[Photo Credit: Mark Sardella / Flickr]
According to the Salem News, police received information about heroin being sold out of Watson’s apartment at 100 Bridge Street, and made some undercover purchases before obtaining a search warrant and raiding the premises. Inside the place, they found Watson and another man, Javier Pena-Abreu, sitting at a table on which there was reportedly a pile of heroin.
Pena-Abreu is no stranger to police encounters, and was free on a $20,000 bail resulting from another heroin-trafficking arrest last year. He invoked his right to remain silent. Watson, on the other hand, cooperated with police by showing them the remainder of the heroin in the apartment, totaling more than two ounces. Police allege that $10-15,000 of the drug was passing through the apartment on a weekly basis.
This was not the first time that Watson, or his apartment, had been touched by less-than-legal activities. In 2007, during the so-called “witch wars” over psychic licenses in Salem, Watson arrived home to discover a grisly scene. As was reported by the Salem News at the time,
Richard Watson said he went back to his Bridge Street apartment on the night of May 26 to a disturbing scene: his roommate, Sharon Graham, dressed in black, surrounded by four young men, also all in black, standing around a jar. Inside that jar was the eye of a raccoon, police say. And in two trash bags in Watson’s refrigerator was the rest of the critter, which had been dismembered.
Graham was one of the people who later pleaded guilty to leaving parts of that raccoon on the steps of two psychic shops. Watson was a witness in that case, and claimed at the time that Graham had pressured him to not testify.
However, this time, it was Watson caught by surprise. He and Pena-Abreu have different recollections of what was happening when they were discovered at a table piled with heroin. Watson has asserted that he was allowing Pena-Abreu to keep the drugs in the apartment as a favor, while not profiting from the dealing whatsoever. Pena-Abreu’s attorney, at the arraignment Monday, claimed his client was only there for a tarot reading, and had no involvement with the heroin. Only Pena-Abreu had money on his person, although it is not clear if it was heroin proceeds or cash for a reading.
Reverend High Priestess Lori Bruno of Our Lord and Lady of the Trinacrian Rose Church, where Watson was an ordained minister, issued a statement denouncing the news. She said, in part:
What I cannot stomach is one who would be a purveyor of death to the innocent. Therefore, after the news article I saw today and having also been directly informed about this, I and our clergy counsel have come to the decision to revoke the ministerial credentials of a trusted minister to humanity, Richard Watson. It is with much sadness that I do this, because I trusted Richard Watson to carry on the creed of our people.
I still hope that may be there is no truth in this, but as it stands right now, to protect our people, I have to remove him from clergy status. I hope that he is innocent of this, but should he not be, this revocation will stand.
Heroin is a growing problem in Massachusetts, and nationwide. The supply of the drug has increased since the United States took the Taliban, whose oppressive policies included a near total shutdown of opium poppy cultivation, out of power in Afghanistan. At the same time, drug manufacturers developed stronger and stronger prescription drugs to manage high levels of pain, many of which are opium derivatives themselves. The powerful prescriptions created more dependence among legitimate users, and also wended their way into the black market, increasing addiction.
Attempts to curb prescription drug abuse, together with the now greater supply of heroin, has led to more addictions and more overdose deaths. In 2014, Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick declared this to be a public health emergency, with at least 185 suspected heroin deaths in the prior six months and 363 opioid-related deaths in 2011, the most recent year for which figures were available for that broader metric.
Courtesy of Flickr’s jimmywayne
Another Salem witch, Sandra Wright, had a somewhat nuanced reaction to the news. Wright is a third-generation Salem resident who is High Priestess of Elphame coven. Speaking only for herself, she commented to The Wild Hunt, “Wiccan priesthood comes with responsibilities” Wright said:
People of the Priesthood of the Craft of the Wise should possess leadership ability. Not everyone is cut out to lead. . . . and they need to display integrity, wisdom, and most of all, compassion. Compassion is the one that can be hardest to maintain, especially when lines are crossed. So I myself failed to show compassion to Rick Watson when this story broke because I believe that even though he claims he was just allowing others to deal drugs out of his apartment and that he himself was not dealing the drugs, he was allowing people to poison the community he claimed to serve. He was serving as a conduit for an epidemic that has taken lives left and right in this city and the surrounding area. And if he was actually dealing the drugs, he is even more directly responsible for ruining the lives of others, nevermind his own. And for this reason, I find myself hard pressed to offer compassion.
At the same time, Wright said, “my compassion kicks in” as a reaction to the Trinacrian Rose Church removing his credentials … and the local community trying to disavow him as a Wiccan. And, as for the broader community reaction, she observed:
And now everyone … he was close to is scrambling to distance themselves from him, and distance him from Wicca, because they don’t want to be associated with a drug dealer. They are making him a pariah because they don’t want the rest of the world to think that Wicca sanctions this kind of behavior. Of course it doesn’t! No faith of any value would approve of capitalizing on the addicted and afflicted. Anyone who thinks Wicca has anything to do with Rick’s decisions doesn’t understand Wicca. Like the Pensacola murders, the mundane media is trying to sensationalize the story by including the buzzwords they think will rile people up. Well, we are riled.
Another Salem witch and High Priestess, Penny Cabot had only these few words. “I feel that the shameful situation speaks for itself, no words are needed,” she said.
Watson’s bail was set at $50,000, but Pena-Abreu’s was set at ten times that. In addition, his bail in the prior case was revoked, so he won’t be getting out of jail before the September 2 status hearing in any case. We will continue to follow the story as it unfolds.
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As a Witch who has lived in Salem for over 20 years and seen all this city has to offer, both good and bad, this saddens me in the extreme. Whether he was actually dealing himself, or “simply” allowing someone else to use his home to do so is irrelevant. His actions made him a willing participant in the heroin trade and deserves every part of the bitter harvest he has sown. That said I also hope he is one day able to rise from this a better, stronger, and more wise person.
It now falls to the rest of us in the Pagan, Wiccan, and Witch communities to once again do what we can to prevent sensationalist media from conflating the actions of a single member of the Pagan community with the community as a whole. I must say that if something like this had to happen, perhaps the best place for it to happen IS in Salem. Our police department is exceptionally conscientious when dealing with anything that involves a member of the Pagan community.
Had this happened anywhere else I am certain the headlines would have been far more sensational, proclaiming “Witchcraft heroin ring busted in Whereverville” rather than “Pair charged after Salem heroin raid.” The fact that neither our police department nor our local newspaper are making that big a deal over Watson’s connection to Wicca speaks volumes. And how it was mentioned in the paper was no different than had he been a local Baptist minister, Jewish Rabbi, or Catholic priest.
I am glad a serious drug has, in small part, removed from our local streets. I am saddened that a member of my community… and my own neighborhood, in fact!…are involved. I am extremely grateful that the common sense and professionalism of the Salem Police Department will keep this from becoming yet another anti-Pagan sideshow like the unfortunate situation in Pensacola Fl.
There can be no compassion for those who dabble in the sale of such poison and who profit from the misery of other. Even if he simply let someone else store it under his roof he’d still be responsible for that much.
I can come up with some compassion for what I think I see in Rev. Watson: a focus so tight on ministering to the damaged person in his presence as to be oblivious to the danger that person is to the larger community. (I say “his” because I’ve only seen this in men.) I used to have that focus, and one of my damaged people died doing the same thing for other damaged people. Like Kelly NicDruegen I just hope Watson emerges from this episode with a bit more balance in this area.
I’ve seen similar things happen, though not to any such extent as *this,* …and really it’s only even worse judgment considering he’d been in the midst of other seriously-damaging-to-the-community shenanigans before and was carrying a clergy title. We’re supposed to be about *wisdom* and this isn’t it, even if he was trying to help someone in a jam, that wouldn’t be the way, nor would this other accused fellow seem to have returned any such loyalty.
I’m not necessarily considering this a community overreaction, considering. At best it’s colossally stupid when others are at stake and being harmed, And the other possibilities get worse from there.
a focus so tight on ministering to the damaged person in his presence as to be oblivious to the danger that person is to the larger community.
I actually did not thought about that. You may have a point here.
But still, there’s a difference between ministering to ´damaged´ people and directly and indirectly damaging this kind of people. It can be okay to be friendly with drug abusers, but one does not need being friendly with people abusing drug abusers.
Great! The community condemns before he’s even convicted in court. If true, the man has a medical problem. Why are Americans so judgemental… and paranoid?
With all due respect for the law, you cannot blame this man for deaths. What is to blame is the ridiculous drug laws of this country and the world we live in, and partly stemming from this lack of education for responsible use of drugs. Heroin is not something to go to, I abhore I.V. drug use and unnecessary extracts of plants which are effecitve by themselves and have been used for millenia, like the opium poppy. However, some people need healing be it for emotional problems or actual physical pain, and it is not an act of good conscience for any human, including a Wiccan, to blame these people for that.
No one blames the drug users in here.
One blames the people (Watson potentially included) that unethically profit from drug users and lead them to more suffering.
The former group deserves compassion. The second, none at all.
All these stories about drugs in the comment made me think about this famous french song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ4dYceF3fA
Velvet Underground’s is better.
https://youtu.be/skxi4NTqFlw
Not a bad song indeed!
Two comments:
1. I find the comments in here accusing this man of causing deaths and sewing a “bitter harvest” to be missing the mark. The fact of the matter is that addiction will exist, and those who are addicts will fulfill their craving wherever and however. If we castigate those who sell heroin for dealing in death, then by all means let us take our torches and pitchforks to the liquor stores and supermarkets, whose alcoholic wares cause untold agony and millions of deaths in far greater numbers than heroin.
The problem here is not participating in the underground economy, the problem is actually the atrocious way in which our country uses the “war on drugs” as an excuse for our abominable economic and mental health systems. And every one of you excoriating this person as immoral has bought the story told to you, hook, line and sinker. Watson is no more immoral that the fellow from whom you buy the bottle of ale or liquor.
2. My second issue stems from the story itself, in which the reporter attributes the growth in heroin usage to taking the Taliban “out of power” in Afghanistan. First of all, by almost all accounts, the Afghan Taliban has hardly been rousted, much less removed from the power structure of that country. Second, fundamental economics would tell us that there must be a demand before there is a supply, and after 40 years of a losing “war on drugs,” we ought to realize that we are fighting the wrong war.
The real war we should be fighting is the war against social isolation and alienation, the war against those who insist on gutting the health care system for profit, and the most fundamental war of all, against economic inequality; not surprisingly, all of those ills have risen in tandem with the increase in heroin usage.
Lastly, though I am posting anonymously, I want to make it absolutely clear that I have no connection whatsoever to Watson. I have never met him or corresponded with him. Nor have I any connection to this case, the town of Salem, or any other salient matter of this story.
I just think that the people in this section who are ready to draw and quarter Watson upon a guilty verdict should spend a little time polishing their mirror and asking themselves how well thought-out their response was, and how much they were simply parroting mainstream conservative American thought.
Addiction will not exist if no one’s there to sell the junk. Please stop defending criminal types. Dealers aren’t harmless pharmacists. Yes there are a lot of problems related to legal drugs but comparing that to heroin traffic is senseless and offensive.
Especially ain’t gonna fly on the North Shore. Heroin’s been an issue up there for decades, really since the fisheries went down, etc.
“Addiction will not exist if no one’s there to sell the junk.”
That’s not how addiction actually works. I’ve worked with addicts as a professional mental health counselor (for transparency’s sake, I am not an addict myself so much of what I’m speaking from comes from my clients’ feedback and experiences.). An addict will always find something, even if it’s something legal like alcohol or inhalants. Yes, most addicts have preferred substances, but if you take the substance away they will generally find a substitute. That’s why you end up with alcoholics with no money stealing mouthwash from the drug store and drinking that.
It’s not about the substance itself; it’s about the very physical nature of addiction itself. The vast majority of addicts I served had significant trauma early in life, and most had untreated or under-treated mental illnesses that they were self-medicating. They became dependent on the drugs they used as a way to cope with these problems to the point where they were literally incapable of anything else. It’s not something they can just walk away from when the supply runs out–it is a part of their basic ability to function and how their brains work.
That’s why addiction is so difficult to fight, and why many addicts who have been clean for years still think of themselves as “addicts in recovery”, not “former addicts”. A person can still relapse after twenty years clean. For many, it’s a daily fight to go against something that likely affected how their brains developed and that is a constant background noise in their lives.
I see, I had no idea about that. But it surely cannot help to have ´preferred´ substance readily available?
You would think so, wouldn’t you? On the other hand, look at what happened during U.S. Prohibition in the 1920s–when people were unable to get alcohol legally, they sometimes resorted to bootlegged liquor that was often cut with poisons like wood alcohol, or they tried making their own and again poisoned themselves. Because heroin and other street drugs aren’t legal, people sometimes get bad batches cut with poisonous substances, and often resort to crime in order to get their next fix.
I grew up with the War on Drugs. I got all the D.A.R.E. propaganda in schools and anti-drug commercials on T.V. in the 1980s. Now as an adult, all I see is the government throwing money at arresting addicts and dealers, rather than putting more money toward addiction treatment and, more importantly, addressing poverty, a lack of mental health support, and other social problems that can exacerbate addiction rates. Getting drugs off the streets does no good if the system that creates addiction isn’t improved.
i totally agree. Drug use is not only the result of individual initiative and while I still think dealers who dabble in hard drugs deserve jail time it is as if not more important to provide support for the victims of these drugs.
I am no where near Salem. However, I am a caregiver. If you are a person who suffers from debilitating, chronic pain, and you have been cut off from pain meds or are one of those folks who can’t take them due to gastric issues or even allergies to synthetic codeine and the like, H may be all that our miserly, productivity oriented society has left for you. Having said that, I am also aware a lot of people who are using it, aren’t those people. We need first of all legal marijuana in all states, Medical for patients who need it covered by insurance, and to lift the stigma on needing pain medicine. we need to stop valuing the person by what they create or produce and just value the person for being a person. I never met this guy and have no clue if he was out for a buck or was selling to the sick and dying… but well, just sayin.
I don’t think people realize how much of the current epidemic was produced by the greed and reactionary thinking of the pharmaceutical and medical establishments. From the late 90s up until a couple years ago, doctors were giving out drugs like Oxycontin for mild backaches and large quantities of Vicodin for almost any ache and pain at all. The pharm companies were promoting that to the hilt. Nobody paid any heed to the fact that oxy in particular was creating dependency and addiction every bit as strong as heroin and worse in some ways. At the same time, the party circuit idiots, as they always do, took it to irresponsible extremes. If two a day are good for pain, grinding and slamming 15 must be better.
Lots of young or relatively young people croaked. So then the medical matra swung all the way past the other extreme, so that now opioids are never justified for anything outside of maybe hospice. I’ve seen people sent home from abdominal surgery and told that tylenol is adequate. People with chronic intractable pain are basically SOL. They better hope the “recommended” dose works, because now adequate pain relief is what the DEA, insurance companies and pharmacies tell you it is.
Are patients turning to the black market for relief? I don’t know. Probably not in vast numbers, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some do. I would if I was left to rot by the medical establishment. I don’t suspect heroin dealers are doing it out of some calling to a healing ministry the way many of the weed folks are. On the other hand, predatory and opportunistic heroin dealers could not exist but for the insane Drug War and prison industries. They are all equally parasitic and profit from suffering and addiction.
While I agree that the “war on drugs” (“you can’t call it a war, wars end” -The Wire) is insane, you’re putting a very sensational spin on this that isn’t really true. It isn’t true that oxycontin was handed out like candy “up till a few years ago”, and it isn’t true that people with chronic intractable pain are “SOL” today. *As* someone with chronic intractable pain, who is networked with other people with similar conditions, I can say it was easier to get necessary medication and now it’s much harder. Not impossible, but a lot harder. The DEA has been ridiculous, response to the DEA (especially by corporate pharmacies) has often been utterly ridiculous. I’ve had a prescription refused by a pharmacist because he “wasn’t comfortable” with it. Note: he did not ask what I was prescribed for, he did not check my long and exemplary record as a patient, he did not call my doctor. He just said “not comfortable” and that was that– luckily my doctor isn’t as strict with sticking to one pharmacy or I’d be screwed. But it’s not every doctor everywhere “leaving people to rot”, that’s simply not true.
Nor, to the original article, is it true that legitimate patients have anything to do with the “epidemic” that the DEA is spouting on about. Only a small minority of legitimately prescribed patients ever misuse their medication, and the vast majority of those patients had a preexisting addiction problem. I am tired of this being blamed on pain patients, our prescribers, or even the pharmaceutical companies that have come up with more options to manage pain. The “powerful prescriptions” are not some kind of fantasy evil potion, this article reads like it buys lock stock and barrel into DEA propaganda.
A “purveyor of death to the innocent?” Pardon me for laughing, but I doubt very much that anybody who purchased heroin from him was ignorant of what they were doing. My personal opinion is that drugs like heroin are a poor choice of a recreational activity, but also that it’s none of our business how adults choose to abuse themselves.
Everyone’s free to do whatever they want, but if we let people hurt themselves and brush it off as a perfectly neutral act of ´personal freedom´ I think we are not doing anyone a service.
So if I understand you correctly, we are doing people a disservice by permitting them to abuse themselves in a way that has no impact on ourselves personally? Following that line of logic, it follows that we should limit one’s ability to purchase and consume low-quality food (junk food, fast food, etc.). Perhaps not more than a a handful of French fries permitted more often than once every two weeks. Or not more than one Baconator every six months. Complete proteins are easily obtained through combinations of grains and legumes such as rice and lentils.
Same for carbonated beverages: the acid destroys enamel, and the sweeteners (artificial or not) wreak havoc on the body’s ability to know when it is full and should stop eating. Fizzy drinks are arguably the largest contributor to the obesity epidemic, so by your logic it makes sense that we shouldn’t allow people to harm themselves. I personally know a man who developed type 2 diabetes and temporarily went blind as a result of drinking too much Mountain Dew.
There are people literally eating and drinking themselves to death, and digging their own graves with forks and knives. Don’t open the door to a discussion about doing people some great service through governing what they can choose to do with their own bodies, because I guarantee you won’t like where that takes you.
Nicely put, James.
Well, regarding this kind of unhealthy eating, I have, as a European, some rather non-libertarian views about it.
Also, to tied in with another recent article of TWH, I do believe that we are all connected some way or another. Someone I don’t know personally destroying themselves will have repercussion that I might very well feel. And even if I did not, other would. Misery, in all of its form doesn’t really have positive influence on people, on society, on family, etc… While it is indeed a personal choice to destroy or hurt oneself, it is foolish to think that there won’t be any repercussions beyond the individual. No man is an island after all.
The state makes a very poor parent. If you’re willing to let the state make decisions about what you can do with and to your own body, then I’d love to hear what you think about a woman’s right to contraception and elective abortion.
You are derailing the conversation, I won’t even go there. But anyways…
The state might not be the best structure in the world but there are people out there who just cannot fed off for themselves. I’ve seen such types in my younger days, quite a few. The state is only as bad or bad as the people allow it to be. I’d cut you some slack because I do sense that you might be from the US where the situation with the federal government and the states is somewhat different from Europe but total disengagement from other people’s welfare seems somewhat selfish to me. And if the state isn’t as such wholeheartedly concerned by its citizens happiness, it still has some kind of responsibility to ensure that they don’t delve into utter misery.
To answer Kenofloken, you have a good point as well, but still, if you go bungee-jumping in Syria, you are as irresponsible as a hard-drug user. Such behavior should be discouraged if possible and not be glamorized like it often is as you said.
Neither James nor afaik anyone else says there’d be no consequences. James is talking practically about personal freedom: There is a slippery slope between the personal infringement you accept as applied to someone else, and the infringement you would not accept on yourself.
Not only do we not stop people from harming themselves in most contexts, we actually celebrate it. Every day there are stories of people who die taking insane risks – mountain climbing, base jumping, racing, crossing oceans alone in tiny boats, being war correspondents in areas where death or kidnapping is virtually inevitable. We almost never judge them harshly or propose to ban their pursuits. We think it’s admirable that they “died doing what they love.” In most cases, what they’re doing is functionally no different from drug abuse. They’re chasing the exact same neurotransmitter bursts.
I have to say to those who defend this man that yes, some of you have points. From a strictly personal perspective I happen to believe strongly that drugs should be legalized, and why in creation medical marijuana is Not available I cannot understand and feel is a true crime. All that said the point is that dealing in this drug Is Illegal. It Is Against The Law Of The Land That This Man Lives In! You don’t have to agree with the law, and feel free to pour your heart felt efforts into changing the laws in just and legal ways, but if you are a citizen of and live in a country, I feel passionately the laws of that country should be respected. (And if you truly cannot abide by their dictates then do all in your power to move to a country who’s laws you Can respect!) And just because there are those, even members of your own government, who do not always abide by this practice themselves does not in anyway justify others not doing so.
My two cents worth. (Or should inflation make that a nickel?)
Better make it a dime bag’s worth for this discussion! 🙂