Issue 104 – May 2012

S.M.A.R.T
(Stop Mind control And Ritual abuse Today)
P. O Box 1295, Easthampton, MA 01027-1295 USA E-mail: SMARTNEWS@aol.com
Home page:  http://ritualabuse.us/

Issue 104 – May 2012

The purpose of this newsletter is to help stop secretive organizations and groups from abusing others and to help those who allege they have been abused by such organizations and groups. This newsletter is not a substitute for other ways of recovering from ritual abuse. Readers should use caution while reading this newsletter. If necessary, make sure other support systems are available during and after reading this newsletter.

Important: The resources mentioned in this newsletter are for educational value only. Reading the books cited may or may not help your recovery process, so use caution when reading any book or contacting any resource mentioned in this newsletter. Some may have a religious or other agenda that may be separate from your own recovery process. Others may have valuable information on the Masons and other organizations, but have triggers or be somewhat sympathetic to those organizations.  Unless explicitly stated otherwise, the views expressed in this newsletter constitute expressions of opinion, and readers are cautioned to form their own opinions and draw their own conclusions by consulting a variety of sources, including this newsletter. Resources listed, quoted and individual articles, etc. and their writers do not necessarily support all or any of the views mentioned in this newsletter. Also, the views, facts and opinions mentioned in this newsletter are solely the opinions of the authors and are not necessarily the opinions of this newsletter or its editor.

Copyright 2012 – All rights reserved.   No reproduction of any material without written permission from the editor and individual authors.

SMART wants to thank all those that have contributed resource information to the newsletter.

The Survivorship Ritual Abuse and Child Abuse 2012 Conference – Our Healing Journey: Past, Present, Future – Two days of survivor and professional workshops, a safe room, great price, good food, safe environment, a chance to mingle with others who share your experience, a chance to move the movement forward. May 19 – 20, 2012 Survivorship will hold a conference at Executive Inn & Suite 1755 Embaracadero Oakland, CA 94606 The keynote speaker will be: Caryn Stardancer http://survivorship.org/2012conference.html

Special discounts are available this spring for those that register and pay early for the SMART conferences.

August 2012 Ritual Abuse Conference for Survivors  http://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/

August 2012 Ritual Abuse Conference for Clinicians http://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/ritual-abuse-and-extreme-abuse-clinicians-conference-2012

CD information on the 2011 ritual abuse conference information is at http://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/2011-conference/

Smart-Talks Podcast Blog
This is a collection of talks given at the annual SMART conference in Connecticut. Speakers present to tell their stories of their experiences with ritual abuse and/or mind control, their experiences treating patients with such backgrounds, or to raise awareness of the various issues surrounding recovery from ritual abuse/mind control of efforts made to raise awareness with the general public of this issue. http://smart-talkspodcastblog.blogspot.com/

This issue contains information on the Powell Family Tragedy, Josh Powell, Steven Powell, Susan Powell, Miramonte Elementary School, Edgar Friedrichs Jr., Tender Care Learning Center, Matthew K. Byars, Jerry Sandusky, Penn State Abuse Scandal, John Wayne Gacy, online pedophile network, Church Puts Legal Pressure on Abuse Victims’ Group, SNAP, Dutch Church Accused of Castrating Young Men, Philadelphia Catholic Clergy Abuse Trial, Clergy Abuse Cases, Fugitive Priests, Boy Scouts Abuse Case, T.J. Lane, underage forced prostitution, Village Voice – Backpage.com, Hollie Greig case, Foreign Exchange Students Sexual Abuse Case, Children Removed from Texas Home, Survivorship Ritual Abuse and Child Abuse 2012 Conference, ritual abuse of children, When the Devil Knocks, Cheryl Rainfield, West Memphis Three, Satanic Ritual Abuse, Military and Government Experimentation Lawsuit, MK-ULTRA, Bluebird, Artichoke, Mexican Family Accused of Human Sacrifices, Santa Muerte, child abuse, trauma information, pedophilia, Child abuse and neglect costs, SYBIL in her own words, Shirley Mason, MPD, child abuse consequences, brain studies, dissociative disorders and abuse, Public Secrecy About Child Sexual Abuse, Violence Against Women, Bradley Manning, R.A. Dickey, Rapists, Vanessa Williams

Resources and Information    
Please note: Listing of these resources does not necessarily constitute our endorsement of them. They are for educational value only and some may be heavy for survivors to read. Some of the conferences listed may not necessarily be safe for all survivors. S.M.A.R.T. recommends always bringing a support person to all conferences. If you are a survivor of mind control and/or ritual abuse, S.M.A.R.T. recommends that you try to bring a support person that is familiar with mind control techniques.

Legal Information

Powell Family Tragedy

Powell Family Tragedy – Josh Powell was alleged to have killed his wife and children. His father was reported to be obsessed with Josh’s wife Susan. Records show that Josh had behavioral problems as a child and threatened his mother with a knife. This page also details allegations against Steven Powell, Josh Powell’s father. Please note that this page describes violent crimes. http://natrcoalition.org/links/powell-family-tragedy/

Josh Powell Told Sons He Had ‘Surprise’ For Them, Social Worker By CHRIS CUOMO, HARRY PHILLIPS and COLLEEN CURRY TACOMA, Wash. Feb. 9, 2012

Josh Powell told his sons he had a “big surprise” for them as they ran toward his home Sunday, just moments before he attacked them with a hatchet and then blew them up, social worker Elizabeth Griffin-Hall told ABC News today. “He caught my eye, his shoulders were slumped. He had a sheepish look,” Griffin-Hall told “20/20” in an exclusive interview. “He just shrugged his shoulders and slammed the door.”

Griffin-Hall said she had been taking the boys, Charles, 7, and Braden, 5, on supervised visits to Powell’s house for three months. Powell, who was the sole suspect in his wife Susan Cox’s disappearance in 2009, had lost custody of the children in September and lost an appeal to get his children back just four days before he decided to kill them.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/josh-powell-told-sons-surprise/story?id=15549745

Charlie and Braden Powell: Family, Teachers Remember Powell Boys At Tacoma Funeral By RACHEL LA CORTE   02/12/12 TACOMA, Wash. More than a thousand people mourned the deaths of Charlie and Braden Powell at a public funeral Saturday, nearly a week after the young boys’ father killed them and himself in a gas-fueled blaze….The boys’ father, Josh Powell, was in the middle of a custody battle with Cox when he torched his rental home in Graham last Sunday.

Josh Powell was a person of interest in his wife’s disappearance in Utah two years ago, and prosecutors consider the fire an admission that he killed her. Cox gained custody of the children more than five months ago after police arrested Josh Powell’s father, Steve, on voyeurism and child pornography charges. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/12/charlie-and-braden-powell-funeral_n_1271692.html

Josh Powell Childhood

Josh Powell Threatened His Mother With Knife, ’90s-Era Court Documents Allege By ALICE GOMSTYN , CHRIS CUOMO , GERRY WAGSCHAL, BROOKE STANGELAND and JOE RHEE Feb. 9, 2012

Josh Powell, the husband of a missing Utah woman who killed himself and his two young sons last week, was a disturbed adolescent who threatened and hit his mother, according to 1992 court documents obtained by ABC News.

The documents, filed during the divorce of Josh Powell’s parents in Washington state, Steven and Terrica Powell, include several statements by Terrica Powell describing her son’s disturbing behavior.

Terrica Powell wrote that her son once tried to commit suicide and also threatened her with a butcher knife. On other occasions, he and one of his brothers pushed and hit her, she wrote….

Josh Powell was the only named person-of-interest in Susan Powell’s disappearance, but he was never charged. He continually denied involvement in his wife’s disappearance and later moved himself and his sons to live with his father, Steven Powell — Terrica Powell’s ex-husband — in Washington state.

The couple’s two sons were placed in the custody of Susan Powell’s parents after Steven Powell was arrested on charges of voyeurism and child pornography in September 2011. Steven Powell has denied the charges. A judge ruled earlier this month that Josh Powell could not have custody of his sons until he underwent a psycho-sexual evaluation. http://abcnews.go.com/US/josh-powell-threatened-mother-knife-90s-era-court/story?id=15544558#.TzXqXVFH6c8

Powell Family Tragedy: A Timeline of Events ….In an interview with “Good Morning America” Steven Powell (father of Josh Powell) makes new claims that he had a flirtatious relationship with his daughter-in-law that was “a little beyond the pale.”

“Father-in-law – daughter-in-law flirting with each other, maybe some sexual touching or whatever,” Steven Powell said of the relationship that he developed with his son’s wife, adding that he started to fall in love with her, and stated, “there’s no question in my mind that the feelings were mutual.”….

Sept. 22, 2011: Steven Powell is charged with using a telephoto lens to take photos of two young girls in the bathroom of a neighboring house. The photos, which were found during the August search of his home, are among thousands he secretly took of women’s buttocks and breasts, according to charges filed against him. Powell was charged with 14 counts of voyeurism and one count of child pornography and held on $200,000 bail.

Josh Powell is named a “subject” in the child porn investigation, according to assistant Attorney General for Washington John Long.

Susan Powell’s parents file to gain custody of the two boys in court the following day…..
Sept. 28, 2011: Josh and Susan Powell’s two boys are ordered by a Washington court to remain in the custody of her parents Chuck and Judy Cox, because they had been living in a dangerous home environment with sexually explicit material, and because of the possibility that Josh Powell participated in the voyeurism and child pornography charges against his father. He is, however, granted visitation rights with his boys.    http://abcnews.go.com/US/powell-family-tragedy-timeline-events/story?id=15520239#.TzXrTFFH6c-

Powell’s story: cruelty, abuse from an early age – A look at the divorce file of Josh Powell’s parents shows extreme discord between the parents over everything from religion to pornography. And both parents had concerns about Josh. The Salt Lake Tribune; and The Associated Press February 10, 2012

Long before Josh Powell killed himself and his sons, the pages of his parents’ divorce file portrayed him as a seriously troubled teen who attempted suicide, killed pet gerbils, once threatened his mother with a butcher knife and early on adopted his father’s allegedly disparaging view of women.
As an adult, Powell appears to have repeated in his own marriage to Susan Cox Powell some of the same emotionally abusive behavior he witnessed growing up, according to a story in The Salt Lake Tribune….Court files show the divorce of Steve and Terrica Powell involved not only serious conflicts over parenting and religion, but allegations of mental unfitness, pornography, polygamy and even witchcraft, The Tribune reported.

A tug of war ensued over the children, who at the time ranged in age from 18 to 7. Josh, the second-oldest child, was 16. In 1992 court filings, Steve claimed his wife, who studied herbs and natural healing, had mixed a New Age mysticism with Mormon beliefs in a way that amounted to practicing “witch craft and devil worship.” Terrica responded that Steve’s interest in pornography, which he shared with their sons, had corrupted him, the newspaper said, quoting court files….
In the divorce case, Terrica told the court her husband’s parenting was offensive. He subjected Josh in particular to overly harsh discipline, she said. “For years, he pointedly attacked Josh very frequently, nearly every day for a time,” she wrote. Steve acknowledged Josh was a challenge.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2017479417_powell11m.html

Josh Powell Update: Documents report Powell killed pets, threatened mother with knife as a teen By Crimesider Staff February 13, 2012  (CBS) PUYALLUP, Wash. – New information about Josh Powell’s past came to light last week when the Salt Lake Tribune newspaper reported that documents from Powell’s parents’ divorce two decades ago portray the then-16-year-old as seriously troubled.

According to the Tribune, the documents state that a teenage Powell had tried to commit suicide, threatened his mother with a butcher knife, and killed pet gerbils. Powell and his two sons were found dead in his home on Feb. 5. Powell reportedly attacked the boys with a hatchet then set the home on fire. Powell had been a suspect in the disappearance of his wife, Susan, who has been missing since December 2009.  On Friday, police found a comforter stained with blood in a storage unit rented by Powell, reported CBS affiliate KIRO. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57376765-504083/josh-powell-update-documents-report-powell-killed-pets-threatened-mother-with-knife-as-a-teen/

Josh Powell Allegations

Murder-suicide dad Josh Powell had cartoon sex, incest images on computer  February 18, 2012 Associated Press OLYMPIA, Wash. –  Three weeks before Josh Powell killed himself and kids in a violent inferno, Utah authorities disclosed to social workers for the first time that his computer once contained some 400 images of cartoon sex and incest.

Investigators had initially told Washington state officials that there were only a half-dozen images, seized in 2009, but the social worker tasked with keeping the kids safe sent off a note to a psychologist saying “it is now clear there are many more images than initially indicated.”
The psychologist who had previously praised Powell’s strong parenting skills found the images to be a “great concern” and quickly suggested a more intense evaluation of the father.
Powell killed himself before that assessment took place.
Many of the approximately 400 images described in documents released under Washington state public records laws Friday included sexual depictions of popular cartoons, including child-focused characters such as Rugrats, Dennis the Menace and SpongeBob SquarePants. Another 15 images showed 3-D depictions of sex involving parents and their children.

Powell had initially told the psychologist that he visited only pornography sites featuring adults. “Given the gaps of information about Mr. Powell there seems reason to conclude he may not presently be a stable and appropriate resource for his children,” wrote Dr. James Manley in a follow-up  report dated Jan. 31. http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/02/18/murder-suicide-dad-josh-powell-had-cartoon-sex-incest-images-on-computer/

New documents released from Powell custody Case by Brooke Adams, Nate Carlisle and Melinda Rogers The Salt Lake Tribune Mar 3, 2012
….other documents among 1,699 pages released by Washington authorities Friday show that long before the state took protective custody of Powell’s children, his oldest son was clearly struggling with the disappearance of his mother and scrutiny that surrounded the family.

….The documents offer a complicated portrait of Powell. He is described as sometimes making inappropriate comments in the presence of his sons about police, his in-laws and others he considered as out to get him and becoming agitated when one son said his mother had been found in the desert; a psychologist who evaluated him said he appeared to be putting on a front. But Powell also is described as a loving, involved father whose supervised visits with his sons that could have been the script for a parenting manual.

….But the documents show that months after Powell relocated, people who interacted with his sons were noting odd behavior. On Aug. 20, 2010, a daycare worker at the YMCA in Puyallup, Wash., called Child Protective Services about comments made by Charlie, then 5. Charlie was asked why he didn’t want to play with other children. During the exchange, Charlie responded that, “My little brother Braden tried to kill me, so he’s in Utah now living with my grandparents” — something that wasn’t true. Charlie also had described to other children how to kill and bury a bear, something he said he learned from a television program.  The document says daycare workers considered the stories “suspicious” and a DSHS caseworker relayed both stories to West Valley City Police.

….Days after his sons were placed in protective custody, Powell sent an email to a DSHS caseworker stating his children were not exposed to any pornographic material his father might have had in the home, which was “why we never thought there was a problem.”
Powell also claimed that his mother Terri would provide a statement saying Steve Powell “never left pornographic materials laying around and never gave any hint at creating porn on any level during her 20-year marriage” — a claim refuted by documents filed in the couple’s 1993 divorce. In those documents Terri Powell said her husband kept a stash of pornographic material and shared it with their older sons.
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/53633137-78/powell-sons-charlie-washington.html.csp

Letters Josh Powell wrote to his sons http://www.scribd.com/doc/83559020/Letters-Josh-Powell-wrote-to-his-sons

Steven Powell Allegations (Josh’s father)

New trial date set for Steven Powell March 16, 2012, by Ben Winslow TACOMA, Washington — A new trial date has been scheduled for the father of Josh Powell. Steven Powell appeared briefly in Pierce Co. Superior Court on Friday, where a judge scheduled an April 23 hearing on a motion to suppress evidence in the criminal case against him. The judge also scheduled a May 7 trial.

Steven Powell is facing voyeurism and child pornography-related charges. He’s accused of taking photos and video of girls and women. Police claim that one of those he filmed without their knowledge is his daughter-in-law, missing West Valley City mother Susan Cox Powell. She vanished in 2009 and has not been found. Powell’s son, Josh Powell, killed himself and his children last month in an explosion and fire at a home he was renting. http://fox13now.com/2012/03/16/new-trial-date-set-for-steven-powell/

Father-in-law dragged deeper into Powell saga Feb 10, 2012 By GENE JOHNSON and MIKE BAKER Associated Press OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) – In a folder on his work computer labeled “Personal Pics,” Steve Powell maintained a peculiar collection of photos: 55 depicting his daughter-in-law Susan but few if any showing his son.
Thousands of images and emails on his Washington state government-issued laptop provide a small glimpse into his increasingly scrutinized world. Authorities said this week that he is a person of interest in her 2009 disappearance in Utah. The files, obtained by The Associated Press as part of a public records request, portray Steve Powell as a meticulous worker who gathered photos by the thousands and had his life upended by the constant inquiries that ensued after Susan vanished.

He is now in jail on voyeurism and child pornography charges – and on suicide watch.
Powell’s son and Susan’s husband, Josh, killed himself and the couple’s two young sons in a gas-fueled inferno Sunday that a prosecutor considers an admission that he killed his wife….
Until this week, authorities have only publicly discussed Steve Powell in relation to the charges he now faces. But a warrant and emails indicate that he has been dragged deeply into the Utah investigation surrounding his son, and police say they want to interview him to see if he knows anything about his daughter-in-law’s disappearance….

Steve Powell said last year that he had a flirtatious and somewhat sexual relationship with Susan Powell. Her parents said she thought he was a creep and moved to Utah in part to get away from him. In a search of Steve Powell’s Washington state home last year, authorities found explicit images on his computers and images of people being photographed without their knowledge. Among them were pictures of Susan Powell. Those findings led to the voyeurism and child porn charges, to which he has pleaded not guilty. The state took custody of Josh Powell’s boys and turned them over to Susan’s parents, Chuck and Judy Cox. http://news.yahoo.com/father-law-dragged-deeper-powell-saga-203957748.html

Susan Powell (Josh’s wife)

Susan Powell’s Blood Found At Josh Powell’s Home, New Documents Show By MIKE BAKER 03/30/12
TACOMA, Wash. — Authorities investigating the 2009 disappearance of a Utah woman found her blood in the family home and a hand-written note in which she expressed fear about her husband and her potential demise, according to documents unsealed Friday.
The files raise further questions about why Susan Powell’s husband was never charged in her disappearance before he killed himself and their two young sons in a gas-fueled inferno in Washington state earlier this year. Investigators in West Valley City, Utah, never arrested Josh Powell or even publicly labeled him as a suspect in his wife’s disappearance….

Shortly after Susan Powell disappeared, authorities found blood evidence on a floor next to a sofa and determined that it was Susan Powell’s. The sofa appeared to have been recently cleaned, and two fans had been set up to blow on it.

Investigators found several life insurance policies on Susan Powell that totaled $1.5 million and determined that Josh Powell had filed paperwork to withdraw her retirement account money about 10 days after her disappearance.
The documents describe Josh Powell as unwilling to help in the investigation.

A safety deposit box used by Susan Powell had a hand-written letter titled “Last will & testament for Susan Powell,” according to the documents. She wrote in that letter that she did not trust her husband and that they’d been having marital troubles for four years.
The letter also said that “if Susan Powell dies it may not be an accident, even if it looks like one,” according to the documents….
Investigators had found a gas can, tarps and a shovel in Josh Powell’s vehicle shortly after the investigation began. Susan Powell’s cellphone was also in the car, and Josh Powell “did not have an answer as to why,” according to the documents. One person interviewed by police said Powell had once made comments about how to kill someone and dispose of the body….

The documents also describe how Steven Powell had an apparent obsession with his daughter-in-law. A locked cabinet in Steve Powell’s bedroom contained multiple images of Susan Powell, including some of her in her underwear. Other images showed nude female bodies with Susan Powell’s face copied onto them. Another image showed Steven Powell masturbating to an image of Susan Powell.
Susan Powell wrote in her personal journals that she did not want Steven Powell involved in her life and wished that Josh Powell would sever ties with him.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/30/josh-powell-susan-powell-missing-utah_n_1392756.html

Susan Powell’s Parents: Josh Powell’s Dad Knows What Happened To Missing Daughter 4/4/2012
….Josh Powell, the primary “person of interest” in the missing person case, killed himself and his two sons by setting fire to his home earlier this year. Despite evidence suggesting Josh played a role in Susan’s disappearance, he was never arrested by authorities in West Valley City, Utah. As a result, Susan Powell’s family believe the authorities are at least partially responsible for the death of her two sons, Braden, 5, and Charles, 7….

Court documents unsealed on Friday revealed that Susan Powell left a letter in a safety deposit box saying she did not trust her husband and that if she were to die, “it may not be an accident, even if it looks like one,” the Associated Press reported.
Authorities also found Susan Powell’s blood on a floor next to a sofa, which appeared to have been recently cleaned and had two fans set up to dry it.

Josh Powell, who is described in the documents as “unwilling to help” the investigation, said he took his two sons on a late-night camping trip the night Susan Powell disappeared. Investigators found Susan’s cell phone in her husband’s car, which he “did not have an answer” to explain, the Associated Press reported.
Susan’s purse, keys and credit cards were among some of the other belongings found in the couple’s bedroom.

The documents also show that Susan Powell had several life insurance policies, totaling $1.5 million in value. “There is direct evidence. There is circumstantial evidence. There is motive,” Pierce County prosecutor Mark Lindquist told ABC News. “There is everything but the body.”
The court documents also detail an apparent obsession Steven Powell had with his daughter-in-law. In a cabinet belonging to Steven Powell, authorities found several images of Susan, some of which showed her in her underwear, while others featured her face copied onto other women’s naked bodies. Another image depicted Steven Powell masturbating to an image of his daughter-in-law. According to Susan Powell’s personal journals, she did not want anything to do with Steven Powell, whom she described as a pedophile. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/04/susan-powell-josh-powell-charles-judy-cox-steven-utah_n_1403293.html

Josh Powell Friend Says He Bragged of Knowing How to Dump a Body By Katie Kindelan Apr 5, 2012
The friend to whom Josh Powell once bragged that he knew “how to kill someone, dispose of a body and not get caught,” according to recently revealed court documents, said it was “scary that I even had that conversation with him.”
Powell boasted at a 2008 Christmas party he attended with now-missing wife Susan that he knew how to commit the perfect crime, thanks to his obsession with television crime shows, the friend told ABC-affiliate KTVX in Salt Lake City, Utah.
The TV report did not name the friend but ABC News has identified him as Scott Hardman.

“He was basically telling me about how the best way to dispose of a body would be down a mineshaft like a vertical one,” Hardman said in the KTVX interview. “It would be the best way of disposing one because they’re so unstable.” http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/04/josh-powell-friend-says-he-bragged-of-knowing-how-to-dump-a-body/

Josh Powell Bragged About Committing Perfect Crime, Friend Says 04/5/2012 David Lohr
In another startling development, the man who alleged to police that Josh Powell bragged he “could kill someone … and not get caught” has taken his story to ABC-affiliate KTVX in Salt Lake City, Utah. The media outlet did not name the man but ABC News has identified him as Scott Hardman.

Speaking with KTVX, Hardman said the conversation took place at a 2008 Christmas party, roughly a year before the disappearance of Powell’s wife, Susan Cox Powell. “He was basically telling me about how the best way to dispose of a body would be down a mineshaft like a vertical one,” Hardman said in the KTVX interview. “It would be the best way of disposing one because they’re so unstable.”
Hardman said Powell was obsessed with television crime shows and credited them with teaching him how to get away with murder…. Hardman’s tip prompted police to search dozens of abandoned mines outside of Ely, Nev., but they found no evidence that Susan Powell’s body had been disposed of in a shaft. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/05/josh-powell-perfect-crime_n_1406657.html

Miramonte Elementary School Case

Teacher Abuse Cases – Miramonte Elementary School, Tender Care Learning Center
Recently, several school teachers have been either charged or convicted of sexual crimes committed against children. Here are two cases, one from Los Angeles and one from Pittsburgh.

Teacher Abuse Cases – Miramonte Elementary School, Tender Care Learning Center

has graphic descriptions
Teacher Charged with Taking Bondage Pics of Students By COLLEEN CURRY Jan. 31, 2012
A former third-grade teacher in Los Angeles has been arrested for allegedly molesting nearly two dozen children after photos of students posed in bondage positions were passed to the sheriff’s department. Mark Berndt, 61, a teacher with more than 30 years experience at Miramonte Elementary School in south Los Angeles, is charged with molesting 23 children, according to a statement from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Police began the investigation after a photo processing facility passed along suspicious images depicting students blindfolded with their mouths covered in tape….

In some photos, Berndt had his arm around the children or his hand over their mouths.
Police found the spoon, along with an empty container in the trash in Berndt’s classroom and, through DNA testing, determined that both contained Berndt’s semen….The students were between the ages of 7 and 10 years old when the alleged crimes occurred, police said. The photos were taken under the guise of a classroom game during school hours, according to the Los Angeles Times. Investigators believe the girls consumed the semen on the spoon as part of the game, according to the Los Angeles Times. Authorities launched a widespread sex crime investigation, interviewing current and former students and school employees and searching Berndt’s home. They recovered a total of 390 photographs and an adult “sexual bondage” film that mirrored the photos of the children, according to a statement by the sheriff’s department today. More than 26 children from the 390 photographs have been identified; an additional 10 children have not yet been identified, police said.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/teacher-arrested-bondage-photos-students/story?id=15480041#

has graphic descriptions
Teacher Charged with Taking Bondage Pics of Students ABC News By COLLEEN CURRY | ABC News Jan. 31, 2012 A former elementary school teacher in Los Angeles has been arrested for allegedly molesting nearly two dozen children after photos of students posed in bondage positions were passed to the Sheriff’s Department.
Mark Berndt, 61, a teacher with over 30 years experience at Miramonte Elementary School in south Los Angeles, is charged with molesting 23 children, according to a statement from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.

Police began the investigation after a photo processing facility passed along suspicious images depicting students blindfolded with their mouths covered in tape….In some photos, Berndt had his arm around the children or his hand over their mouths. Police found the spoon, along with an empty container in the trash in Berndt’s classroom and, through DNA testing, determined that both contained Berndt’s semen. The students were between the ages of 7 and 10 years old when the alleged crimes occurred, police said….
More than 26 children from the 390 photographs have been identified; an additional 10 children have not yet been identified, police said….Berndt was arrested Monday and charged with 23 felony counts of lewd acts upon a child. He is being held at LA County jail in lieu of $2.3 million bail.
http://news.yahoo.com/teacher-charged-taking-bondage-pics-students-163621853–abc-news.html

describes abuse
Second Miramonte Elementary Teacher Remains in Custody – Investigators have found an additional 200 bondage-type photos of children allegedly taken by a teacher.  KTLA News February 9, 2012 LOS ANGELES  Miramonte Elementary School reopened on Thursday with completely new staff, in the wake of the arrests of two teachers last week on child sex abuse charges.
LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy said the idea behind the “clean sweep” is to re-build confidence among the many families who have lost faith in the school in the wake of the sex scandal…..
Meantime, at least two dozen students at Miramonte Elementary have retained attorneys so far.

The children allege they were victimized by teacher Mark Berndt, who was arrested last week and charged with 23 counts of lewd conduct. Investigators have uncovered an additional 200 bondage-type photos of children allegedly taken by Berndt, who worked at the school for more than 30 years. The pictures were found inside a computer at the Redondo Beach CVS store where the original photos implicating Berndt were found, Sgt. Dan Scott told KTLA.
Scott says the photos show about 25 victims that haven’t been identified yet….
The new pictures bring the total number of photos to roughly 600. Authorities said the Berndt case could involve more than 100 children over five years. Berndt is being held on $23 million bail and is due in court for an arraignment on Feb. 21. KTLA spoke to a 10-year-old girl who said she was sexually abused by Berndt. The girl said Berndt — who was not her teacher — would contact her female teacher and ask for the her to be sent to his classroom to “get cookies during class.” “Mr. Berndt, he called my teacher and (asked) if he could borrow some students,” the girl said in the interview.

The girl said Berndt would always pick the same group of students. He gave her cookies, she said, and told her female teacher the girl had “been helping a lot.”….
Scott told KTLA that investigators have interviewed the female teacher and that, “we are satisfied with her answers she’s provided us. She is definitely not a suspect. I can’t predict what will happen in the future.”….
The Berndt case in particular has raised questions about whether the school properly handled misconduct issues in the past. Authorities have acknowledged that a 10-year-old girl claimed Berndt tried to fondle her in 1994. Sheriff’s detectives investigated the allegation, but the district attorney’s office rejected the case, saying there was not enough evidence to prosecute.

Additionally, two women, who are now adults, said school officials investigated rumors about Berndt back in 1990. One of the girls told the Los Angeles Times that a counselor told her and two other girls to stop inventing stories after a complaint that Berndt appeared to be masturbating behind his desk.
In another instance, a woman who discovered love-letters written by a Miramonte teacher’s aide to her 11-year-old son was not taken seriously….

And in 2005, Richard Guevara, a former teacher’s aide at Miramonte Early Education Center, was convicted of committing lewd acts with children. He had been investigated for improper behavior as far back as 1995, but it was a case from 2003 that led to his conviction. In that case, Guevara received a sentenced of 15 years to life in prison.
http://www.ktla.com/news/landing/ktla-miramonte-second-teacher-removed,0,7913135.story?page=3

Entire staff to be replaced at LA school where 2 teachers were arrested By msnbc.com staff and news services 2/7/12 The Los Angeles Unified School District is replacing the entire staff of Miramonte Elementary following the arrest of two teachers on lewd conduct charges last week, Superintendent John Deasy told parents at a meeting Monday night, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Positions will be filled by qualified teachers and other workers already on a placement or rehiring list, the Times report stated. But the displacement of the current staff could be temporary, according to the report.
Teacher Mark Berndt was charged last week with committing lewd acts on 23 children. Another teacher, Martin Springer, was arrested Friday on suspicion of fondling two girls in his classroom.
Deasy said staffers are being replaced because a full investigation of allegations is disruptive, and staffers require support to get through the scandal.
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/06/10332533-entire-staff-to-be-replaced-at-la-school-where-2-teachers-were-arrested

Abusers Target Impoverished Schools Feb 10, 2012 LOS ANGELES – The charges are shocking, but the choice of victims comes as little surprise. The horrors alleged at Miramonte Elementary School echo previous cases of sexual abuse: vulnerable children, plied with attention and gifts and groomed to trust adult predators. The abuses claimed here may be different – children blindfolded, gagged and fed a substance investigators say was semen. But the setting follows a pattern alleged at Penn State University, where former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky is accused of using a charity he founded to target vulnerable boys from single-parent homes or troubled families, people unlikely to speak out.At Miramonte, the victims could hardly have been more disadvantaged: The 1,400 students are virtually all from poor Latino homes….

A former teacher’s aide, Ricardo Guevara, is serving a 15-year sentence in state prison after being convicted in 2004 of sexually abusing three kindergarten girls at Miramonte. The Los Angeles school system was ordered to pay $1.6 million to his three victims’ families. Beverly Hills lawyer Keith Davidson….now represents four children, three boys and one girl, ages 9 to 13, who were students of accused teacher Mark Berndt, the man at the center of the scandal. Berndt, 61, who was removed from his third-grade class a year ago, was charged last month with 23 counts of committing lewd acts on children ages 6 to 10 from 2005 through 2010. Investigators say they have found 600 photographs Berndt took of the children, many performing what he told them was a game….
While investigating claims against Berndt, the Los Angeles sheriff’s department brought charges against another Miramonte teacher.

Martin Springer, 49, pleaded not guilty this week to charges he fondled a second-grade girl. Springer taught at Miramonte for 26 years. Berndt taught there 32 years, a span that saw the neighborhood transform from a heavily African-American population to almost uniformly Latino. Berndt had been the subject of complaints before. The sheriff’s department investigated a September 1993 incident at the school, but prosecutors decided they didn’t have enough evidence to charge him, said Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for District Attorney Steve Cooley….
In a separate incident, school system officials said they fired a female teacher’s aide at the school in 2009, after a mother reported finding love letters the aide wrote to her 11-year-old son….

Ellen Greenwald, a University of Texas-Dallas psychologist, says kids who are victims of sex abuse often fear that going to adults will get them in more trouble and that no one will believe them, or that adults will blame them. “That’s what really creates the silence that continues,” she says.
Lisa Aronson Fontes, a psychology professor at the University of Massachusetts who wrote Child Abuse and Culture: Working with Diverse Families, says, “There’s a culture of silence at most schools … and a culture of disbelief and denial.” http://www.wltx.com/news/national/article/172940/142/Abusers-Target-Impoverished-Schools

Miramonte teacher was paid $40,000 to drop dismissal challenge – LAUSD says it paid Mark Berndt to settle his challenge because it was blocked from investigating and defending its firing of the Miramonte Elementary teacher accused of sexually abusing students.
By Howard Blume, Angel Jennings and Richard Winton, Los Angeles Times February 10, 2012

The Los Angeles Unified School District paid Mark Berndt, the teacher at the center of the Miramonte Elementary child abuse scandal, $40,000 to drop the challenge to his dismissal last year.
The payout consisted of four months of back salary plus reimbursement for the cost of health benefits. Berndt was fired by the Board of Education in February 2011 after officials learned that the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department was investigating him for alleged lewd acts against students. He was arrested last week. The firing took Berndt off the district payroll. But he fought to keep his job through an appeal process that lasted until he settled with the school system and resigned in June.

The settlement with Berndt came in the face of a dilemma, said L.A. Unified general counsel David Holmquist. A hearing on the dismissal was pending and the district didn’t have evidence to justify the firing because the Sheriff’s Department investigation was ongoing….
Berndt was charged last week with 23 counts of lewd conduct against children; another teacher, Martin Springer, was charged this week with three counts of lewd conduct. Berndt is alleged to have taken photographs of blindfolded children being spoon-fed his semen. Springer is accused of fondling a girl in his class. The Berndt and Springer cases are believed to be unrelated.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-miramonte-20120210,0,91877.story

Educator Abuse Cases

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell – A local teacher who molested his charges was allowed to take a new job in West Virginia, where a student died in his care. By Aina Hunter Sep. 22, 2004
Former elementary school principal Edgar Friedrichs Jr. was convicted on four felony counts of child sexual abuse in January 2002. Last year he was indicted for the 1997 murder of a 12-year-old West Virginia boy. He began his career more than 30 years ago in Prospect Park, Pa….
From the stories extracted from the children–particularly those who served as crossing guards–Friedrichs had not only molested a number of boys, but had engaged in statutory rape.

The police were never involved. The parents, most of them now in their 60s, say principal Robert Castle and his superintendent believed it better if things were handled quietly. (Castle could not be reached for comment. His former secretary told PW that he’d moved to an undisclosed address in Florida.) Mr. Friedrichs and his wife simply disappeared….

Charol Shakeshaft, co-author of the Shakeshaft-Cohan study, the most recent scholarly work on sexual abuse in the classroom, says it’s not surprising that the Interboro superintendent in Prospect Park didn’t try to have Friedrichs’ teaching license revoked. In her 1995 study of 225 school districts across the country that had dealt with allegations of abuse by teachers, only 1 percent of the superintendents moved to have teachers’ licenses revoked.
Further, in the Shakeshaft-Cohan study, none of the surveyed superintendents involved police. “There is no excuse or rationale for that,” she says. “These are crimes, abuse and exploitation.”
http://www.philadelphiaweekly.com/news-and-opinion/cover-story/dont_ask_dont_tell-38388094.html

Ex-teacher gets decades in prison for child molestations Monday, January 30, 2012 By Paula Reed Ward, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette  – A former teacher at Tender Care Learning Center in Scott pleaded guilty to 13 cases involving child molestation and child pornography this morning in Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas.
Matthew K. Byars, 26, was sentenced to 35 to 70 years in prison for his actions abusing 12 boys, ranging in age from 6 to 17 years old. He also must register for life as a sex offender. The families of the boys agreed to the plea deal in part to end the case quickly and avoid having them testify.

“We made an offer that will not victimize these boys any further,” said Deputy District Attorney Laura Ditka….According to Ms. Ditka, Mr. Byars molested seven boys he taught at Tender Care, met the cousin of a boy there who he also abused, and molested two other boys.
He befriended the boys at the daycare, as well as their families, and often took them on outings, organized pickup hockey games, brought them to his church and invited them to sleepovers at his home. In some instances, the boys were fondled and photographed or recorded on video. In others, they were forced into sex acts or sexually assaulted, Ms. Ditka said….

Speaking briefly, Mr. Byars apologized. “I do realize the affect of my actions on so many people,” he said. “I truly am sorry.” http://www.postgazette.com/pg/12030/1207008-100.stm

Day care teacher gets 35 years for sexual assaults on 12 boys Tuesday, January 31, 2012
By Paula Reed Ward, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Scrawled across the page in all capital letters, written in the hand of a child, the statement read, “I HATE MATT.” Another boy, in blue ink, wrote to the judge, “I feel sad and lonely. But once I see the other kids, I’m not so lonely because I know I’m not the only one. “But what’s the worst is that every morning I wake up, I think of that.”

They were two of 11 boys who sat in the jury box in Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Donna Jo McDaniel’s courtroom Monday and listened as the prosecution listed each one’s case, and the horrific things they had to endure at the hands of Matt Byars, a man they trusted.     In the middle of Deputy District Attorney Laura Ditka’s summary, one of those boys, who is now 9, shouted, “Find someone your own age, Matt,” and fled the courtroom….
Mr. Byars, hired at Tender Care in 2007, pleaded guilty Monday to sexually abusing 12 boys, ranging in age from 6 to 17 years old, over a period of several years….

According to Ms. Ditka, Mr. Byars, 26, of the West End, sexually abused seven boys he taught at Tender Care, as well as the cousin of a boy who attended the center. He also abused four others. He befriended the boys at the day care, as well as their families, and often took them on outings, organized pickup hockey games, brought them to his church and invited them to sleepovers at his home. While at Tender Care, Ms. Ditka said, Mr. Byars would sometimes call boys out of line when they were going outside and have them stay back with him. In some instances, he assaulted them there.
In other cases, he took the boys to his home where he showed them pornography and photographed and recorded them on video performing sex acts. He also set up a video camera in his shower and recorded the boys while they washed. Mr. Byars told them to “flex” their muscles when he photographed them, the prosecutor said. In one instance, Mr. Byars made a boy engage in oral sex to let him play video games.

Police became aware of Mr. Byars’ actions when the mother of one boy told her son “Mr. Matt” wanted to take him to the movies. The woman explained the terror she saw in her son’s eyes that day, and how the boy reacted to what she had said. “It all makes sense now,” she said. “How my son went from an open, caring, loving little boy to an angry, fearful and sad lost soul.”

Her son had been having head- and stomachaches daily. She took him to doctors, and he was diagnosed with having anxiety….”My life will never be the same,” she said. All of the family members who spoke talked about betrayal and the loss of innocence.
“He has taught them hate. He has taught them fear,” read one woman who is the grandmother of one victim and the great-aunt of another. Another mother called Mr. Byars a “monster.” She told the court that her son has only recently been able to cuddle with his own father after having been abused. “[He] is having trouble learning how to trust men again, including his dad,” she said. http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/12031/1207105-55-0.stm

Jerry Sandusky – Penn State Abuse Scandal

Mother of Jerry Sandusky’s grandchildren aims to bar him from visitation By Jeremy Roebuck  The Philadelphia Inquirer Wednesday, February 15, 2012  The mother of three of Jerry Sandusky’s grandchildren is vowing to fight to bar the former Penn State assistant football coach from having access to her children while he awaits trial on child sex abuse charges. In a statement sent to reporters hours after a judge approved visits between Sandusky and his 11 other grandchildren on Monday, former daughter-in-law Jill Thomas said psychologists who had treated her 5-year-old son “could not rule out that Jerry Sandusky was grooming him for sexual abuse.”
Thomas, 29, is currently involved in a custody dispute with her former husband, Sandusky’s son, Matt. Judge John M. Cleland, who issued the pretrial order involving the other children, opted to leave any decisions involving Thomas’ youngsters to the judge presiding over her custody case.
http://www.bostonherald.com/sports/college/football/view.bg?articleid=1403798

Jerry Sandusky Called A ‘Likely Pedophile’ By Psychologist In 1998 The Huffington Post By Melissa Jeltsen 03/24/2012
Penn State police were warned Jerry Sandusky fit the profile of a pedophile in 1998, an internal memo has revealed. The memo, published by NBC News, was written by Alycia Chambers, who was a psychologist for an 11-year-old boy who knew Sandusky through his charity for troubled boys, Second Mile Program. The boy is not named in the report, but is now known as Victim 6. He is one of 10 boys allegedly molested by the former Penn State coach over a 15-year period. Sandusky denies the allegations against him.
The boy’s mother contacted Chambers after he returned home from a night of weightlifting with Sandusky, the memo says. He had wet hair, and explained to his mother that Sandusky asked him to take a shower with him. When they were naked, he came up behind him and tightly squeezed their bodies together, according to the memo….
Chambers reported the incident to the Pennsylvania child abuse line and wrote a detailed report for the Penn State police. In it, she concludes that Sandusky’s actions matched those of a “likely pedophile”:

My consultants agree that the incidents meet all of our definitions, based on experience and education, of a likely pedophile’s pattern of building trust and gradual introduction of physical touch, within a context of a “loving,” “special” relationship. One colleague who has contact with the Second Mile confirms that Mr. Sandusky is reasonably intelligent and thus, could hardly have failed to understand the way his behavior would be interpreted, if known. His position at the Second Mile and his interest in abused boys would suggest that he was likely to have had knowledge with regard to child abuse and might even recognize this behavior as typical pedophile “overture.”
But prosecutors decided not to charge Sandusky. The case was closed for 13 years, until last November, when Sandusky was arrested. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/24/jerry-sandusky-psychologist-likely-pedophile_n_1377156.html

Sandusky labeled ‘likely pedophile’ in 1998 report – Psychologist warned university police, but they weren’t able to prove abuse of boy  By Michael Isikoff NBC News 3/24/2012
More than a decade before former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky was charged with more than 50 counts of child sex abuse, a psychologist warned university police that his actions fit that of a “likely pedophile’s pattern.”
The finding by State College, Pa., psychologist Dr. Alycia A. Chambers, the therapist for one of Sandusky’s alleged victims, was contained in the internal Penn State files of a 1998 police investigation of the former coach for showering and bear hugging her client and another young boy in the school’s athletic locker room.

The Sandusky Files: Read the 1998 police report
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/NEWS/redactedpolicereport.pdf
NBC News has obtained the complete file on the investigation – the police report and assessments by two psychologists who interviewed the boys — which provides new details about Sandusky’s behavior. It also could raise fresh questions about how school and local authorities handled his case.

“There was very little doubt in my mind (Sandusky) … was a male predator, someone that was in the process of grooming a young man for abuse,” said Chambers, speaking publicly for the first time, with the permission of her client’s family, in an interview with NBC News. “I thought…my report was strong enough to suggest that this was somebody who should be watched.”….

Joe Amendola, Sandusky’s lawyer, said he hasn’t seen Chambers’ report, but that her conclusions will be disputed by other psychologists who will be called by the defense. “I understand that there are some people who could look at this behavior and say it’s a pedophile problem. But there are others who will say, ‘This is somebody who loves kids and loves to be around them’…Sandusky has pleaded not guilty to all charges.  http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/46843083/ns/today-today_people
Report of expert who concluded no abuse occurred
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/Seasock_Sandusky_Report_Redacted1.pdf

Sandusky Investigation Drew Psychologist’s Alert in 1998, Report Says By MARK VIERA March 24, 2012  More than a decade before the former Penn State football assistant Jerry Sandusky was charged with child sexual abuse, a psychologist warned the university police in an investigation into a suspected assault of an 11-year-old boy that Sandusky’s actions in that case fit a “likely pedophile’s pattern.” But the university seemed to do nothing about Sandusky in the wake of that report in 1998.
What is unknown is whether senior officials at Penn State were unaware of the investigation, or whether they knew of it but chose to do nothing. The details of the investigation were made public Saturday in an NBC News broadcast. NBC News, which obtained the police report and the assessments of two psychologists who had interviewed the 11-year-old boy, did not initially release the documents with the article it published online.

The investigation uncovered a clear warning about Sandusky, then the defensive coordinator for the Nittany Lions. Sandusky was charged late last year with more than 50 counts of child sexual abuse. He is accused of sexually abusing 10 boys from 1994 to 2009….
Sandusky, 68, has maintained his innocence. Last week, his lawyer, Joseph Amendola, asked a judge to dismiss the sexual abuse charges against Sandusky….
The campus police’s 1998 report totaled almost 100 pages, but the district attorney at the time decided against taking the case to trial. People with knowledge of the active Sandusky case told The New York Times in November that the district attorney’s decision in 1998 was seen as a close call, even with the evidence that the Penn State police had….

On May 19, 1998, still working under the supervision of the district attorney, Penn State’s campus police officers set up a sting operation. The boy’s mother met Sandusky and confronted him, with the police monitoring the conversation.
Sandusky admitted to showering with her son and another boy and said that he did not think that his private parts had touched her son, but acknowledged that what he had done was wrong. “I wish I could get forgiveness,” Sandusky was quoted as saying. “I know I won’t get it from you. I wish I were dead.”

A week and a half later, according to NBC News, Schreffler and Lauro interviewed Sandusky at his office. The police report said that Sandusky had admitted to hugging the boy in the shower and to showering with other boys and had said he realized he used poor judgment in doing so.
“As a result of the investigation, it could not be determined that a sexual assault occurred and Sandusky was advised of such,” the 1998 police report read. One investigator then advised Sandusky not to shower with children and he agreed.    http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/25/sports/ncaafootball/psychologist-alerted-penn-states-police-to-sandusky-in-1998-nbc-says.html

Serial killer John Wayne Gacy had accomplices, lawyers say By James Eng, msnbc.com 2/10/12
Nearly two decades after Chicago serial killer John Wayne Gacy was executed for torturing, raping and murdering 33 men and boys in the 1970s, two lawyers say they’ve unearthed evidence that indicates he didn’t act alone in some of the slayings.
Criminal defense attorneys Robert Stephenson and Steven Becker, who are partners in a Chicago law practice, said they re-examined the circumstances surrounding the disappearances of some of the victims. Their conclusion: the so-called “Killer Clown” had at least three accomplices.
The Chicago Sun-Times and WGN-TV first reported on the lawyers’ claims on Thursday and Friday.

“There is significant evidence out there that suggests that not only did John Wayne Gacy not operate alone, he may not have been involved in some of the murders, and the fact that he was largely a copycat killer,” Stephenson told WGN….
The sheriff said investigators will follow up on the information and, if it proves solid, will try to locate the potential accomplices — two of whom are believed to be still alive. The case has had so many twists and loose ends – seven Gacy victims remain unidentified, for example – that Dart is keeping an open mind….
Gacy, a building contractor who performed as an amateur clown at fundraising events and children’s parties, was tried in Chicago in 1980 and convicted of 33 murders. He was executed in 1994
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/10/10374067-serial-killer-john-wayne-gacy-had-accomplices-lawyers-say

Italy police break up global online pedophile network By Catherine Hornby, Reuters March 8, 2012
ROME – Italian police have broken up a pedophile network spanning at least 28 countries that used social media websites to swap pornographic images and videos of child abuse.
Ten people have been arrested in Italy, the United States, France and Portugal, and another 112 are being investigated on suspicion of child pornography, Italy’s computer crime police bureau NIT said in a statement….The data revealed an Italian-founded criminal group with more than 700 followers around the world, exchanging thousands of images and videos, NIT said.
http://www.timescolonist.com/news/Italy+police+break+global+online+pedophile+network/6270037/story.html

Church Legal Pressure on Abuse Victims’ Group

Church Puts Legal Pressure on Abuse Victims’ Group By LAURIE GOODSTEIN   March 12, 2012
Turning the tables on an advocacy group that has long supported victims of pedophile priests, lawyers for the Roman Catholic Church and priests accused of sexual abuse in two Missouri cases have gone to court to compel the group to disclose more than two decades of e-mails that could include correspondence with victims, lawyers, whistle-blowers, witnesses, the police, prosecutors and journalists.
The group, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, known as SNAP, is neither a plaintiff nor a defendant in the litigation. But the group has been subpoenaed five times in recent months in Kansas City and St. Louis, and its national director, David Clohessy, was questioned by a battery of lawyers for more than six hours this year. A judge in Kansas City ruled that the network must comply because it “almost certainly” had information relevant to the case.

The network and its allies say the legal action is part of a campaign by the church to cripple an organization that has been the most visible defender of victims, and a relentless adversary, for more than two decades. “If there is one group that the higher-ups, the bishops, would like to see silenced,” said Marci A. Hamilton, a law professor at Yeshiva University and an advocate for victims of clergy sex crimes, “it definitely would be SNAP. And that’s what they’re going after. They’re trying to find a way to silence SNAP.”
Lawyers for the church and priests say they cannot comment because of a judge’s order. But William Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, a church advocacy group in New York, said targeting the network was justified because “SNAP is a menace to the Catholic Church.”

Mr. Donohue said leading bishops he knew had resolved to fight back more aggressively against the group: “The bishops have come together collectively. I can’t give you the names, but there’s a growing consensus on the part of the bishops that they had better toughen up and go out and buy some good lawyers to get tough. We don’t need altar boys.”

He said bishops were also rethinking their approach of paying large settlements to groups of victims. “The church has been too quick to write a check, and I think they’ve realized it would be a lot less expensive in the long run if we fought them one by one,” Mr. Donohue said.
However, a spokeswoman for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Sister Mary Ann Walsh, said Mr. Donohue was incorrect. “There is no national strategy,” she said, and there was no meeting where legal counsel for the bishops decided to get more aggressive….

Mr. Clohessy was deposed in January by lawyers for five accused priests and the diocese. In the 215-page transcript, made public on March 2, most of the questions were not about the case but about the network — its budget, board of directors, staff members, donors and operating procedures.
Mr. Clohessy testified that he had never had contact with John Doe. “It was not a fishing expedition,” Mr. Clohessy said. “It was a fishing, crabbing, shrimping, trash-collecting, draining the pond expedition. The real motive is to harass and discredit and bankrupt SNAP, while discouraging victims, witnesses, whistle-blowers, police, prosecutors and journalists from seeking our help.”

Cardinal Dolan – “Stop the legal bullying!” As the head of America’ bishops, we urge you to publicly denounce, and stop, the bullying tactics used by bishops and church defense lawyers against those seeking help from the support group SNAP, including victims of abuse by clerics, witnesses, whistleblowers, police, prosecutors and journalists. http://www.snapnetwork.org/snap_petition

Church’s Lawyers Have SNAP in Their Sights – Victims’ advocacy group’s national director speaks to RD about a flurry of subpoenas, and fears of ongoing harassment By Kathryn Joyce March 16, 2012
In October, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), the oldest, largest, and most visible peer counseling group for victims of clergy sex abuse in any denomination, received a subpoena from a Kansas City, Missouri, priest being prosecuted for sexually abusing an older male victim SNAP has never met. The subpoena demanded a sweeping range of documents and correspondence concerning thousands of the estimated 100,000-plus people SNAP has counseled over two decades.

In December, the group received a second subpoena from the other side of the state, from the Archdiocese of St. Louis, facing its own charges concerning the alleged abuse of a 19-year-old woman. SNAP has fought the requests, citing Missouri laws protecting the privacy of rape survivors, and describing the records-request as a coordinated Church effort to bully sex abuse victims into silence and harass a longtime opponent into bankruptcy.

While the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has denied that there is a national strategy for the Church to fight sex abuse cases more aggressively, even the Church’s staunchest defenders see the pattern. As William Donohue, the pugilistic president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, told the New York Times this week, bishops are going after SNAP because “SNAP is a menace to the Catholic Church.”….

Why do you think they are doing this?
What they’re trying to do is to discredit, derail, bankrupt, and silence SNAP. And to scare anyone—police, prosecutors, victims, concerned Catholics—from contacting us and reporting crimes and exposing corruption.
What they have said in court filings is we’re trying to get to the truth of this case. But if you think about it, the easiest way to get to the truth of John Doe BP v. Fr. Michael Tierney and the Kansas City Diocese and Jane Doe v. Fr. Joseph D. Ross and the St. Louis Archdiocese is to depose the parties, the people involved, John Doe and Jane Doe. And they haven’t even tried. In both cases, they haven’t even sought the records. In essence they’re using these two court cases as a ruse and a weapon.
http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/5803/church%E2%80%99s_lawyers_have_snap_in_their_sightschurch%E2%80%99s_lawyers_have_snap_in_their_sights.hm

Philadelphia Clergy Abuse Case

Trial: Priest joked about abusing 3 boys in week By MARYCLAIRE DALE 4/3/12 PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Jurors in a landmark priest-abuse trial heard Monday about a priest-turned-camp prowler and another who allegedly bragged about having sex with three boys in one week….
Monsignor William Lynn is on trial for child endangerment and conspiracy. Lynn, 61, is the first Roman Catholic church official in the U.S. charged for his handling of priest-abuse complaints. Prosecutors say he helped the church bury them in secret files, far from the prying eyes of investigators, civil attorneys and concerned Catholics.

In the day’s most startling testimony, a detective read internal church memos about a priest who allegedly “joked about how hard it was to have sex with three boys in one week.” His accuser also stated that the priest had a “rotation process” of boys spending time sleeping with him.
Defense lawyers argue that Lynn tried to address the problem as secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004, but was blocked by the late Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua and others in the Philadelphia archdiocese.

The testimony Monday also included a 1992 complaint about a different priest who allegedly molested boys at a church-owned camp three decades earlier. Several junior counselors complained in the early 1960s that the priest was on the prowl at night, molesting them in their tents. They said it was a well-known secret among teen counselors for several years.
The priest remained in ministry, working at three archdiocesan high schools and serving as assistant superintendent of Catholic schools through 2004. Confronted after a man complained to the archdiocese in 1992, the priest admitted to the “sin” of masturbation and said he had read up on that subject because so many people were mentioning it in the confessional….

His 28-year-old son, Arthur Jr., died of a drug overdose in 2006, after his civil lawsuit against the church accusing his high school principal of molesting him was thrown out because of legal time limits. The former principal, a Franciscan friar, is in prison for stealing nearly $900,000 from the school and the Franciscans, some of which fed the younger Baselice’s drug addiction, according to prosecutors.
Prosecutors are detailing allegations made against nearly two dozen priests since 1948 to show that Lynn and other archdiocesan officials kept suspected predators in jobs around children.
On cross-examination Monday, defense lawyers Jeffrey Lindy and Thomas Bergstrom had detectives concede that Lynn promptly interviewed both complainants and accused priests, and sent the priests to a church-run hospital for mental health evaluations and treatment….

He remained there until 2004, when a church panel reviewing complaints in the wake of the national priest-abuse scandal found the allegations against him credible. The priest only then admitted molesting three boys, and explained earlier denials on the fact he had confessed and moved past it. The archdiocese restricted his ministry — 40 years after the camp allegations first surfaced.
http://news.yahoo.com/trial-priest-joked-abusing-3-boys-week-205857367.html

Testimony Begins In Child Sex-Abuse Trial For Philadelphia Catholic Priests, Archdiocese By MARYCLAIRE DALE 03/27/12
PHILADELPHIA — Prosecutors aired dozens of confidential church documents in court Tuesday to try to prove the Philadelphia archdiocese routinely buried complaints that priests were molesting children.
Monsignor William Lynn is the first Roman Catholic official in the U.S. charged with endangering children by keeping accused priests in parish work. The letters and memos read in court Tuesday centered on now-defrocked priest Edward Avery. Avery, known as the Smiling Padre, adopted six Hmong children and moonlighted as a disc jockey at parties and nightclubs throughout his three-decade church career.

According to the documents, a medical student told the archdiocese in 1992 that Avery had molested him after a DJ gig when the priest and the high school freshman were drinking heavily at a West Philadelphia nightclub. It happened again at age 19 when the two shared a motel bed on a ski trip to Vermont with Avery’s brother, he said.
Avery denied the allegations to Lynn, but then said they “could” have happened. A four-day evaluation at a church-owned hospital showed he may be bipolar and have alcohol and psycho-sexual problems. Avery was admitted to St. John Vianney in Downingtown for nearly a year of sex therapy and mental health treatment. Avery’s parishioners were told that their outgoing, energetic pastor was on a “health leave” but heard no mention of the abuse allegation. Lynn’s lawyers said the documents show that Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua gave those orders.

St. John Vianney never diagnosed Avery as a pedophile but said he should not be around adolescents or work as a DJ. Lynn next recommended that Avery go to a Philadelphia parish with a tough pastor, although that parish had a school attached. Bevilacqua instead sent Avery to work as a hospital chaplain, with residency at St. Jerome’s Parish. The northeast Philadelphia parish was home to many of the city’s police and firefighters and had an elementary school.

Avery, 69, admitted last week that he sexually assaulted a fifth-grader there in 1999, forcing the altar boy to strip naked after Mass in the church sacristy. Instead of going on trial with Lynn, Avery pleaded guilty to sexual abuse and conspiracy and will serve 2 1/2 to five years in prison….
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/27/philly-sex-abuse-case_n_1381982.html

Lawyers: Bevilacqua ordered memo on priests to be shredded February 24, 2012 By John P. Martin, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER   Cardinal Anthony J. Bevilacqua ordered aides to shred a 1994 memo that identified 35 Archdiocese of Philadelphia priests suspected of sexually abusing children, according to a new court filing.
The order, outlined in a handwritten note locked away for years at the archdiocese’s Center City offices, was disclosed Friday by lawyers for Msgr. William J. Lynn, the former church administrator facing trial next month.
They say the shredding directive proves what Lynn has long claimed: that a church conspiracy to conceal clergy sex abuse was orchestrated at levels far above him. “It is beyond doubt that Msgr. Lynn was completely unaware of this act of obstruction,” attorneys Jeffrey Lindy and Thomas Bergstrom wrote.

Their motion asks Common Pleas Court Judge M. Teresa Sarmina to dismiss the conspiracy and endangerment charges against Lynn, or to bar prosecutors from introducing Bevilacqua’s videotaped testimony at trial….
The revelation is likely to further cloud Bevilacqua’s complicated legacy in the handling of clergy sex abuse and could shape what happens at the historic trial, the first for a cleric accused of covering up sex abuse….
Prosecutors say that Lynn, as the secretary for clergy, recommended priests for assignments despite knowing or suspecting that they would sexually abuse children. Facing trial with him are two former parish priests accused of molesting a boy in the 1990s, the Rev. James J. Brennan and Edward Avery.

In their motion, Lynn’s lawyers argue that the new documents show he was one of the few church officials trying to confront the issue of abuse. After becoming secretary for clergy in 1992, they say, Lynn began combing the secret personnel files of hundreds of priests to gauge the scope of misconduct involving children. He did it, his lawyers said, because he “felt it was the right thing to do.”
http://articles.philly.com/2012-02-24/news/31095897_1_church-lawyers-priests-abuse-complaints

Other Clergy Abuse Cases

describes crimes
Dutch Church Is Accused of Castrating Young Men By STEPHEN CASTLE March 20, 2012  BRUSSELS — A young man in the care of the Roman Catholic Church in the Netherlands was surgically castrated decades ago after complaining about sexual abuse, according to new evidence that only adds to the scandal engulfing the church there.
The case, which dates from the 1950s, has increased pressure for a government-led inquiry into sexual abuse in the Dutch church, amid suspicions that as many as 10 young men may have suffered the same fate.

“This case is especially painful because it concerns a victim who was victimized for a second time,” said Peter Nissen, a professor of the history of religion at Radboud University in the Netherlands. “He had the courage to go to the police and was castrated.”
It is unclear, however, whether the reported castration was performed as a punishment for whistle-blowing or what was seen as a treatment for homosexuality.
In 2010, about 2,000 people complained of abuse by priests, church institutions or religious orders in the Netherlands after the Roman Catholic Church commissioned an inquiry. It finally concluded that the number of actual victims over several decades could be 10 times higher.

That committee, led by Wim Deetman, a former education minister, was presented with evidence of the castration case when it was contacted by a friend of the young man, who was castrated in 1956, two years before his death in a road accident….
The victim, Henk Heithuis, lived in Catholic institutions from infancy after being taken into care. When he complained about sexual abuse to the police, Mr. Heithuis, 20 at the time, was transferred to a Catholic psychiatric hospital before being admitted to the St. Joseph Hospital in Veghel, where he was castrated….

Mr. Dohmen, the investigative journalist who broke the news in the daily NRC Handelsblad, said that correspondence from the 1950s and Mr. Heithuis’s testimony to Mr. Rogge suggested that there could have been an additional nine cases….
Mr. Dohmen said that the man accused of abusing Mr. Heithuis was investigated but not prosecuted. He was transferred to Nova Scotia, where he started a home for boys.

Catholic church abuse: inspectors knew minors were castrated  Monday 19 March 2012
Government inspectors were aware that minors were being castrated while being looked after in Catholic-run psychiatric institutions, local paper the Limburger reported on Monday.
The NRC reported on Saturday at least one boy under the age of 16 was castrated to ‘help’ his homosexual feelings while in Catholic church care in the 1950s.
Minutes of meetings held in the 1950s show inspectors were present when the castrations were openly discussed, the Limburger said. The minutes also showed directors of the institutions did not think parents needed to be involved in the decision-making process when minors were involved.

Report
But there are indications at least 10 other boys were also castrated, the NRC reported on Saturday. The claims were not included in the Deetman report on sexual abuse within the Catholic church which was published at the end of last year….
The Deetman committee was set up by the church itself in 2010 after the sexual abuse scandal broke. It reported in December having identified some 800 priests and monks who abused children in their care between 1945 and 1985.

In addition, church officials, bishops and lay people were aware of what was going on but failed to take action to protect children, the report said.

Politician
The NRC also said on Saturday the final Deetman report did not mention that a leading politician with the Catholic people’s party KVP had tried to have prison sentences dropped against several priests accused of abusing children in 1958. Vic Marijnen, who went on to become prime minister in 1963, was chairman of the children’s home where Henk Heithuis and dozens of other children were abused until 1959. http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2012/03/catholic_church_abuse_inspecto.php

Fugitives from justice: Roman Catholic priests – Few clergy who fled the U.S. after being accused of sexual abuse of minors have been returned to face the charges
Web application by David Eads, Katie Nieland, Joe Germuska, Brian Boyer Research and reporting by David Jackson, Gary Marx, Brian Boyer March 11, 2012

Since 1985, at least 32 Roman Catholic priests have left the United States for foreign countries while facing criminal charges or a police investigation over allegations that they sexually assaulted or abused minors, according to federal warrants, news reports and law enforcement sources. Only five have been returned to the U.S. to face trial; some died abroad. The number of fugitive priests grows by more than two dozen if it includes those who left the country while facing internal church probes or civil allegations of child sex misconduct, instead of a criminal investigation, and those who were transferred to foreign countries by church authorities before or after allegations surfaced. Many have maintained their innocence. Authorities also have pursued religious leaders from other faith traditions who fled the U.S. amid abuse allegations.  http://media.apps.chicagotribune.com/fugitives/priests.html

550 sexual abuse claims filed against Milwaukee Archdiocese – Archdiocese sought bankruptcy protection last year, saying pending lawsuits could leave it with debts it couldn’t afford  by CARRIE ANTLFINGER 2/2/2012

MILWAUKEE — About 550 people are asking for restitution for alleged sexual abuse by clergy in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee — more than in any of the other U.S. dioceses that have filed for bankruptcy protection, according to a lawyer involved in the Milwaukee case….
The archdiocese has paid more than $30 million in settlements and other court costs related to allegations of clergy abuse and more than a dozen suits against it have been halted because of the bankruptcy proceedings. One priest alone is accused of abusing some 200 boys at a suburban school for deaf students from 1950 to 1974….

The other seven Catholic dioceses in the U.S. that have filed for bankruptcy since the clergy abuse scandal erupted in 2002 in Boston are in Davenport, Iowa; Fairbanks, Alaska; Portland, Ore.; San Diego; Spokane, Wash.; Tucson, Ariz.; and Wilmington, Del. Two other religious orders have also filed for bankruptcy. Of the seven other dioceses that also filed for bankruptcy, the number of claims ranged from about 40 to 250, Stang said. About 535 claimants had come forward against the Oregon Province of the Jesuits, he said. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46236534/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts

Judge won’t dismiss misdemeanor charges against Kansas City Roman Catholic bishop, diocese  By Associated Press, April 5, 2012
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A Missouri judge refused Thursday to dismiss misdemeanor charges against a Kansas City diocese and its bishop, who is the highest-ranking U.S. Roman Catholic official criminally charged with shielding an abusive priest. Bishop Robert Finn and the Catholic Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph are charged with failing to report suspected child abuse. Prosecutors say each is a “mandatory reporter” under the state law. Defense attorneys argued the law is unconstitutionally vague, and that Finn wasn’t the diocese’s designated reporter.

“This Court finds and concludes that persons of ordinary intelligence have no difficulty understanding the meaning of ‘immediately report,’” Circuit Judge John Torrence wrote in his ruling….
Finn has acknowledged he was told in December 2010 about hundreds of images of small children, some of them pornographic, found on the Rev. Shawn Ratigan’s computer — several months before the diocese turned over a disk containing the photos to local police. The bishop also has acknowledged that a parish principal raised concerns about Ratigan’s behavior around children in May 2010, half a year before the photos were found….

Finn in turn sent Ratigan out of state for a psychiatric evaluation. When the priest returned to Missouri, Finn sent him to the Sisters of St. Francis of the Holy Eucharist, where he was to say Mass for the sisters and be away from children. The diocese went to police with the photos last May after the church received reports Ratigan had violated orders to stay away from children.
Ratigan was charged that month with three state child pornography counts. He was then charged in June with 13 federal counts of producing, possessing and attempting to produce child porn. He has pleaded not guilty and remains jailed. Finn has claimed Vicar General Robert Murphy and a diocese review board — not the bishop — were responsible for reporting suspected images of child pornography to the state. But prosecutors insist that as the diocese’s top manager, Finn not only was a mandatory reporter, but acknowledged as much before a grand jury.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/judge-wont-dismiss-misdemeanor-charges-against-kansas-city-roman-catholic-bishop-diocese/2012/04/05/gIQALvahxS_story.html

The Archbishop of Dublin challenges the Church – 60 Minutes – CBS News March 4, 2012 The Dublin archdiocese refused to turn over records on priests who abused children, that is until Diarmuid Martin became archbishop. Bob Simon reports. http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7400874n

transcript:
The Archbishop of Dublin challenges the Church – CBS News March 4, 2012
(CBS News) An Irishman named Diarmuid Martin says the Catholic Church in Ireland has reached a breaking point, a crisis that he says results from the sexual abuse of children by priests and the cover-up by the Church. Martin has provided tens of thousands of pages of evidence against specific priests, and his words and actions carry extraordinary weight. That’s because Diarmuid Martin is the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Dublin. Bob Simon reports….
For decades, the outrage was covered up and the priests were largely protected. An Irishman named Diarmuid Martin would not disagree with any of this. He has dared to publicly criticize the Church, and his words carry a lot of clout because Diarmuid Martin is the archbishop of Dublin….

Archbishop Martin:….There’s overwhelming evidence that the Church hierarchy was not only aware of the sexual abuse, but did little about it. The Dublin Archdiocese knew who the predator priests were, even wrote reports about them but then locked up the files. Investigators on a state panel, the Murphy Commission, asked for the files, but the Church refused until Diarmuid Martin became archbishop.
Martin: I provided the Murphy Commission investigation into Dublin Diocese over 65,000 documents. And the material was there. It was in my archives.

The documents revealed that one priest admitted abusing over a hundred children. Another said he abused children twice a month for 25 years. Archbishop Martin believes thousands of children suffered similar fates.
Martin: Abuse isn’t– it isn’t– it isn’t just the, you know, the actual sexual acts, which are horrendous, but sexual abuse of a child is– it’s a total abuse of power. It’s actually saying to a child, “I control you.” And that is saying to the child, “You’re worthless.”….

Patsy McGarry is the religious affairs correspondent for the Irish Times. He says other high-ranking figures in the church have been directly tied to the cover-up….
Including Archbishop Martin’s superior, Cardinal Sean Brady. When he was a young priest, Brady interviewed two teenagers who’d been abused by a priest. Twenty years later, when one of them sued the Church, it was revealed that Brady had ordered him to remain silent.
McGarry: He met those young people, he believed those young people, he swore them to secrecy as part of the canon law investigation process. He never informed the police, he never informed the health authorities. He informed nobody in civil society.

Just last November, the church agreed to a secret financial settlement in Dublin High Court. Cardinal Brady has apologized for his actions and said he was ashamed he did not uphold the values he believes in. The priest he helped protect went on to abuse 20 more children….
The Vatican, says Patsy McGarry, also overruled Archbishop Martin’s suggestion that two bishops associated with the scandal step down….
Martin: There’s a real danger today of people saying– “The child abuse scandal is over. Let’s bury it. Let’s move on.” It isn’t over. Child protection and the protection of children is something will go on– for– for– you know, for the rest of our lives and into the future. Because the problems are there. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57390125/

Secret church files detail anguish – Unprecedented look at struggle to manage a child sexual abuse crisis Feb. 19, 2012  It was March 4, 2009, and the bishop’s right-hand man, Monsignor J. Thomas Cini, was sitting in a conference room in Bart Dalton’s Wilmington law office. Cini, vicar general of the Catholic Diocese of Wilmington and pastor of St. Ann’s Catholic Church, was surrounded by lawyers, answering questions under oath about a priest who had sexually abused children while working as a teacher in two Catholic schools.

The priest in this case, Paul Daleo, was a Capuchin friar, not a diocesan priest. But he was under contract to teach in the diocese, and no priest can minister here without the bishop’s permission. So attorney John Manly was pressing Cini to learn what the diocese knew about Daleo before granting that permission.
Manly zeroed in on a controversy that arose in 1979, when Daleo was teaching sex-education courses at St. Edmond’s Academy and St. John the Beloved. “What in Father Paul’s résumé stands out at you as making him qualified to teach kids about sex?” Manly asked Cini.
“Well, he did a lot of it,” Cini replied. “Well, you may think that’s funny,” Manly shot back. “I don’t, and I’m sure Mr. Conaty doesn’t.”

Matthias Conaty, sitting nearby, was in fourth grade at St. Edmond’s when Daleo first took an interest in him. For almost four years, Daleo raped and sexually assaulted him. Now a grown man with children of his own, Conaty was suing Daleo, the diocese, the school and the religious order.

He could file suit because he fought to change Delaware’s statute of limitations. A 2007 law opened a two-year window for suits that would otherwise have been barred. As scores of lawsuits were filed, the Diocese of Wilmington filed for bankruptcy protection….
Last week, as those files reached the public for the first time, Conaty was among those calling for the resignation of Cini and two other top diocesan officials — monsignors Joseph Rebman and Clement Lemon — for their failure to report predatory priests to the authorities, to warn parents of their presence in the community, and their failure to place the safety of children above their concern about public scandal….

But, Krebs said, Cini did talk to him about that remark in the Daleo deposition and said he believes the attorney took his comment out of context. Cini told Krebs he wasn’t saying Daleo had engaged in a lot of sexual activity, but that he had taught a lot of sex-education courses….
The files also reveal church authorities’ ongoing struggle to contain the abuse, control information and rumors, negotiate payments and confidentiality agreements (no longer permitted) with those who said they were abused, remove priests from parishes where they had abused children and respond strategically whenever problems became public.

Among the church documents included in the files is a 1962 publication explaining how church officials must handle allegations of a sexual nature. Complete secrecy is demanded, under threat of excommunication — which, in church terms, means eternal damnation. http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20120219/NEWS/202190358/Secret-church-files-detail-anguish

Judge sentences pastor to 158 years to life in molestation case March 2, 2012 Rio Linda Baptist Church Pastor Tommy Gene Daniels was sentenced to 158 years to life in prison today for molesting five little girls in a respite and child-care operation his family ran out of his Citrus Heights home….
Daniels…has continued to maintain his innocence. His attorney, Michael L. Chastaine, filed a motion for a new trial that the judge rejected. Chastaine said afterwards he intends to appeal the Dec. 8 verdict handed down by the Sacramento jury.

The five victims in the case were between the ages of 5 and 13 when Daniels touched them inappropriately while they were in his family’s care in his Wapiti Place residence. The molestations took place in his house between December 2002 and August 2007.
One of Daniels’ victims, who is now 12, began to read her victim’s impact statement in the courtroom. She said the molestation “changed me forever.” http://blogs.sacbee.com/crime/archives/2012/03/judge-sentences-pastormolester-to-158-years-to-life.html

‘Standing Silent’ follows uncovering of sexual abuse in Baltimore’s Orthodox Jewish community By Emily Wax, March 19, 2012 One by one the victims stood and described their alleged molesters: the Torah teacher, the rabbi, the ice cream truck driver, the man at the mikvah.
That meeting, held nearly six years ago in a small room in a synagogue in Pikes-ville, just outside Baltimore, went on for four hours. Seated in a circle with the other victims was Phil Jacobs, a Baltimore Jewish Times journalist. He was not there as a reporter. He was there because he, too, had experienced sexual abuse. But after the meeting, a young man who knew Jacobs was a journalist approached and asked to be interviewed, to have his story told. That was the beginning of Jacobs’s effort to document sexual abuse in Baltimore’s Orthodox Jewish community, bringing the harrowing experiences shared by the 18 victims in that room out into the open.

The first of his stories, “Today, Steve is 25” was published in February 2007, 10 months after the Pikes-ville meeting. That process of reporting and writing has been made into a documentary film, “Standing Silent,” directed by Scott Rosenfelt and now being shown at film festivals across the country. Partially funded by a Sundance Institute grant, it details how Jacobs, an Orthodox Jew himself, has been credited with — and criticized for — uncovering a painful secret in Baltimore’s Orthodox community….

There are no hard numbers to document the extent of the problem, but Elaine Witman, director of the Shofar Coalition, a nonprofit agency that provides services for victims of sexual and other abuse in the Baltimore area’s Jewish community, says the center is seeing an increase in the number of Jews coming forward to report abuse. In 2010, 67 people requested help for childhood sexual abuse from the coalition. That number nearly doubled in 2011, to 132 people, said Witman, who attributes the increase to Jacobs’s articles and the coalition’s efforts toreduce the shame that has kept the issue quiet for so long. Http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/documentary-standing-silent-recounts-efforts-to-uncover-abuse-in-orthodox-community/2012/02/28/gIQAewi9NS_story.html

Boy Scouts Abuse Case

Convicted leader continued with Scouts movement CBC 2/7/12 A man who was twice-convicted of sex offences against children was welcomed as a member of a Scouts alumni association for decades, even after officials became aware of at least one of his convictions, a CBC News investigation has found.
Even though the organization says there was no contact with youth, Scouts Canada, in a recent interview with the CBC, now admits it was a mistake.
But a Lillooet, B.C., family that suffered damage caused by the abuse, says the acknowledgement gives them little solace. “I ended up doing nine prison sentences, and having drinking and drug and all those other problems,” Christopher Jones told CBC News. Decades ago, in 1976, his Grade 4 teacher and Scout leader, Michael David Henley, began molesting him….It took Jones, who was known as Christopher Aaron as a child, 10 years to tell anyone what Henley did to him….

Henley eventually pleaded guilty to indecent assault and received a year’s probation. In 1994, Moore wrote to Scouts officials to be certain they were aware of what happened.
Moore says the letter she got back made her sick. Henley was still involved in Scouting as part of an adult alumni group for leaders called the Baden Powell Guild. The provincial commissioner wrote that Henley had no direct contact with youth, was undergoing counselling, and appeared determined to stay clear of situations that could result in a recurrence of his crime.
After Henley was convicted of sex assaults against six boys in 1999, he stepped down from his position as editor of the Baden Powell Guild’s newsletter, but returned as editor until 2005.
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/convicted-leader-continued-scouts-movement-000842148.html

Boy Scouts sued in sexual abuse case – A Santa Barbara County boy was sexually abused by his Scout leader in 2007. A judge overseeing the lawsuit brought by the boy’s family has ordered the Boy Scouts to hand over confidential files detailing allegations of sexual abuse by Scout leaders around the nation. By Kim Christensen, Los Angeles Times February 19, 2012
The mother of a Santa Barbara County teenager says he was wronged twice — once by the 450-pound Boy Scout leader who sexually abused him in 2007, and then by a local Scouts executive who she says told her not to call police.
“He said that wasn’t necessary, because the Scouts do their own internal investigation,” said the woman, whose name The Times is withholding to protect her son’s identity. “I thought that was really weird…. I thought it was really important to call the sheriff right away.”

So she did, triggering an investigation of volunteer Scout leader Al Steven Stein, then 29, who was charged with abusing her 92-pound son and two other boys. In 2009, he pleaded no contest to felony child endangerment. He was put on probation but later went to prison after authorities found pictures of nude children on his cellphone data card. Stein’s criminal case is closed….
Nor is it over for the Boy Scouts of America, which is being sued by the boy’s family for negligence in a case whose ramifications could reach well beyond Santa Barbara. The lawsuit contends the Scouts knew or should have known that Stein had put the boy at risk and cites the executive’s reluctance to call police as evidence of an effort to conceal widespread sexual abuse….

In January, after reviewing some of the files, a Santa Barbara Superior Court judge rejected the Scouts’ argument that the documents are irrelevant to the lawsuit and ordered the organization to turn over the most recent 20 years’ worth of records to the boy’s lawyers by Feb. 24, with victims’ names removed. The judge ordered the lawyers not to disclose the files publicly.
Known as “ineligible volunteer files,” the documents have been maintained since the 1920s and are intended to keep suspected molesters and others accused of misconduct out of Scouting. Scouts officials have steadfastly resisted releasing them and won’t discuss their contents, citing the privacy rights of victims and the fact that many files are based on unproven allegations.

They strenuously dispute that the files have been used to conceal sexual abuse….
According to the lawsuit, Stein had a history of inappropriate behavior with children he’d met through Scouting, including “making sexual jokes and comments” in front of Scouts and in some cases pulling down their pants. In November 2007, he abused the Santa Barbara County boy, who was 13 at the time….In early 2008, Stein was charged with a felony, committing a lewd act upon a child, and two misdemeanors including child pornography for photographs he took of a boy’s genitals. Two of the victims were Scouts; the third was the son of a family friend.
Stein struck a deal to plead no contest to felony child endangerment and one misdemeanor. He was placed on five years’ probation but violated it by having the photos of nude children on his cellphone card. He was sentenced to two years in prison but was paroled early and has been in no trouble since, said Steven Balash, his attorney in the criminal case and the lawsuit….

But the boy’s mother said her son has been deeply affected, in part because other families from the troop accused him of lying or “hallucinating” about the abuse. He refuses to go out in public and is now tutored at home, she said….
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-scouts-20120219,0,5265678.story

Scouts to turn over files in Calif. sex abuse case Associated Press 2/19/12
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (AP) — A judge overseeing a lawsuit brought by the family of a California boy molested by his troop leader in 2007 has ordered the Boy Scouts of America to hand over confidential files detailing allegations of sexual abuse by Scout leaders around the nation….
The trial is scheduled for April, nearly five years after the boy, then 13, was molested by volunteer troop leader Al Stein at a Boy Scouts Christmas tree sale in Goleta. Stein pleaded no contest to felony child endangerment in 2009….

The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified damages, contends the Scouts knew or should have known that Stein had put the boy at risk and cites Tate’s reluctance to call police as evidence of an effort to conceal widespread sexual abuse….The boy’s lawyers contend the files will expose the Scouts’ “culture of hidden sexual abuse” and its failure to warn boys, their parents and others about pedophiles in the ranks of one of the nation’s oldest youth organizations….
Some of the estimated 5,000 files have surfaced in recent years as a result of lawsuits by former Scouts accusing the organization of failing to exclude known pedophiles, detect abuses and report offenders to police, and allowing predators to remain at large.
http://news.yahoo.com/scouts-turn-over-files-calif-sex-abuse-case-201919674.html

Prostitution Cases

describes violence
Spanish police arrest 22 gang members that tattooed bar codes onto prostitutes’ wrists By Associated Press, March 24, 2012
MADRID — Spanish police arrested 22 suspected pimps who allegedly used violence to force women into prostitution and tattooed them with bar codes as a sign of ownership, officials said Saturday.
Police are calling the gang the “bar code pimps.” Officers freed one 19-year-old woman who had been beaten, held against her will and tattooed with a bar code and an amount of money — €2,000 ($2,650) — which investigators believe was the debt the gang wished to extort before releasing her….

Sex is a multibillion-dollar industry in Spain, with colorfully lit brothels staffed mainly by poor immigrant women from Latin America, Africa and eastern Europe lining highways throughout the country.
Prostitution falls in legal limbo: it is not regulated, although pimping is a crime. The northeastern city of Barcelona plans to introduce regional legislation in coming weeks banning prostitution on urban streets.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/spanish-police-arrest-22-gang-members-that-tattooed-bar-codes-onto-prostitutes-wrists/2012/03/24/gIQAil7AYS_story.html

Ohio man accused of prostituting adopted boy By ANN SANNER and DAN SEWELL Associated Press 3/1/12 TROY, Ohio (AP) — A 10-year-old boy shook when asked about being prostituted to two other men by an adoptive father who regularly had sex with him, according to police, who said the boy was fearful of talking because he didn’t want to be taken from his home or separated from his new siblings.
The adoptive father has been charged with raping three boys in his care and compelling prostitution by hiring the 10-year-old out for sex. He and two other men remained in jail Thursday on rape charges. Federal and local law enforcement officials said they’re widening the investigation into child sexual exploitation allegations against the father, who worked out of his home as an insurance claims adjuster….

School officials said the man had recently withdrawn the three adopted children from school, saying he would home school them. A neighbor said he had no idea anything lurid might be going on in the home. “You don’t know what goes on inside people’s homes,” said neighbor Ed Rogers, who had lived across the street from the man the past five years in a neighborhood lined with single-story ranch homes, typical in this working class city of 25,000 people about 20 miles north of Dayton….

An undercover detective in Franklin County, part of a state task force, talked online with the adoptive father, who said he would arrange sex with a 10-year-old boy, Troy police said. He had been led to the adoptive father by another man who had posted a Craigslist ad wanting “taboo” sex, police said. The adoptive father was going to meet the undercover detective at a McDonald’s in a nearby city
http://news.yahoo.com/ohio-man-accused-prostituting-adopted-boy-013051158.html

Crime Inc. – Human Trafficking – Forced Prostitution. Slave Labor. CNBC goes inside a $32 billion underground industry that knows no moral bounds and stretches around the globe.
From prostitution to slave labor, human trafficking is a booming business. This $32 billion dollar underground industry knows no moral bounds, stretching around the globe. Crime Inc. examines the underground industry where hopelessness and greed create a sinister and sometimes lethal combination.
Sex Trade
The Commercial sex trade is a thriving business and you don’t have to go far to find its victims. In Tijuana, just across the California/Mexico border, many girls are forced into prostitution.  http://www.cnbc.com/id/42490340
The High-Dollar Trade in American Girls  http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000023572

Backpage.com

Where Pimps Peddle Their Goods By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF     March 17, 2012
I WENT on a walk in Manhattan the other day with a young woman who once had to work these streets, hired out by eight pimps while she was just 16 and 17. She pointed out a McDonald’s where pimps sit while monitoring the girls outside, and a building where she had repeatedly been ordered online as if she were a pizza….
After Alissa testified against her pimps, six of them went to prison for up to 25 years. Yet these days, she reserves her greatest anger not at pimps but at companies that enable them. She is particularly scathing about Backpage.com, a classified advertising Web site that is used to sell auto parts, furniture, boats — and girls. Alissa says pimps routinely peddled her on Backpage. “You can’t buy a child at Wal-Mart, can you?” she asked me. “No, but you can go to Backpage and buy me on Backpage.”

Backpage accounts for about 70 percent of prostitution advertising among five Web sites that carry such ads in the United States, earning more than $22 million annually from prostitution ads, according to AIM Group, a media research and consulting company. It is now the premier Web site for human trafficking in the United States, according to the National Association of Attorneys General. And it’s not a fly-by-night operation. Backpage is owned by Village Voice Media, which also owns the estimable Village Voice newspaper….

Liz McDougall, general counsel of Village Voice Media, told me that it is “shortsighted, ill-informed and counterproductive” to focus on Backpage when many other Web sites are also involved, particularly because Backpage tries to screen out ads for minors and reports possible trafficking cases to the authorities. McDougall denied that Backpage dominates the field….
Backpage’s exit from prostitution advertising wouldn’t solve the problem, for smaller Web sites would take on some of the ads. But it would be a setback for pimps to lose a major online marketplace. When Craigslist stopped taking such ads in 2010, many did not migrate to new sites: online prostitution advertising plummeted by more than 50 percent, according to AIM Group.

Responding to Village Voice on Sex Trafficking By NICHOLAS KRISTOF   March 21, 2012
After my Sunday column criticizing Village Voice Media for providing a forum for sex traffickers on its Backpage.com websites, Village Voice has struck back. It has just gone on line with an article “What Nick Kristof got wrong”:
The article begins:
Nicholas D. Kristof was wrong about the most devastating ‘fact’ in his Sunday, March 18th, column in The New York Times regarding Backpage.com. He wrote about an underage victim of human trafficking: “Alissa says pimps routinely peddled her on Backpage.” A video that accompanied his online op-ed was headlined: “Age 16, She Was Sold on Backpage.com” That is not true. According to Alissa’s court testimony, she was 16 in 2003. Backpage.com did not exist anywhere in America in 2003.

It’s interesting that Village Voice doesn’t dispute anything in my column or the accompanying video, but only the online blurb for the video. The Voice is right that Alissa was 16 in 2003 — for about two days. In fact, Alissa turned 16 at the end of 2003. So all during 2004, she was 16 years old. And so it was in 2004, not 2003, that she was traveling up and down the east coast being pimped. Backpage operated in at least 11 cities during 2004, including Miami and Fort Lauderdale, both of them cities Alissa where says she was pimped on Backpage. Then at 17, as Backpage expanded to 30 cities including Boston, she was pimped even more broadly on Backpage — and also in Village Voice print ads, she says.
Moreover, contrary to what the Voice says, Alissa continued in the sex trade until 2007, when she got out for good. Backpage was steadily expanding and becoming a major force in this period, and pimps routinely used it to sell her, she says.

I’m frankly a bit surprised that Village Voice is even trying to deny its role. Attorneys General around the country have linked Backpage to arrests for trafficking of underage girls in 22 different states. As my column noted, one recent case involved a 15-year-old girl here in New York. A previous column I wrote cited a 13-year-old girl peddled on Backpage. http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/21/responding-to-village-voice-on-sex-trafficking/

Hollie Greig case

Hollie Demands Justice – Working directly with Hollie, Anne Greig & Robert Green
http://www.holliedemandsjustice.org/

In the summer of 2000, Hollie told her mother, Anne, that she had been repeatedly sexually abused http://holliedemandsjustice.org/about_hollie_greig/

Brian Gerrish with Mark Windows outside The Royal Courts of Justice. Part two of our report on the latest in the Hollie Greig case.
http://www.youtube.com/     watch?v=Kbvfek8UvPk

THIS FRIDAY, March 2nd 2012, we need you to show your support for Hollie by being at The High Court in London http://www.youtube.com           /watch?v=1dVMkY_cj8I

Foreign Exchange Students Sexual Abuse Case

Foreign exchange students sexually abused in program overseen by State Department  Mar 13, 2012   By Anna Schecter Rock Center – Dozens of high school foreign exchange students have been raped, sexually abused, or harassed by American host parents in towns and cities across the country, an NBC News investigation has found.
In one of the most egregious cases, at least four exchange students were sexually abused over the course of two years by the same host father, even after the first victim sounded alarms.
“He said ‘this is American culture,’ and I should get used to it,” Christopher Herbon of Germany told NBC News in an exclusive interview to be broadcast Wednesday night on Rock Center.
The organization that placed them with the host father has been accused of orchestrating a cover-up to protect its reputation over the safety of the students….

But NBC News’ investigation found two major flaws in the system.  A lack of oversight can allow sexual predators to take advantage of the program. And when sexual abuse does happen, there is evidence that the students are sent back to their home countries with little or no support from the exchange organizations or the State Department….
Meyer pleaded guilty to first degree sexual assault and served four of a six year sentence.
http://rockcenter.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/13/10669162-foreign-exchange-students-sexually-abused-in-program-overseen-by-state-department

High school foreign exchange students repeatedly placed with convicted murderer Fri Mar 16, 2012 By Anna Schecter and Kate Snow  Rock Center
The day after a Rock Center report on the sexual abuse of high school foreign exchange students aired, the State Department’s Inspector General issued a scathing report that challenged spokesperson Toria Nuland’s assertion to NBC News that the Department has taken the necessary steps to protect students. The IG report said an exchange organization had for years been placing high school students in the home of a convicted murderer.  The Department did not terminate the organization from the program until a year after this information was discovered, the report said….

Some organizations that placed students in the homes of convicted felons continued for extended periods to operate as “designated sponsors,” according to the report.  Those “designated sponsors” are regulated by the State Department.

The report cited 118 allegations of sexual abuse or harassment of high school exchange students in 2010 and 2011….The most recent IG report found only 39 of 92 organizations had been reviewed.
Furthermore, the IG found 15 of the organizations did not comply with regulations. They failed to complete criminal background checks on families, resulting in teens being placed in homes of sex offenders and other felons.  Instead of shutting down or suspending the organizations as required by law, most received only a letter of reprimand.  http://rockcenter.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/03/16/10722997-high-school-foreign-exchange-students-repeatedly-placed-with-convicted-murderer

Culture Shock: ‘He touched places that he shouldn’t have’ Dozens of high school foreign exchange students have been raped, sexually abused, or harassed by American host parents in towns and cities across the country, a Rock Center investigation has found. The State Department regulates more than 80 organizations that place foreign teens in American homes where they study at American high schools. The study abroad experience, a rite of passage and diplomatic gesture, became a nightmarish experience for some teens. NBC News’ Kate Snow reports.  http://video.msnbc.msn.com/rock-center/46741718

Children Removed from Texas Home

describes abuse
In a Texas Home, 11 Children Found in Grim Conditions – Investigators found 11 children last month in this house in Dayton, Tex. Eight were packed into a single 10-foot-by-10-foot room, some in restraints. By MANNY FERNANDEZ February 22, 2012
DAYTON, Tex. — A 2-year-old girl was tied up in a restraint attached to her bed. Nearby another 2-year-old child, a boy, was restrained to his bed, too. A third child, a blind 5-year-old girl who appeared to be in a daze, was tied up on a filthy mattress. An 11-year-old boy had a black eye and finger marks on his forearms, and one of his teeth had been knocked out….

Eight of the children were found inside a 10-foot-by-10-foot back bedroom. Though it was about 2 p. m., the room was dark because the window was covered with plywood and there was no light fixture, according to the court filing. Three of the eight children in the room were restrained to their beds at the time the authorities visited. One child told the authorities that the children were placed in restraints while they slept at night and sometimes during the day when they were awake, and another child said they were kept in the room for up to three days at a time. The harness-style cloth restraints, tied around the chests of some of the children and attached to their small beds, were so tight that they had only about one or two feet to maneuver. None of the older children attended schools, the court papers said….

The court document states that none of the adults in the home thought there was anything wrong with restraining the children. “All adults in the home were interviewed, in which none of them felt like this was a problem, and stated that they tie the children up for safety,” the legal papers said.

11 children, some tied to beds, removed from Texas home – Eleven children, some of whom police say were tied to a bed, are removed from a Dayton, Texas, home north of of Houston where at least 21 people were discovered living. KPRC’s Ryan Korsgard reports. By NBC News, msnbc.com staff and news services  2/21/02 DAYTON, Texas — Authorities said Tuesday they removed 11 children from a crowded home used as an address by a registered sex offender after they found eight confined in a small, dark bedroom with restraints tying some to their beds. Along with the children, 10 adults were living in the one-story, 1,700-square-foot brick home in Dayton, about 30 miles northeast of Houston, Child Protective Services spokeswoman Gwen Carter said. One month after a raid on the house, authorities are still trying to determine how the children are related and why they were there, she said. The children, belonging to seven separate families, ranged in age from 5 months to 11 years, said NBC station KPRC of Houston. http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/21/10469420-11-children-some-tied-to-beds-removed-from-texas-home

Deputies: Children found tied up in Liberty County home – 21 people were living in house Feb 21 2012 DAYTON, Texas – Eleven children removed from a Liberty County home are in the custody of Children’s Protective Services. Investigators said 21 people were living in a home on Ford Avenue in Dayton. The children, ages 5 months to 11 years, were removed from the home on Jan. 24. Detectives said some of them were found tied up to a bed. Some of them suffered physical abuse and physical and medical neglect, officials said. The children belonged to seven separate families, officials said.
http://www.click2houston.com/news/Deputies-Children-found-tied-up-in-Liberty-County-home/-/1735978/8815936/-/iy2v6az/-/index.html

Other Abuse Cases

Big sexual abuse racket suspected at orphanage – Staff Reporter NEW DELHI, February 13, 2012
The boy apprehended a couple of days ago for allegedly sexually abusing a girl inmate of an orphanage in Darya Ganj here, who died under mysterious circumstances last December, has also been booked for purportedly sodomising a boy inmate inside the orphanage premises about six months ago. Several other inmates of the orphanage too are suspected to have been sexually abused in the past….

Stating that the orphanage staff seemed to have threatened the boys and girls against revealing anything to the police or the NGO members, the officer said they did not cooperate and later even prevented the NGO representatives from interviewing the children claiming that they could do so as they were not registered under the Juvenile Justice Act.

….Alleging that sexual abuse of boys was rampant, the report quoted a boy as saying that those living in the hostel were sodomised by older boys and the warden. Himself a victim, the boy disclosed names of some others who were being sodomised.
The victim alleged that once when he complained to the chief warden that the warden had been sexually abusing a boy, he was beaten up badly. The NGO team met some other boys who made shocking revelations of sexual abuse. The team recorded several other instances of physical torture, molestation and eve-teasing of children, who lived under the constant terror of being victimised by certain orphanage staffers.  http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/article2887862.ece

Orphanage management denies sexual abuse charge  Staff Reporter NEW DELHI, February 14, 2012
The Arya Orphanage, in which several small children are suspected to have been sexually abused and sodomised by boys and even the staff members, have denied all allegations of sexual abuse and alleged that the entire issue is a conspiracy being perpetuated by local politicians….

He also termed the entire incident a conspiracy of two MLAs whom he had refused favours. “There is this MLA who asked us to give the front portion of the orphanage land, we refused that is why he is doing this,” said Viresh Pratap Chaudhry, president of the Foundation that runs the orphanage, refusing to reveal the name of the MLA….
The incident first came to light when an 11-year-old girl in the orphanage died under mysterious circumstances and the post-mortem report revealed that she had been raped and sodomised. A 14-year old boy in the same orphanage was apprehended by the police for the crime along with charges of sodomising another minor boy.   http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/article2891787.ece

The Living Nightmare – Quanitta Underwood: A Contender for Olympic Gold and a Survivor By BARRY BEARAK February 11, 2012   THE TWO SISTERS shared a bed, and each night, with their hearts hammering, they would listen for the turn of the knob and the push of the door. Quanitta Underwood was 10, her sister Hazzauna, 12. The walls of the house were thin, and the girls could hear every move their father made. Hear him sit up, hear him get out of bed, hear him walking their way.
Quanitta pinched her eyes shut when her father entered the room, but she could imagine the presence of his familiar silhouette. She felt his weight sink into the bed while his hands traveled beneath the covers. As Quanitta feigned sleep, her father groped her sister and often rolled on top.

Azzad Underwood was a forceful man, not so much in size as in manner. He was a welder by trade but gave way to few men in self-importance. He could be charming. He had been president of the parents association at the girls’ school and was among the most active members at a local Church of God in Christ….
The most important thing, Quanitta told herself, was never to let on that she knew, for this was a secret surely meant to be hidden in the dark. So she lay motionless in the bed, breathing gently through a sleeping face. Sometimes, her father pushed her aside, and she drowsily flopped over….

“I remember the first time ever; he held me down,” Hazzauna said. “It was rape. There’s no other word for it. Every time after that, it seemed he purposely did it in the room with my sister, because he knew that if I moved or screamed, she was right there and it would wake her up.”….

Hazzauna has a family of her own now, and she too works as a nurse in Las Cruces. In college, she studied child abuse, the methodologies of molesters and the horrid frequency with which molestation occurs. And while she said she now found it “empowering” to talk of what happened, tears seeped from her eyes as she revisited the memories: Azzad was her demon and her father, a man callously conniving and yet strangely pitiable. She recalled, “On multiple occasions, he would cry like a baby, saying, ‘I’m sorry. I want to stop but just give me an amount of time.’ ”
Her father bribed her with clothes and other gifts. He threw her an expensive birthday party at a skating rink. He persuaded her to take up modeling, escorting her to competitions, where they shared a room in a hotel….

Quanitta said she was in the seventh grade when Azzad began to molest her, always taking advantage of a time when neither his wife nor Hazzauna was at home. “I would lock my arms and squeeze my legs tight,” she said, describing efforts to constrain what her father could do.
Both sisters fantasized about escape. Hazzauna hoped to one day go to college in Washington. Quanitta had darker ideas. She thought about hurting Azzad — “using a knife or something” — then running away. What neither did was confide in the other. But that changed in January 1998. The sisters were 13 and 15. Quanitta was terribly upset about something. Hazzauna already had suspicions. She finally asked the question.  “Has he been touching you?” she said, and the scalding truth poured out. By then, the sisters were seldom in contact with their mother in Seattle. But they did have a number for the hospital where she worked.  The things Hazzauna told Alonna were dumfounding. “How long has he been doing this?” the girls’ mother recalled asking. “Forever,” Hazzauna answered.  The police arrived at the Underwood home within an hour. This time, the girls were willing to tell the truth….

Azzad pleaded guilty to “criminal sexual conduct with a minor.” He was sentenced to seven years in prison and five years of probation. The penalty could have been stiffer. The judge asked various people to speak in court. Hazzauna and Quanitta said they did not want their dad to go to jail….
Azzad’s sentence was cut to six years, and he left prison in August 2005….interviewed….His answers were often spare, a nod followed by “O.K.” or “no comment.” He refused to discuss the molesting of his daughters but made no effort to deny it. Being arrested was a relief, he said: “I was struggling between two forces. I wanted to do right but instead I did wrong. That’s it in a nutshell.”  Then Azzad amended the thought. It’s more complicated than that, he said. The counselors in prison made him aware of how the mind creates justifications to tolerate its own misdeeds. “When you do things for a long time that you know to be wrong, you come to think that it’s right,” he said….

Aberrant behavior may have detectable roots. When he was a boy, Azzad said, he delivered newspapers, and a man on his route abused him, “sexually, repeatedly.” A second cousin had also molested him. But he said he was not mentioning these traumas as an excuse: “Whether that was a contributing factor, I still need to be held accountable.”  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/sports/quanitta-underwood-a-contender-for-olympic-gold-and-a-survivor.html

Parents of teen accused of shootings faced charges February 28, 2012, Rachel Dissell, The Plain Dealer  CHARDON, Ohio — It appears that T.J. Lane had violence in his life from the beginning. Geauga County court records show the father of the teen who authorities say shot five students at Chardon High School on Monday had been arrested many times for violent crimes against women in his life, including Lane’s mother. More than once, police or courts warned him to stay away from the boy and his mother.
Authorities said the teen walked into the high school cafeteria early Monday morning, took out a gun and aimed it at several boys. In the end, three students were seriously wounded and one was killed. A fifth student died early Tuesday. T.J. Lane is to appear in Geauga County Juvenile Court Tuesday….

T.J. Lane attended Lake Academy, an alternative school in Willoughby for students in Lake and Geauga counties….The teen had one prior case in Geauga County Juvenile court two years ago. Officials would not release information on the case. But several at the court said the family’s troubles were known to social workers in the county.
The father, Thomas Lane Jr., was known to county authorities because of a series of arrests for abusing women in his life, court records show. It’s not clear how much contact the father and son had.

But between 1995 and 1997, the boy’s father and mother, Sara A. Nolan, were each charged with domestic violence against each other. The father was later charged with assaulting a police officer and served time in prison after trying to suffocate another woman he married several years after his son was born, according to court records. He held the woman’s head under running water and bashed it into a wall, leaving a dent in the drywall, court records show….
http://www.cleveland.com/chardon-shooting/index.ssf/2012/02/parents_of_teen_accused_of_sho.html

2 former Orioles batboys say they were abused by former Red Sox clubhouse manager By Justin Fenton, The Baltimore Sun March 5, 2012 As a teenager growing up in the shadow of Memorial Stadium, working as a batboy in the clubhouses with the Baltimore Orioles and opposing teams was a dream job for Ronald Shelton.
But Shelton said he quietly left the job before he had planned to do so after being twice sexually assaulted in an equipment room in 1990 by a Red Sox clubhouse manager, Donald Fitzpatrick, when the Boston team was in town. Now all these years later, Fitzpatrick has been linked to a growing number of claims of sexual assault. And Shelton has come forward.

“He told me to ‘Be good,’ and as I got older, I came to understand what that meant: Do not tell,” said Shelton, now a 38-year-old father. He said the experience made him fear being considered “abnormal,” and as a result of his experience, he is fiercely protective of his son.
Shelton and a second, unnamed former Orioles batboy this week joined a growing number of former Red Sox attendants who say that Fitzpatrick, who died in 2005, abused them.
Boston lawyer Mitchell Garabedian said Monday that though the statute of limitations for legal action has expired in many of the cases, the alleged victims are seeking settlements from the Red Sox as well as the Orioles because the teams failed to protect the young employees….

The Boston Globe reported that a total of 21 individuals have come forward to make claims spanning decades, and the newspaper called it the “worst sexual abuse scandal in Major League Baseball history.”….
Allegations of sexual abuse by Fitzpatrick are not new — he was convicted of sexually assaulting young boys in 2002 and one former clubhouse attendant showed up at a nationally televised game in 1991 holding a sign that read, “Don Fitzpatrick sexually assaulted me.” The Red Sox have paid settlements to several former attendants.
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/breaking/bs-md-ci-batboy-sex-abuse-20120305,0,2438664.story

2 Children Found Living In Bus In Splendora, Tex 03/8/2012 SPLENDORA, Texas (Associated Press) — Two children who were found living in a stench-filled abandoned school bus near Houston, its windows blocked and the lot around it covered in trash, are in the custody of Texas child welfare workers, officials said Thursday. A postal worker discovered the children, ages 11 and 5, at the bus in Splendora about 10 a.m. Wednesday, officials said. Their parents are believed to be in prison for embezzling money from Hurricane Ike victims in 2008. The children are not enrolled at local schools.  The bus appeared to have electricity, an air conditioning unit installed in one window and bunk beds inside for the children. But several neighbors told the Houston Chronicle that the children typically looked unkempt and could often be spotted running around at night. “They always had dirty clothes on (and) no shoes, even in the winter,” said nearby resident Gayla Payne, who said the 11-year-old girl told her daughter that she bathes twice a week. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/08/2-children-live-in-bus_n_1333251.html

Sexual predators rarely committed under Justice program By Brad Heath, USA TODAY
3/20/12 BUTNER, N.C. – Inside the sprawling federal prison here is a place the government reserves for the worst of the worst — sexual predators too dangerous to be set free. Six years ago, the federal government set out to indefinitely detain some of the nation’s most dangerous sex offenders, keeping them locked up even after their prison sentences had ended.

But despite years of effort, the government has so far won court approval for detaining just 15 men. Far more often, men the U.S.Justice Department branded as “sexually dangerous” predators remained imprisoned here for years without a mandatory court hearing before the government was forced to let them go, a USA TODAY investigation has found. The Justice Department has either lost or dropped its cases against 61 of the 136 men it sought to detain. Some were imprisoned for more than four years without a trial before they were freed.
Dozens of others are still waiting for their day in court. They remain in a prison unit where authorities and former detainees said explicit drawings of children are commonplace, but where few of the men have received any treatment for the disorders that put them there.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-03-13/dangerous-sexual-predators-detained/53621210/1?loc=interstitialskip

USA Today: Sexual predators rarely committed under DOJ program By James R. Marsh on March 20, 2012 USA Today has an excellent investigative article on the DOJ’s federal civil commitment program for sexually dangerous sex offenders. Not surprisingly, many of those requiring indeterminate incarceration were convicted of child pornography crimes. According to the article:
Six years ago, the federal government set out to indefinitely detain some of the nation’s most dangerous sex offenders, keeping them locked up even after their prison sentences had ended.
But despite years of effort, the government has so far won court approval for detaining just 15 men. The Justice Department has either lost or dropped its cases against 61 of the 136 men it sought to detain.

Dozens of others are still waiting for their day in court. They remain in a prison unit where authorities and former detainees said explicit drawings of children are commonplace, but where few of the men have received any treatment for the disorders that put them there.
Despite that, neither the Justice Department nor other watchdog agencies have offered any public assessment of how well the federal civil commitment law works.
We have repeatedly pointed out that individuals incarcerated for possession, receipt and distribution of child pornography are significantly more likely than not to have sexually abused a child via a hands-on act. http://www.childlaw.us/2012/03/usa-today-sexual-predators-rar.html

Ritual Abuse and Mind Control Information

The Survivorship Ritual Abuse and Child Abuse 2012 Conference – Our Healing Journey: Past, Present, Future
Two days of survivor and professional workshops, a safe room, great price, good food, safe environment, a chance to mingle with others who share your experience, a chance to move the movement forward… On May 19 – 20, 2012 Survivorship will hold a conference at Executive Inn & Suite 1755 Embaracadero Oakland, CA 94606 http://www.executiveinnoakland.com

The keynote speaker will be: Caryn Stardancer
Caryn Stardancer was a pioneer in establishing a grassroots network for survivors of sadistic ritualistic abuse. She co-founded Survivorship with Catherine Raggazzi, and served at the helm of that organization for a decade. During that time Caryn wrote and spoke both nationally and internationally, served as a mentor-counselor, taught professional service providers through UC Davis Entension classes and San Francisco General Hospital Grand Rounds, and exhibited her survivorship-inspired artwork in publications, galleries and exhibitions. She is currently retired to her rural home, where she is a proudly active grandma, homemaker and gardener.

To register for the conference email: conference2012reg@survivorship.org
To cosponsor this conference email: conference2012cosp@survivorship.org

To link directly to this page: http://survivorship.org/2012conference.html

Survivorship is one of the oldest and most respected organizations supporting survivors of extreme child abuse, including sadistic sexual abuse, ritualistic abuse, mind control, and torture.
Survivorship provides resources, healing, and community for survivors; training and education for professionals who may serve survivors; and support for survivors’ partners and other allies. The organization functions as a lifeline for survivors who may be isolated emotionally or geographically. Through community outreach and training, Survivorship also raises awareness about these difficult issues.

The purpose of the conference will be to help survivors of ritual abuse and their allies. The conference will be for survivors, cosurvivors, helping professionals and others interested in this topic.         Survivorship Family Justice Center     470 27th Street     Oakland, CA 94612 USA

A victim of child sex abuse shares her story on a TV News program. The abuse in her life led to a multiple personality disorder. deJoly now takes any opportunity to tell her story in hopes that others in similar experience may find healing, as well as teaching healthcare providers in understanding the devastating results of abuse. http://www.youtube.com      /watch?v=qlG_jrAHRN0&feature=youtu.be http://dejoly.com/

describes abuse
Ritual abuse of children: a hidden and under-reported crime – Police in London have a special unit to probe this type of crime but believe they have only scratched the surface     Sandra Laville, crime correspondent     guardian.co.uk, Thursday 1 March 2012
Witchcraft-based abuse first came to national consciousness with the murder 12 years ago of Victoria Climbié by her guardians. After her death it emerged that the police and other authorities had missed several opportunities to step in and save the eight-year-old. Her death led to a public inquiry and produced major changes in child protection policies in England.

Since Climbié’s murder, agencies have learned a great deal more about the ritualised abuse and torture of children. But figures collated by the Metropolitan police merely scratch the surface, detectives believe, of a hidden crime that is still under-reported.
In the past 10 years police in greater London have investigated 83 incidents of child abuse and torture linked to witchcraft and other religious rituals. Of these children, four – including Kristy Bamu – were murdered during ritualised violence.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/mar/01/witchcraft-ritual-abuse-hidden-crime

describes rituals
Religious ritual or abuse? Police investigate cuts on 4-year-old girl Monday, Feb. 6, 2012 By Mike Petchenik ROSWELL, Ga. — Roswell Police are investigating if lacerations on a 4-year-old girl’s chest are linked to a religious ritual or child abuse. Last week, the director of Children’s First Learning on Elkins Road called police after finding the cuts on the child, a police report said. The girl’s parents told police that the cuts were part of a religious ritual. Channel 2’s Mike Petchenik went to the girl’s apartment off Greenhouse Drive and talked to a woman who said she actually witnessed the ritual that she contends is part of the Santeria religion. http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/religious-ritual-or-abuse-police-investigate-cuts-/nHWW6/

When the Devil Knocks – Storyville – One woman’s gripping struggle with multiple personality is captured on camera as she goes public with her private therapy tapes.  http://www.knowledge.ca/program/when-the-devil-knocks

When the Devil Knocks is the intimate story of a woman suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder, formerly known as Multiple Personality. The film premiered at the 2010 Vancouver International Film Festival and will have its World Broadcast Premiere on CBC News Network’s The Passionate Eye on Wednesday, January 26, 2011 at 10 pm ET/PT. http://whenthedevilknocks.com/

West Memphis 3 judge speaks after 18 years Feb 10, 2012 By Janice Broach MEMPHIS, TN –      (WMC-TV) – For 18 years the West Memphis Three appealed their case and every time Judge David Burnett denied those appeals and he refused to speak about the case or the men. outside of the courtroom. “Frankly, everything I did was affirmed by the Arkansas Supreme Court,” Burnett said. http://www.wmctv.com/story/16912053/west-memphis-3-judge-speaks-after-18-years

Relationships 101 – Brutalized by a Spouse, Surviving Ritual Child Sex Abuse
Dr. Beth’s (www.drbetherickson.com) first guest is Dr. Connie Hebert (www.conniehebert.com) whose husband verbally, physically, and emotionally abused her until she took her daughter and left. But it took her 20 years to fully recover from the degradation she felt. Cheryl Rainfield (www.cherylrainfield.com) then speaks with Dr. Beth about the ritual sexual abuse she experienced from infancy on and the children she saw murdered until she escaped to a shelter when she was 16. She is the author of the fictionalized account of her life in Scars. http://webtalkradio.net/2012/03/05/relationships-101-%E2%80%93-brutalized-by-a-spouse-surviving-ritual-child-sex-abuse/

Special Section on Military and Government Experimentation Lawsuit

Vets feel abandoned after secret drug experiments By David S. Martin, CNN March 1, 2012 ….From 1955 to 1975, military researchers at Edgewood were using not only animals but human subjects to test a witches’ brew of drugs and chemicals. They ranged from potentially lethal nerve gases like VX and sarin to incapacitating agents like BZ….The military also tested tear gas, barbiturates, tranquilizers, narcotics and hallucinogens like LSD….This top secret Cold War research program initially looked for ways to defend against a chemical or biological attack by the Soviet Union, thought to be far ahead of the United States in “psycho-chemical” warfare. But the research expanded into offensive chemical weapons, including one that could, according to one Army film obtained by CNN, deliver a “veritable chemical ambush” against an enemy.
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/03/01/health/human-test-subjects/index.html

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT NORTHERN DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA – OAKLAND DIVISION VIETNAM VETERANS OF AMERICA, a Non-Profit
Corporation; SWORDS TO PLOWSHARES: VETERANS RIGHTS ORGANIZATION, a California Non-Profit Corporation; BRUCE PRICE; FRANKLIN
D. ROCHELLE; LARRY MEIROW; ERIC P. MUTH; DAVID C. DUFRANE; TIM MICHAEL JOSEPHS; and WILLIAM BLAZINSKI, individually, on behalf of themselves and all others similarly situated, Plaintiffs,

v.
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY; LEON PANETTA, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency; UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE; DR. ROBERT M. GATES, Secretary of Defense; UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY; PETE GEREN, United States Secretary of the Army; UNITED STATE S OF AMERICA; ERIC H. HOLDER, JR., Attorney General of the United States; Case No. CV 09-0037-CW THIRD AMENDED
COMPLAINT FOR DECLARATORY AND INJUNCTIVE RELIEF UNDER UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION AND FEDERAL STATUTES AND REGULATIONS (Class Action)UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF VETERANS AFFAIRS; and ERIC K. SHINSEKI, UNITED STATES SECRETARY OF VETERANS AFFAIRS, Defendants.

Excerpts:

This action chronicles a chilling tale of human experimentation, covert military operations, and heretofore unchecked abuses of power by our own government. Ironically, one of the main facilitating events for this debacle was action by a court. In 1950, during the height of the Cold War, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Feres v. United States, 340 U.S. 135 (1950) (hereafter, “Feres”), which in effect ruled that the government is immune from damages claims brought by Armed Forces personnel arising from DEFENDANTS’ own torts. The Supreme Court’s decision to absolve DEFENDANTS of legal responsibility for damages caused by the tortious acts committed by the government upon our nation’s military personnel quickly led DEFENDANTS to undertake an expansive, multi-faceted program of secret experimentation on human subjects, diverting our own troops from military assignments for use as test subjects. In virtually all cases, troops served in the same capacity as laboratory rats or guinea pigs.
DEFENDANTS were able to capitalize on the inherently coercive relationship of a soldier’s commanding officers to their soldiers, as military orders can be enforced by a strong set of formal and informal sanctions or punishment.

In 1942, the War Department — the present day Department of Defense (“DOD”) — authorized the first experiment on military personnel which used mustard gas, and various additional experiments were conducted during and following World War II. Beginning in the early 1950s, the human experiment program was greatly expanded, as the Central Intelligence Agency (“CIA”) and United States Army planned, organized and executed an extensive series of experiments involving potential chemical and biological weapons. The CIA also sponsored human drug experimentation by the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (“FBN”), now the Drug Enforcement Administration (“DEA”). This vast program of human experimentation — shrouded in secrecy — was centered at the Army’s compounds at Edgewood Arsenal and Fort Detrick, Maryland. The human experimentation was conducted without the informed consent of its subjects and in direct contravention of applicable legal standards and principles of international law. Representatives of DEFENDANTS had also, on many occasions, promised the test participants (“volunteers”) that they would receive medals for volunteering, as well as health care, but they instead abandoned Plaintiffs and the other participants, hiding behind the insulating walls of government bureaucracies and security classifications. Indeed, DEFENDANTS actively concealed the existence of the human experimentation tests and the test results from the outside world, and destroyed most of the documentation of the tests once their existence began to leak….

DEFENDANTS used at least 7,800 armed services personnel in the experimentation program at the Edgewood Arsenal alone.…

The experiments involving human subjects were one of the key beneficiaries of the recruitment of over 1,500 scientists and technicians from Nazi Germany in “Project Paperclip,” some of whom played a pivotal role in, e.g., the testing of psychochemicals and development of a new truth serum. Over half of these recruits had been members of the SS or Nazi Party. The “Paperclip” name was chosen because so many of the employment applications were clipped to immigration papers….

That study identified numerous contracts from 1958 to 1965 between DEFENDANTS and outside research institutions, including multiple contracts (for tens of thousands of dollars) with the University of California, the Regents of the University of California, and with Stanford Research Institute, which was founded in 1946 by the  trustees of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California….

Yet, despite the CIA’s repeated representations over multiple decades that they could not find any living persons who participated in Edgewood experiments and others, the CIA had in fact secretly obtained a “large data base” from Edgewood Arsenal in 1974, which contained the names and personal information of all the “volunteers.” Currently, at a point in time 35 years later, the DOD claims to be still working to compile a registry of participants and does not expect to complete work until 2011….

The vast majority of Edgewood participants have never received any notice from DEFENDANTS and at most a small handful have ever received any health care or compensation from DEFENDANTS associated with their participation in the MKULTRA experiments….

On or around April 13, 1953, CIA Director Allen Dulles approved Helms’s proposal and a covert CIA mind-control and chemical interrogation research program known as “MKULTRA” was created. (Memorandum from Allen Dulles, Dir. of Cent. Intelligence, to Deputy Dir. of Admin. (Apr. 13, 1953); see Exh. B at B-038-B-039; see also Exh. B at B-040.)
“Through the course of MKULTRA, CIA sponsored numerous experiments on unwitting humans.” (The Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments (ACHRE), Interim Report of ACHRE (Oct. 21, 1994) at App. E.) MKULTRA testing was conducted at Edgewood Arsenal together with other sites such as Fort McClellan, Alabama, Fort Benning, Georgia, and Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The CIA also contracted with Fort Detrick, which conducted a series of experiments using human subjects, one of which was known as “Project White Coat.” 116. The MKULTRA projects were under the control of the Chemical Division, within the Technical Services Division of the CIA. Beginning in 1951, Dr. Sidney Gottlieb became the director of the Chemical Division. During testimony he gave to Congress in 1977, Dr. Gottlieb claimed that the creation of MKULTRA was inspired by reports of mind-control work in the Soviet Union and China. He stated that the mission was “to investigate whether and how it was possible to modify an individual’s behavior by covert means.” (Human Drug Testing by the CIA, 1977: Hearings on S. 1893 Before the Subcomm. on Health and Scientific Research of the S. Comm. on Human Resources, 95th Cong. (1977) at 169.)….

MKULTRA, the “funding vehicle,” soon established over 149 subprojects that involved experiments using drugs on human behavior, lie detectors, hypnosis, and electric shock. The CIA also enlisted the cooperation of over 44 colleges and universities, 15 research foundations, 12 clinics or hospitals, and 3 prisons. The CIA established front organizations to channel funds to institutions conducting or assisting in the experiments using benign, descriptive names such as the “Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology.”….

The CIA also financed studies by Dr. D. Ewen Cameron at the Department of Psychiatry, McGill University, in the 1950s, which explored methods to erase memory and rewrite the psyche, using patients being treated for conditions such as post-partum depression, marital problems, and anxiety. Dr. Cameron used a combination of intense electro-shocks, sensory deprivation, isolation, drugs such as LSD and insulin (to induce extended sleep). Eventually, the subjects regressed to a vegetative, pre-verbal or infantile state. Once this “depatterning” had occurred, Dr. Cameron forced patients to listen to repetitive pre-recorded messages that contained principles intended to guide future behavior such as, “You are a good mother,” which he referred to as “psychic driving.” Most of Dr. Cameron’s patients emerged from his therapies with more serious symptoms and problems, including memory loss, hallucinations, intense anxiety, and loss of touch with reality….

The final step in the “research and development sequence” was to “deliver[] MKULTRA materials into the MKDELTA control system governing their employment in clandestine operations.” (Exh. B at B-015.) “The final stage of covert testing of materials on unwitting subjects is clearly the most sensitive aspect of MKULTRA.” (Exh. B at B-016.)
“Present practice is to maintain no records of the planning and approval of test programs.” (Exh. B at B-016.)….
Under MKULTRA and its progeny, at least 1,000 “volunteers” were given up to 20 doses of LSD to test the drug as an interrogation weapon, even though the tests were known by Edgewood scientists to result in serious physical and psychological problems….
Some of the experiments at Edgewood and other sites were designed to replicate some of those that were conducted by Nazi doctors in concentration camps. American psychiatrist Paul Hoch’s experiments on mental patients in New York, where he was working on Edgewood projects supervised by DEFENDANTS and as a CIA consultant, killed one patient with a mescaline injection (Harold Blauer) and seriously injured another. As the federal judge concluded in a case brought by Mr. Blauer’s daughter, “the real reason Blauer died was not
medical incompetence in the administration of a therapeutic or diagnostic drug, but the fact that he was used as a human guinea pig.” Barrett v. United States, 660 F. Supp. 1291, 1308 (S.D.N.Y. 1987). MKULTRA’s experiments also resulted in the death of Frank Olson, an Army scientist who mysteriously fell out of a hotel window after members of the CIA secretly slipped LSD into his drink….

Documents from the CIA’s “Family Jewels” declassified file establish that drugs that had been rejected by private manufacturers were tested on soldiers at Edgewood….

DEFENDANTS changed the program name from MKULTRA to MKSEARCH after release of the CIA IG’s 1963 Report, which was highly critical of MKULTRA; b. the OFTEN and CHICKWIT projects, jointly conducted by the Army and CIA at the Edgewood Arsenal, but also funded by the CIA, which involved the collection of information about foreign pharmaceuticals and experiments with human subjects;
c. the BLUEBIRD and ARTICHOKE projects, where DEFENDANTS researched hypnosis, drugs such as sodium pentothal, the stimulant Desoxyn (methamphetamine), and bulbocapnine (an alkaloid), which facilitate recovery of information under hypnosis, and other substances that might aid in the interrogation of prisoners of war and defectors;
d. the MKDELTA project, a mind control research and development program
devised by DEFENDANTS that concentrated upon the use of biochemicals in clandestine operations;
e. the MKNAOMI project, a successor to MKDELTA, which focused on the
research, testing, manufacture and means of diffusion or distribution of lethal and non-lethal
biological agents and materials;
f. the CHATTER project, which focused on the development and use of truth serum and other interrogation drugs such as anabasis, aphylla, scopolamine, and mescaline; and g. a series of related or follow-on projects with code names including “PANDORA,” “SPELLBINDER,” “MONARCH,” “SLEEPING BEAUTY,” as well as others….
148. The MKULTRA and MKSEARCH project sponsors operated “safe houses” in New York City and San Francisco, where drugs were surreptitiously administered to human subjects lured to the site by prostitutes, and the effects were witnessed and/or recorded on film as part of Subprojects 3, 16, 42, 132, and 149….

DEFENDANTS formally launched Sub-Project 119 in 1960, the purpose of which was to research, study, and interpret “bioelectric signals from the human organism, and activation of human behavior by remote means.” (Memorandum for the Record re MKLUTRA Subproject 119 from Technical Servs. Div., Research Branch, CIA (Aug. 17, 1960).)….

150. Dr. Jose Delgado began to research the use of pain and pleasure for mind control during WWII. Later, as Director of Neuropsychiatry at Yale University Medical School, he refined the design of his “transdermal stimulator,” a computer controlled, remote neurologic transceiver and aversion stimulator. Dr. Delgado was especially interested in Electronic Stimulation of the Brain. Dr. Delgado discovered that he could wield enormous power over his subject by implanting a small probe into the brain. Using a device he called the “stimoceiver,” which operated by FM radio waves, he was able to electrically orchestrate a wide range of human emotions, including rage, pleasant sensations, elation, deep thoughtful concentration, odd feelings, super relaxation (an essential precursor for deep hypnosis), colored visions or hallucinations, lust, fatigue and various other responses. Dr. Delgado researched and perfected many of his devices under the auspices of MKULTRA Sub-Project 95, in which he was joined by Dr. Louis Jolyon West, who had mastered a technology called “RHIC-EDOM.” RHIC means “Radio Hypnotic Intracerebral Control,” and EDOM means “Electronic Dissolution of Memory.”
These implants could be stimulated to induce a post-hypnotic state.  EDOM involves the creation of “Missing Time” or the loss of memory….

From 1965 through to 1970, Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency (DARPA), with up to 70-80% funding provided by the military, set in motion operation PANDORA to study the health and psychological effects of low intensity microwaves with regard to the so-called “Moscow signal.”….
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2012/images/02/15/complaint.pdf

SECRET Cq U. S. Army Chemical Research and Development Laboratories Technical Report….May 1964….EDGEWOOD ARSENAL, MD BZ study http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2012/images/02/15/bz.study.pdf

U. S. Army Iy Chemical Research and Development Laboratories Technical Report…Edgewood Arsenal GROUP 4….THE HUMAN ASSESSMENT OF EA 1729 AND EA 3528 BY THE INHALATION ROUTE (U)….A study of the inhalation effectiveness of agent EA 1729 (d-,kl agent EA 1729 (d-lysergic acid diethylamide) and its maleate salt was conducted in which retained doses ranging from 0. 3 to 7. 8 jg/kg were administered to 60 military volunts 60 military volunteers….In a series of field trials in 1958, volunteers at Fort Bragg, N. C., were assigned a variety of team missions to be carried out after the ingescion of 150 jig/man of LSD25. These tasks included reporting of meteorological information, fire direction control, artillery control surveying, and antiaircraft tracking, In these cases, the dose given resulted in loss of effectiveness sufficient to constitute failure in the mission, as judged by XVIII Airborne Corps evaluation teams.
(C) In the 1961 report, summarizing the results of these and other
clinical studies of the effectiveness of LSD25, the author concluded that incapacitation by the oral route could be achieved with doses as low as I ig/kg.
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2012/images/02/15/human.test.subjects.-.edgewood.ketchum.lsd.study.pdf

Santa Muerte Case

may be triggering
Mexican Family Accused of Human Sacrifices  Published March 30, 2012 EFE
Mexico City –  Eight members of a Mexican family were arrested in the northern state of Sonora on suspicion of committing ritual murders, authorities said.
The spokesman for the state Attorney General’s Office, José Larrinaga, told Efe that the arrests made on Tuesday resulted from a recent report on the disappearance of a 7-year-old boy.
He said that when questioned by police on the matter, some of the boy’s family members began contradicting each other and finally confessed that they had taken the youngster’s life “as a sacrifice to Santa Muerte (Holy Death).”….

He said that those in custody were interrogated about another minor  whose disappearance was reported about a year ago “and they admitted to killing him as well and finally confessed that they had also slain a woman.”….
The AG’s office spokesman said that the investigations are continuing to determine whether there were other participants in the murders or other if more people were sacrificed.
The Santa Muerte cult, popular among drug traffickers and some other  Mexican criminals, is an eccentric blend of Christianity, Indian traditions and folk beliefs that arose in the 1940s in poor Mexico City neighborhoods and subsequently spread throughout the country….
Http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2012/03/30/mexican-family-accused-human-sacrifices

Ofrecían a niños como sacrificio para la Santa Muerte, en Sonora
describes crimes
google translate
Offered to children as a sacrifice to the Santa Muerte, Sonora
Police dig up the bones Nacozari two ten year olds and a 55. There are eight detainees of the same family – Daniel Sanchez Dorame / Correspondent 2012-03-29

Hermosillo, March 29. – The remains of three people-two boys and a woman were unearthed by police officers in the municipality of Nacozari de Garcia, Sonora. Early research suggests human sacrifices made by a family in honor of Saint Death….
So far there are eight members of one family arrested for these acts, which led the police officers to the place where they had buried their victims and confessed to the crimes perpetrated in honor of Saint Death….
http://www.excelsior.com.mx/index.php?m=nota&seccion=seccion-nacional&cat=1&id_nota=822425

has graphic descriptions of crimes
Children Killed During Cult’s Ritual Sacrifices In Mexico Border Town April 2, 2012 HERMOSILLO, Mexico (AP) — Eight people have been arrested for allegedly killing two 10-year-old boys and a 55-year-old woman in ritual sacrifices by the cult of La Santa Muerte, or Saint Death, prosecutors in northern Mexico said Friday….
The grisly slayings recalled the notorious “narco-satanicos” killings of the 1980s, when 15 bodies, many of them with signs of ritual sacrifice, were unearthed at a ranch outside the border city of Matamoros, across from Brownsville, Texas.
http://houston.cbslocal.com/2012/04/02/children-killed-during-cults-ritual-sacrifices-in-mexico-border-town/

describes crimes
Mexico Santa Muerte Murders: Nacozari ‘Death Saint’ Cult Sacrifices Lead Police To Investigate Family By FELIPE LARIOS and ADRIANA GOMEZ LICON 04/1/12
NACOZARI, Mexico – It was a family people took pity on, one the government and church helped with free food, used clothes, and farm animals. The men were known as trash pickers. Some of the women were suspected of prostitution.

Mexican prosecutors are investigating the poor family living in shacks outside a small town near the U.S. border as alleged members of a cult that sacrificed two 10-year-old boys and a 55-year-old woman to Santa Muerte, or Saint Death, a figure adored mostly by outlaws but whose popularity is growing across Mexico and among Hispanics in the United States….
Before last week, there have only been unconfirmed reports of human sacrifices related to the figure in Mexico in recent years, said R. Andrew Chesnut, chairman of Catholic studies at Virginia Commonwealth University and author of the book “Devoted to Death: Santa Muerte, the Skeleton Saint.”

Chesnut said the 2007 shooting deaths of three men appeared to be related to Santa Muerte because the bodies were abandoned at a shrine to the figure outside the border city of Nuevo Laredo. But they showed no signs of being sacrificial killings.
He said that although most Santa Muerte devotees consider killing a “Satanic aberration of devotion,” and that books about the Santa Muerte don’t mention human sacrifice, some followers are extreme. “With no clerical authority to stop them, some practitioners engage in aberrant and even abhorrent rituals,” Chesnut said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/01/mexico-santa-muerte-murders-family-investigated-cult-killings_n_1395176.html

Journal articles and child abuse and trauma information

Sexual Abuse’s Second Shame BY NICK BRYANT from: USA Today magazine, January 2012, pps 46-47.
“The reality is that many perpetrators are not shady men in dirty, threadbare trench coats living in seedy hotels, but are, in fact, pillars of our community.”
THE RECENT scandals at Penn State and Syracuse universities, Brooklyn’s Poly Prep Country Day School, Fenway Park, and now the Amateur Athletic Union, along with the intimations of possible cover-ups of child sexual abuse, have citizens shocked and outraged. However, these recent allegations only are the latest variations on a theme of abuse by churches and respected organizations like the Boy Scouts.

Pedophilia seems to exist in a distant parallel universe that is antithetical to the universe of Little League, Disneyland, and the other hallmarks of wholesome, youthful Americana, but the current allegations of pedophilia and the possibility of its cover-up just may be waking up Americans to the reality that this universe may not be as distant as they once thought.
I have shared the outrage at the reports of sexual abuse but, unlike most people, I have not been shocked, because of my research over the last decade. Prior to 2002, I had written extensively on children’s issues, and then I stumbled across a 1987 U.S. Customs report on a “child abuse investigation” that that the agency was conducting, and it described child abuse of the most horrific nature.

Two men connected to the investigation had been arrested and charged with multiple counts of child abuse, and six children, whose ages ranged from two to six years old, had been placed in Florida’s child protective services. The investigation ultimately was quashed by Federal authorities (who should not have had jurisdiction in this situation), and the two men were released from jail and the charges dropped. I was stunned by the report, and it triggered my prolonged odyssey into the depths of child trafficking in America….

Many specialists in the field of child sexual abuse have concluded that it is rare for individuals to fabricate accusations of these crimes. In 2002, The New York Tunes interviewed Patrick Schiltz, former associate dean of the University of St Thomas law school in Minnesota and now a Federal judge, who had defended Catholic dioceses against sexual-abuse lawsuits in more than 500 cases. Judge Schiltz expressed the belief that “fewer than 10” of those cases were based on false accusations.
Likewise, I have spoken with scores of men and women who claim to have been sexually abused. I also have concluded that the overwhelming majority are telling the truth and, of all the victims I have interviewed, I am not aware of a single abuser who has been indicted for his or her alleged abuse….

Another factor that dooms many investigations, and abets corrupt ones, is that victims frequently are from disadvantaged backgrounds, and the adult luring the child frequently introduces the underage individual to drugs or alcohol, further eroding that victim’s credibility. Moreover, the abuser often has powerful allies in law enforcement, government, and the media, who decide that the sordid details are too hot to handle. Add into the mix the public’s understandable squeamishness toward the entire subject of pedophilia, and we arrive at the perfect recipe for cover-up.
The reality is that many perpetrators are not shady men in dirty, threadbare trench coats living in seedy hotels, but are, in fact, pillars of our community. Until our society addresses these facts and its institutions are willing to face embarrassment, instead of heaping more abuse upon victims, our national shame of rampant child abuse and its cover-up are unlikely to end.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WbQSxoBkDuGXvvsiA5FBn4q5LdYVRMiEwxLTnjW0buY/edit?pli=1\

The FRANKLIN SCANDAL is the story of a nationwide pedophile ring that pandered children to a cabal of the rich and powerful. By Nick Bryant http://franklinscandal.com/

Press Release – For Immediate Release: February 1, 2012  Contact :CDC Division of News and Electronic Media
Child abuse and neglect cost the United States $124 billion – Rivals cost of other high profile public health problems
The total lifetime estimated financial costs associated with just one year of confirmed cases of child maltreatment (physical abuse, sexual abuse, psychological abuse and neglect) is approximately $124 billion, according to a report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, published in Child Abuse and Neglect, The International Journal.
This study looked at confirmed child maltreatment cases, 1,740 fatal and 579,000 non–fatal, for a 12–month period. The lifetime cost for each victim of child maltreatment who lived was $210,012, which is comparable to other costly health conditions, such as stroke with a lifetime cost per person estimated at $159,846 or type 2 diabetes, which is estimated between $181,000 and $253,000.  The costs of each death due to child maltreatment are even higher….
Child maltreatment has been shown to have many negative effects on survivors, including poorer health, social and emotional difficulties, and decreased economic productivity.  This CDC study found these negative effects over a survivor’s lifetime generate many costs that impact the nation’s health care, education, criminal justice and welfare systems.

Key findings:
The estimated average lifetime cost per victim of nonfatal child maltreatment includes:
$32,648 in childhood health care costs
$10,530 in adult medical costs
$144,360 in productivity losses
$7,728 in child welfare costs
$6,747 in criminal justice costs
$7,999 in special education costs
….Child maltreatment can also be linked to many emotional, behavioral, and physical health problems. Associated emotional and behavioral problems include aggression, conduct disorder, delinquency, antisocial behavior, substance abuse, intimate partner violence, teenage pregnancy, anxiety, depression, and suicide.
http://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2012/p0201_child_abuse.html

The economic burden of child maltreatment in the United States and implications for prevention     Xiangming Fanga, Derek S. Brownb,
Curtis S. Florencea, James A. Mercya
Results
The estimated average lifetime cost per victim of nonfatal child maltreatment is $210,012 in 2010 dollars, including $32,648 in childhood health care costs; $10,530 in adult medical costs; $144,360 in productivity losses; $7,728 in child welfare costs; $6,747 in criminal justice costs; and $7,999 in special education costs. The estimated average lifetime cost per death is $1,272,900, including $14,100 in medical costs and $1,258,800 in productivity losses. The total lifetime economic burden resulting from new cases of fatal and nonfatal child maltreatment in the United States in 2008 is approximately $124 billion. In sensitivity analysis, the total burden is estimated to be as large as $585 billion.
Conclusions
Compared with other health problems, the burden of child maltreatment is substantial, indicating the importance of prevention efforts to address the high prevalence of child maltreatment.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0145213411003140

Study: Child abuse bigger threat than SIDS
4,600 children hospitalized with serious injuries By Frederik Joelving 2/6/2012
Nearly 4,600 U.S. children were hospitalized with broken bones, traumatic brain injury and other serious damage caused by physical abuse in 2006, according to a new report.
Babies younger than one were the most common victims, with 58 cases per 100,000 infants. That makes serious abuse a bigger threat to infant safety than SIDS, or sudden infant death syndrome, researchers say in the report….
Based on data from the 2006 Kids’ Inpatient Database, the last such numbers available, Leventhal’s team found that six out of every 100,000 children under 18 were hospitalized with injuries ranging from burns to wounds to brain injuries and bone fractures.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46281207/ns/health-childrens_health

Private Practice Partners with RAINN As ABC Makes TV History – ABC made television history this month when its hit drama, Private Practice, ran a storyline about a male survivor of sexual assault. The episode featured a character that had just returned from Afghanistan, who discloses that he was raped during his military service. This was the first time that a national network addressed sexual assault in the military.

The Private Practice team, led by the show’s creator, Shonda Rhimes, partnered with RAINN for the second time in the last year. Experts on RAINN’s staff were able to help the show’s writers and producers understand what many men go through after an assault, and the challenges they face in their recovery process.
http://rainn.org/news-room/private-practice-military-survivor-episode
The Time Has Come Full Episode – Private Practice – ABC
http://abc.go.com/watch/private-practice/SH559070/VD55167665/the-time-has-come

Information about Sybil and MPD

Press Release: Reading of “SYBIL in her own words: The Untold Story of Shirley Mason, Her Multiple Personalities and Paintings.”
The public is invited to attend a reading of the book “SYBIL in her own words: The Untold Story of Shirley Mason, Her Multiple Personalities and Paintings.” It is the follow up to the original book SYBIL. Being her friend, Shirley gave Dr. Suraci the materials for this book about her life after her cure.  Paintings of 5 of her 16 alternate personalities will be projected on a screen and Dr. Suraci shall give interpretations of the various emotions each personality displayed.  A recording of her conversation with Dr. Suraci will be played so the audience will hear Sybil/Shirley’s voice for the first time. Shirley maintained her anonymity until her death. The event will be held on March 31, 2012 from 7pm to 9pm at the Bluestockings Bookstore,  172 Allen St. New York, NY 10002 – 212.777.6028

Sybil in her words – Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sybil-In-Her-Own-Words/108610352553254
Sybil in Her Own Words – Patrick Suraci, Psychologist
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/patrick-suraci/post_2699_b_1152241.html
Patrick Suraci, Ph.D. Biography http://members.authorsguild.net/psuraci/

Sat March 31, 2012 – 7pm • Free READING: PATRICK SURACI: SYBIL IN HER OWN WORDS
Dr. Patrick Suraci, a friend of Sybil/Shirley Mason, will read from his book SYBIL in Her Own Words: The Untold Story of Shirley Mason, Her Multiple Personalities, and Paintings. Recorded conversations between Mason and Suraci will be made public for the first time, and Suraci will share his interpretations of paintings of five of Mason’s sixteen personalities. Bluestockings, 172 Allen St
212-777-6028 • bluestockings.com
http://www.indypendent.org/2012/03/30/indy-weekly-events-calendar-march-30-april-5

more information on the reading:
Projections of the paintings of 5 of Sybil’s 16 personalities are accompanied by his interpretations. Shirley’s recorded conversations with Dr. Suraci will be heard in public for the first time. Documents will be produced exposing the untrue statements made by others attempting to claim the Sybil case is a fraud, including how documents were distorted.

Sybil and MPD blog http://sybilandmpd.blogspot.com/
This blog will be about the book “Sybil” and the life of Shirley Ardell Mason. Sybil was published in 1973 and written by Flora Rheta Schreiber about the treatment of Sybil Dorsett (which is a pseudonym for Shirley Ardell Mason) for what is now called dissociative identity disorder (then called multiple personality disorder). She was treated by her psychoanalyst, Cornelia B. Wilbur.

Wellspring of Compassion- Self-Care for Sensitive People Healing from Trauma by Sonia Connolly – Whether you are new to healing or an old hand, whether your trauma is long past or ongoing, this book offers validation, support, and tools for healing. With this guide, uncover your wellspring of compassion, understand your reactions to trauma, rebuild self-trust, and respond to your inner voices with kindness. Reconnect with your body and respect your internal NO and YES. Nourished by compassion, grow into a shape defined by your history and desires, like a tree becoming more intricately itself every year. Sundown Healing Arts ISBN: 9780983903802 2012
Sonia Connolly, LMT helps sensitive trauma survivors regain self-trust and peace through intuitive, compassionate bodywork in Portland, Oregon. Her writing about trauma is inspired by twelve years of client sessions and twenty years of self-observation while healing from abuse.
http://www.wellspringofcompassion.com/

Physically Abused Children Report Higher Levels of Psychosomatic Symptoms – ScienceDaily (Feb. 9, 2012) — Children who display multiple psychosomatic symptoms, such as regular aches and pains and sleep and appetite problems, are more than twice as likely to be experiencing physical abuse at home than children who do not display symptoms, according to a study in the March edition of Acta Paediatrica. Swedish researchers who studied 2,510 children aged 10, 12 and 15 from 44 schools found a strong association between reported physical abuse and three or more psychosomatic symptoms. The association was highest in children who were physically abused and also witnessed intimate partner violence (IPV). However, there was no significant association between IPV on its own and multiple symptoms….”Our study demonstrates a clear association between high levels of psychosomatic symptoms and an increased risk of physical abuse” says Professor Janson. “The association was even stronger in abused children who also witnessed intimate partner violence at home.
Carolina Jernbro, Birgitta Svensson, Ylva Tindberg, Staffan Janson. Multiple psychosomatic symptoms can indicate child physical abuse – results from a study of Swedish schoolchildren. Acta Paediatrica, 2012; 101 (3): 324 DOI: 10.1111/j.1651-2227.2011.02518.x
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/02/120209135343.htm

Multiple psychosomatic symptoms can indicate child physical abuse – results from a study of Swedish schoolchildren – Carolina Jernbro, Birgitta Svensson, Ylva Tindberg, Staffan Janson – Acta Paediatrica Volume 101, Issue 3, pages 324–329, March 2012  DOI: 10.1111/j.1651-2227.2011.02518.
Methods: A national cross-sectional study of 2771 pupils in grades 4, 6 and 9 from 44 schools in Sweden was carried out in 2006 (91% response rate)….
Results: There was a strong association between reported physical abuse and multiple (three or more) psychosomatic symptoms among schoolchildren (AOR 2.12). Chronic condition was the only determinant that had an obvious enhancing effect on the association between physical abuse and psychosomatic symptoms in childhood.
Conclusion: This study shows that multiple psychosomatic symptoms are associated with child physical abuse. Health professionals therefore need to pay special attention to schoolchildren who complain about the co-occurrence of psychosomatic symptoms and pattern of symptoms, which could not be easily explained by other causes.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1651-2227.2011.02518.x/abstract;jsessionid=534C549F
full article
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1651-2227.2011.02518.x/full

Child Abuse Leaves Mark on Brain  Jennifer Welsh  Live Science Mon, 13 Feb 2012
Childhood abuse and maltreatment can shrink important parts of the brain, a new study of adults suggests. Reduced brain volume in parts of the hippocampus could help to explain why childhood problems often lead to later psychiatric disorders, such as depression, drug addiction and other mental health problems, the researchers say. This link could help researchers find better ways to treat survivors of childhood abuse.
“These results may provide one explanation for why childhood abuse has been identified with an increased risk for drug abuse or psychosis,” study researcher Martin Teicher, of Harvard University, told LiveScience. “Now that one can look at these sub-regions [in the brain], we can get a better idea of what treatments are helping.”

The researchers used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to scan the brains of 193 individuals between 18 and 25 years old, who had already undergone several rounds of testing to be qualified. They then analyzed the size of areas in the hippocampus and compared the results with the patient’s history. They saw that those who had been abused, neglected or maltreated (based on well-established questionnaires) as children had reduced volume in certain areas of the hippocampus by about 6 percent, compared with kids who hadn’t experienced child abuse.

They also had size reductions in a related brain area called the subiculum, which relays the signals from the hippocampus to other areas of the brain, including the dopamine system, also known as the brain’s “reward center.” Volume reduction in the subiculum has been associated with drug abuse and schizophrenia, as well….The study was published today (Feb. 13) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences.  http://www.livescience.com/18453-child-abuse-brain.html

Brain Development Harmed in Mistreated Kids – Study May Help Explain Why Child Abuse Often Leads to Mental Problems Like Depression, Post-Traumatic Stress By Brenda Goodman, MA WebMD Health News
Reviewed by Laura J. Martin, MD
Feb. 13, 2012 — A new study shows that the stress of child abuse appears to shrink a key region of the brain that regulates emotion, memory, and learning. The finding may help explain why mistreated kids often experience lasting mental problems like depression and other psychiatric disorders.

The study is a counterpoint to recent research that found that children who were nurtured early in life were more likely to have larger brain centers for memory and emotion. “Stress has a negative impact on brain development; support has a positive impact,” says Joan Luby, MD, a child psychiatrist at Washington University in St. Louis, Mo. Luby studies early emotional development, but she was not involved in the research. The impact on brain development caused by child abuse may have lasting consequences. “Having adverse life experiences clearly puts people at risk for mental disorders,” she says….

Researchers found that three key regions of the hippocampus were nearly 6% to 7% smaller in people who were significantly mistreated as kids compared to those who were not….
But he says people who had rough childhoods should also know that although early life experiences may be important for brain function, other studies have shown that some of the brain changes can be undone. “Things like vigorous exercise will change it. Mental stimulation will influence it,” Teicher says. “Changes in the hippocampus are plastic and can be modified.”
http://children.webmd.com/news/20120213/brain-development-harmed-in-mistreated-kids

Epidemiology of Dissociative Disorders: An Overview
Epidemiology Research International – Volume 2011 (2011), Article ID 404538, 8 pages doi:10.1155/2011/404538 Vedat Sar  Department of Psychiatry, Istanbul Faculty of Medicine, Istanbul University, 34390 Capa, Istanbul,  Turkey – Academic Editor: Huibert Burger
excerpts:
….screening studies using diagnostic tools designed to assess dissociative disorders yielded lifetime prevalence rates around 10% in clinical populations and in the community. Special populations such as psychiatric emergency ward applicants, drug addicts, and women in prostitution demonstrated the highest rates. Data derived from epidemiological studies also support clinical findings about the relationship between childhood adverse experiences and dissociative disorders.

….  Data collected in diverse geographic locations such as North America [2], Puerto Rico [3], Western Europe [4], Turkey [5], and Australia [6] underline the consistency in clinical symptoms of dissociative disorders. These clinical case series have also documented that dissociative patients report highest frequencies of childhood psychological trauma among all psychiatric disorders. Childhood sexual (57.1%–90.2%), emotional (57.1%), and physical (62.9%–82.4%) abuse and neglect (62.9%) are among them.
….Two studies in North America demonstrated that 13.0–20.7 % of psychiatric inpatients had a dissociative disorder [22, 23]. Studies on dissociative disorders in Istanbul, Turkey, yielded a prevalence slightly above 10% among psychiatric inpatients and outpatients [8, 24, 25]. Although still considerable, these rates were lower in the Netherlands [26], Germany [18], and Switzerland [27] among inpatients, that is, between 4.3%–8.0%. A Finnish study [28] reported higher rates for psychiatric outpatients (14.0%) and inpatients (21.0%). Emergency admissions of a university psychiatric clinic in Istanbul, Turkey yielded the highest rate in the country:  35.7% [29]. In a study from Zurich, Switzerland, among severely impaired psychiatric outpatients, prevalence of all dissociative disorders were 25.0% [30].

….Overall, the prevalence of dissociative disorders in inpatient and outpatient psychiatric settings seems to be around 10%, while approximately half of them (5%) has DID, the most severe type of dissociative disorders.
…. A screening study on a representative sample…in Manitoba, Canada, using the DDIS yielded 11.2% prevalence for all DSM-III-R dissociative disorders [36]. Two large-scale studies were conducted in the general population of Sivas City, Turkey, supported these findings gathered in North America.  The first one was conducted on a representative sample of 994 participants from both genders [37]. Approximately 3/4 of the probands dropped-out who were selected for a second and third diagnostic interview due to their elevated DES scores. Despite of this high loss in data, 0.4% of the original sample was diagnosed as having clinically confirmed DID.  The second study in Sivas City, Turkey was conducted on a representative female sample of 648 participants in the same city using a structured diagnostic interview, that is, the DDIS [38]. The overall prevalence of dissociative disorders was 18.3%.  1.1% of the population had DID. However, the largest group was DDNOS (8.3%). Conditions based primarily on the presence of distinct personality states (i.e., DID and DDNOS-1) built up a prevalence of 5.2% for chronic complex dissociative disorders.

….In a recent North American study conducted in the community (New York,…the prevalence was 8.6% for all DSM-IV dissociative disorders observed in the past year [39]….A further study [42] documented that 6.3% of the general population suffered from three or more frequently occurring dissociative symptoms possibly representing a dissociative disorder. In The Netherlands, 378 subjects from a non-clinical population were screened using the dissociation questionnaire (DIS-Q), a self-rating scale of European origin [43, 44]. 2.1% of the participants had a score above the cutoff point (score of 2.5), and 0.5 % had a score comparable to those of patients with dissociative disorders (scores of 3.0 or higher).

….Among consecutive inpatients admitted to a dependency treatment unit of a large state mental hospital in Istanbul, Turkey, the lifetime prevalence of DSM-IV dissociative disorders was 17.2% [45].  These rates were   9.0% for alcohol dependency only [46] and 26.0% for patients with chemical dependency [47]. Those rates were between 15.0% and 39.0% [48–50] for patients with chemical dependency in North America.

….In Germany, a screening study was conducted on 51 male criminal offenders admitted to a medicolegal institution by the court so as to understand diminished or lack of responsibility for the offence due to psychiatric disorder, including a large group of persons with substance-use disorders [56]. Using the SCID-D, a high prevalence of dissociative symptoms and disorders (23.5%), mostly DDNOS, was demonstrated. 22.6% of the group had a DES score 20.0 or higher. In Turkey [57], 26.8% of 108 male prisoners in a regular correctional center had a DES score 20 or above. This rate was 18.5% for DES scores 30 or above which is known to be the cut-off level for chronic dissociative disorders [58]. Nevertheless, according to the SCID-D, 15.7% of the subjects had a dissociative disorder, that is, either DDNOS or dissociative amnesia. Exotic dancers and women in prostitution have also been demonstrated as risk groups for dissociative disorders [52–55, 59]. This seem to be due to the highly traumatic background of the probands.

….Epidemiological studies also documented the relationship between dissociative disorders and childhood trauma, an association clinicians and researchers are familiar with [32, 71, 72].  A screening study conducted on consecutively admitted psychiatric outpatients yielded elevated rates for sexual (27.8%), physical (50.0%,), and emotional (72.2%) abuse and neglect (83.3%) among dissociative patients in comparison to nondissociative controls [24]. In the inpatient psychiatric unit of the same institution, these rates were 58.8%, 82.4%, 70.6%, and   58.8%, respectively [25]. Apparently, patients with childhood sexual and/or physical abuse were hospitalized more readily pointing to a more crisis-prone and severe general condition.

On the other hand, dissociative outpatients and dissociative subjects identified in non-clinical settings report emotional abuse and neglect predominantly [24, 38]. Nevertheless, in a Turkish study in the community, subjects with dissociative or conversion disorder (somatic dissociation) reported significantly higher levels of childhood traumata than the remaining participants [38, 69]. In a case series and also in the community, conversion disorder patients with a concurrent dissociative disorder reported childhood traumata more frequently than those without.
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/eri/2011/404538/

Public Secrecy About Child Sexual Abuse – The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism
Attorney and author Michael Lesher will make oral arguments on February 14 before New York State’s Court of Appeals in his longstanding Freedom of Information (FOIL) lawsuit against Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes. If Lesher prevails, the district attorney may be forced to provide some much needed transparency regarding cases of child sexual abuse in fervently Orthodox (sometimes referred to in media reports as the “Haredi” or “ultra-Orthodox”) communities….

Hella Winston’s Reporting
Winston has reported for several years—primarily in the New York Jewish Week, the nation’s largest Jewish weekly—about allegations of secrecy and cover-ups involving child sexual abuse in fervently Orthodox Jewish communities. Despite many roadblocks, including community members’ fears of speaking out and a lack of transparency from both the communal leadership and law enforcement authorities (similar to the resistance Lesher has experienced), Winston, perhaps more than any other journalist, has reported relentlessly and extensively about this issue….

Michael Lesher’s Freedom of Information Lawsuit
Lesher is suing to compel the Brooklyn district attorney to release, under FOIL, documents related to efforts to extradite alleged serial child molester, Avrohom Mondrowitz. Mondrowitz, a member of the fervently Orthodox community, fled from New York to Israel in 1984—likely mere hours before a warrant for his arrest could be executed, law enforcement sources told Winston. Mondrowitz was indicted in absentia by a Brooklyn grand jury in 1985 on 14 counts, including five counts of sodomy in the first degree. After two failed attempts to extradite him, Mondrowitz remains in Israel to this day.
http://www.brandeis.edu/investigate/political-social-justice/public-secrecy-about-child-sexual-abuse.html

Few penalties for keeping child abuse secret By Brad Heath, USA TODAY 12/16/2011 Laws that could punish doctors, teachers and other adults for keeping silent when they suspect a child has been abused have gone largely unenforced over the past decade. Those state laws require people who work closely with children to alert police or child-welfare investigators anytime they so much as suspect a child has been abused.
Yet a USA TODAY examination of police and court records from across the USA found that a combination of infrequent enforcement and small penalties means adults often have little to fear from concealing abuse. In most of the states that could provide records, local police and prosecutors typically charged no more than one or two people each year. Michigan police made just five arrests over the past decade. In Hawaii and Minnesota, court officials said they couldn’t find a single case.

Fewer than half of the cases USA TODAY reviewed in detail ended in convictions, and the penalty was usually a fine of less than $1,000. “If you’re not going to make the moral choice, at least you have to have a law with some teeth that makes somebody do it for the legal reason that you’re afraid you’re going to be charged,” said Sean McCormack, the chief child abuse prosecutor in Harrisburg, Pa.

States’ mandatory abuse-reporting laws are getting new scrutiny in the aftermath of a sexual abuse scandal at Penn State University, where longtime assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky is accused of having molested 10 boys over 15 years. He has pleaded not guilty. Two Penn State officials are charged with failing to report the abuse to police….
Abuse frequently unreported – Child welfare agencies estimate that 695,000 children were abused or neglected last year, but studies have repeatedly found that even more abuse goes unreported.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-01-02/unreported-child-abuse/51981108/1

Sex abuse often not reported 2/18/12 Officials and victim advocates say a silver lining in the high-profile child sex abuse scandal involving a former Penn State football coach is that more people are now coming forward about the historically underreported crime.
Cases often aren’t investigated because victims are hesitant to report the offenses and adults who suspect a child is being abused don’t know what to do, experts say.
“I think it is underreported, and I think it always will be,” said Capt. Kathi Rhodes, director of the Montgomery County police’s family crimes division. She said children are often pressured not to tell, or are too embarrassed. Boys often believe they should have been able to fight off their abuser, said Curtis St. John, past president of Male Survivor.
Another difficulty is that cases require children to make reports about someone close to them. In Alexandria, 95 percent of alleged perpetrators “know the child, and know the child very well,” said Giselle Pelaez, executive director of the Center for Alexandria’s Children.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/crime/2012/02/sex-abuse-often-not-reported/289231

Marilyn Van Derbur Atler – Lifetime Achievement Award 2011 – child abuse survivor speaks about her activism to stop child abuse http://www.youtube.com/     watch?v=qbfM3Me86eA&feature=related

Selective memory does exist, say scientists – Selective memory really exists and we can train our mind to forget   embarrassing moments completely, research claims.  06 Jul 2011
A study found that repressing these memories for long enough can lead to us   erasing them completely. Using EEG scans, scientists noted the parts of volunteers’ brains which became   active when actively trying to forget something. They were also able to pinpoint the exact moment a memory is ‘forgotten’, and   claim that long-term supression of a memory is a sure fire way of   permanently erasing it. The study authors, led by Gerd Thomas Waldhauser, from Lund University in   Sweden, say that mastering the technique could be useful for people who   suffer from depression or post traumatic stress disorder. Mr Waldhauser, a researcher at Lund University, said “We know that ‘forgotten’ or repressed feelings often manifest themselves as physiological reactions.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8620360/Selective-memory-does-exist-say-scientists.html

On April 28, 2012, there will be the Eighteenth Annual Child Sexual Abuse Conference at the Veterans Memorial Center, 203 East 14th Street, Davis, CA from 9:30 am to 5:00 pm. The presentation “Healing from Trauma: Clergy Abuse” with Keynote Speaker Jaime Romo http://jaimeromo.com will talk about the trauma healing process, particularly healing from clergy abuse. For more information, go to http://www.issb.us. The conference is at no cost.

Milwaukee woman charged with cutting fetus from mother has multiple personality disorder, report says – By Bruce Vielmetti  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 03/08/2012
MILWAUKEE – The woman charged with cutting the late-term fetus from a young mother, with hopes of passing the baby off as her own, suffers from a multiple personality disorder, according to the report of a new mental exam. The 57-page report released Thursday concludes that Annette Morales-Rodriguez suffered horrific sexual abuse and abandonment as a child and has adopted extremely dissociative behavior to block it out. The truth only emerged during 13 hours of interviews in which her alter-ego, “Lara,” emerged, according to the report.

“Lara admitted to tragically believing that as a separate ‘person’ she could sacrificially spare Annette from imprisonment by coming forward herself and confessing to the crime,” states Anne Speckhard, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Medical School who was part of the defense team for Lorena Bobbitt….
Morales-Rodriguez, 34, has entered a similar plea, but a state psychiatrist in December found that she did not suffer from a mental disease or defect. She is charged with two counts of first-degree intentional homicide in the October deaths of Maritza Ramirez, 23, and her unborn son.

According to the criminal complaint, Morales-Rodriguez went looking for a pregnant woman near a south side social service agency, found Ramirez and offered her a ride….
Speckhard, the defense expert, also has testified in courts around the country and before Congress about post-traumatic stress disorder, and worked with international committees on terrorism and its sociocultural effects. She also has studied and written about the traumatic stress of abortion, according to her website.
But in court Thursday, Assistant District Attorney Mark Williams questioned her qualifications, noting her doctorate is in family social science, and that federal judges in Wisconsin have declined to recognize her as an expert in two other cases. Whether it ever becomes evidence, Speckhard’s report offers fascinating reading about a condition – dissociative disorder disease, or DID – believed to exist in less than 1 percent of people.

According to the report, in the first several hours of an interview at the jail, Morales-Rodriguez spoke of a fairly happy, normal childhood. But eventually, Speckhard noticed that when the conversation turned to the facts of the case or other trauma, Morales-Rodriguez’s eyes would roll up and her eyelids would flutter rapidly, as “Lara” would emerge.
According to Speckhard, Lara is only a personality fragment, developed to absorb the most traumatic experiences and memories of Morales-Rodriguez’s abuse and abandonment by her mother, and the death of her grandmother. Like those events, the October murders don’t register in Annette’s memory, while Lara can recall them in numb detail. The report includes lengthy accounts of each personality speaking of the other, and mentions a videotaped emergence of Lara during the second daylong interview. “The change was quite dramatic in bodily posture, musculature, emotional tone, etc.” the report states.

Speckhard concludes that Morales-Rodriguez continues to suffer from a severe mental defect that affects her capacity to “understand and morally evaluate her decisions and actions” and is dire need of lengthy therapy. According to the report: Morales-Rodriguez suffered long-term sexual abuse until about age 12. Her mother left the family, and her grandmother, who had taken over parenting, died when Morales-Rodriguez was 16, a very traumatic event that triggered her first realization of Lara….
http://www.twincities.com/wisconsin/ci_20134741/milwaukee-woman-charged-cutting-fetus-from-mother-has

DOJ Director on Violence Against Women in the United States – Rahim Kanani, Contributor  3/08/2012 In one of the most in-depth discussions to date on violence against women in the United States, and to coincide with International Women’s Day, I interviewed Susan B. Carbon, Director of the United States Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women (OVW)….
One in every four women and one in every seven men have experienced severe physical violence by a current or former spouse, boyfriend, or girlfriend.[1] Stalkers victimize approximately 5.2 million women and 1.4 million men each year in the U.S, with domestic violence-related stalking the most common type of stalking and often the most dangerous.[2] One in ten 9th-12th grade students were physically hurt on purpose by a boyfriend or girlfriend in 2009 alone.[3] One in five women and one in 71 men have been raped in their lifetimes, and nearly 1.3 million women in the U.S. are raped every year.[4]….

Susan Carbon: Since the 1990s, we have learned a great deal more about prevalence of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking.  For example, research has helped us better understand how rapists target their victims and escape justice.  This is particularly significant on our college campuses.  College rapists may avoid the justice system by attacking acquaintances, picking women who will not be considered credible due to alcohol use or other factors, and by minimizing injuries by plying their victims with alcohol rather than using physical force.  Nineteen percent of undergraduate women reported experiencing completed or attempted sexual assault since entering college.  Most of these assaults occurred when the victim was incapacitated by alcohol.  Rapes involving alcohol are much more prevalent than rapes involving date-rape drugs.[9] Risk of incapacitated rape increases significantly during college.[10] In one study, over 80% of undetected college rapists reported committing rapes of women who were incapacitated because of drugs or alcohol.[11] Many college rapists create “cases” that victims are least likely to report and that prosecutors are less likely to prosecute.[12] Only 2% of victims of incapacitated rape reported the assault to law enforcement.[13]

Campuses often fail to respond to college rapists,[14] who continue to offend.  Even the best- intentioned universities’ adjudication and other processes often blame the victim and fail to discipline the perpetrator.[15] In one study, 63% of rapists reported committing repeat rapes, averaging six each.[16] More than two-thirds (68%) of the repeat rapists admitted to other forms of interpersonal violence, averaging 14 violent acts.  Their level of violence was nearly 10 times that of non-rapists, and nearly 3.5 times that of single-act rapists.[17] This portrait of college rapists is more consistent with the data on recidivism among sex offenders than with the still-prevalent image of a college student who, under the influence of alcohol, mistakenly crosses the line between sexual pressure and rape.[18]….

There is also a body of research indicating that the increased availability of legal services has significantly contributed to a decline in domestic violence in the United States.[35] Obtaining a protection order has been shown in multiple studies to reduce future assault and improve quality of life.[36] Even when orders were violated, there was a significant reduction in subsequent abuse.[37]….
Although we tend to think of sexual assault as a crime usually involving only two people, a 2002 study using data from the National Crime Victimization Survey revealed that sexual assaults are often witnessed by at least one person in the bystander role.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rahimkanani/2012/03/08/doj-director-on-violence-against-women-in-the-united-states

The Twice-Victimized of Sexual Assault By JANE E. BRODY December 12, 2011
Nearly every woman I know can recall one or more instances in which she was sexually assaulted, harassed, threatened, inappropriately touched or even raped. Yet few told anyone about it at the time, or reported it to the police. I have clear memories of three such episodes from my childhood, one of which involved a man who owned a store in my neighborhood….
I had trouble sleeping, and I avoided the block where the store was. Yet, fearing that the assault was somehow my fault, I said nothing to my parents. Experts on sexual assault and rape report that even today, despite improvements in early sex education and widespread publicity about sexual assaults, the overwhelming majority of both felony and misdemeanor cases never come to public or legal attention.

It is all too easy to see why. More often than not, women who bring charges of sexual assault are victims twice over, treated by the legal system and sometimes by the news media as lying until proved truthful. “There is no other crime I can think of where the victim is more victimized,” said Rebecca Campbell, a professor of psychology at Michigan State University who for 20 years has been studying what happens legally and medically to women who are raped. “The victim is always on trial. Rape is treated very differently than other felonies.”

So, too, are the victims of lesser sexual assaults. In 1991, when Anita Hill, a lawyer and academic, told Congress that the Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her repeatedly when she worked for him, Ms. Hill was vilified as a character assassin and liar acting on behalf of abortion-rights advocates….
Victims must be better supported with better forensics, investigations and prosecutions, Dr. Campbell said. “This is a public safety issue. Most rapists are serial rapists, and they must be held accountable.” In one study, published in 1987 in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 126 admitted rapists had committed 907 rapes involving 882 different victims.
Rapists are not the only serial sexual offenders. Witness the all-too-frequent revelations of sexual abuse of children involving multiple victims and persisting for decades even when others in positions of authority knew it was going on….

Last year, according to the Department of Justice, 188,280 Americans were victims of sexual violence. Among female victims, nearly three-quarters are assaulted by men they know — friends, acquaintances or intimate partners, according to federal statistics.
But fewer than 40 percent of rapes and sexual assaults are reported to the police. Underreporting is more common among male victims and women raped by acquaintances or domestic partners. Only one-quarter of rapes are committed by strangers. The result of underreporting and poor prosecution: 15 of 16 rapists will never spend a day in jail, according to the network….

The consequences (of rape) can include pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease; feelings of helplessness, hopelessness and low self-esteem; self-blame and depression; substance abuse and eating disorders; fears of intimacy; numbness; post-traumatic stress disorder (nightmares, flashbacks, anxiety attacks, difficulty functioning); borderline personality disorder; unexplained physical problems; and even suicide.  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/13/health/the-twice-victimized-of-sexual-assault.html

Bradley Manning’s treatment was cruel and inhuman, UN torture chief rules – UN special rapporteur on torture’s findings likely to reignite criticism of US government’s treatment of WikiLeaks suspect    Ed Pilkington in New York    guardian.co.uk, Monday 12 March 2012
The UN special rapporteur on torture has formally accused the US government of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment towards Bradley Manning, the US soldier who was held in solitary confinement for almost a year on suspicion of being the WikiLeaks source.
Juan Mendez has completed a 14-month investigation into the treatment of Manning since the soldier’s arrest at a US military base in May 2010. He concludes that the US military was at least culpable of cruel and inhumane treatment in keeping Manning locked up alone for 23 hours a day over an 11-month period in conditions that he also found might have constituted torture.
“The special rapporteur concludes that imposing seriously punitive conditions of detention on someone who has not been found guilty of any crime is a violation of his right to physical and psychological integrity as well as of his presumption of innocence,” Mendez writes.

The findings of cruel and inhuman treatment are published as an addendum to the special rapporteur’s report to the UN general assembly on the promotion and protection of human rights. They are likely to reignite criticism of the US government’s harsh treatment of Manning ahead of his court martial later this year…..
The Pentagon has refused to allow Mendez to see Manning in private, insisting that all conversations must be monitored. “You should have no expectation of privacy in your communications with Private Manning,” the Pentagon wrote. The lack of privacy is a violation of human rights procedures, the UN says, and considered unacceptable by the UN special rapporteur.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/12/bradley-manning-cruel-inhuman-treatment-un

Study of the Day: 1 in 4 Adults With HIV Were Sexually Abused as Kids By Hans Villarica Mar 23 2012  New research from Duke University shows that psychological trauma predicts increased vulnerability for HIV/AIDS and faster health decline.
METHODOLOGY: Duke University researchers led by Brian Pence monitored more than 600 HIV-positive patients, aged 20 to 71, in the “Coping with HIV/AIDS in the Southeast” study. They investigated possible links to traumatic experiences, HIV-related behaviors, and health outcomes.

RESULTS: A quarter of the respondents were sexually abused as children. Moreover, half of the patients had faced three or more traumatic experiences in their lifetime, including enduring physical abuse and witnessing domestic violence as a child, living through a parent’s suicide attempt or completion, or losing a child.
These painful experiences predicted worse health-related behaviors, such as instances of unprotected sex, missed antiretroviral medications, recent emergency room visits, and hospitalizations. Those who lived through such ordeals were also more likely to die or see their health decline during the two-year study period.
CONCLUSION: Psychological trauma heightens the risk for HIV infection, medication lapses, and disease progression.
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/03/study-of-the-day-1-in-4-adults-with-hiv-were-sexually-abused-as-kids/254666/

J Acquir Immune Defic Syndr. 2012 Apr 1;59(4):409-416. Childhood Trauma and Health Outcomes in HIV-Infected Patients: An Exploration of Causal Pathways.
Pence BW, Mugavero MJ, Carter TJ, Leserman J, Thielman NM, Raper JL, Proeschold-Bell RJ, Reif S, Whetten K. METHODS: In 611 outpatient people living with HIV/AIDS, we tested whether trauma’s influence on later health and behaviors was mediated by coping styles, self-efficacy, social support, trust in the medical system, recent stressful life events, mental health, and substance abuse.
RESULTS: In models adjusting only for sociodemographic and transmission category confounders (estimating total effects), pasttrauma exposure was associated with 7 behavioral and health outcomes….
CONCLUSIONS: These data suggest that past trauma influences adult health and behaviors through pathways other than the psychosocial mediators considered in this model. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22107822

Child traffickers thrive on disasters By David Singh GENEVA, 26 March 2012 – Disasters and climate related catastrophes are increasing the dangers facing children today such as child trafficking, according to a recent report by Najat Maalla M’jid, the UN Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography.
“Children’s vulnerability is significantly increased when they are separated from their families, unaccompanied, orphaned or displaced following humanitarian crisis,” warned M’jid at a review of the report at the 19th Session of the Human Rights Council which ended on Friday.

“Some people exploit the chaotic environment that follows a natural disaster to engage in criminal activities, such as selling children for the purpose of illegal adoption, forced labour or sexual exploitation”, stated the report.
“The situation enables them to circumvent national and international standards and remove children from their communities or national territory. Furthermore, the collapse or absence of a State system during and after an emergency results in a protection vacuum for children who may become separated from their families”, the report said.
http://www.unisdr.org/archive/25934

97% of rapists never spend a day in prison – Reporting Rates – Sexual assault is one of the most under reported crimes, with 54% still being left unreported.
What happens to Rapists When They are Caught and Prosecuted?
54% of rapes/sexual assaults are not reported to the police, according to a statistical average of the past 5 years. Those rapists, of course, never spend a day in prison. Factoring in unreported rapes, only about 3% of rapists ever serve a day in jail.
http://rainn.org/get-information/statistics/reporting-rates

R.A. Dickey book: Childhood sexual abuse revealed in memoir with Daily News’ Wayne Coffey; NY Mets pitcher thought about suicide – Dickey says he got through painful times with ‘strength, honesty and love’ By Andy Martino NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, March 28, 2012
PORT ST. LUCIE — Four hours after telling the world what he was once unable to share with his wife, R.A. Dickey stood in the Mets clubhouse Tuesday, detailing the impact of sexual abuse on his life, and the hope that his own history will help other victims make peace with theirs.

In a raw, new memoir, excerpted Tuesday in Sports Illustrated and detailed in the Daily News, Dickey reveals that he was abused as an 8-year-old, and later lived with so much anger and shame that he contemplated suicide as recently as 2006….
Entitled “Wherever I Wind Up: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball” (Penguin/Blue Rider Press) and written with the Daily News’ Wayne Coffey, the book is excerpted in this week’s Sports Illustrated and in the Daily News on Thursday.
The book chronicles Dickey’s 14-year odyssey through the minor leagues, his entry into the majors, including finding a used syringe in the Texas Rangers clubhouse, and his late conversion to the knuckleball, but the biggest revelations center on a troubled Tennessee childhood.
Dickey writes about closing Nashville bars with his mother at age 5, sleeping in abandoned houses as a teen, swimming with alligators and turning to sports in an effort to mitigate the pain brought on by the sexual abuse.
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/mets/a-dickey-book-childhood-sexual-abuse-revealed-memoir-news-wayne-coffey-ny-mets-pitcher-thought-suicide-article-1.1051163

R.A. Dickey writes of confronting darker sides of human nature By R.A. Dickey with Wayne Coffey Tuesday March 27, 2012 From WHEREVER I WIND UP: My Quest for Truth, Authenticity and the Perfect Knuckleball, by R.A. Dickey with Wayne Coffey, published by arrangement with Blue Rider Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Copyright 2012 by R.A. Dickey.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/baseball/mlb/03/26/dickey.excerpt/index.html

Presidential Proclamation — National Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month, 2012 – A PROCLAMATION
Though we have come far in the fight to reduce sexual violence, the prevalence of sexual assault remains an affront to our national conscience that we cannot ignore.  This month, we stand with survivors of sexual assault, join together to break the silence, and recommit to ending this devastating crime.
Rape and sexual assault inflict profound suffering upon millions of Americans every year.  Nearly one in five women has been raped, and still more have endured other forms of sexual violence or abuse.  Tragically, these crimes take their greatest toll on young people; women between the ages of 16 and 24 are at greatest risk of rape and sexual assault, and many victims, male and female, first experience abuse during childhood.  The trauma of sexual violence leaves scars that may never fully heal.  Many survivors experience depression, fear, and suicidal feelings in the months and years following an assault, and some face health problems that last a lifetime.

It is up to all of us to ensure victims of sexual violence are not left to face these trials alone.  Too often, survivors suffer in silence, fearing retribution, lack of support, or that the criminal justice system will fail to bring the perpetrator to justice.  We must do more to raise awareness about the realities of sexual assault; confront and change insensitive attitudes wherever they persist; enhance training and education in the criminal justice system; and expand access to critical health, legal, and protection services for survivors.  As we fight sexual assault in our communities, so must we combat this crime within our Armed Forces.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/04/02/presidential-proclamation-national-sexual-assault-awareness-and-preventi

Vanessa Williams In ‘You Have No Idea’: ‘I Was Molested’ 04/5/2012 When it comes to Vanessa Williams, “You Have No Idea.” The 49-year-old’s new memoir, which carries the mysterious title, reveals within the pages that as a child, she was molested by a woman.
The incident occurred when Williams was just 10 years old, making it hard for the young girl to comprehend just what was happening to her. In the latest issue of People magazine, on stands now, Williams details an incident in which an 18-year-old girl, Susan, a friend of a family friend whom the actress described as the “epitome of cool,” inappropriately touched her….
Susan told Williams, “Don’t tell anyone” — and she didn’t. Williams kept her molestation a secret for years, not knowing how to comprehend the events that transpired that night in California.
“I didn’t really understand until college,” Williams said of the moment she finally realized what had happened to her. “I was with my boyfriend and it hit me and I blurted out: ‘Oh my god — I was molested.'” Williams’ startling revelation led her to “become a bit more rebellious.” The beauty admits that she smoked marijuana in high school and had an abortion her senior year.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/05/vanessa-williams-molested-woman_n_1406611.html

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