Doesn’t justify the breakdown in due process here, but does mean the headline is more than a little hyperbolic. It should be noted that the stories in the article are exactly that, one side’s story of what happened. They are unlikely to be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Blaming the victims, I see. The hyperbole is completely legitimate, every sentence he passed down is under a cloud now. In a strange twist, society is the victim as well. Officers of the court must never countenance even the appearance of a conflict of interest for fear of tainting justice. Now society can not distinguish the guilty from the innocent because due process was suborned. No one can safely make the claim any of the sentenced "got what they deserved". Let's add to that the essential fact that children were taken from parents, that people were coerced into giving up their rights to legal representation - these things are not contested btw - who pays for all of this? They are owed compensation to make them whole, and they can't be made whole because they were minors. Due process was suborned. There is no way to get around that. Every case that ever had a connection with this judge is completely unreliable. He was only able to get away with it for so long because no one who had a responsibility to ensure justice actually verified it was done. So he was not alone in complicity.
The “children” in this case were victimized by a lack of proper due process.
This is quite different from saying they were treated unfairly on a cosmic justice scale.
Let’s look at an example. Let’s say a man is convicted of and executed for a murder he did not commit. This was a failure of the justice system to properly handle his case. He has a legitimate right to complain about that as a miscarriage of justice.
But let’s also assume this same man had committed several other murder for which he was not arrested. He deserves to die for them, so to my mind thereby loses his right to claim that he was treated unjustly on the scale of cosmic justice. In fact, the element of poetic justice starts to creep in.
This is of course all theoretical, as humans don’t have access to knowledge about cosmic justice.
You are quite correct that this judge has tainted every single case in which he was involved. Which is why all of them are being re-examined, as they should be. IMO every benefit of doubt should go the child in each such case. Generous compensation should be given those who were mistreated.
My only point is that if a child would have received a similar sentence from another judge who was not corrupt, then that child has no right (on the cosmic justice scale) to claim he/she received an unfair sentence. Unfair trials often, indeed in America probably most of the time, produce a just result.