trial. But it's not always going to be as frustrating for people as it was in our particular case and as Kelly said, you know one case doesn't, doesn't dictate how everything should go for the rest of time, but you learn a lot of lessons when you look at, at situations like Kelly's and situations that like my family. And then I'm sorry I'm a little disjointed here. But the final thing that I want to emphasize is just the general status of victims in the Vermont criminal system. And it's not just Vermont is other places as well. It's a struggle. And I would, I would say that to emphasize that the purpose that the stated purpose of the law is to protect the victims of the crimes. While balancing the crime victims rights with the criminal defendants rights so what I want to emphasize here is crime victims rights. In my experience, there is no balancing. There is no consequences associated with the failure to comply with the provisions relating to victims rights. Especially, I mean and it's understandable because when you, if you don't chip toe around the defendant, you know that defendant could end up going free. So you want to make sure that they're given all the due process they can possibly get, but, but who is being ignored in this mix, the person who was actually the most impacted by the actions of that that defendant. There are a lot of people who have loved ones who were who were injured, who were, who were all the different circumstances that could happen in a criminal case. And so, I just feel like, even though there is a law on the books that victims and victims families are still largely invisible in the process and once they get into the mental health system, they're silent. I would really urge you to take a good hard look at this legislation. I think it's a very good start. I think this focus group can really come up with some good suggestions. I know it's very difficult because there are so many different nuances that come up with all different kinds of cases, but I think we can do better. I don't want to see another family have to go through 10 years of the kind of thing.  The guy, the guy who murdered her is the one who was responsible, but it's what happens to him or her once they're in the system to get that person to stand for their crime and to give the family a little bit of comfort with respect to that. I feel so sorry for Kelly. I appreciate her testimony. I think she'd be a great advocate for your group. I'm willing to do whatever I can to help give input with respect to ongoing issues related to victims' rights. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm so sorry for your loss and so appreciative of your testimony and your suggestions and your statement is posted. So we'll be able to refer to that. And again, thank you. Thank you so much for really shedding an important light on the victim and the victim's family, which I understand is not always a good thing. Thank you. One more thing I want to say is, and I know you guys have a lot of witnesses, but just listen to what Kelly and I are saying in terms of we have nothing to gain. Our people are dead. My sister's killer can never be brought to justice. We are, I mean, I've been, I've been, this has been a part of my life now for a decade. And we'll continue to be. I'm doing my, I'm doing volunteer work here in Colorado. This is where I live in the volunteer and the victims area, because I feel so strongly about the need for improvements. And I just hope you would take that into consideration when you're looking at making improvements because they are just really needed. Absolutely. We'll, we'll take all of your testimony into consideration again. I thank you. And I do see a hand up for you. Is it okay to take a question? Sure. Okay. Thank you. Barbara. Thank you so much. I, I think that your testimony and Kelly's testimony just make this all so vivid and real for us in a way that no one else can and I, I'm sorry, I can't imagine how hard this is. So, you had mentioned that the only communication you heard was from the state attorney. That's how we got our communication. We did get a few and we did get some information through the Attorney General's office. But, but he could only give us limited information. So I'm, I'm wondering, especially given your legal background in that your volunteer work also, what ideally would you like to see for communicate, like, what, what should that look like so that I, I can't, I'm not a legislative drafter and I know there's a lot of nuances here. Sure. Yeah, I listen to the testimony. I know there's a lot of people that are going to be telling you that any, any information that is protected and it's the, and talk a lot about the due process that writes that that that individual has and the agency writes. So what I'm going to say is not everything is hip and protected, not everything that goes on in those places is hip and protected. And, and I don't, and, and I know it's case by case and I'm not and so it becomes difficult to say, this is the standard that whenever these things happen notice should be given to the victims, but there should be some sort of liaison maybe that can work between the two systems with victims and consider the enter the competing interests there and know what needs to be said and what can't be said, and, and help the victim. The victim has no one helping them. I, I will qualify that though I have to say the victims advocates on the criminal side were amazing and I really really appreciated them. I, I looked at my emails over their 10 year period I felt I felt like that I mean I had an ongoing relationship with these these women. They were they could only give me the information they had, and I would ask we would ask specific pointed questions about what was going on with him. We would find out little bits and pieces to the extent they said we could hear it. He was doing things while he was in custody, he was gathering outside the on the grounds to bring them into the facility. He was investigating ways to open get the locks on the doors and the windows where he was on his computer. I mean, all this stuff is going on and we don't I mean we hear about it. Most of the time when we find things out would be something that was written in the press and I'm not going to say the press always has the correct information because I know that's not true. But when you're when you're sitting there and you're you've got a loved one who's been killed and you don't get to talk to her, and you don't, and you don't get to know what is going on with her killer. And you don't know whenever what the status of that's going to change you you get a call you get a text saying okay something's going on right now and then your world just changes. Well and it sounded like Kelly had to like hear from people in the community. So that was a common theme in both your testimony is information and communication and right who was available for you and you know what could have made an awful time, slightly better, you know what I mean. And I get it everybody the thing that I really really hit home for me was, everybody has their own individual interests in the case, and either protecting the person from a from a mental health perspective, bringing justice, you know getting the case going if they can't, it's stuck because he's in the mental health system so they're on to another case. So, the only one that has a consistent interest in what's going on is the victim. And so we'd like to see all of these different parts, connect more work together this is what Kelly was emphasizing in her testimony, and I'll emphasize it too. Don't just say I can't do this because blah blah blah. Let's look at the whole let's look at getting the person. Help them for goodness sakes if they're mentally all absolutely, but but also look at whether they truly are to in my case that's that was the real tricky, tricky thing, because he was he was not. He had a diagnosis of delusional disorder, but he was not does he was not diagnosis schizophrenic. So, it's going to be different for every different person, but somebody needs to look at all the pieces and help that victim through the process. And get that person to trial if they really this in this case, this this man should have been put on trial. I'm not saying that's always the case but in this case that he should have been and that was very frustrating for us. Right. I mean, it seems like, like I get there's no conclusion like up or down the trial, having a trial at least you have your day in court so to speak, you know. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. I really appreciate you listening. I know I'm going on and on but you know I have been waiting so many years. And even while the processes, even while he was still in the process. I was looking and talking to people about maybe making some legislative changes. And so I, what you guys are doing is so important. It's so important for these people, the people who have no voices. And I repeat myself a little bit, I respect the fact that defendants has all the rights that they have and they need them. But please, please consider the people who are most impacted by the crime. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm not seeing any other questions again. Thank you. We appreciate your, your testimony. Okay, so representative Donna Hugh. Do next we only have 10 minutes. You're welcome to start what what works for you. I don't want to want to make sure we get all of your testimony. I think at this phase, my testimony, hopefully is not too lengthy, because I'm not, it's not, it's not about details or wordsmithing and so forth. It's kind of an overview of issues. Okay, great. And we will continue after the floor. I know you're busy with your committee but I hope you're able to come back so welcome. Thank you. Thank you, representative and Donna Hugh. And I want to start by saying I think they're really serious problems with our current forensic law system, both with gaps and with significant discrepancies within it, it has not been overhauled in, I don't know how long. We actually introduced a bill in 2019 to try to do some overhaul work that followed a work group that the legislature had established on the orders of non hospitalization, which then didn't receive any follow up from the legislature. And the bill included a fact finding mechanism that actually therefore enabled some of the actions that people would like to see happen. And I think it's, it's really critical in looking at this bill. You need to have the context of the full statute and understand the revisions that need to be made in the full statute because picking out just limited pieces is going to add to the disconnects and the discrepancies that exist. And at a minimum you need to look at them to avoid increasing discrepancies, like the little reference I made to DMH being the only one mentioned when in fact insanity and competence is not only about mental health and there's a lot of focus on mental illness but that is not the only part of the definition. So a couple of the brief examples.  However, there is no outcome for that possible if a person is found not competent or insane based on a traumatic brain injury. There's, there is no custody involved by anyone. There's no ability to place conditions, or, or anything if they've been found not competent or insane, and we don't even include in the definition dementia.  Do we want to wait to again have to do reactive law when that situation arises, or do we want to incorporate looking at that as as part of a holistic picture, and probably the best legal example of a conflict in the law, in terms of what's changed since 30 years is about 12 years ago we revised the laws in acknowledgement that when somebody's being sent for an evaluation, mental evaluation, that it, the judge should not order that to be an inpatient evaluation unless the person actually needs to be in a hospital. The evaluation may need to take place in corrections it may happen in the community, but it shouldn't occur in a hospital unless they need to be in a hospital because our hospitals are not intended anymore to be correctional facilities, or just for the purpose of holding someone. But when we did that we didn't we were not consistent in other parts of the statute so the section that was just referenced by Eric this morning about the revocation of an order of non hospitalization. If someone is not following the conditions, and the court, then has jurisdiction and the court can order hospitalization has absolutely no relationship to whether hospitalizations appropriate. And if you don't look at that but just include the notification to the court that a person's not following their own age the court can pull that person in and order them into the hospital. I can tell you our hospital system which is already overloaded is not the right person for somebody who doesn't need that level of care and treatment. Now there may be a lot of other things that need to happen that may not be happening now. But being hospitalized if they don't need hospital care is not the appropriate answer and that would be the current statutory effect. The last thing I just want to mention in terms of you know highlights overview to what you have in front of you is I think the forensic work group which is critically important because this is not a task that could be taken on in a few weeks time on zoom. But it has to have the right people on it, and I think they're key ones who are missing. It has to have the right amount of time to do the work and August to November does not meet that. And it has to have the right charge in terms of what it ought to be doing. Right now, there are parts that are specific enough that it's actually sort of skews the outcome in terms of truly being an evaluation of what ought to happen and I will reference at this point I have a UVM intern, who is looking at various states to really handle this so that there's some ability to say okay, here are different models, not just here is a model that we think is the one that we ought to be do replicating in Vermont without looking at how different states handle it. So that's that's my, that's my quick overview I think there's a lot here there's a lot that needs to be done, but it's really important to do it right and by picking out things in isolation. There's a really significant risk of making things much worse in the interim. Thank you. Yeah, thank you and I appreciate your testimony and I'm hoping that your committee will will look at, look at the working group. But at the very least I really welcome your, your thoughts on who, who should be on it who you know who isn't on it as well as, as well as the charge in the, in the timeline and, and perhaps that will come from your committee. In a lot of ways that's the easier part. Right and trying to, you know grapple with the the underlying statutes but. Sure. Okay. Yeah. Questions, Barbara I see your hand up that might have been from before. Any other questions. Okay, well thank thank you and thank you everybody it's been I actually, I'm sorry I need to make one thing I did not mean and I think from some comments that may have been understood. I did not mean in any way to suggest that there are not victims involved. And I think that that may have been misunderstood by comment I made. You know, I think that sort of thing is really easily remedied by simply saying a victim of a crime for which the person has been charged. You know that that result but there's I mean there's no question about there being a victim. I just think we shouldn't. I think that the answers are completely clear as to somebody who has not been convicted as to whether we're in a sense saying we're convicting you. Thank you, thank you. Thank you for that, for that clarification. Okay. All right, again, thank you everybody. It's been a long morning but certainly very, very important and only a start of the conversation. I'm not sure how long will be on the floor. My understanding is we are only looking at one thing today so 15 minutes after the floor we will continue working on the bill and I really appreciate them. The witnesses that will be hearing from in the afternoon and, and possibly Friday for for your flexibility. So, hey, thank you. So, Evan if we could please go off you too.


helpful. You think it's helpful. Okay, hey friends, you're watching behind the scenes divine intimacy radio. And today, I'm, you know, I always like the shows we do. But today, this one's pretty important. Pretty extremely, totally amazingly nuclear important. Stephanie is whispering under breath. Pretty important. Pretty important. Like, yeah, I don't know. It's one of just many important topics. No, it's actually on the top of the list of important topics. It's probably number one, or, you know, there's a few number ones, and it's one of the number ones, you know, so anyway, excited to have Father Jesse Mango again back with us talk about mysteries at Eucharist. Before we jump into the show, though, I wanted to give you a heads up on a couple of things. One, something very cool is coming up. We're going to do an international prayer rally to come against the gates of hell and the Armenian with the Armenians who are suffering with a blockade that's eight months long. And that's happening against them. It's happening against them, which is keeping them from food and all the sustenance they need. So we're trying to work with the Eparkey here in the United States. I've been talking to friends in Israel. And so we're trying to get that for Friday, the 25th of August, I think is the date. So keep your eye out on that. If you're Armenian in particular, or if your heart breaks like mine does, I'm Jewish, you know, by birth and by faith, and I'm a Hebrew Catholic. And just what the Armenians have gone through has got some parallels to the Holocaust historically. They went through and almost, you know, they were, it's just million-plus, just horrifying stuff before the Second World War. But anyway, and there's just this constant hatred. So we're going to try to let you know about what we will let you know. But go out to spiritualdirection.com and subscribe there because we're not ready to like send you to a link yet. We're working this out really quickly. And we'll have Simone Rascala with us. She's from McDowell and she's an Armenian American. She's an Egyptian Armenian. Egyptian Armenian, awesome woman, good friends with Stephanie. So we'll have her on part of it. So anyway, we're just trying to organize it just, I believe in prayer. And I think we could, I think, I think you're all going to think I'm crazy. I think we can pray and all those trucks could blow up. Or run out of gas. There's nobody in them. They're just sitting on the roads blocking the road. So I just, I believe they could all disintegrate. I mean, I really do. I have no doubt if the people of God who really believe come together and pray, we can move mountains. So we're going to do it. And we're going to help those women and children in particular who are suffering with, again, with grave evil coming against them. Okay, the other, there's just two other things I know you want me to get onto the show. Sorry. But this summit, or no, which one do you want to do first? Divine intimacy or the summit? Summits come in first. Okay. Why don't you do that? So the amazing summit. I'm so excited about this summit. Yeah, one of, pardon me, one of Father Jesse's brother priests, a very good close friend, Father Ignatius, will be one of the speakers at the summit. It is October 13th through the 15th, the Marian mystery and the triumph of the Immaculate Heart. So I love Mary today's her feast day. I love this day because it's the assumption of Mary. It's a holy day of obligation. Please go to mass. And not only that present yourself for communion on Sunday. Not only that. One of the other days that I, that I love this day is because it's a day that the Lord made me a man, a mother for the, for the third time. And so our son Marcus was born on August 15th. So it's special day for Mary today. So anyway, on this day, I'm announcing, reminding you, if you don't know about it, to go out and sign up for the Avalos Summit 2023, October 13th through the 15th at the shrine of the most blessed sacrament in Hansville. It's an amazing venue, second largest monstrance in the world, which ties into our topic today. And amazing speakers. So you don't want to miss that. You can find that at spiritualdirection.com forward slash events. Why don't we leave the last one for the break? Let's do that. Okay, you can find all of our events. Yeah, at spiritualdirection.com. So if, and if you want to stay touched in touch with us, that's where you, like you get emails about everything you do from, from spiritualdirection.com. So go sign up there and let's go ahead and start the show in your market set. Go. This is Dan Stephanie Burke. Welcome to Divine Intimacy Radio, your radio haven of rest. Your hermitage of the heart. Your monastery of the mind where we lift our hearts and minds to heaven to draw upon the wisdom of the saints so that we can navigate the incredible storm that we're in. God be praised. Why praise the Lord for a storm? Because the storm denotes that he's at work. The storm shows us that he's here. The storm is the opera is the context within which saints are born. Right. It's the context, the difficulties and the struggles that we face on the highest level. If you look through church history, look at the look at the incredible saints that emerged out of the Protestant revolts, you know, Teresa of Avila, Ignatius of Loyola, Saint John of Avila, you know, Saint Peter of Alcantara.  That's really beautiful. Say that again. The storm. The storm is the place out of which saints emerge. That's really beautiful. Yeah. We should really think about that. Well, you know, it's interesting. My book's coming out, Finding Peace in the Storm. And the reason those saints emerged out of it is because our hearts were just deeply oriented to God and they were able to provide a unique light and perspective. They were not swept away by their times because they're staring at Jesus, not at the waves. They're staring at Jesus, not at the waves. So Finding Peace through the Storm, you can already pre-order it out at spiritualdirection.com. It's not the subject of our talk today. However, it is true, though. If we're facing Jesus, we're facing the Eucharist. We're facing the Eucharist. We're not being overcome by the storm. And that's why Father Jesse Meng goes with us today. Welcome back, Father Jesse. Great to be back here with you guys. It's awesome to be with you. Before we kind of get into what we wanted to talk about today, I wanted to ask, so you're a Dominican priest of the Irish province. You're from Trinidad, Tobago. Like, tell me a little bit about your priestly call and then I want to, but I want to kind of shape it around why your life really is oriented to Eucharistic revival. What's happening in the church right now, your heart is oriented to that reality. So give us a little background and tell us a little bit about yourself. Yeah, so I'll try and pitch that in terms of Eucharistic adoration and revival. I grew up in a very catholic, faithful home, certainly with lots of witnesses of people who were really living their faith in profound ways. I'm actually on my dad's side with his parents and cousins and even on my mom's side, my uncle and his wife had a profound kind of conversion in a Marianne apparition shrine in Venezuela where my aunt was healed from not being able to have children after 10 years. And so we started to gather to pray the rosary as a family every week. Also the instigation of my grandmother after a profound experience she had in Medjugorje. So there was a lot of witness of prayer and my grandparents were very involved in and a lot of charity, which always stood out to me. But one of the things they would do is that after they would pick me up from school, they would bring me to an adoration chapel called the Center for Peace in Trinidad, which was started by a lay couple after they had been converted in Medjugorje. They came back to Trinidad and realized that they wanted to create a sanctuary, a place of prayer so that people could come and drink deeply from the Eucharistic Lord. And also they did great work to support priests, etc. So as a kid, I would go there and I could still remember the peace of that chapel. And maybe because there was air condition as well and hot Trinidad. But it was a peace then my grandmother's sister would often be doing some hours and we'd be picking her up and going back home. So that kind of stands out. I drifted away from my faith. I won't go into a conversion story full blown, but I drifted away from my faith, became agnostic. And then for a while for maybe a year, two years, I would describe myself as an atheist in the sense that I had come to this point where I didn't believe in God at all. But of course, the Lord starts to pull through I think the prayers of my mother in a very particular way and prayers of so many in the family to pull my heart back to the Lord. And so then I had a conversion, a kind of reversion back to the faith in a church, which which turns out to be called the Church of Corpus Christi, the Church of the Body of the Lord. And it was at communion time. So I often reflect on this now because as my life after coming back into Christ and to follow the Catholic faith after this devotion to the Eucharist, really developing more and more through series of encounters with really wonderful books that set my heart on fire. And in particular with one priest who had profound, his life was completely ordered to the Eucharist. And he seemed to be truly what the church means by source and summit.  And it was the devotion and the desire for the Eucharist was already there. So it just deepened. And so it made more sense why the Lord had come to meet me at I'm a Holy Communion. When I had went up to Holy Communion, I didn't receive actually something had stopped me from receiving. And I think that was the Lord protecting me because I wasn't in a state of grace. I hadn't been to confession in the years. And something I just I kind of felt like a hypocrite for receiving. And and so I just went up for a blessing. Nevertheless, it was very powerful life changing moment and experience. And I guess it has marked my life to be converted in a church called Church of Corpus Christi at communion time. So since then, I've like tried to devote my prayer time principally to adoring the Lord in the tabernacle and when possible to have exposition. And I could safely say that it has just transformed my life. And the more that I've tried to give myself more to that over the years, I've seen just interior freedom. And I'm convinced, you know, that's the Calus of Coutis, the great Eucharistic saint of most recent kind of Beatified Italian saints, said the Eucharist is the shortcut to heaven. And it's true because when we are before Jesus in Eucharist, we're before Jesus Christ himself, who is the source of all grace. He's in John tells us he is full of grace and truth. And so when we sit before Jesus in the Eucharist, he's truly and utterly there. Then we are the source of what sanctifies our mind and our heart and our will. And so I believe that spending as much time with him is the greatest deliverance from evil we could experience. The greatest, it's he is the deliverer. And the time before him is silent. It can seem ineffective and it can seem like a waste of time because not much is happening. In your perception. In my perception. But that's why faith, you know, because faith. And I believe for me personally, I feel that because we clearly see from the quotes and the statistics that so many Catholics have fallen away from true faith in the Eucharist, which means that they've cut themselves off, which explains why Catholics don't look like what Catholics are supposed to look like. You know, which looks like, which looks like she has a power outage. It's not true because she has the source of the Lord himself, but it looks at times we're suffering a power outage. But that's because people are not disposed to the Eucharist. They're not preparing well before mass. You know, we're not, and I include myself in that in my journey over the years. I've had to learn and I still struggle to make sure I'm preparing well for the mass that I linger enough in Thanksgiving after mass. And so the, these are just some ideas.  And he says that, and he quotes her saying, anybody with a normal brain basically, anybody with normal feelings and a healthy heart, believing Jesus is in the Eucharist, would want to go and visit him as much as possible and whenever possible. And it's as simple as that. And because when we look at the Eucharist, we look at a person. It's not a thing. It's not a container. We're looking at the divine person, Jesus Christ himself, who mysteriously is in heaven at the right side of the Father, we are brought to him. It's not so much that Jesus leaves heaven to come to us rather than when we're in adoration, we're actually being brought to his presence at the right side of the Father. That's the true movement. And he's allowing us to enter that atmosphere of heaven in adoration in a very special way. We, I think it's the closest place on earth that we get to be like our brothers and sisters, saints in heaven, where they look upon the Lamb directly with their eyes. We look upon him directly, but with faith, but he is really there. Can I ask you a question? I think it's a perception breaking question or a reality. I've spent a lot of time meditating on the person of Jesus in the first century, and we've been blessed in our time with a lot of good art, like the Passion of the Christ, the Chosen series, that really helps to give us holy imagination. What's the difference between a Christian in the first century walking beside Jesus? I always liked this idea of Jesus walking with me to Jericho, or me walking with Jesus to Jericho and having this conversation where he's revealing my heart to me, he's healing me, he's loving me, or we're just being together in silence and just, you know, I know who, I know he's the Messiah in all of that. What's the difference between that walk, between Jerusalem and Jericho, and being in the presence of the Eucharist? So I will say that there's a difference, and there is not a difference. So there's not a difference in the sense that the same Jesus Christ, who were with the disciples in the Holy Land, in Galilee, is present utterly and completely, as the Church teaches us, body, blood, soul and divinity in the Eucharist. It's him, you know. Sometimes people get caught up on the word sacrament in Eucharist as if it can almost be a barrier, just think it's him.  And that is how my prayer began as a novice. Or even before I came to the Dominican Order, but in the novice, I was a loud time, saying many distractions were taken from me and I needed the help of that to settle into a deep life of prayer and just go, wow, Jesus, your hair, and believe like a child. And it's that faith that scatters the darkness. It's this is Jesus. Now, so there is a difference in the sense that he's just sacramentally present. So he's not present in the same way that he was with them, but that shouldn't be a barrier. It just means that it's a new way of him being present, but he's still being fully present as a person. He can, it's a way he can be present in a sense. While being in heaven. With every single living being wants to be present with him, where they can find the Eucharist. So we're coming to a break when we get back from the break, I want to just keep breaking these barriers and digging into these mysteries, because when you go on pilgrim, well, when you read the New Testament, you read how an apostle who is who is traveling through an area touches something, and then another person touches it and they get healed. Yes, there's this, there's this impregnation of matter and time and space. However, this great grace and mystery that happens with people who are not God and man. I want to talk, I want to dig into this people. I don't think we understand well, and I'm sure I don't as well, how it is that even just being in silence, that graces are flowing. There's something supernatural happening here that can only happen here in this context of us in Eucharist. And so we'll be right back. Let's go to the next one. Okay. You can do that from all. Gentlemen, I hope you're listening. I have a suggestion for you. And it's a very impassioned suggestion, because I know you love your wives, and I know you want to learn how to love them better. And I know that you want to be the best husband possible to your spouse, and you want to honor God, and you want to honor your household. And so I want to invite you to come to a marriage retreat, Divine Intimacy and Marriage Retreat, that Dan and I are leading. And why would I be speaking to the man? Because I think you're the key to the transformation of your marriage and your household more than anybody else. We know the data shows that. The data shows that just amazingly spiritual principles are clear about that. It's amazing. And I think my husband's amazing. And I think you would be so blessed listening to my husband speak about what it means to be a husband and what it means to be the husband that God is calling him to be in our household. And you can certainly see the fruit of his spiritual headship in our home. You can see it through this radio program. You can see it through spiritualdirection.com, through the Avala Institute, through Apostoli Via, through everything that you and I have invested the entirety of our lives to. Yeah, it comes in part because you're a man of prayer and because you listen to God. So I just I just think you're comfortable. I think you're wonderful. And I think the guys should come and listen to you. Well, that's very kind. But I do want to say I was going to joke as you were talking, but I'm trying not to interrupt you as a discipline. But we're not perfect. And that's the only thing I love. Thank you for saying that. It's very moving to me. I'm just going to look under the table and see if there's any alcohol at the next break. But I do appreciate it. But the the the thing about it is we're not we are broken and we we've come we've come to, I don't know, a functional wholeness. So we're still, you know, we're still we still go to confession. You know, we're not levitating. I mean, we're not. I just want to be careful that, you know, paint a picture of my husband's perfect and he's going to come and tell you how to get it all right. Because the opposite is really true. Jesus is perfect. We're focused on him. That's what that's the secret. That bears fruit. Amazing fruit. But how do you do that in marriage is the question. Right. And that's the thing. That's the thing is that what through our the brokenness of our story and our journey and what the Lord has done through for us and in and through us. We want to help you to get there, too. We want to love you. We want to serve you. This is not about us. It's about the Holy Spirit. I do I am crazy about my husband, but the truth is it's about the Holy Spirit and his design for your marriage. And I just think it's phenomenal. I've seen the fruit of it. I'm watching marriages be transformed. And so come join us. And you will be blessed. Your marriage will be blessed. Your wife is just going to think you're the bee's knees for giving that huge, huge, huge. For the guys who know this, you know, there's the secret program of points inventory. And if you're like depleted, most guys are like borrowing from other guys inventory. I don't know how you do that.  Can I say one more thing? Yeah. And then as you're kind of thinking of that, I want to give like three or four examples. Okay. Yeah. Go ahead. Okay. So one more thing is ladies. If you're the one that's listening and we have a lot of listeners all over the place, God be praised. You can just ask your husband, just say, Hey, you know, I want to save you shopping for Christmas and for my birthday. This would mean the world to me. Will you come away with me and come hang out with Dan and Stephanie and go to this divine intimacy and marriage thing? I'm hearing great things about it. It would make me really happy and try it. Yeah. You never know. So I saw just a few examples. A couple who hadn't been intimate for 20 years restored their intimacy to them. That's right. And we see them regularly and they're like glowing, which is awesome. A woman who had left the master bedroom came back. A woman who said, I'm leaving my husband and at the end of the weekend, decided not to leave. And then a man. I love this too. Because it's the full spectrum of premarades, difficult marriages, good marriages. A good marriage example, he said to his wife, I never knew there were so many ways that I could love you, which just kind of reignited. I don't know, reinforced, you know, an already very good marriage with and deepening their union together. So divine intimacy and marriage retreat. What's the date? November 3rd through the 5th in Hansville, Alabama. Amazing, amazing venue. We also have a second one if by chance you can't make the November 1, February 9th through the 11th. Same venue. Next year. Next year. So check it out. They're both at spiritualdirection.com forward slash events. You're not going to want to miss this. It'll sell out, so don't waste time. All right. We're on 12 and a half this second, this second segment. Welcome back to Divine Intimacy Radio. You're with Dan and Stephanie Burke and father Jesse Mango, not smelled, not spelled like mango fruit. That's mango if you're in Hispanic. Yeah, mango. I'm sorry, I'm fake. That's how we say it in Trinidad, mango. How do you say mango? Yeah, sorry. So it's not. So it's really this thing. Jesse mango. By the way, there's no mixing it up. If people want to find you, you also have something you do called heart reach. Do you want to tell them about that before we jump in? Yeah, so that's mainly on a WhatsApp group, but it gets those videos that I post nearly daily go up onto something called Dominican House of Prayer on YouTube. So just look up Dominican House of Prayer on YouTube. And you can see all the videos there for the last couple of years and also Father Ignatius Schweitzer, another Dominican from the eastern province. Who teaches for us? Who teaches for you guys. He's a friend. He's like omnipresent. He's everywhere. He's leading retreats all over the place and he does formation for a lot of different religious orders. And he puts up his retreats that he gives to the different monasteries throughout the states. And so if people want to do their own retreats, they can go and listen to one of the retreats on the Dominican House of Prayer. That's fantastic. So before the break, I set up this question to try to, I'm just trying to break through misperceptions or a lack of an build up faith. Why is it that someone could be in the incarnational reality of Jesus in the first century? Yes. In my view, one of the reasons why Mary is so extraordinary holy is because one, they share DNA. He was present. He was in her womb. But I have this belief that if I were in the first century and I was standing next to him, nothing transpiring that grace would be flowing in an extraordinary way. And I would only be able to touch you if you had faith. Yes. So again and again in the gospel, we see that people are close to him and he said, like the woman who touched me, power went out of me. Yeah. So you could be standing right in front of the tabernacle. You could be going to mass and your heart is closed and not disposed. And yes, it's still the best place to be because the grace is coming and trying to soften your heart and invite you. But unless you are prepared, unless you make that act of faith, you won't enter it more fully. Yeah. But if you go to adoration, you go to the holy mass with faith, hope and love, those are the main virtues of the spiritual life that open us up to God's transforming power. Faith first, the primacy of faith, but obviously love being the queen and the crown because its love is the actual union with God. Then God is transforming us as St. Paul says, in ways beyond our wildest imagination by this spirit, even this life in us that we cannot see, there's a divine life, a treasure and an earth and rare vessel that we will only fully appreciate when we go to heaven, what we've been carrying or who we've been on earth by baptism, by the life of grace. So, but Jesus is alive and active, you're right. He's alive and active in the holy Eucharist. And this analogy of gringing the sun, when you put yourself in the sun, you get a sun tan. You just put yourself there. You don't see it happening. But you dispose yourself. You make sure your skin is revealed and they took some work. But the sun and its adoration is like a spiritual radiation, sun tan, in the sense that Jesus is alive and active when we're present before him at an open heart. He's transforming us, again, as the scripture says, into glory, to glory. His face, you know. Now that takes great faith. But when it transforms me, it's transforming the whole church. We must remember the mystical body of Christ doctrine. That what happens to one happens to all. So we want to put the lights back on. We can do it for ourselves and others if we spend more time in adoration. Well, you're drawing grace into your heart, but into the hearts of all sorts of people. When you celebrate mass, or even the priests, you know, you don't know who is about to commit suicide. Yeah. And they're called back from that by light and grace. We don't know, like, there's so many scenes. Blessed Dina Belanger, great blessed from Canada. And who was at the time of Faustina both of them almost same revelations. They didn't even know each other. Faustina as well, Saint Faustina. They tell us what the Lord showed them, like all these souls on the precipice of losing their eternal life. And after an hour of adoration, where they were, how they were drawn back by the power of the pray. Now you could say, oh, this is nice pious talk. But these are great saints who have been given profound insight into the spiritual world. Yeah. So and one thing I would say, the advantage we have to those disciples in the early century is that blessed are those who have not seen. So there's a great blessing. Well, I would say so because think of it. Yeah. I mean, you said it. And Saint Thomas Aquinas says Jesus on the cross, it's hard to see his divinity on the cross, right? Yeah. He sees divinity when he was in Galilee doing all the miracles. But we don't even see his humanity. We look at something that looks like bread. Our senses betray us. But faith comes to see his faith. Faith, as Saint Thomas says, faith alone sees his faith. And so it's like, you're there. And because we believe that is highly meritorious for our soul. And that's why Saint Thomas Aquinas says that that's why the Lord has left us in his wisdom hidden. It's more meritorious to make an act of faith for the unseen Christ in the Eucharist. It's it's more meritorious. And actually it brings great glory. Yeah.  So God be praised and so for for the folks out there that, you know, because we've seen the data that's come out and we all know many, many people who have just lost hope. They've lost faith. They've lost the fervor that maybe they once had or they would have experienced. So for those that are listening that are going, you know, I don't know. This this sounds good, you know, and I'd like it to be true. But Father Jesse, how do I get faith when I have no faith? Because you were there. You went to a such a point where you say you would you would claim that you were an atheist. So how do you get there from where you are? First of all, faith is a gift. It's a grace from God. A grace God likes to give. And once again, I think that's key, right? Yeah. And that promises to give is the other key. And so if we are asking for the gift already, the Holy Spirit is birthing that designed my heart. So pay attention to that. If you pray for the gift of faith, you're already entering the realm of faith. And so first of all, pray. Ask God for faith. And if your life is in a state of, if you're not living a God day life, you're not living a state of sin, ask God to bring you out of it. Save me, God. Like Peter, Lord, save me. What did the Lord do immediately stretched out his hand? It's the same Lord who wants to do that for us. The next thing is pray. You know, some people say with Father Jesse, I don't experience much when I go to adoration. Well, then I say, well, how often do you go to adoration? Is it just once a week, just for 10 minutes? Is it, you know, the different stages to it and the life of prayer? We know that, right? There's a rarity. There's rhinitis. But I think that there's a special constellation that is given a neucristic adoration that you won't get in other forms of prayer because they're his body's present. And it's most appropriate relational for a way of him being present to us as us being human being, body to body. And so, as Theresa would say, or any of the great doctors on prayers, you want to learn about prayer? Pray and pray more and stick to it and get a friend who will hold you accountable and say, come, we're going to adoration because it's the perseverance that will bear fruit. And that's my experience. Maybe it's yours as well throughout the years. Jesus, there's a lot in the Eucharistic heart of Christ that he wants to reveal to us. Only fidelity. It's like the gospel, right? Jesus doesn't tell and reveal his intimacy to the disciples all at the beginning. The transfiguration came after many years of discipleship or many journeys. So the point is he will reveal himself in degrees to the Adora according to how generous they are to him and how much he will reveal the pearl of his own heart according to their fidelity. Key, key principle. I remember writing my first book. I read a book and there was a quote in it, Writers' Right. And so I started writing every single day and then I got good at it. And then I've written a ton of books since then. And it's like a dream to be able to serve the people this way. Prayers pray. People who pray pray. People who know how to pray pray. And that's a big thing. I would recommend Super Practical into the deep. I wrote a book on Lectio Divina. One of the things I think is not the greatest advice that it is. And I had a woman who I think is going to become a saint. I had a conversation with her named Michelle Dupont. And she was a focused missionary and she was, you know, they have a requirement where you spend an hour a day in adoration. She said she was extremely frustrated when we had this conversation. She's obviously passed away now. She said, I didn't know what to do. And so to get down to brass tacks of what to do, the first thing is just show up number one. And rest. Show up. Just sit and rest from the tumult of life. Right. Just show up and rest before Jesus.  I got a monkey mind. Yeah. And so you have to direct your thoughts in a particular way. So just take out the Gospel of John. You know, read into the deep. Take out the Gospel of John and read it and look up at the Lord. And you know, anything moves your heart of praise or or or forgiveness or anything. Say it or do it. But don't I think one big thing is don't go in going. I'm going to feel something. And and my success is whether or not I feel something right. That's that'll get you frustrated. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's a great principle of this prayer life spiritual. Great principle of spiritual life for prayer is that we don't go to pray for us. We go there to for the sake of God for the sake of his love to give him glory and to adore him. And the fruit of that often would be just strength and peace. Like even if we walk away with no peace. I often quote this about Mother Teresa of Calcutta who experienced such darkness, yet she knew that time of adoration was absolutely indispensable to her and her sisters for their life. When they committed to daily adoration, their vocations went up and she would say that the moment they did that is when their ministry exploded too. So the Lord gives you something in adoration, whether you feel it or not. And often you won't experience it till later on in the day. And often as you become a regular adorer and being with Christ there, you will then start to see the difference. Even if you feel it or not. And often people will feel the sweetness of being with the Lord. And I would say most adorers would feel that. Some don't because God may have a different cross for them in their prayer line. So we're running out of time. One book recommendation. What is it to help them get? Well, I would recommend the Bishop of the Abandoned Tabernacle. The Bishop of the Abandoned Tabernacle. Translated by Victoria Schneider. Published by Scepter. Publishing. And it's on The Life of Sin Manuel Garcia and his writing. It's fantastic. Dominican House of Prayer. Father Jesse. Mango. Mango. Mango. Mango. Mango. You got it right the first time. I did. All right. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for being with us, Father Jesse. It's been a real gift to have you on the show today. Steph, you want to take us out? No, I want to have a second show. So spiritualdirection.com. Yes. Head out to the spiritualdirection.com YouTube page and we'll get that there. Okay. So the editor, you can edit that out. So let's set it up for the editor the right way. So the good news is, Father is available for us to do a second show and we're going to do that out at spiritualdirection.com. So that's not good for the editor. Let's just end the show for the editor. Okay. But everybody's listening. They can do that. And then I'm a little tired today. So. Okay. So until next time, may the God of peace make you perfect in holiness. May he preserve you whole and entire spirit, soul, and body. You're approachable at the coming of our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen. Amen.  Sign up events, pages there, shop pages there. I told you about my new book, Finding Peace in the Storm, what it'll be, which will be out next month. And Books a Million and Barnes and Noble are picking up. So pray for that, because it'll be a powerful witness to people who are struggling. And then, what's the other thing I want to tell everybody about? Oh, on the YouTube page, a lot of you like it, but you don't subscribe. So subscribe and comment. We actually, I could use a crass word about how good we are at YouTube. And I would say historically really bad. But we're getting better, and we're trying to, we're even adjusting the format of this show, where we're trying to get off, always talking about in a certain way and get gas and things. But part of our success is you subscribing, telling your friends, helping us build the audience. And that'll encourage us. So please subscribe out there on our YouTube page, spiritualdirection.com. And we'll, we're going to sign off now. We'll be back on in a few minutes at spiritualdirection.com on YouTube. So we'll see you then.


Feedback is letting students know what they are doing correctly and where they can improve. It is critical to give students positive feedback, praise and encouragement motivate students and build confidence. The other type of feedback is telling students how they can improve. This helps them learn from their mistakes and make necessary changes. The teacher should be direct and specific so students know exactly what they have done well or where they need to improve. Feedback also needs to be given as soon as possible. Feedback gives the students the support they need to keep working until they succeed.


And Belarus marked on Saturday the Independence Day for the first time after last year's protest over the result of the presidential election. President Alexander Lukashenko laid down flowers at the World War II Victory Memorial and told the people at the ceremony that the future is in their hands. Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko on Friday, July 2nd ordered the closure of the border with Ukraine, seeking to block what he called an inflow of weapons to cool plotters detected by his security services. Western countries imposed sanctions on Belarus to polish it for the action and the European Union and Ukraine have also banned Belarus registered flights from entering their airspace. And heavy rain turned a scenic stream in central Japan into a raging river on Saturday after the area was lashed by heavy rain. In the nearby city of Atami, a landslide swept through houses, living 20 people missing. The rainfall deluge in the city since Friday has already exceeded the average July levels for both the Shizuka prefecture where Atami is located and neighboring Kanagawa prefecture according to the public broadcaster NHK.


My name is Agnes Keravo. I come from Uganda. I work for Food Rights Alliance in Bacom in Uganda. And we are working to say that the world is free from hunger and vegetation. And therefore land is a primary factor of production for food. That is the biggest motivation to come here. Land in Uganda is largely owned by the few. And unfortunately not many of these are actually farmers. Most smallholder farmers do not own land. And they are so constrained when they wish to pursue their ownership and access and user rights. So the subject of winning the fight against the corruption in the land sector speaks to the heart of the issue. But in our own perspective as Food Rights Alliance, we think that the issue of corruption in the land sector in Africa and in Uganda is not an issue of the absence of law or the absence of policy or institution. But for us we have a feeling and an experience that Africa and Uganda's land sector is over governed. There are so so many institutions, there are so many laws, there are so many regulations and they are parallel and conflicting, making the whole issue of access to land services, access to justice, very very complicated. And once the system is so complicated, if it becomes a spaghetti bowl, then it's a bleeding stalk for corruption. Therefore it is not an issue of the absence of law. It is actually the complexities within law and conflicting institutions and structures that are actually making the poor very badly. The second thing is, as we are talking about winning the war on corruption in the land sector in Africa, we need to understand that corruption is an aspect of power. If we are not willing to speak to power, if you are not willing to check power, if you are not willing to question power, then we are talking to ourselves. Actually the issue of power plus the issue of the complexities and conflicting laws, policies and institutions, it is just a habit of corruption. And either I get the power and get the land services or get justice, or if I do not have the power, I have to find means and very power to get the services and the justice that I want. But how many people in Africa can do that anyway? Not so many.