Cross Posted at Legal Schnauzer
The corrupt environment that has been at the heart of my reporting for four-plus years now has helped produce a serial child molester. That's how ugly things have gotten here in Shelby County, Alabama.
Daniel M. Acker Jr., a retired elementary-school teacher in Alabaster, has been charged with four counts of sexual abuse and is being held in the Shelby County Jail. According to press reports, Acker has confessed to molesting more than 20 girls during his 25-year career.
From Don Siegelman to Paul Minor to Julian Assange, we have reported on legal cases with national and international implications. But this blog started largely because of a blatant cheat job my wife and I experienced from a lawsuit filed against me in a property-related matter by a criminally inclined neighbor named Mike McGarity. It all took place in the Shelby County Courthouse--in the judicial hellhole of Columbiana, Alabama--where pretty much all public officials are white, conservative, Republican, and (best I can tell) corrupt.
What does the Daniel Acker Jr. case have to do with the culture of corruption that I have witnessed first hand? It has everything to do with it. In fact, an environment of white/conservative privilege wound up "enabling" a guy who had shown signs of being a child molester for roughly two decades.
Acker Jr.'s father, Daniel M. Acker Sr., is a long-time member of the Shelby County Commission. I wrote just last week about the commission, the Shelby County Sheriff's Department, and their roles in a bogus warrant on drug charges that was issued against a black minister from Montevallo.
I was not surprised that Kenneth Earl Dukes was a victim of what amounts to racial profiling in Shelby County. And I'm not surprised that Daniel M. Acker Jr.'s unsavory activities were more or less covered up for about 20 years because he has strong ties to the county's white, conservative power structure.
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