We have an update from a Montreal newspaper on Dennis Markuze, the raging spammer who yap-yap-yapped at me and many others for over a decade. He’s free, he’s employed, he’s been ordered to abstain from participating in online discussions. That’s the good part; I also hear now and again about an occasional Mabus-like rant appearing in some obscure forum on the internet, so he might be breaking the strict wording of his orders, but at least the deluge has been dammed.
I am bothered by one thing. It sounds like his trial didn’t do him justice: he blamed everything on drug and alcohol addiction, the court agreed with him, and all of his post-trial treatment has been directed towards his addictions.
“Since the therapy team at (Freedom House) does not have the competence necessary to make a psychiatric diagnosis, it seems to us that (Markuze) absolutely needs a follow up after he leaves the centre,” Proulx wrote.
“He sometimes makes remarks that leave us perplexed.”
I’m perplexed, too. His past behaviors did not seem to be the product of being drunk — they weren’t impulsive, they were planned and obsessive. So he wasn’t actually diagnosed or treated for psychiatric problems? That’s a body of possible causes for his behavior that weren’t examined or treated in the rush to pin the blame on the simplest explanation.