Issue 92 – May 2010

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 92 – May 2010

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 2010 – 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.

2010 conference information is at http://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/

The 2009 Twelfth Annual Ritual Abuse, Secretive Organizations and Mind Control Conference – August 14-16, 2009 CD information is at http://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/2009-conference/ or available by writing the above address.

This issue contains information on clergy abuse around the world, including alleged cover ups by the Vatican and Pope, Boy Scouts, Franklin Scandal/Gosch, Ritual abuse, mind control, mk-ultra, CIA experiments, West Memphis 3, Afghanistan, MPD/DID. Child sexual abuse and its traumatic effects, Scientology and a similar Milgram experiment on French TV.

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

Brendan Smyth victim battles with US church  Crime Correspondent Ali Bracken 1/31/10
Helen McGonigle (48) was just six years old when she was first assaulted by the late Irish priest. She was living in East Greenwich in Rhode Island with her family when he entered her life. The sexual abuse perpetrated against her continued for the next four years. McGonigle’s family of Irish descent were members of Our Lady of Mercy Catholic Church and it was here that they came into contact with the convicted sexual abuser. A master manipulator, he infiltrated her family’s daily life. He also sexually abused her elder sister Kathleen under the pretence of preparing her for the sacrament of penance. Kathleen and Helen’s brother Gerard both died from fatal drug overdoses as a result of the abuse Smyth perpetrated against her family. Her mother also spent time in a mental institution before her death because of the actions of the paedophile priest.
Helen repressed the memory of the horrors Smyth inflicted upon her as a child. It only came to the surface five years ago when she began to look deeper into what caused her sister’s fatal overdose from antidepressants in 2005. As she delved into their early life in Rhode Island, she soon learned her elder sister, and many other children, were also victims of Smyth….The McGonigle family moved from Rhode Island in 1973 but the damage wreaked by Smyth never left them. In 1994, the priest was convicted of 17 counts of sexual abuse in a Belfast court. Three years later in Dublin, he pleaded guilty to another 74 counts of child sexual abuse….His rampant abuse of children was known to his superiors in the Catholic church and helped bring down the Fianna Fáil/Labour coalition in 1994.
In 2006, McGonigle notified the diocese of Providence of the abuse she suffered at the hands of Smyth in Rhode Island. She was informed that she was the sixth person to come forward but there was “no pastoral reason” for making this information public. “I have since located two other victims of Smyth from our parish. I know of a third, a neighbour and my sister’s friend, and if I count my sister, that makes at least nine children. Smyth was caught molesting children at our parish in early 1968, sent to a mental hospital and allowed to return to reoffend. To my knowledge there are two major groupings of us. Those aged six and seven who were one-on-one with Smyth in preparation for taking the sacrament of penance, and those five years older preparing for confirmation.”
Last week, the Boston archdiocese finally confirmed that Smyth at one time worked in Boston….”He destroyed my entire family. He was moved around four states in the US, from parish to parish within those states.”
http://www.tribune.ie/article/2010/jan/31/brendan-smyth-victim-battles-with-uschurch/

Thursday, 4th February, 2010 Abuse victim of the late Fr. Brendan Smyth. Helen McGonigle, Acts as a Lawyer in the United States for clients who have been victims of clerical abuse.  http://www.rte.ie/radio1/todaywithpatkenny/2010-02-04.html

Child abuse monster Father Brendan Smyth ruined my life By APRIL DREW, Irish Voice Reporter
2/10/10 Helen McGonigle, 48, was just six years old when Father Brendan Smyth, a notorious sex offender from Co. Cavan, first abused her.
McGonigle, now a successful attorney in Connecticut, says Smyth destroyed her family. She blames Smyth for the death of her sister and brother and the demise of her beautiful mother.
After years of suppressing the memories of the horrendous abuse, McGonigle is now dealing with her past and hoping other victims will do the same….Helen wasn’t the only sister to encounter Smyth’s evil ways.  The Cavan priest also sexually abused her older sister Kathleen. In the past few years, both Kathleen, 48, and her brother Gerard, 53, died of drug overdoses. McGonigle claims it was the abuse Kathleen suffered at the hands of Smyth that made her dependent on antidepressants….
It was finally her sister’s tragic death in 2005 that lead McGonigle to face her worst nightmares, nightmares from the past she thought she would never need to resurrect.
“It was because I observed my sister rapidly deteriorating and fearful for her life that I began my investigation into the past about our childhood in Rhode Island,” said McGonigle during a lengthy interview with the Irish Voice.
While her sister was ailing, McGonigle’s father said accusingly, “It was that priest from Rhode Island that gave your sister alcohol that started her problems.” Not only did this statement shock and frighten McGonigle, it got her thinking back into her past. Was Smyth really responsible for his sister’s problems? “People who do not walk in these shoes cannot comprehend how it (abuse) impacts adults and can be life threatening as in the case of my family,” said McGonigle.
http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Helen-McGonigle-My-years-of-abuse-at-the-hands-of-monster-Father-Brendan-Smyth-83985092.html

In 1968, McGonigle said Smyth was caught molesting children in her parish and sent to Purdysburn Mental Hospital in Northern Ireland for treatment. After his time was served in Ireland, Smyth was allowed to return to Rhode Island, said McGonigle….During the abuse, McGonigle knew nothing but fear. Smyth told her she would “end up like the body in the woods” if she ever told a soul about what he was doing to her. “I took that as a real death threat and was terrified and confused and very young,” she says. McGonigle also witnessed Smyth molesting her sister. They had a bedroom with a door directly to the outside that he could enter. Smyth’s evil antics didn’t stop at the McGonigle sisters either. Their mother also spent time in a mental institution.
According to McGonigle’s childhood neighbor who she located after 36 years, in 1968 her mother caught “Smyth sodomizing a little boy behind the stone wall and she shouted, ‘What are you doing to that little boy.’
http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Helen-McGonigle-My-years-of-abuse-at-the-hands-of-monster-Father-Brendan-Smyth-83985092.html?page=2

The abuse stopped when the family moved from Rhode Island in 1973 but the scars were left for life. McGONIGLE got on with her life. She put her abuse behind her and did her best to lead a normal life. It wasn’t until her sister’s death five years ago that she began to delve into their pasts.  She began to question why her sister suffered from depression in the first place. After a little investigating she too discovered and remembered that Kathleen was a victim of Smyth’s lurid acts. After burying her sister McGonigle took time to deal with her own issues. http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Helen-McGonigle-My-years-of-abuse-at-the-hands-of-monster-Father-Brendan-Smyth-83985092.html?page=3

Not wanting to let Smyth ruin any more of her life, McGonigle reported the sexual abuse inflicted on her to the Diocese of Providence, Rhode Island in 2006. They told her she wasn’t the first to report Smyth. “I was informed that I was the sixth to come forward, yet newspaper accounts that I located indicated there were no problems whatsoever in our parish,” she said.
McGonigle attended a meeting where she said the Vicar General, Paul Theroux, of the Providence Diocesan, offered her $25,000 compensation, or she could “privately arbitrate with a cap of $50,000 (meaning there would be no public record and everything would once again be kept secret).”
McGonigle became infuriated with the financial offer. McGonigle said the diocesan victim outreach coordinator, Michael Hansen, told her to “just send us all your bills.”    “I refused their hush money,” said McGonigle. The Diocese of Providence has paid for therapy and medical expenses McGonigle has incurred as a result of the abuse by Smyth.
McGonigle, who still has a case pending against the Diocese of Providence, realizes that it’s too late for Smyth to be brought to justice, but she longs for the Catholic Church to recognize the abuse he inflicted on the children of her parish while he served his time there.
http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Helen-McGonigle-My-years-of-abuse-at-the-hands-of-monster-Father-Brendan-Smyth-83985092.html?page=4 Smyth was convicted on 91 counts of child molestation – 17 in Northern Ireland and 74 in the summer.  http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Helen-McGonigle-My-years-of-abuse-at-the-hands-of-monster-Father-Brendan-Smyth-83985092.html?page=5

Priest’s victims forced into vow of silence 3/15/10 The leader of the Catholic Church in Ireland resisted calls for his resignation yesterday, despite admitting that he took part in meetings where the victims of a paedophile priest were forced to take a vow of silence.
Cardinal Sean Brady, the Primate of All Ireland, has confirmed he was present at a closed canonical tribunal in 1975 when two child victims of Father Brendan Smyth were ordered to sign agreements under oath that they would not discuss what happened to them with anybody other than an approved priest….He said that three weeks after he submitted a report to the Bishop of Kilmore, Smyth was suspended from practising as a priest in the Diocese of Kilmore and throughout the country.
However, Smyth continued to sexually abuse children and later confessed he had done so until at least 1993….One of the reports found that the Government had colluded with the Church and legal authorities to cover up almost four decades of sexual abuse and beatings by priests and nuns of thousands of children in state care. The other revealed a litany of cover-ups by senior clergy in the Dublin diocese to protect the Church’s reputation….Smyth was accused of sexually assaulting a ten-year-old altar boy and a 14-year-old girl. The boy and girl were required to sign affidavits swearing they would not talk to anybody except priests who had been given special permission by the tribunal. The church authorities did not inform police of the allegations. In court, Smyth admitted dozens of counts of sexual abuse of children in nine counties over 35 years to 1993.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article7061540.ece

Latest Today with Pat Kenny Podcasts Sean Brady Controversy….The cardinal has once again this morning said that he doesn’t intend to resign following weekend revelations about his involvement in a 1975 canonical inquiry into child abuser Brendan Smyth. He admits that he didn’t pass the information on to the Gardai. Pat spoke with Mary Raftery; Monsignor Maurice Dooley, a former professor of canon law but first joining us on the line from the U.S. is Helen McGonigle who was abused by Fr Smyth.
http://www.rte.ie/radio1/todaywithpatkenny/2010-03-15.html

Irish bishop resigns, apologizes to abuse victims By SHAWN POGATCHNIK (AP) – 3/24/10 DUBLIN — Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation Wednesday of Bishop John Magee, a former papal aide who stands accused of endangering children by failing to follow the Irish church’s own rules on reporting suspected pedophile priests to police. Magee apologized to victims of any pedophile priests who were kept in parish posts since he took charge of the southwest Irish diocese of Cloyne in 1987….Irish society is still debating the merits of Saturday’s unprecedented letter from Benedict apologizing for decades of unchecked child abuse by priests, nuns and other clerics. The letter criticized Irish bishops, promised a Vatican inspection of unspecified dioceses and religious orders in Ireland — but accepted no Vatican responsibility for promoting a culture of cover-up.
Benedict also has yet to accept resignation offers from three other Irish bishops who were linked to cover-ups of child-abuse cases in the Dublin Archdiocese, the subject of a government-ordered investigation that published its findings four months ago. Magee, however, had been expected to resign ever since an Irish church-commissioned investigation into the mishandling of child-abuse reports in Cloyne ruled two years ago that Magee and his senior diocesan aides failed to tell police quickly about two 1990s cases.
The church and government suppressed publication of that report’s findings until December 2008, when Magee faced immediate calls to quit from victims’ rights activists and some parishioners. They accused him of ignoring an Irish church policy enacted in 1996 requiring all abuse cases to be reported to police….Cardinal Sean Brady, a Vatican-trained canon lawyer, faces his own cover-up accusations. He has admitted collecting evidence in 1975 from two altar-boy victims of a notorious pedophile priest — but had both boys sign confidentiality agreements and never passed his information to police. That priest, Brendan Smyth, wasn’t imprisoned until 1994 after molesting scores of children in Ireland and the United States….The church’s Cloyne report found that Magee and his diocesan deputies fielded complaints from parishioners about two priests from 1995 onward — but told the police nothing until 2003 and little thereafter. The report said Cloyne church authorities appeared solely concerned with helping the two priests, not protecting children of the diocese.
One priest, who was accused of molesting a younger priest when he was a teenager, was encouraged by Magee to resign. But the investigation found that the bishop shielded the abuser’s identity from police — and considered such concealment “the normal practice” for the church.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jQWrzPjAEtxgfa_tARqu5413A4PAD9EL25QG2

Irish Catholic leader won’t quit for abuse coverup By SHAWN POGATCHNIK (AP) – 3/15/10
DUBLIN — Ireland’s senior Roman Catholic, Cardinal Sean Brady, said Monday he would not resign despite admitting he helped the church collect evidence against a child-molesting priest — and never told police about the crimes.
Brady, as a priest and Vatican-trained canon lawyer in 1975, said he interviewed two children about the abuse they suffered at the hands of the Rev. Brendan Smyth. He said both children were required to sign oaths promising not to tell anyone outside the church of their allegations.
Smyth went on to molest and rape scores of other children in Ireland, Britain and the United States before British authorities in neighboring Northern Ireland demanded his arrest in 1994. The Irish government of the day collapsed amid acrimony over why Smyth had not been extradited to Belfast….
Smyth abused at least 90 children in Ireland, Britain and in U.S. parishes in Rhode Island and North Dakota from 1948 to 1993.
His Irish religious order, the Norbertines, gave him sanctuary in the Republic of Ireland in 1991 after one Belfast family told Northern Ireland police he had molested four of the family’s children.
After his delayed 1994 arrest and extradition north, Smyth pleaded guilty to 17 counts of indecently assaulting five girls and two boys in Belfast and spent three years in a Northern Ireland prison. In 1997 he pleaded guilty to 74 counts of sexually abusing 20 boys and girls between 1958 and 1993 in the Republic of Ireland.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hH-e1FTvF61v8gt0efOO4w5Kz60wD9EF6CEO0

Victims recall horror of abuse and call on prelate to resign his post March 16 2010 – THEIR innocence was stolen by the notorious paedophile priest Brendan Smyth — but three of Smyth’s victims yesterday united to call on Cardinal Sean Brady to take personal responsibility for his role in allowing the serial child abuser to continue on his destructive path.
The youngest victim was just six-years-old, the eldest 13, when they were abused. He sought them out in their family homes, in their schools, and in a care home. Each was left traumatised by their experiences. But now — as adults — they are determined that those who covered up for their abuser will be called to account. While the church investigation into Smyth in 1975 came too late for many children, countless more could have been saved. It is for that reason that they believe Cardinal Brady has “blood on his hands” and should resign.
Helen McGonigle
HELEN McGonigle was just six-years-old and preparing for the sacrament of penance when she was abused by Smyth, who led her from her classmates into the sacristy of the church where he molested her.
Her sister, Kathleen, was also abused by the Belfast-born priest in their hometown of East Greenwich, Rhode Island, in the US. Unable to cope with the trauma of her devastated childhood, she took her own life as an adult. Smyth was already known to have sexually molested children when he was sent to the McGonigles’ parish in the summer of 1965. Using his usual modus operandi, he befriended the family and they bonded over a shared Irish ancestry. Speaking to the Irish Independent, Ms McGonigle, who is an attorney living in Connecticut, said: “From 1967 until about 1970 he molested me. He was caught in my parish molesting children as early as 1968.
“It was in the spring of 1967, when myself and a neighbour were going through training to get the sacrament of penance, that he would pick us out one by one and bring us to the sacristy of the church to abuse us.” While any intervention by Cardinal Brady in 1975 would have been too late to save the children of East Greenwich, Ms McGonigle said many others could have been protected. “Cardinal Brady has blood on his hands. He came to this with unclean hands. “So many lives and children could have been spared. We know the reports of the number of Brendan Smyth’s victims who committed suicide or attempted suicide.”
She said Cardinal Brady must resign and he should be charged with obstruction of justice. “He sat on this knowledge for 35 years, from 1975 through to 2010, and Brendan Smith continued to abuse children. It is only because of the lawsuit one of his victims has brought that he has had to show his hand.” She added: “How this is unfolding, we’re seeing what the real church is. The real church has orchestrated this for decades. People need to take their church back.” http://www.independent.ie/national-news/victims-recall-horror-of-abuse-and-call-on-prelate-to-resign-his-post-2100127.html

German Priest in Church Abuse Case Is Suspended By NICHOLAS KULISH March 15, 2010
MUNICH – The priest at the center of a German sexual-abuse scandal that has embroiled Pope Benedict XVI continued working with children for more than 30 years, even though a German court convicted him of molesting boys. The priest, Peter Hullermann, who had previously been identified only by the first letter of his last name, was suspended from his duties only on Monday. That was three days after the church acknowledged that the pope, then Archbishop Joseph Ratzinger, had responded to early accusations of molestation by allowing the priest to move to Munich for therapy in 1980.
Hundreds of victims have come forward in recent months in Germany with accounts of sexual abuse from decades past. But no case has captured the attention of the nation like that of Father Hullermann, not only because of the involvement of the future pope, but also because of the impunity that allowed a child molester to continue to work with altar boys and girls for decades after his conviction….In June 1986, the priest was convicted of sexually abusing minors and given an 18-month suspended sentence with five years of probation, fined 4,000 marks and ordered to undergo therapy.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/16/world/europe/16church.html

Under-fire pope urges youth to follow ‘the call’ By Simon Sturdee (AFP) – 3/16/10
Since the first revelations of abuse dating back to the 1970s and 1980s at an elite Jesuit-run school in Berlin emerged in January, former victims have alleged abuse at two-thirds of Germany’s 27 dioceses.
One of those implicated is a boarding school attached to Regensburg cathedral’s choir. The pope’s elder brother, Georg Ratzinger, who ran the choir for 30 years, has denied all knowledge.
On Friday the diocese of Munich and Freising said that the pope, when he was archbishop there, had approved in 1980 giving a priest reportedly suspected of abusing an 11-year-old boy Church housing for “therapy”.
Two years later, by which time the pope had been transferred to the Vatican, the priest was given pastoral duties in a Bavarian town and convicted of sexual abuse of minors in 1986, according to the diocese….Bishop Stephan Ackerman of Trier, charged with shedding light on the scandal, said in an interview that the Church was guilty of trying to hush up abuse.
“According to our information, there has been concealment,” he told the Rhein Zeitung daily.
“In cases where there has not been the will to shed light and where abusers have been simply transferred, we must admit there has been concealment,” the daily’s online edition quoted him as saying.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g_ICbQc_NQN7nCXilfXdGNBaH8JQ

Germany to set up expert panel on sexual abuse 24 Mar 2010 Following recent revelations of sexual abuse in Catholic Church, Germany is setting an expert panel to discuss sex crimes in the country….(Chancellor) Merkel has said that the panel should examine past abuse cases and reevaluate Germany’s limitations on sex crimes as well as possible compensation for the victims. Since January, several Catholic-run institutions in Germany have been engulfed in a deepening scandal over allegations of sadistic and sexual abuse, with more than 150 pupils coming forward with horrifying tales of mistreatment, mostly during 1970s to 80s. German Catholic Church is dealing with 300 alleged cases of child abuse across the country, many of which were reported in regions where Pope Benedict served as an archbishop. Vatican is accused of building up a “wall of silence” around such issues after it ordered Catholic priests in 2001 to report ‘priestly misbehaviors’, even the most serious abuse cases, only to the Vatican. http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=121572

A Closer Look At Clergy Sex Abuse 2/19/10 In Ireland, Dublin’s Archbishop met with victims of clergy sex abuse today, following a closed door conversation between Pope Benedict XVI and 24 Irish Bishops. The gathering was prompted by several devastating reports released by the Irish government detailing decades of clergy abuse on thousands of children. We speak with Audrey Carville, who reports from Dublin for the BBC, we also speak with two victims of sex abuse: John Kelly, founder of the group Irish Survivors of Child Abuse, and attorney Helen McGonigle, of Greenwich, Rhode Island. http://www.hereandnow.org/2010/02/rundown-219-2/#2

Pope knew priest was paedophile but allowed him to continue with ministry 3/13/10 Richard Owen, Rome The Pope was drawn directly into the Roman Catholic sex abuse scandal last night as news emerged of his part in a decision to send a paedophile priest for therapy. The cleric went on to reoffend and was convicted of child abuse but continues to work as a priest in Upper Bavaria. The priest was sent from Essen to Munich for therapy in 1980 when he was accused of forcing an 11-year-old boy to perform oral sex. The archdiocese confirmed that the Pope, who was then a cardinal, had approved a decision to accommodate the priest in a rectory while the therapy took place.
The priest, identified only as H, was subsequently convicted of sexually abusing minors after he was moved to pastoral work in nearby Grafing. In 1986 he was given an 18-month suspended jail sentence and fined DM 4,000 (£1,800 today). There have been no formal charges against him since. The church has been accused of a cover-up after at least 170 allegations of child abuse by German Catholic priests.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7060406.ece

Pope ‘led cover-up of child abuse by priests’ 30.09.06 The Pope played a leading role in a systematic cover-up of child sex abuse by Roman Catholic priests, according to a shocking documentary to be screened by the BBC tonight. In 2001, while he was a cardinal, he issued a secret Vatican edict to Catholic bishops all over the world, instructing them to put the Church’s interests ahead of child safety. The document recommended that rather than reporting sexual abuse to the relevant legal authorities, bishops should encourage the victim, witnesses and perpetrator not to talk about it. And, to keep victims quiet, it threatened that if they repeat the allegations they would be excommunicated.
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23369148-pope-led-cover-up-of-child-abuse-by-priests.do
The Pope, the letter and the child sex claim – A series of paedophile allegations against a senior papal confidant are haunting Benedict XVI. How he deals with them will be his first major test, writes Jamie Doward….The Observer, 24 April 2005
The story goes back to the Nineties when the new Pope – then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger – was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office responsible for investigating abuse claims.
One of the most high-profile of such claims was made by Professor José Barba Martin, a 68-year-old professor of humanities at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México. He is one of nine former members of the Rome-based Legion of Christ who allege they were abused by the religious order’s powerful founder, Marcial Maciel….
The nine filed their case before the Vatican’s courts, and persuaded intermediaries to carry a letter to Ratzinger outlining abuse allegations against Maciel. According to one of the intermediaries, Father Alberto Athie, when confronted with the allegations Ratzinger simply said Maciel had brought many ‘benefits’ to the church and that it was a ‘touchy problem’. The Vatican denies Athie’s claim.
On 24 December 1999, Ratzinger’s secretary, Father Gianfranco Girotti, wrote to the men saying that their claims – many allegedly corroborated by each other’s detailed testimonies – had been examined but, for the time being, the Vatican considered the matter closed. In a last-ditch attempt to persuade Ratzinger to change his mind, another letter was despatched to him in 2002 through an intermediary. It went unanswered.
For support groups campaigning on behalf of abuse victims, Ratzinger’s apparent reluctance to investigate the claims against Maciel was a crushing blow, but one that did not surprise critics of the new Pope.   http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/apr/24/children.childprotection1

Vatican to Drop Statute of Limitations for Pedophile Priests March 13, 2010 By Flavia Krause-Jackson (Bloomberg) – The Vatican’s chief prosecutor will remove the statute of limitations for priests accused of child molestation and said today it was “false and calumnious” to accuse Pope Benedict XVI of a cover-up….Benedict has struggled to contain damage to the Church’s reputation by allegations of sexual abuse by priests. Bringing the scandal a step closer to the papacy, a German Church report said yesterday that when he was archbishop of Munich he took part in the 1980 decision to move a priest accused of molestation to his diocese to undergo therapy….Asked whether the Church has been too lenient, Scicluna says “it may be that in the past, perhaps also out of a misdirected desire to protect the good name of the institution, some bishops were, in practice, too indulgent towards this sad phenomenon.”
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-03-13/vatican-to-drop-statute-of-limitations-for-pedophile-priests.html

Child abuse claims sweep Catholic Church in Europe By SHAWN POGATCHNIK (AP) – 3/13/10 DUBLIN – It often starts as a voice in the wilderness, but can swell into an entire nation’s demand for truth. From Ireland to Germany, Europe’s many victims of child abuse in the Roman Catholic church are finally breaking social taboos and confronting the clergy….Floodgates opened for Irish complaints that have topped 15,000 in this country of 4 million. Three government-ordered investigations have shocked and disgusted the nation, which has footed most of the bill to settle legal claims topping euro1 billion (nearly $1.5 billion)….In January, an elite Jesuit school in Berlin declared it was aware of seven child-abuse cases in its past and appointed an outside investigator, Ursula Raue, to seek testimony. Within weeks, she had gathered stories of long-suppressed woe from more than 100 ex-students abused by their Jesuit masters, and from 60 molested by parish priests.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h_cfU5TnimDgvhfygQBB2NlzikuQD9EDRVS00

Pope will struggle to survive abuse scandal By John Cooney 3/13/10
A depressing week for Pope Benedict  dramatically escalated last night into an unprecedented papal crisis when he was directly implicated in a cover-up of a German paedophile priest when he was Cardinal Archbishop of Munich 30 years ago. The latest revelations are so potentially damaging to the reputation of then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger that speculation was mounting last night that they could severely, perhaps even irreparably, damage his moral authority as Pope Benedict XVI. It was being speculated that the German Pope could conceivably have to recognise that his position as supreme pontiff could become untenable — and do what was until now considered impossible, resign from the Petrine throne….
The Dutch church has climbed to 350 complaints just a week after the Salesians first admitted they were investigating claims that three pupils in a school were abused in the 1960s. In Austria, the Benedictine arch-abbot of St Peter’s in Salzburg has resigned after admitting he abused a 12-year-old boy 40 years ago.
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/pope-will-struggle-to-survive-abuse-scandal-2098357.html

Benedict’s involvement ‘shows extent of cover-ups’ By Breda Heffernan 3/13/10 Irish victims of clerical sex abuse said the involvement of Pope Benedict XVI in covering up for paedophile priests showed that the practice was endemic within the Catholic Church and said he should now consider his own position. Andrew Madden, who was abused by a priest in the Dublin Archdiocese, said it appeared the Pope was doing the same thing as the archbishops of Dublin going back to John Charles McQuaid by not reporting clerics to the civil authorities….Another victim, Marie Collins, said the implication of the Pope in clerical sex scandals in Germany  showed the practice of covering up for offenders and moving them on to different dioceses was “church-wide”.
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/benedicts-involvement-shows-extent-of-coverups-2098356.html
describes crimes
Catholic Scandal Spreads – Former Regensburg Choirboys Talk of ‘Naked Beatings’  03/08/2010
Former choirboys of the Regensburger Domspatzen have told SPIEGEL about sexual and physical abuse at two boarding schools attached to the famous Catholic choir. One former choirboy says it’s “inexplicable” that the Pope’s brother Georg Ratzinger, a former head of the choir, didn’t know about it.    The abuse scandal at the Regensburger Domspatzen choir is bigger than had been thought so far. Therapists in and around Munich treated several former choirboys who were traumatized by sexual and other physical abuse.
One man affected told SPIEGEL about cruel rituals in the Etterzhausen boarding school, a preparatory school for younger pupils from which the choir draws its recruits. He said that at the end of the 1950s the headmaster of the school, a Catholic priest, had dealt out hard physical punishments. He had often practiced what was called “naked beatings” in his private rooms, where boys aged eight or nine had to undress and were beaten by hand. In some cases, the victim said, penetration took place.
‘Sexual Lust’     The director and composer Franz Wittenbrink, who lived in the Regensburg boarding school of the choir until 1967, said the school had an “elaborate system of sadistic punishments combined with sexual lust.” He said the headmaster at the time “would choose two or three of us boys in the dormitories in the evenings and take them to his flat.” He said there had been red wine, and that the priest had masturbated with the pupils. “Everyone knew about it,” said Wittenbrink. “I find it inexplicable that the Pope’s brother Georg Ratzinger, who had been cathedral bandmaster since 1964, apparently knew nothing about it.” http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,682344,00.html

Pope’s Brother Denies Sex Scandal While He Ran Boys Choir – Rev. Georg Ratzinger Defends Tenure as Choir Master, Willing to Testify By ANN WISE  ROME March 8, 2010
In an interview with an Italian newspaper on Sunday, the Rev. Georg Ratzinger, 86, the Pope’s older brother, said he knew nothing of abuse, and noted that he was not the head of the choir when the alleged abuse took place….Last month Archbishop Zollitsch apologized for sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests after over 100 cases were reported in schools across the country, according to press reports.  http://abcnews.go.com/International/popes-brother-speaks-church-abuse/story?id=10042319&nwltr=WN_mostviewedstories_hed4

Pope’s brother says slapped pupils at choir school Christopher Lawton  Mar 9, 2010 BERLIN (Reuters) – The brother of Pope Benedict said in an interview on Tuesday he slapped pupils in the face at a German school where he led the choir, but had been unaware of the brutality of discipline there….The Regensburg diocese is home to one of three Catholic schools in the southern state of Bavaria where the charges of sexual and physical abuse have surfaced recently. The diocese has said one priest abused two boys sexually in 1958 and was sentenced to two years in jail. Another clergyman served 11 months in jail in 1971 for abuse. Other former pupils have said they suffered sexual abuse and excessive beatings and humiliation in the early 1960s by unnamed teachers. German Pope Benedict, formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, taught theology at Regensburg University from 1969 to 1977….More than 200 Catholics in the Netherlands have come forward to report alleged sexual abuses by priests, often decades ago. The Dutch Roman Catholic Church said on Tuesday it was asking an independent commission to look into the reports. http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6282UR20100309

Pope’s brother linked to new claims of child abuse by clergy – Fresh allegations emerge over Bavarian school where Georg Ratzinger led choir for 30 years By Jerome Taylor, Religious Affairs Correspondent  3/9/10  http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/popes-brother-linked-to-new-claims-of-child-abuse-by-clergy-1918357.html

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Inside Germany’s Catholic Sexual Abuse Scandal  The Catholic Church in Germany has been shaken in recent days by revelations of a series of sexual abuse cases. Close to 100 priests and members of the laity have been suspected of abuse in recent years. After years of suppression, the wall of silence appears to be crumbling. By SPIEGEL Staff. 2/8/10
This is what it looks like, the document of a conspiracy: 24 pages, with appendix, in Latin, published by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith at the Vatican. A “norma interna,” or confidential set of guidelines for all bishops, who were required to keep it a secret for all eternity, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.
The guidelines, issued in the year of our Lord 1962, address a sensitive subject: sex in the confessional. The Vatican doesn’t put it quite that directly, preferring to use more guarded terminology to describe what happens when a priest leads a member of his flock astray before, during or after the confession — in other words, when he provokes a penitent “toward impure and obscene matters” through “words or signs or nods of the head (or) by touch.” ….
But now the wall of silence is coming down here in Germany. It started when Berlin’s Canisius College, an elite Jesuit high school, recently disclosed the sordid past of a number of members of the order, who had abused students at the school in the 1970s and 1980s. After that, new victims began coming forward on a daily basis. By last Friday, at least 40 of them had accused three Jesuit priests of molesting children and adolescents, first in Berlin and later at the St. Ansgar School in Hamburg, the St. Blasien College in the Black Forest and in several parishes in the northern German state of Lower Saxony…..
For decades, German bishops tried to look the other way when their pastors engaged in sexual abuse, as well as to downplay the problem by characterizing it as isolated incidents. Now they are finally revealing their own figures, though hesitantly. According to a SPIEGEL survey of Germany’s 27 dioceses conducted last week, at least 94 priests and members of the laity in Germany are suspected or have been suspected of abusing countless children and adolescents since 1995. A total of 24 of the 27 dioceses responded to SPIEGEL’s questions.
A group called the Round Table for Care in Children’s Homes recently published an interim report which contains dramatic findings. The report deals with the wrongs committed since the 1950s against children and adolescents living in homes, almost half of which were run by the Catholic Church.
According to the report, more than 150 victims of sexual abuse have come forward with their stories in recent months.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,676497,00.html

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Jesuit Priest Admits Molesting Youth – Germany Shaken By ‘Systematic’ Sexual Abuse at Berlin Catholic School Reported by Sven Röbel and Peter Wensierski 2/1/10 A priest last week admitted in a statement to SPIEGEL he had abused a number of pupils at an elite Berlin high school run by Jesuit priests. In recent days, around 20 former students have come forward alleging they were sexually abused by priests at the school. The director of Canisius College has described the years-long abuse as “systematic.” Berlin’s Canisius College, a university-prep high school run by Jesuit priests, is one of the most elite schools in the German capital. Former students from the respected private school have reached the upper echelons of business, politics and society. For the past week, however, Canisius College has been at the center of a major sexual abuse scandall. Last week, around 20 former students claimed they had been sexually abused by two teachers at the school, Wolfgang S. and Peter R. The abuse is believed to have been committed during the 1970s and 1980s.  http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,675331,00.html

German Church Faces Child Abuse Charges By NICHOLAS KULISH February 9, 2010 BERLIN – The Roman Catholic Church faces yet another child abuse scandal, this time in Pope Benedict XVI’s native Germany. The widening public scandal began last month with allegations that three priests at the elite Canisius Jesuit high school in Berlin had sexually abused students in the 1970s and ’80s. In the midst of a steadily growing uproar over the handling of that case, the German magazine Der Spiegel published an article last weekend that said nearly 100 clerics and laypeople had been suspected of abusing children and teenagers nationwide since 1995….
The abuse of children by members of the clergy remains one of the most difficult issues for the church. In December the Vatican accepted the resignations of several Irish bishops after a report by the Irish government detailed the physical, sexual and emotional abuse of children by Catholic priests in church-run residential schools, many of them run by the Christian Brothers.
The report found that both the Catholic hierarchy and Irish state agencies covered up complaints by 320 Irish children who said they were abused by priests between 1974 and 2004.
On Monday at the Vatican, Benedict told members of the Pontifical Council for the Family that he condemned the abuse of children by members of the clergy, but he has not commented directly on the situation in Germany.
Der Spiegel said that at least 94 clerics and laypeople had been suspected of abuse since 1995, based on a poll of 27 of Germany’s 30 Catholic dioceses.
Irish Victims Write to Pope
DUBLIN (AP) – Irish victims of sexual abuse by members of the Catholic clergy have written to Pope Benedict XVI asking him to take responsibility for the church’s concealment of child molestation by forcing out bishops implicated in the decades of cover-up.
Their plea comes one week before a special Vatican summit meeting involving the pope and Ireland’s bishops to prepare a response to scandals in the Irish church. Three bishops have already offered to resign. The letter’s writers urge Benedict to write to all the people of Ireland, “accepting fully the harm that has been caused” by child-abusing priests, nuns and brothers.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/world/europe/10germany.html

Sexual abuse in German Church deeper than expected 2/6/10 Less than a week after a German Jesuit leader apologized over a deepening sexual abuse scandal at a prestigious Catholic institution, new reports paint a far grimmer picture of the crisis.
German media reported on Saturday that nearly 100 employees of the Catholic Church have been suspected of involvement in sexual abuse over the past 15 years.The new accusation comes after victims, who suffered abuse as students in four Jesuit-run schools in the 1970s and 1980s came forward. More than 20 of the victims assaulted at a Berlin school were between 13 and 14. A former Catholic priest admitted in early January to sexually abusing pupils in the 1970s and 1980s at a Berlin school where he taught….The cases of sexual abuse at Jesuit schools in Berlin during the 1970s and 80s spread from Berlin to Hamburg and the Black Forest, and at church institutions in Spain and Chile. http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=118042&sectionid=3510212

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RIGHTS-GERMANY: ‘Catholic Church Protects Paedophile Priests’  By Julio Godoy BERLIN, Feb 28, 2010 (IPS) – The Catholic Church has for decades protected paedophile priests and clerics who sexually abused children from judiciary prosecution, according to German theologians, law experts, and internal church documents. The church hierarchy’s complicity was confirmed recently through thousands of denouncements against numerous priests in Germany. In practically all the cases, the abusers were only transferred from one jurisdiction to another and never legally prosecuted.
Similar cases of sexual abuse of children within Catholic schools and other institutions, with impunity for the abusers, have been documented in such countries as Austria, Australia, France, Italy, the Philippines, Spain, and the United States.  In Germany, the denouncements started last January, when Klaus Mertes, director of the Catholic Canisius high school in Berlin, in an open letter addressed to former students, apologised for the sexual abuse priests had inflicted on them in the 1970s and 1980s.
In the letter, Mertes said that he knew “since years” of the abuse, and called them “systematic and years-long.” He also urged the victims to reveal the precise the nature of the abuse and encouraged them to ‘’break the wall of silence” maintained around the cases. Much attention has fallen on the Canisius high school, managed by the Jesuit order, and rated as one of the best educational institutions in Germany.
On Feb. 14, Mertes said at a press conference that the number of cases of sexual abuse at Canisius reached “the hundreds” and suggested that the Catholic church pay financial reparations to the victims….According to German theologians, and Germany’s prosecution officials, the church hierarchy invariably hid the abuse. The German theologian Uta Ranke-Heinemann told IPS that the Catholic Church “from the Vatican down to the priests on the field, have helped to guarantee the abusers absolute impunity. There are two internal documents in which the Catholic church takes care of maintaining the abuse in absolute secrecy,” Ranke-Heinemann said.
The first document, titled “Crimen Sollicitationis” (Latin for “the crime of soliciting”), goes back to 1962, and was written by the Cardinal Alfredo Ottaviani, at the time prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, formerly known as the Inquisition. The second paper, “De delictis gravioribus” (“on more serious crimes”), was written in 2001 by then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, today’s Pope Benedict XVI. He was also prefect of the congregation.
“Both documents, which are today in the possession of every Catholic bishop around the globe, emphasise the exclusive jurisdiction of the Vatican on sexual crimes such paedophilia,” Ranke-Heinemann told IPS. “In the letters, Ottaviani and Ratzinger order bishops all over the world to report the priests’ sexual abuses against children exclusively to the Vatican, under the threat of excommunication. These threats have led to a total obstruction of judiciary inquiries, other state law enforcement actions, and to impunity,” Ranke-Heinemann added.  Ranke-Heinemann said that the only penalty for the abusers has been their “continued relocation. They are continuously transferred from one place to another. This allows them to walk abroad and be up to their mischief in total impunity.”
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50479

How paedophile priest was allowed to evade justice – Former priest Bill Carney was named as one of the worst cases in Dublin’s Catholic diocese in the Murphy report into clerical abuse there. However, for the last 10 years he has been free to live quietly in Britain. 3/9/10
Newsnight’s Olenka Frenkiel has investigated his case and tracked him down in the Canary Islands….The Murphy report into the cover up by the Catholic Church and Irish state of clerical sex abuse was published in November 2009. It described Carney as “a serial sexual abuser of children, male and female”, saying that there had been complaints and suspicions “in respect of 32 named individuals” about him, adding that “there is evidence he abused many more children”….
We now know that complaints about Carney were diverted away from the Irish criminal justice system to Bishop James Kavanagh, a man described by the Murphy Report as someone with “a soft spot for Carney”. Kavanagh did what he could to protect Carney from the law to avoid scandal for the Church.
One conscientious policeman, praised in the Murphy Report, did investigate complaints and they came to court. But the press were kept away as Carney pleaded guilty to two counts of indecent assault and  got probation. Six families were paid compensation and Carney was soon back working, with access to children….
In its 40 pages on Carney, the Murphy report said that his was one of the worst cases the commission investigated and that the Church’s handling of his case was “nothing short of catastrophic”.
“It was inept, self-serving and for the best part of 10 years displayed no obvious concern for the welfare of children,” the report said.
In 1992, the Church convicted Carney internally, under Canon law, of child sexual abuse. But this compulsive paedophile refused to leave the parish house. So the Church paid him £30,000 to go away….
Newsnight has established that the Irish authorities knew his address but no-one, either from the Church or the Irish state, thought to warn his new wife about his past, or protect any children who might be at risk.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/8556659.stm

Catholic pedophile scandal engulfs Italian church Davide Berretta, Agence France-Presse  March 26, 2010 ROME – Pedophile priest scandals sweeping Catholic churches around Europe have encouraged more and more victims to speak out, fuelling a storm that now threatens to break over Italy. “Victims’ groups will grow exponentially in the next few weeks,” predicted Italian anti-pedophilia activist Roberto Mirabile. Fresh Catholic Church investigations in the northern cities of Bolzano and Verona could expose new cases of predatory clergy in Italy, which counts more than 50,000 priests, the highest concentration in the world. And on Friday, the left-leaning Italian weekly L’Espresso published new allegations of child molestation by a monk in Tuscany and by a nun in the northern region of Lombardy.
In an echo of the scandal that rocked the Irish Catholic Church in November, L’Espresso noted that the bishops overseeing the two dioceses were aware of the abuses and covered up the allegations….In Bolzano, revelations of abuse emerged in the local press earlier this month, and the diocese is meeting with victims who have come forward, said spokesman Martin Pezzei.
The Bolzano bishop publicly asked for forgiveness and urged victims to contact the diocese, saying in a statement that in so doing he was dispelling “the impression that the Church wants to hush up or hide something.” http://www.nationalpost.com/story.html?id=2729572

70 Irish priests accused of sex crimes in US Friday, 29 January 2010 US victims of child abuse have unearthed a direct link to scandals in Ireland, revealing that 70 irish priests who worked in the States have been accused of paedophile crimes. http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/world-news/70-irish-priests-accused-of-sex-crimes-in-us-14657871.html

Catholic church sex scandals rock Brazil 3/18/10 RIO DE JANEIRO – The Brazilian authorities are investigating three priests accused of sexually abusing altar boys after a video allegedly showing one case of abuse was broadcast on television, police said on Tuesday.
The case came to light after a network aired a video purportedly showing an 82-year-old priest having sex with a 19-year-old altar boy who worked for him for four years.
Other young men appeared on the report saying that they, too, had been abused. The Vatican confirmed that three Brazilian clergymen had been removed in the paedophilia scandal….
The Vatican has also ended a probe into the Legionaries of Christ after revelations that its late founder molested seminarians and fathered children, the ultra-conservative order said on Tuesday. The outcome would be “communicated in the coming months”.
Vatican watcher Sandro Magister said the pope, who in 2006 ordered Legionaries of Christ founder Marcial Maciel to renounce all duties and lead a “quiet life of prayer and penitence,” should name a commissioner “with full powers” to overhaul the order.
Before Maciel’s fall from grace, he and the order were championed by the pope’s predecessor, Pope John Paul II.
Earlier this month in Mexico, the order asked for forgiveness after two brothers claiming to be Maciel’s sons said he had abused them. Maciel, who died aged 87 in January 2008, led the order he founded in Mexico in 1941 with an iron fist.
Last year, the order confirmed that Maciel had secretly fathered a daughter. Maciel was also accused of sexually abusing seminarians, prompting the pope’s denunciation.
The order is present in 22 countries, notably Mexico and Spain, and runs 12 universities. It counts 800 priests, 2,500 seminarians and 70,000 lay members.
http://www.todayonline.com/World/EDC100318-0000087/Catholic-church-sex-scandals-rock-Brazil

Secretive Catholic Order Founded by Accused Pedophile Under Fire  3/14/10 (March 14) — As sex abuse scandals rock the Vatican, the results of an investigation into a rich, ultra-conservative and secretive Roman Catholic order founded by a priest accused of pedophilia and incest are due to be filed in Rome tomorrow.
The sordid story of the Legion of Christ, whose late founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, was a close ally of Pope John Paul II before being forcibly retired by the Vatican in 2006, is a microcosm of the crisis currently enveloping the church….
The controversy over the Legion, which is now barred or severely restricted from operating in six U.S. dioceses, is especially awkward for Benedict because he wants to have John Paul, a staunch defender of the order, canonized.
“Maciel was a sexual criminal of epic proportions who gained the trust of John Paul II and created a movement that is as close to a cult as anything we’ve seen in the church,” said author Jason Berry, one of two reporters who broke the Maciel story in 1997 and who directed a 2008 documentary about the priest called “Vows of Silence.”….
In 1997, nine former high-ranking seminarians accused Maciel, who died in 2008, of sexually abusing them when they were boys training for the priesthood. Last year, it was discovered Maciel had an illegitimate daughter born in 1986 in Spain. Two Mexican men who say they are Maciel’s sons claim  he also sexually abused them as children.
Though the Vatican knew of improprieties involving Maciel as far back as 1956, he was praised and protected by John Paul II, who became pope in 1978 and once called Maciel “an efficacious guide to youth.”
Even when the former seminarians went public in 1997 about Maciel’s sexual abuse and filed a formal complaint with the Vatican, the church at first did nothing while the Legion and other high-profile conservative Catholics called them liars.
A book, Vows of Silence, written by Hartford Courant reporter Gerald Renner and writer Jason Berry, was published in 2004 with what one reviewer called “horror stories… of brainwashing, manipulation, pederast seduction rituals, character assassination, bribes, drug abuse, gulag-type threats — you name it.”
http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/secretive-catholic-order-founded-by-accused-pedophile-under-fire/19398262

Catholic child abuse – nuns also accused 9 March 2010 By Britta Wielaard     Following recent reports about sexual abuse of children by Dutch priests, it now appears that some nuns also took advantage of their charges. Tuesday’s edition of newspaper De Telegraaf contains the story of Herman Harends, who says he was abused by nuns at a Roman Catholic boarding school he attended in the 1950s.
Radio Netherlands Worldwide and newspaper NRC Handelsblad published their report on sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic church two weeks ago. Since then, more and people have come forward, saying they, too, were childhood victims.
http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/catholic-child-abuse-nuns-also-accused

Dutch Catholic Church faces child sex abuse scandal 26 February 2010 By Robert Chesal
Large-scale abuse – At the boarding school in ‘s-Heerenberg, 80 to 100 boys between the ages of 12 and 18 slept in four large dormitories. “Sometimes you knew for sure: there’s something going on between that boy and that priest. And that other priest has a number of boys up in his room. It happened on a large scale. Several of the priests were involved.”….
Since it was set up in 1995, the hotline has received almost 300 reports of sexual abuse. “It has taken too long for the Church to apologise and take action. The Dutch bishops adopted the same `wait and see’ approach. I didn’t get the impression that dealing with sexual abuse was a priority for them.”
Committee resigns – Two years ago, dissatisfied with the attitude taken by the Dutch bishops, Yvo van Kuijck, now vice-president of the District Court in Arnhem, resigned along with the entire Assessment and Advisory Committee. Priests guilty of abuse in one parish were simply transferred to another parish where they were free to find new victims. “Not only is that unprofessional, it’s inconceivable.”
http://www.rnw.nl/english/article/dutch-catholic-church-faces-child-sex-abuse-scandal

Irish Catholic church in new child sex abuse allegations – Reports of settlement overseen by bishop of Derry adds to abuse scandals surrounding Catholic churches in Europe Henry McDonald, Ireland correspondent 18 March 2010
The Catholic church in Ireland was today embroiled in another child abuse scandal after allegations that a victim was paid to keep quiet in a deal overseen by the bishop of Derry.    Bishop Seamus Hegarty was named as a party in a confidential civil settlement after a woman claimed she was abused by a priest for more than a decade, according to a report in today’s Belfast Telegraph. According to the newspaper, the claim was settled without admission of liability but with a payment of £12,000 to the alleged victim. The settlement between the archdiocese of Derry and the woman, who was eight when the abuse began, reportedly contained a confidentiality clause preventing her from discussing the case.
Her ordeal allegedly began in 1979 and lasted for a decade before she revealed at her 18th birthday party that she had been repeatedly abused by the priest….
The Derry abuse case allegedly began after the priest was invited into the family home by the alleged victim’s parents, who had no idea he was a child abuser. She claims he told the girl that God would punish her if she spoke out about her ordeal. After she did speak out, her family approached the diocese in Derry, and the victim claims the cleric was moved to another parish despite meetings with Hegarty in 1994 during which he told her family he would deal with the problem. In an interview with the Belfast Telegraph today, her family described Hegarty as being “totally unsympathetic” during their initial meetings. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/18/irish-catholic-church-child-abuse

Germany and Ireland call on Catholic church to hold child sex abuse inquiries Angela Merkel becomes most senior politician to speak out over abuse by priests as pope to release pastoral letter on subject 17 March 2010  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/17/catholic-church-abuse-germany-ireland

The List: The Catholic Church’s Latest Abuse Scandals – FP’s guide to the Vatican’s spiraling crisis. BY KAYVAN FARZANEH  MARCH 16, 2010 The report alleged 2,000 cases of abuse over a 60-year period. A second government investigation, released by the Irish government in November 2009, fanned the flames by revealing the collusion of Irish police in systematically covering up cases of child abuse by Dublin clergymen. For Ireland, this is only the latest part of the clergy abuse saga — the Associated Press reports  that since the mid-1990s there have been nearly 15,000 complaints leveled against the church — with legal claims topping $1.5 billion….In September 2009, a Vatican official responded to growing criticism by defending the clergy’s action, citing statistics that showed only 1.5 to 5 percent of clergy have been involved in cases of child sex abuse — a leaky argument that acknowledges sexual abuse by up to 20,000  priests worldwide….
In late February, a Dutch radio station and newspaper broke the story of alleged abuse in Dutch Catholic boarding schools in the 1960s and 70s. The last Catholic boarding school may have closed in 1981, but victims have not forgotten their traumatic experiences. Once again, the trickle of a few lone voices surged into a torrent — nearly 200 allegations surfaced in the weeks following the radio program. Victims told stories of priests who shamed them into thinking they had done something wrong, which accounted for their silence. Even when accusations were leveled, priests tended to brush off evidence….
The latest and most salient crisis is now taking place in Germany, where allegations of abuse have surfaced this year for the first time. At least 300  cases of abuse have emerged, and elite Jesuit boarding schools across the country have been accused of mistreating pupils. Eighteen of the 27 German archdioceses are now being investigated for child abuse while the German Justice Ministry says that Vatican secrecy has hampered  investigations for the past decade.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/03/16/the_list_the_catholic_church_s_latest_abuse_scandals

Bishop admits involvement in secrecy oath for abuse victims By Fergus Black March 22 2010
ANOTHER Irish bishop has admitted being involved in an investigation into clerical abuse claims in which victims were made to sign oaths of secrecy. The Bishop of Clogher, Joseph Duffy, said in a statement that he had been been party to at least one civil settlement involving a claim made against the diocese in which a non-disclosure agreement was signed between the diocese and the claimant.
He told a Sunday newspaper that it was to his “regret” he did not pass on the abuse claims to police when he first became aware of the allegations in 1989. Bishop Duffy, who was unavailable for comment last night, told the ‘Sunday Business Post’ he was bound to secrecy by the victim’s parents at the time of the offence, but that he would not now be restricted by such a condition. Last week, a spokesman for Bishop Duffy said he had co-operated fully with the statutory authorities by sharing “all known records with them”. Irish Independent
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/bishop-admits-involvement-in-secrecy-oath-for-abuse-victims-2106660.html

Child sex abuse by US Catholic clergy down sharply: study Mar 23, 2010  WASHINGTON (AFP) – Pay-outs by the US Roman Catholic church for child abuse cases involving clergy members fell to a six-year low last year but remained in the nine-figure range, an annual US report tracking clergy sex abuse of minors said Tuesday. Nearly 400 new, credible allegations of clergy sex abuse were reported in 2009, said the report, which comes as the Roman Catholic church struggles to deal with thousands of alleged sex offenses by clerics against children in Europe and South America. In the United States, the Roman Catholic church paid out 104,439,629 dollars last year in costs related to sex abuse cases, more than half of the money – 55 million dollars – in settlements for victims, the report showed.
The 193 dioceses around the United States that provided data for the report said they received 398 new credible allegations last year of sexual abuse committed by priests and deacons against children. The vast majority dated from decades ago, but six involved children who were under the age of 18 in 2009. http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100323/ts_alt_afp/usreligioncatholiccrimesexchild_20100323183323

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Verona deaf school ex-pupils tell Italian TV of sex abuse by priests Richard Owen, Rome March 27, 2010 The sex abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church came to the Pope’s doorstep last night as a group of victims appeared on Italian television to claim that two dozen priests had for decades abused children at a school for the deaf in Verona. Three former pupils of the Antonio Provolo school who spoke on RAI, the state broadcaster, confirmed allegations made in a signed statement last year by 67 ex-pupils who described a regime of sexual abuse, paedophilia and corporal punishment from the 1950s to the 1980s. They said that 24 priests and lay brothers from the Company of Mary order were involved. The three said that the priests had “fondled and masturbated” them as well as sodomising them in dormitories, bathrooms and the priests’ quarters. Among the accused is Monsignor Giuseppe Carraro, Bishop of Verona from 1958-78, who died in 1981 and whom the local diocese has sought to have beatified, a crucial step on the road to sainthood….
The present Bishop of Verona, Mgr Giuseppe Zenti, initially accused the former pupils of “hallucinating”. However, the diocese had to open an inquiry after one of the accused lay brothers admitted sexual relations with pupils. Last summer the diocese forwarded its files on the abuse to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which took no action until last month when Cardinal William Levada, Pope Benedict’s successor as head of the congregation, agreed it was “opportune to proceed” with an inquiry….
1962 The Vatican issued a document to every bishop emphasising the importance of “strictest” secrecy in investigating sex abuse allegations
1975 Cardinal Sean Brady looked into two complaints of abuse against Father Brendan Smyth, with the teenagers sworn to secrecy
1980 Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger led a meeting examining the case of Father Peter Hullermann. Although known to be a paedophile, the priest was given therapy and transferred
1996 Cardinal Ratzinger received requests from the Archbishop of Wisconsin for Father Lawrence C. Murphy, accused of molesting up to 200 children, to be defrocked. The inquiry was halted after Father Murphy appealed for mercy
2001 Cardinal Ratzinger signed a document suggesting that child abuse cases must be handled in canonical trials behind closed doors
2002 Pope John Paul II appointed Cardinal Bernard Law as an Archpriest even though he had resigned as Archbishop of Boston over the cover-up of sexual abuse by more than 1,200 priests
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article7078227.ece

Pope knew about US deaf school predator priest, victim says 3/25/10 ST FRANCIS, Milwaukee — A US man claiming he was abused by a predator priest accused of molesting scores of deaf boys said Thursday Pope Benedict XVI knew about the latest sex scandal to rock the church and should be held accountable for it. “The pope knew about this. He should be held accountable,” Arthur Budzinski said outside the Archdiocese of Milwaukee after a New York Times report said Vatican officials, including the future pope, failed to act on warnings that Father Lawrence Murphy was abusing boys at a school for the deaf here.
Murphy is believed to have molested as many as 200 boys at St John’s School for the Deaf in Wisconsin between 1950 and 1974. The New York Times published documents Thursday which show that top Vatican officials, including then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — who was elected pope in 2005 — never took action against Murphy, despite many warnings from US bishops.
Budzinski, who is deaf and attended St John’s, said in sign language, which was spoken to reporters by his daughter, that Murphy would come into the boys’ dorm at night, take them into a closet and sexually molest them. Budzinski, who is now 62, said he told then archbishop of Milwaukee William Cousins and other officials about the abuse in 1974. The archbishop shouted at him and Budzinski “left the meeting crying,” he said.
According to the documents published in the New York Times, in the 1990s — years after the alleged offenses occurred — then Archbishop of Milwaukee Rembert Weakland and another Wisconsin bishop wrote “directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope,” about Murphy. Ratzinger failed to respond to the letter, and a canonical trial authorized by his deputy was halted after Murphy wrote to Ratzinger begging that the proceedings be stopped, the Times said.  “While church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal,” the newspaper said. Murphy died in 1998, having never been defrocked.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jK4hSiZZ14czYbRfbiPTiCWqVY5w

Weakland shredded copies of sex abuse reports, documents say By Bruce Vielmetti of the Journal Sentinel Dec. 3, 2009 Former Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland routinely shredded copies of weekly reports about sexual abuse by priests, according to formerly sealed testimony turned over to Milwaukee County’s district attorney on Thursday. In a 1993 deposition, Weakland admitted destroying copies of the reports in his office, according to a partial transcript of the deposition released by Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
Peter Isely, SNAP’s Midwest director, turned over the partial transcript, as well as portions of the logs to which Weakland was referring, to Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm and asked him to review them for any possible criminal violations. Chisholm accepted the records and promised a thorough review. The 16-year-old deposition documents have come to light during the discovery process in more than a dozen civil fraud lawsuits filed against the Milwaukee archdiocese.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/78431087.html

Wis. priest accused of molesting 200 deaf boys By DINESH RAMDE and GRETCHEN EHLKE, Associated Press Writers Dinesh Ramde And Gretchen Ehlke, 3/25/10 ST. FRANCIS, Wis. – Arthur Budzinski says the first time the priest molested him, he was 12 years old, alone and away from home at a school for the deaf. He says he asked the Rev. Lawrence Murphy to hear his confession, and instead the priest took him into a closet under the stairs and sexually assaulted him.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100325/ap_on_re_us/us_church_abuse_wisconsin

Vatican warned about Wisconsin priest report 3/25/10 AP Documents charge top Vatican office led by future pope was told of concerns about priest suspected in widespread abuse
Two Wisconsin bishops urged the Vatican office led by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger — now Pope Benedict XVI — to let them conduct a church trial against a priest accused of molesting some 200 deaf boys, but the Vatican ordered the process halted, church and Vatican documents show.
Despite the grave allegations, Cardinal Ratzinger’s deputy at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ruled that the alleged molestation had occurred too long ago and the accused priest, Rev. Lawrence Murphy, should instead repent and be restricted from celebrating Mass outside of his diocese….Church and Vatican documents obtained by two lawyers who have filed lawsuits alleging the Archdiocese of Milwaukee didn’t take sufficient action against Rev. Murphy show that as many as 200 deaf students had accused him of molesting them, including in the confessional, while he ran the school. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/vatican-warned-about-wisconsin-priest-report/article1511470/

Warned About Abuse, Vatican Failed to Defrock Priest By LAURIE GOODSTEIN March 24, 2010 Top Vatican officials — including the future Pope Benedict XVI — did not defrock a priest who molested as many as 200 deaf boys, even though several American bishops repeatedly warned them that failure to act on the matter could embarrass the church, according to church files newly unearthed as part of a lawsuit. The internal correspondence from bishops in Wisconsin directly to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future pope, shows that while church officials tussled over whether the priest should be dismissed, their highest priority was protecting the church from scandal….
The Wisconsin case involved an American priest, the Rev. Lawrence C. Murphy, who worked at a renowned school for deaf children from 1950 to 1974. But it is only one of thousands of cases forwarded over decades by bishops to the Vatican office called the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, led from 1981 to 2005 by Cardinal Ratzinger. It is still the office that decides whether accused priests should be given full canonical trials and defrocked….
Father Murphy not only was never tried or disciplined by the church’s own justice system, but also got a pass from the police and prosecutors who ignored reports from his victims, according to the documents and interviews with victims. Three successive archbishops in Wisconsin were told that Father Murphy was sexually abusing children, the documents show, but never reported it to criminal or civil authorities.    Instead of being disciplined, Father Murphy was quietly moved by Archbishop William E. Cousins of Milwaukee to the Diocese of Superior in northern Wisconsin in 1974, where he spent his last 24 years working freely with children in parishes, schools and, as one lawsuit charges, a juvenile detention center. He died in 1998, still a priest….
The Vatican’s inaction is not unusual. Only 20 percent of the 3,000 accused priests whose cases went to the church’s doctrinal office between 2001 and 2010 were given full church trials, and only some of those were defrocked, according to a recent interview in an Italian newspaper with Msgr. Charles J. Scicluna, the chief internal prosecutor at that office….
But the effort to dismiss Father Murphy came to a sudden halt after the priest appealed to Cardinal Ratzinger for leniency. In an interview, Archbishop Weakland said that he recalled a final meeting at the Vatican in May 1998 in which he failed to persuade Cardinal Bertone and other doctrinal officials to grant a canonical trial to defrock Father Murphy. (In 2002, Archbishop Weakland resigned after it became public that he had an affair with a man and used church money to pay him a settlement.)….“In spite of these difficulties,” Archbishop Weakland wrote, “we are still hoping we can avoid undue publicity that would be negative toward the church.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/25/world/europe/25vatican.html

Sex abuse scandal in US, Italy taints papacy By NICOLE WINFIELD (AP) – 3/25/10 VATICAN CITY – Revelations that the Vatican halted the investigation of a Wisconsin priest accused of molesting some 200 deaf boys have eerie echoes in Italy, where 67 deaf men and women accused two dozen priests of raping and molesting children for years….On Friday, The New York Times reported that the future pope was kept more closely apprised of a German priest’s sex abuse case in 1980 than previous church statements have suggested.
The case of the German priest, the Rev. Peter Hullermann, has acquired fresh relevance because it unfolded at a time when Cardinal Ratzinger, who was later put in charge of handling thousands of abuse cases on behalf of the Vatican, was in a position to refer the priest for prosecution, or at least to stop him from coming into contact with children, the Times said. Cardinal Ratzinger was copied on a memo that told him that a priest, whom he had approved sending to therapy in 1980 to overcome pedophilia, would return to pastoral work within days of beginning psychiatric treatment, the Times said. The priest was later convicted of molesting boys in another German parish.
Earlier this month, the Archdiocese of Munich placed full responsibility for the decision to allow the priest to resume his duties on Cardinal Ratzinger’s deputy, the Rev. Gerhard Gruber, the Times said.
But the memo cited by the Times says that the future pope not only led a meeting on Jan. 15, 1980, approving the transfer of the priest, but was also kept informed about the priest’s reassignment, the newspaper reported….In a signed statement last year, the 67 former pupils at a school for the deaf in Verona described sexual abuse, pedophilia and corporal punishment from the 1950s to the 1980s. They named 24 priests, brothers and lay religious men at the Antonio Provolo Institute for the Deaf. While not all acknowledged being victims, 14 of the 67 wrote sworn statements and made videotapes, detailing abuse, some for years, at the hands of priests and brothers of the Congregation for the Company of Mary. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hYl_IG1-vAhkRRY_xljSBpyW-PdAD9EM47G00

Doctor Asserts Church Ignored Abuse Warnings By NICHOLAS KULISH and KATRIN BENNHOLD 3/18/10 ESSEN, Germany — The German archdiocese led by the future Pope Benedict XVI ignored repeated warnings in the early 1980s by a psychiatrist treating a priest accused of sexually abusing boys that he should not be allowed to work with children, the psychiatrist said Thursday. “I said, ‘For God’s sake, he desperately has to be kept away from working with children,’ ” the psychiatrist, Dr. Werner Huth, said in a telephone interview from Munich. “I was very unhappy about the entire story.” Dr. Huth said he was concerned enough that he set three conditions for treating the priest, the Rev. Peter Hullermann: that he stay away from young people and alcohol and be supervised by another priest at all times. Dr. Huth said he issued the explicit warnings — both written and oral — before the future pope, then Joseph Ratzinger, archbishop of Munich and Freising, left Germany for a position in the Vatican in 1982. In 1980, after abuse complaints from parents in Essen that the priest did not deny, Archbishop Ratzinger approved a decision to move the priest to Munich for therapy. Despite the psychiatrist’s warnings, Father Hullermann was allowed to return to parish work almost immediately after his therapy began, interacting with children as well as adults. Less than five years later, he was accused of molesting other boys, and in 1986 he was convicted of sexual abuse in Bavaria….Even after his conviction in 1986, Father Hullermann, now 62, continued working with altar boys for many years. He was suspended Monday for ignoring a 2008 church order not to work with youths….The court commissioned another psychiatrist, Dr. Johannes Kemper, to examine him and write an expert opinion for the 1986 trial. “Alcohol played a big role,” said Dr. Kemper, 66, who had examined Father Hullermann in his practice for half a day. As a prelude to sexual abuse, Dr. Kemper said, “he drank, and then under the influence of alcohol he watched porn videos with the youths.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/19/world/europe/19church.html

Hand of God – Frontline 1/16/07 In recent decades, more than 10,000 children were reportedly sexually abused by Catholic priests in the United States. In “Hand of God,” filmmaker Joe Cultrera explores just one of those cases, that of his own brother Paul. Paul Cultrera was molested in the 1960s by Father Joseph Birmingham, who allegedly abused nearly 100 other children. “Hand of God” tells the story of faith betrayed, and how Paul and the rest of the Cultrera family fought back against a scandal that continues to afflict scores of churches across the country. Contains frank descriptions of sexual conduct. Viewer discretion is advised.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/handofgod/view/?utm_campaign=viewpage&utm_medium=grid&utm_source=grid

Older Than America – IFC Entertainment
About Older Than America – A woman”s haunting visions reveal a Catholic priests sinister plot to silence her mother from speaking the truth about the atrocities that occurred at a Native American boarding school. A contemporary drama of suspense, Older Than America delves into the lasting impact of the cultural genocide that occurred at Indian boarding schools across the US and Canada.
http://www.ifcfilms.com/films/older-than-america

Ore. lawsuit claims Boy Scouts sex abuse coverup Mar 19, 2010 By WILLIAM McCALL PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) – The Boy Scouts of America has long kept an extensive archive of secret documents that chronicle the sexual abuse of young boys by Scout leaders over the years.
The “perversion files,” a nickname the Boy Scouts are said to have used for the documents, have rarely been seen by the public, but that could all change in the coming weeks in an Oregon courtroom.
The lawyer for a man who was molested in the 1980s by a Scout leader has obtained about 1,000 Boy Scouts sex files and is expected to release some of them at a trial that began Wednesday. The lawyer says the files show how the Boy Scouts have covered up abuse for decades.
The trial is significant because the files could offer a rare window into how the Boy Scouts have responded to sex abuse by Scout leaders. The only other time the documents are believed to have been presented at a trial was in the 1980s in Virginia.
At the start of the Oregon trial, attorney Kelly Clark recited the Boy Scout oath and the promise to obey Scout law to be “trustworthy.” Then he presented six boxes of documents that he said will show “how the Boy Scouts of America broke that oath.” He held up file folder after file folder he said contained reports of abuse from around the country, telling the jury the efforts to keep them secret may have actually set back efforts to prevent child abuse nationally…..
Clark is seeking $14 million in damages on behalf of a 37-year-old man who was sexually molested in the early 1980s in Portland by an assistant Scoutmaster, Timur Dykes. Clark said the victim suffered mental health problems, bad grades in school, drug use, anxiety, difficulty maintaining relationships and lost several jobs over the years because of the abuse. Dykes was convicted three times between 1983 and 1994 of sexually abusing boys, most of them Scouts….
The lawsuit also named the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints because the Mormons acted as a charter organization, or sponsor, for the local Boy Scouts troop that included the victim. But the church has settled its portion of the case. http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100319/D9EHLRE00.html

Trial opens in Portland, with Boy Scouts accused of hiding pedophiles By Aimee Green, The Oregonian March 17, 2010 Attorney Kelly Clark, who represents a 37-year-old man who as a boy was sexually abused by an assistant Scoutmaster, told Multnomah County jurors Wednesday: “You will see a different face of the Boy Scouts of America” in coming weeks.A civil trial that opened Wednesday in Portland will show that the Boy Scouts of America knew it had child molesters in its leadership for decades but kept the problem quiet, according to an attorney for one of the victims. The case, expected to attract national attention, centers on a Portland man who confessed to Scout leaders that he had molested 17 Scouts but was allowed to continue joining boys in Scouting activities.
On a broader scale, the case is one of the first to bring into open court hundreds of confidential files that the 100-year-old organization kept on Scout leaders and others suspected of sexually abusing boys. Though the Scouts, based in Texas, have been sued dozens of times over allegations of sexual abuse, most cases have been settled out of court, keeping files from becoming public. Patrick Boyle, the Washington, D.C.-based author of “Scout’s Honor: Sexual Abuse in America’s Most Trusted Institution,” said Wednesday that this case may be only the second time such files have been used in a trial….
Timur Dykes, 53…Confessed to or was convicted of molesting more than 20 boys, most of them Boy Scouts. http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2010/03/trial_opens_in_portland_with_b.html

Israeli cult leader accused of enslaving women (AFP)JERUSALEM 2/14/10 – Israel on Sunday indicted a cult leader on a myriad of charges of enslaving and sexually abusing about 21 “wives” and the dozens of children he had with them. Goel Ratzon, 59, is accused of having taken “control over the lives” of the women since the early 1990s, holding them in a number of apartments in the Tel Aviv area.
Among the charges against him are rape, enslavement and indecent assault. “The defendant entrapped the women in a social group that took the form of a pseudo-family evolving around the cult of himself,” according to the indictment submitted to a Tel Aviv court. http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g9bxfuF19NOW-FjCisVtxoFcaK7Q
http://www.france24.com/en/20100214-israeli-cult-leader-accused-enslaving-women

Haiti case adviser linked to child prostitution PATRICIA MAZZEI AND GERARDO REYES  February 15, 2010  SANTO DOMINGO: The man providing legal advice to American church workers charged with trying to take children out of Haiti may have a string of legal charges against him in the US and has emerged as the key suspect in a child prostitution ring in El Salvador….Using photos and fingerprints, police say they are close to confirming that Mr Torres Puello is the suspect wanted since last year for leading a network that recruited children for prostitution in Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and El Salvador. In the interview with the Miami Herald, his mother confirmed that his wife – Ana Josefa Galvarina Ramirez Orellana – had been convicted in the case and was in jail in San Salvador. Police broke the ring last year after three children aged 14, 15 and 16 escaped from a house in El Salvador and went to the police to report they had been forced to pose naked to promote the enterprise.
http://www.smh.com.au/world/haiti-case-adviser-linked-to-child-prostitution-20100214-nzer.html

Documentary on The Franklin Scandal and the Johnny Gosch case
A documentary is in the works about The Franklin Scandal and Johnny Gosch’s case, mainly thanks to Nick Bryant, author of The Franklin Scandal: www.franklinscandal.com Please consider investing in this project to make this important film a reality. Some financial support from the public is needed for the film to be widely distributed. This is your opportunity to make a difference! (note: These links describe crimes) A trailer of the film is available for your viewing at: http://rumur.com/hoax It is approximately 12 minutes long. If you want to invest in the documentary, please read the proposal at http://rumur.com/hoax And contact Nick Bryant about this investment opportunity: nbryant@localnet.com If you want to anonymously donate to the upcoming Franklin documentary,  a PayPal button is provided at the following Web page. No amount is too small to help make a difference: http://www.franklinscandal.com/acarefullycraftedhoax Click on DONATE HERE Thanks for your support!

Johnny Gosch: A Proof of Life Twelve-year-old Johnny Gosch was abducted on the morning of September 6, 1982 while delivering papers in West Des Moines, Iowa. He is one of the more infamous abductions in American history–Johnny Gosch’s photo and a second kidnapped child were the first to appear on milk cartons.
http://www.franklinfiles.net/index.spark?aBID=120661&p=3&topicID=34290611

The Business of Sex Trafficking 2/17/10 Sex trafficking is a criminal business in which women and children are forced or coerced into providing sex services. An estimated 2.5 million people are victims of this modern-day form of slavery which has grown into an ugly and sophisticated $50 billion world wide business. Human trafficking is the fastest growing criminal industry in the world, despite the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, which went into effect on December 25, 2003. http://www.businesspundit.com/sex-trafficking

In Cambodia, American Evangelicals Fight to End Child Sex Trafficking Christian Volunteer: ‘There Is a Deep Fulfillment in Laying Your Life Down for Somebody Else’ By DAN HARRIS, ALMIN KARAMEHMEDOVIC, AUDE SOICHET and SIDNEY WRIGHT IV – SVAY PAK, Cambodia, March 21, 2010 Butler runs a community center in the village of Svay Pak, the epicenter of Cambodia’s raging child sex trafficking epidemic. It’s a place where, on any given night, many of the children will be sold – by their own parents – for sex with strangers. He is one of many American Christians who have come to this impoverished, war-ravaged country to protect some of the world’s most vulnerable children.
http://abcnews.go.com/WN/cambodia-children-sold-slavery/story?id=10163645

The Warlord’s Tune: Afghanistan’s war on children By Mark Bannerman for Four Corners  2/22/10 Sexual slavery involving boys as young as 10 is being condoned and in many cases protected by authorities in northern Afghanistan. In a story to be broadcast on Four Corners tonight, the practice of bacha bazi or “boy play”, as well as other allegations of child abuse, are explored. Afghan journalist Najibullah Quraishi has filmed police attending a party where a young boy is the “entertainment”. The police shown on the video include one officer from the youth crime squad. Such parties are illegal under Afghanistan law and with good reason. The “dancing boys” are in effect sex slaves. They are lured off the streets by pimps. They are taught to dance and sing, to wear make-up and to dress like girls. Then they are made to perform before large groups of men. All of them are sexually abused.
Dancing boys are a lucrative business. Powerful former warlords and businessmen love to watch them and will pay a lot of money to have their own boy for bacha bazi. Some of the boys are traded like swap cards among the rich and powerful, and if they disobey their owners they are killed or brutalised. The trade in boys is well known to the United Nations. According to Nazir Alimy, who compiled a report on the issue for the UN, there is no doubt who is funding this practice and why the police refuse to stop it….There is also evidence this type of abuse is spreading throughout Afghanistan. Mr Alimy says his research shows it is happening in the south and even in the Afghan capital, Kabul.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/02/22/2826024.htm

Afghanistan’s Boy Sex Slaves By Michael Mechanic Mar. 19, 2010 Say what you will about the Taliban. They’re small-minded, repressive, religious zealots who exert their power through fear and intimidation. But certain aspects of Afghan society can make the black turbans look downright righteous. Consider the ancient tradition of Bacha Bazi, which means “boy play.” Banned by the Taliban, this illicit activity is on the upswing across Afghanistan. The Guardian reported on it last fall, and on April 20, Frontline is airing a special report with the same title: The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan….
With remarkable access inside a Bacha Bazi ring operating in Northern Afghanistan, Najibullah Quraishi, an Afghan journalist, investigates this practice, still illegal under Afghan law, talking with the boys, their families, and their masters, exposing the sexual abuse and even murders of the boys, and documenting how Afghan authorities responsible for stopping these crimes are sometimes themselves complicit in the practice. http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/03/afghanistan-boy-sex-slaves-taliban

The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan – On air and online April 20, 2010 at 9:00pm In Afghanistan today, in the midst of war and endemic poverty, an ancient tradition–banned when the Taliban were in power–has re-emerged across the country. It’s called Bacha Bazi, translated literally as “boy play.” Hundreds of boys, some as young as eleven, street orphans or boys bought from poor families by former warlords and powerful businessmen, are dressed in woman’s clothes, taught to sing and dance for the entertainment of male audiences, and then sold to the highest bidder or traded among the men for sex. With remarkable access inside a Bacha Bazi ring operating in Northern Afghanistan, Najibullah Quraishi, an Afghan journalist, investigates this practice, still illegal under Afghan law, talking with the boys, their families, and their masters, exposing the sexual abuse and even murders of the boys, and documenting how Afghan authorities responsible for stopping these crimes are sometimes themselves complicit in the practice. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/dancingboys/

describes crimes
Del. doctor indicted in serial child abuse scandal 2/23/10 By RANDALL CHASE  – DOVER, Del. (AP) – Prosecutors expect to add more counts to a lengthy indictment against a Delaware pediatrician charged with serial molestation of 103 children as investigators urge former patients and parents to come forward. A grand jury returned a 160-page indictment Monday against Dr. Earl Bradley of Lewes with 471 counts of sexual crimes….
Announcing the grand jury’s indictment, Attorney General Beau Biden said all of the alleged victims, mainly girls but including one boy, were caught on more than 13 hours of video recordings, some dating to 1998….
The indictment alleges Bradley was videotaping his sexual exploitation of patients as far back as December 1998. Many victims were assaulted repeatedly, some on consecutive days, according to the indictment, which alleges that one girl was raped more than a dozen times over a period that lasted more than a year….
After years of suspicions among parents and questions about his strange behavior from colleagues, Bradley was arrested after a 2-year-old girl told her mother that the doctor hurt her in December when he took her to a basement room of his office after an exam.

Front Page News

http://www.salon.com/news/2010/02/23/us_delaware_pediatrician_1

Attorney: Army Has No Legal Duty To Report Child Abuse – Schofield Barracks General Says Army Failed To Prevent Child’s Death March 25, 2010 HONOLULU – An attorney for the U.S. Army argued in court on Thursday that Army officials have no legal duty to report child abuse to civilian authorities. The attorney said the mother of a 5-year-old girl who was beaten to death at Schofield Barracks is not entitled to damages. The commanding general has said that opportunities were missed that could have prevented Talia Williams’ death. Army lawyers said the general fired Schofield Barracks’ top child abuse official for not reporting what she knew. However, the Army’s lawyer said the Army should still not be held liable for their mistakes….Judge Alan Kay pointed out that the law considers them mandated reports of abuse. However, Helper argued, “It’s crucial to limit how far you are going to spread liability.” http://www.kitv.com/news/22960722/detail.html

Homicide claim could hinder Mo. incest, rape case  – Bill Draper 3/5/10 KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Bizarre allegations of rape, incest and bestiality in western Missouri led to the arrests of six family members last fall and unleashed public scorn over the unthinkable acts they are accused of committing two decades ago. But one of the more sensational claims — that one of the suspects forced their young victims to help kill a man — is creating an uphill climb for prosecutors that could sink the rest of their case, legal experts say. Investigators say the sexual abuse allegations have been corroborated by six siblings, at least three of whom say they were raped and molested over a 10-year period beginning in the mid-1980s on a farm east of Kansas City.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hQjYY6EwfWzKKgbfAvy7Dv-6-FXwD9E8CL700

Ritual Abuse and Mind Control Information

“Support and Change for Survivors of Egregious Trauma” Panel to be presented at the 54th Conference by the Committee of the Status on Women at the United Nations
Sponsored by Dr. Dana Raphael, Ph.D. and the Human Lactation Center, an  NGO with UN Status.
The presentation will be from10 AM to 12 on March 10th at the Salvation Army International Social Justice Commission 221 East 52nd St. (between 2nd and 3rd Avenues), New York City.
The program is free and no registration is required. Dr. Raphael who was a student of Margaret Meade is a member of the ISSTD. This is the 6th year that she has offered a program at this
Conference featuring survivors and allies of persons who report RA/MC  and other forms of extreme abuse.
Speakers are
Aurana Morgan, M. A. (of this list): “Recovery from Ritual Trauma”
Dana Raphael, Ph.D.: “Advocacy for Extreme Abuse Survivors and
Supportive Behaviors for Families of Survivors”  Brenda Rivera, “Recovery from RA/MC”  Eileen Schrader, M.S. Discussant

Mind-Control Experimentation: A Travesty of Human Rights in the United States – Evangeline Wright (The Journal of Gender, Race & Justice Fall, 2005 Vol 9 Number 1. P. 211)
SUMMARY: … From the end of World War II through the 1970s, the United States government engaged in mind-control experimentation on human subjects, both adults and children. … Josef Mengele was a Nazi scientist infamous for his twin experiments on Auschwitz inmates. … ” Feldman went on to state that the LSD testing was done for the purpose of “exploring that drug’s potential use “both in interrogation and in provoking erratic behavior. … Corroborating Evidence of Experimentation on Children There are two avenues through which the reality of mind-control experimentation on children can be examined. … One problem with using survivor narratives as evidence is the reliability of repressed memory. … Even if a mind-control survivor could convince a prosecutor that the necessary evidence exists, it is very likely that a statute of limitation would bar prosecution. … For a survivor, facing the reality of his or her use as an experimentation subject can be an immensely overwhelming experience. … Every survivor who shares his or her story in any setting is taking a courageous step to publicize government mind-control experimentation….
TEXT: Introduction
Our government, under the auspices of the CIA and U.S. military, has committed severe human rights violations that require a public apology and restitution. From the end of World War II through the 1970s, the United States government engaged in mind-control experimentation on human subjects, both adults and children. n1 These experiments included the use of drugs, hypnosis, electroshock, sexual abuse, and torture. n2 Justice remains elusive for those who have been the victims of these experiments. No one knows how many people were subjected to illegal and inhumane experiments by the U.S. government. n3 Much of the documentation of these experiments has been destroyed. n4 Documentation of other experiments has not been released, ostensibly for national security reasons. n5 An extremely small percentage of mind-control experimentation victims have received settlements under the Federal Tort Claims Act. n6 The majority of victims have received nothing. n7 None of the child victims, now adults, have received compensation for the wrongs they suffered. n8 The names and stories of the survivors are, for the most part, not found in court documents, government documents, or mainstream media reports. Instead, their stories are told in web postings and the notes of mental health workers, the outlets available to the marginalized and ignored. n9
In the past ten years, increasing numbers of mind-control  experimentation survivors have begun to tell their stories. n10 As knowledge of these atrocities filters into the public consciousness, hopefully these survivors will begin to receive compensation for the pain they have suffered. Mind-control survivors face many obstacles in their pursuit of justice, obstacles that must be overcome if we as a society hope to maintain our ideal of equal justice for all citizens. Given the difficulty of proving the link between specific mind-control survivors and CIA documentation of mind-control experiments, and the length of time which many victims have needed in order to learn what has been done to them, there are significant legal obstacles to obtaining justice. We as a society are reluctant to look beyond our assumptions of humanity and acknowledge the inhumanity of which we are capable.
The tremendous violation of human rights that these experiments represent demands some form of restitution. Survivors of CIA and military mind-control experiments are entitled to both civil and criminal remedies. They deserve a public apology for what was done to them; their experiences must become an acknowledged part of the history of this country. It is our responsibility, as members of the society that permitted these experiments to take place, to insure that these survivors’ needs are met. This Note will examine only the United States government’s responsibility for the commission of these experiments. The liability and wrongdoing of private institutions and individuals, a further avenue of justice for survivors of mind-control experiments, is not within the scope of this note. Part II of this Note will discuss the mind-control experiments, including the connection between these experiments and Nazi Germany, and specific experiments performed on adults and children. Part III will address the ways in which mind-control experimentation survivors may seek justice, both through the court system and through legislation….
DID is often a response to severe childhood physical and sexual abuse. n112 An individual with DID is highly hypnotizable and subject to frequent amnesia. n113 Survivor memories indicate that CIA researchers created different personalities in the survivors for purposes including prostitution and assassination. n114 From a military perspective, an individual who could be trained as a military operative and conditioned to carry out orders with no conscious knowledge of such missions would be an ideal agent, impervious to hostile interrogation and utterly obedient. The children who survived the mind-control experiments of the 1950s- 1970s have now grown to adulthood. Some remember the experiments and have found the courage to speak publicly about their experiences, looking for a vindication of their humanity that has heretofore been denied to them. n115 Others work quietly with their therapists, trying to undo the damage caused in the name of national security, sometimes sharing pieces of their stories on the condition of anonymity. n116 And yet others must exist on the fringes of society, carrying a burden of abuse obscured by the hypnosis and amnesiac drugs used by mind-control researchers to hide their experiments. n117 http://www.law.uiowa.edu/journals/grj/Vol9No1.pdf To request an electronic copy of an individual article jgrj@uiowa.edu The Journal of Gender, Race & Justice 186 Boyd Law Building University of Iowa, College of Law, Iowa City, IA 52242 Phone:319-335-9093 Fax: 319-335-8772

describes crimes
Toledoan’s suit against Robinson dismissed  1/15/10 By DAVID YONKE
BLADE STAFF WRITER A lawsuit against Toledo priest Gerald Robinson, who was convicted in 2006 of murdering a nun, has been thrown out for being filed too late.
Judge Ruth Ann Franks of Lucas County Common Pleas Court said a Toledo woman’s civil suit, alleging that she was abused by Robinson and others in satanic rituals when she was a child, was not filed within Ohio’s statute of limitations, which in most cases is 12 years after the person turns 18.
The woman, now in her mid-40s, filed anonymously in 2005 as Survivor Doe along with her husband Spouse Doe, claiming that she could not have sued Robinson earlier because she did not know his identity until she saw him on television after his 2004 arrest for murder.
Mark Davis, the woman’s attorney, said he plans to appeal the ruling.
Judge Franks said in her 27-page decision, dated Tuesday, that while Survivor Doe did not know Robinson’s identity, she knew at least four people involved in the abuse and therefore could have attempted to learn the other abusers’ identities before the time limitations expired….The judge said the Toledo woman began to remember the satanic rituals in 1994, kept detailed journals she calls her “life’s work,” and sought assistance from an attorney in 1994 about possibly suing her uncle for child abuse in a separate matter.
Mr. Davis, Survivor Doe’s attorney, said he is convinced that “our case is even stronger this time . because the evidence is overwhelming that what she described is what actually happened.”
He said he believes an appeals court will side with Survivor Doe’s contention that the statute of limitations countdown should not have begun ticking until she recognized her alleged perpetrators….
Robinson, 71, is serving a 15-years-to-life sentence at Hocking Correctional Facility in southern Ohio for the 1980 murder of Sister Margaret Ann Pahl.
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100115/NEWS02/1150375/0/CAREERCENTER

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Mind Control: America’s Secret War DVD – History Channel – Hear the chilling story of a woman whose entire past was erased by the CIA.
It is one of the ill-kept secrets of America’s intelligence agencies–for decades, they have worked virtually non-stop to perfect means of controlling the human mind. But while many have suspected the existence of these projects, the details have long been preserved.
MIND CONTROL blows the lid off years of chilling experiments, drawing on documents reluctantly released through the Freedom of Information Act and interviews with some of the victims, including a woman whose past was literally taken away.
Hear from John Marks, the author of In Search of the Manchurian Candidate, who broke the story of the CIA’s abuses by unraveling the mysteries contained in financial records. All the other records pertaining to the experiments were destroyed by the agency in an attempt to prevent the details from ever being known. http://shop.history.com/detail.php?a=73738
The History Channel – Mind Control: America’s Secret War DVD is online  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2927316845773056069&ei=4SFvS7XSKJ6uqQPku5nJBg&q=Mind+Control%3A+America%27s+Secret+War&hl=en#

Torturing by Non-State Actors Invisibilized, A Patriarchal Divide and Spillover Violence from the Military Sphere into the Domestic Sphere Authors: Jeanne Sarson, Linda MacDonald PSJ Peace Studies Journal  Vol. 2, Issue 2 Winter 2009 Abstract
Processes of inquiry: a questionnaire, web-survey, and the narratives of women detailing how non-state actor torture (NSAT) inflicted by a mother, father, sibling and guardians who had warring or military experiences, spilled over into the domestic sphere. Discussion illustrates how a patriarchal divide has and does exist internationally and nationally in Canada whereby the defining elements of state torture: severity, intentionality, purposefulness and powerlessness make it a distinct offence from all others, whereas, these elements are not equally applied to NSAT to acknowledge that it is also is a distinct offence that occurs in the domestic sphere, therefore NSAT is invisibilized. It is argued that discrimination exists, even within the UN Committee on the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), when there was a failure to recognize Canadian women and girls who survived NSAT as a vulnerable group. Socio-legal visibilization solutions are suggested. http://www.peacestudiesjournal.org/archive/winter09/mcdonald.pdf
http://www.peacestudiesjournal.org/archive/winter09/mcdonald.doc

CASE REPORTS OF THE MORMON ALLIANCE VOLUME 1, 1995 Chapter 6 RITUAL ABUSE “RITUAL ABUSE” IN CONFRONTING ABUSE,  ELDER GLENN L. PACE: 1990 MEMO GOVERNOR’S TASK FORCE AND ATTORNEY GENERAL’S REPORT, RACHEL HOPKINS: PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
Perhaps the type of child sexual abuse that is hardest for most people to believe is ritual abuse, calling up as it does ill-formed images from the media of black masses, witchcraft trials, and Satan worship. Satan worship, which exists as an organized religion, can occur with or without sexual abuse….This chapter provides:
1. A summary of a chapter on ritual abuse from Confronting Abuse: An LDS Perspective on Understanding and Healing Emotional, Physical, Sexual, Psychological, and Spiritual Abuse, edited by Anne L. Horton, B. Kent Harrison, and Barry L. Johnson (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1993).
2. The text of a memo prepared by Elder Glenn L. Pace of the Presiding Bishopric for the Strengthening Church Members Committee in 1990. It describes his experiences counseling with survivors of ritual abuse.
3. A brief summary of the Utah Governor’s Task Force on Ritual Abuse, created in March 1990, and a summary of the Attorney General’s report in late February 1995 after investigating over 125 cases of alleged ritual crime. No prosecutions resulted.
4. A personal account by Rachel Hopkins, a survivor of ritual abuse. Her case had been investigated by the Attorney General’s office but could not be prosecuted due to the expiration of the statute of limitations. She came forward in the wake of media claims that the report failed to show the existence of ritual abuse to confirm, on the contrary, that it did and that she had signed confessions from the perpetrators, her parents. http://mormonalliance.org/casereports/volume1/part1/v1p1c06.htm

New Zealand counsellors talk about ritual abuse: A discourse analysis – Pack, Sylvia –  Abstract: Research indicates that in the last five decades, claims of Satanic ritual abuse (RA), and the numbers of clients receiving counselling for RA, have increased in all Western countries. This has resulted in an increased corpus of related literature overseas, which includes studies in which facticity as well as aetiology, symptomology and treatment are debated. This present study focuses on a New Zealand context, and examines the talk of New Zealand counsellors in relation to their views regarding RA and the counselling of RA clients. Social constructionist and positivist epistemologies were evaluated in terms of their suitability for this research, and the discourse analytic method developed by Potter and Wetherell (1987) chosen as the means by which participants’ talk might be analysed in such a way as to allow the inclusion of multiple constructions and the emergence of the many discourses and conflicting ideas which occur in overseas literature. A broad selection of the literature was first critically analysed to give an understanding of the topic. Nine counsellors gave interviews, eight women and one man, all Pakeha, six of whom were ACC-registered (Accident Compensation Commission, 2009). The participants constructed RA as a physical reality, which was justified by the use of the credible client discourse. A traditional linguistic repertoire furnished a discourse of government backing, which was employed to warrant voice…The thesis concludes by highlighting the participants’ comments regarding the need for openness and awareness, and specialised literature and training for counsellors treating RA clients.
Publisher:     Massey University Issue Date:     2009  http://muir.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/1098
full text at http://muir.massey.ac.nz/bitstream/10179/1098/1/02_whole.pdf

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Teachers get advice on how to spot signs of ritual abuse….
Lucy Ward, social affairs correspondent The Guardian 2/2/07 ….
Drawing on research showing 38 known cases of child abuse linked to alleged spirit possession in England since January 2000, the government guidance aims to raise awareness of the practice and help those coming into contact with youngsters to recognise indicators of abuse. The signs they are told to look out for, listed in draft advice published today, include marks such as bruises or burns on a child’s body, a child becoming “noticeably confused, withdrawn, disorientated or isolated”, and “deterioration in personal care” including weight loss, unkempt or dirty clothes, or even faeces smeared on the body.
Children may also report directly that they have been accused of being evil, or that they are having the “devil beaten out of them”, according to the advice, which says teachers and others should follow child protection guidelines and pass their concerns to social services or the police.
The most common forms of abuse youngsters may suffer include physical assaults such as beating, burning, cutting, stabbing, semi-strangulation and having chilli peppers rubbed on to their eyes or genitals. Emotional forms of abuse, says the guidance, range from isolation from other family members to threats to abandon the child, who may also be subjected to sexual abuse and neglect extending to denial of food and warmth.
The 38 documented cases involved 47 abused children.
The vast majority of known instances of ritual abuse concerned first or second generation migrants from African countries including Congo, Nigeria, Angola and Ghana as well as south Asia and the Caribbean, but also white English families, according to the document….
The children’s minister, Beverley Hughes, said: “While a very small proportion of all abuse cases are linked to spirit possession the impact on the children can be substantial and serious. Faith-based abuse can be hard for professionals to recognise and deal with and we want them to have all the guidance they need to help them tackle this.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2007/feb/02/childrensservices.schools

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MK-ULTRA: The CIA’s Mind Control Program by Stephen Lendman 2/16/10 Conducting human mind control experiments are clearly illegal and unethical. They’re more sophisticated than ever today, and claims that MK-ULTRA experiments were halted in the 1970s were false. Renamed they continue….
It began “in the fall of 1947 focusing on the identification and testing of drugs (LSD and others) in interrogations and the recruitment of agents. The research included laboratory experiments on both animal and human subjects. The program ended shortly after the Korean War in 1953.”
It was run under the direction of Dr. Charles Savage of the Naval Medical Research Institute, Bethesda, MD from 1947 – 1953, after which CIA’s Office of Scientific Intelligence continued it under the name Project Bluebird, its first mind control program to:
* learn how to condition subjects to withstand information from being extracted from them by known means;
* develop interrogation methods to exert control;
* develop memory enhancement techniques; and
* establish ways to prevent hostile control of Agency personnel.
In 1951, it was renamed Project Artichoke, then MK-ULTRA under Deputy CIA Director Richard Helms in 1953. It aimed to control human behavior through psychedelic and hallucinogenic drugs, electroshock, radiation, graphology, paramilitary techniques, and psychological/sociological/anthropological methods, among others – a vast open-field of mind experimentation trying anything that might work, legal or otherwise on willing and unwitting subjects.
Ongoing at different times were 149 sub-projects in 80 US and Canadian universities, medical centers and three prisons, involving 185 researchers, 15 foundations and numerous drug companies. Everything was top secret, and most records later destroyed, yet FOIA suits salvaged thousands of pages with documented evidence of the horrific experiments and their effects on human subjects.
Most were unwitting guinea pigs, and those consenting were misinformed of the dangers. James Stanley was a career soldier when given LSD in 1958 along with 1,000 other military “volunteers.” They suffered hallucinations, memory loss, incoherence, and severe personality changes. Stanley exhibited uncontrollable violence. It destroyed his family, impeded his working ability, and he never knew why until the Army asked him to participate in a follow-up study.
He sued for damages under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), his case reaching the Supreme Court in United States v. Stanley. Argued and decided in 1987, the Court dismissed his claim (5 – 4), ruling his injuries occurred during military service. Justices Thurgood Marshall, William Brennan and Sandra Day O’Conner wrote dissenting opinions, saying the Nuremberg Code applies to soldiers as well as civilians. In 1996, Stanley got $400,000 in compensation, but no apology from the government.
Perhaps MK-ULTRA’s most publicized victim was Frank Olsen, a biochemist working for the Army Chemical Corps’ Special Operations Division at Ft. Detrick, MD. On November 18, 1953, he was administered LSD. Immediately, he became agitated and severely paranoid. Nine days later, he reportedly committed suicide by jumping 13 stories to his death through a New York hotel’s closed window. His family members didn’t know he was drugged until MK-ULTRA was exposed in 1975.
President Gerald Ford apologized, granted a $750,000 settlement, but Olson’s son discovered documents suggesting his father was killed. In 1994, he exhumed the body, had it forensically evaluated, and the conclusion was homicide based on a previously undetected skull fracture suggesting a blow on the head and other disturbing evidence.
Stanley Glickman was another MK-ULTRA tragedy, an unwitting victim of hallucinogenic drugs and electroshock treatment. He became traumatized, couldn’t work, barely ate, suffered a psychological breakdown and never fully recovered. After learning about the CIA’s LSD experiments, he sued in 1983. The trial was delayed 16 years, he died, but his sister Gloria Kronisch pursued the case.
MK-ULTRA chief Stanley Gottleib was at issue, hired to run its Technical Service Staff (TSS) to develop poisons to assassinate political opponents, truth serum drugs for interrogating spies, and mind control techniques to create robot assassins or unwitting double agents. He used Nazi scientists and their state of the art methods, perfected on concentration camp victims. Some were known as programmers, skilled professionals in the art of breaking down and controlling the human mind.
Joseph Mengele did similar work, experimenting extensively with children and adults using mescaline, electroshock therapy, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, torture, rape, starvation, and trauma bonding. He was so successful with the latter technique that survivors expressed strong affection for him.
The CIA and US military copied the Nazi methodology through numerous programs, including MK-ULTRA, MK being an abbreviation for words “mind control” in German. According to obtained documents, it works best when severe trauma (such as rape) occurs by age three, the result often causing the personality to split or dissociate (called dissociative identity disorder or DID) to repress painful memories….
Under Operation Paperclip, 9,000 Nazi scientists and technicians were recruited to help undermine the Soviet Union….
On December 22, 1974, Seymour Hersh exposed MK-ULTRA in a New York Times article. Headlined, “Huge CIA Operation Reported in US Against Antiwar Forces, Other Dissidents in Nixon Years,” it documented illegal activities, including secret experiments on US citizens during the 1960s and earlier. Church Committee Congressional investigations followed, headed by Senator Frank Church, on abusive intelligence practices, replaced by the Pike Committee five months later. The Rockefeller Commission, under vice president Nelson Rockefeller, also examined the domestic activities of the CIA, FBI, and military intelligence agencies.
By summer 1975, it was learned that CIA and Department of Defense had conducted illegal experiments on willing and unwitting subjects as part of an exhaustive program to influence human behavior through psychoactive drugs (including LSD and mescaline) and other chemical, biological, psychological, and other methods.
Origins of CIA Mind Manipulation Practices
CIA became interested in Montreal Dr. Ewen Cameron’s work at McGill University’s Allan Memorial Institute. With full knowledge of the Canadian government, he was funded to perform bizarre experiments on his psychiatric patients, including keeping them asleep and isolated for weeks, then administering large doses of electroshock and experimental drug cocktails, LSD and PCP angel dust among them.
Though clearly unethical, Cameron believed by blasting the human brain with an array of shocks, he could unmake impaired minds, rebuilding them with new personalities cleansed of their previous state. It was voodoo science and failed, but CIA gained a wealth of knowledge it’s used to this day.
In 1951, the Agency engaged McGill’s director of psychology, Dr. Donald Hebb, and others to conduct sensory-deprivation experiments on volunteer students. They showed intense isolation disrupts clear thinking enough to make subjects receptive to suggestion. They were also formidable interrogation techniques amounting to torture when forcibly administered.
These early experiments laid the foundation for CIA’s two-stage torture process – sensory deprivation followed by overload. University of Wisconsin historian Alfred McCoy documented them in his book, “A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror,” calling them “the first real revolution in the cruel science of pain in more than three centuries.”….
Subsequent Carter and Reagan directives banned all human experimentation. Nonetheless, they continue, in violation of the Nuremberg Code that prohibits:
* medical experiments without the voluntary consent of human subjects – “without coercion, fraud, deceit, and the full disclosure of known risks;”
* those “where there is an a priori reason to believe that death or disabling injury will occur;” and
* only ones expected “to yield fruitful results for the good of society, unprocurable by other methods or means of study….”
Conducting human mind control experiments are clearly illegal and unethical. They’re more sophisticated than ever today, and claims that MK-ULTRA experiments were halted in the 1970s were false. Renamed they continue and much more…..
MK-ULTRA Victim Maryam Ruhullah
This writer will interview Ruhullah and Dr. James Randall Noblitt, a licensed psychologist, on The Progressive Radio News Hour (on The Progressive Radio Network), February 18 at 10AM US Central time to discuss MK-ULTRA, Ruhullah’s experience and Noblitt’s work with survivors of extreme abuse and individuals afflicted with identity dissociation. Noblitt is a Professor at the California School of Professional Psychology and Chair of the International Society of Trauma and Dissociation Ritual Abuse/Mind Control Interest Group….
As an MK-ULTRA victim, Ruhullah’s memory was impaired and somewhat still is because of what she experienced. She explained it as follows.
In the early 1970s, she lived in Boston, MA, was married with a six-year old son, and as a lawyer worked for a prestigious firm, its name she can’t remember. “One day, two federal agents came to (her) home unannounced,” asking her to be a federal witness against an alleged organized crime figure. For her safety, they explained, she’d be placed in protective custody for a period not exceeding six months. She was asked to leave her family and job immediately, and say nothing to her husband and employer.
She “was forced to leave (her) home with the agents that day.” She got no choice, and “was treated more like a prisoner than a witness.” She couldn’t use the phone or communicate with anyone, was transfered frequently, and held in “very low budget places,” during which time her life “became a succession of abuses and exploitations.”
“To this day,” she says, she doesn’t know precisely “when or why the government decided to use” her for MK-ULTRA experimentation, “but one day (she) was a mother, wife, and attorney, then, (later) had no memory of (her) past.”
Having partly recovered it, she recalls “being given non-medically necessary electro-shock treatments. This was done to create amnesia (to block her) core personality and replac(e) it with” only need-to-know information.
She remembers “that the shock treatment given (her) was so severe and often that one day something happened and” she wasn’t returned to her room. She now speaks of “an unbelievable long list of horrid exploitations and inhumane abuses” done to her….
Ruhullah also explains that federal agents stopped communicating with her. Her experiences were “totally removed from the public record,” and she went from “being a missing person to becoming a person erased.” She’s now divorced and unable to contact her children and former friends. “The US government does not want (her) story told.”….
She says she “was not released from custody.” After being used for medical experiments, she was “given an implanted false identity, then left penniless and without proof of (her) true identity or lineage.” She still considers herself a prisoner, a body with no persona, with little knowledge of her former self, stripped of everything important in her life.
MK-ULTRA and Ruhullah’s story will be featured on the Progressive Radio News Hour on February 18 at 10AM US Central time on The Progressive Radio Network.
http://baltimorechronicle.com/2010/021610Lendman.shtml

Terms of sex cult leader’s release anger community  8/15/08 (CNN) – The leader of a religious group that authorities believe preys on children was released from a Pennsylvania prison Friday but won’t be required to register as a sex offender, triggering outrage in the community where he plans to live….George Feigley, now 68, was convicted in 1975 on charges including statutory rape, indecent assault and corrupting the morals of minors.
Because Feigley’s 1975 conviction predated the passage of Megan’s Law, he will not be required to register as a sex offender. And, having served his maximum sentence, he was not put on parole upon his release….
The church’s manifesto says, “We hold that the changes called creation and procreation are divine and that human sexuality is to humans the most available expression of that function of divinity,” according to community activist Scott Portzline, who has researched Feigley’s history and that of the group. “Sexual activity is the greatest act a human can do.”
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/08/15/cult.leader.release/

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Sympathy for the Devil: Ritual Abuse, “False Memories,” and the CIA by Nick Bryant
excerpts:
….The ritual abuse described by the children at the Presidio and West Point day care centers was remarkably similar, so it begs a rather disturbing question: Were these children from disparate geographical locations actually abused in the same ritualistic manner or were they conjuring up the same, incomprehensible stories?
In The Franklin Scandal, I also discuss a cult called the Finders and a subsequent law enforcement investigation into their activities: On February 4, 1987, a concerned citizen notified the Tallahassee Police Department that he had observed six white children, poorly dressed, bruised, dirty, and behaving like wild animals, in a Tallahassee park. The children were accompanied by two well-dressed white males driving a white 1979 Dodge van with Virginia plates. The Tallahassee police responded to the call and took the children and adults into custody. The children told Tallahassee police they were not allowed to live indoors and were given food only as a reward. The Tallahassee police charged the two adults with felony child abuse, and they were held on a $100,000 bond. The children were placed in protective custody….
In The Franklin Scandal, I also discuss the Extreme Abuse Survey (EAS), an international online survey for adult survivors of extreme abuse that was conducted between January 1 and March 30 of 2007. The EAS respondents were questioned about the use of feces and blood in their ritual abuse, and 1,106 of EAS respondents answered the questions regarding abuse with feces and blood. Fifty percent of EAS respondents said that they had been subjected to abuse with feces, and 63% responded that the use of blood was integral to their abuse. So like the victims of the Presidio and West Point day care centers, hundreds of EAS respondents, who come from a myriad of disparate locations around the globe, convey the same horrific, implausible events….
So the Presidio victims’ claim that they were forced to eat feces and drink urine seems preposterous on the surface, but if their allegations are examined in the wider context of extreme abuse or ritual abuse, the children’s allegations shed their implausibility, because they are corroborated by multiple sources from widely disparate geographic locations and points in time. However, skeptics of the accounts given by the Presidio victims and the hundreds of other alleged victims who discuss extreme or ritualistic abuse maintain that these memories were planted by therapists–therapists from widely disparate geographic locations and points in time….
Despite the stance of the FMSF and its credential-laden experts…dissociative amnesia is recognized as a bona fide condition by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), which is the bible of diagnosing psychiatric conditions, whereas the false memory syndrome is not. Moreover, multiple studies have corroborated the realty of dissociative amnesia. A 1995 study, published in the Journal of Traumatic Stress, looked at 46 subjects with PTSD. Over time, 35 of the study’s subjects reported the gradual emergence of a personal narrative that they believed could be defined as an explicit memory lost to significant or total amnesia, and 77% of those subjects reported confirmation of that particular memory of childhood trauma….
The Freyds recruited Ralph Underwager, a Lutheran theologian and psychologist, and his wife to be co-founders of the FMSF–Underwager and his wife published Issues in Child Abuse Accusations, which accommodated Pamela Freyd’s initial assault on her daughter’s credibility. Underwager would prove to have a relatively short tenure with the FMSF, because of various statements he made to the press. London’s Sunday Times reported that Underwager said ”scientific evidence” has shown that 60% of women who are molested as children felt that the experience was good for them–he contended the same could be true for boys….
FMSF Advisory Board members, particularly members who Dr. Ross connected to the CIA’s mind control programs, are extremely skeptical or completely disavow dissociation, a mental state where traumatic thoughts, emotions, sensations, and/or memories are compartmentalized, repressed and actually separated from an individual’s identity. Though the overwhelming majority of the CIA’s mind control documentation was ordered destroyed, bureaucratic ineptitude enabled some of it to survive and one set of documents said “special attention will be given to dissociative states.”
In that specific experiment, the documentation discussed administering electric shock, drugs, hypnosis, and psychological tricks to three groups–psychotics, children, and mediums–to induce various states of dissociation, including multiple personality, which the researchers thought would enhance the subjects’ extrasensory perception.
http://www.franklinfiles.net/index.spark?aBID=120661&p=3&topicID=34032594

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This is George Feigley FRIDAY, HE’S FREE Sunday, August 10, 2008 BY CARRIE CASSIDY Of The Patriot-News She lived in a world where parents willingly gave up their children to a man who declared himself “The Light of the World.”
A world where children were beaten for letting anyone but fellow cult members see them, and their genitals were pierced with a lock to be controlled by this so-called prophet. It was a world unimaginable to most people, but it was her reality for seven years, from the time she was 5 until her mother broke free of George Feigley’s grip.
Three decades later, that world still haunts her through dreams occasionally featuring Feigley and his flock of followers. She was shocked to learn from a reporter that the man who beat her, made her call him “Master,” and photographed her in graphic sexual poses would be released from prison this week. http://www.pennlive.com/news/patriotnews/index.ssf?/base/news/1218143411281160.xml&coll=1

RITUAL MAGIC: ABUSE – You tube TV show video – describes graphic crimes of abuse
http://www.youtube.com/

watch?v=49aAhsivWrY&feature=related

describes graphic crimes of abuse
Child Sacrifice Emerges as Disturbing Uganda Trend – Witch Doctors, Films May Propagate Belief That Burial of Body Parts Brings Riches By DANA HUGHES Feb. 25, 2010 ….Uganda’s children are paying the price. Children are disappearing, victims of human sacrifice.
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/child-sacrifice-uganda-witch-doctors-spread-belief/story?id=9930029

West Memphis 3: Police Chief Takes On Celebrity Defenders – Chief Bob Paudert Says Celebrities Haven’t Presented Any New Evidence In The West Memphis Three Case  Alex Coleman March 1, 2010
The West Memphis Chief says he’s convinced they have the real killers. Paudert said, “I heard that statement made by one of the three that concerned him that after 16 years the murder is still on the loose. Well, we haven’t had any more child killings in West Memphis that’s unsolved. The ones we have in custody are the ones who did it.” http://www.wreg.com/news/wreg-wm3-paudert-story,0,7376855.story

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Damien Wayne ECHOLS v. STATE of Arkansas CR 99-1060 127 S.W.3d 486  Supreme Court of Arkansas Opinion delivered October 30, 2003
The gruesome, disturbing facts of these crimes were set out in great detail in this court’s opinion in Echols v. State, 326 Ark. 917, 936 S.W.2d 509 (1996) (Echols I), and we see no reason to repeat them here. Suffice it to say that Echols was charged, along with Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley, with the murders of three eight-year-old boys, Michael Moore, Steve Branch, and Christopher Byers, which occurred on May 5, 1993, in West Memphis. The boys’ bodies were found submerged in water in a drainage ditch near their homes. The bodies were naked and they had their right hands tied to their right feet and their left hands tied to their left feet. The evidence showed that two of the boys, Moore and Branch, had multiple knife wounds, but ultimately died from drowning. The third boy, Byers, had been mutilated, such that the skin of his penis had been removed, and the scrotal sac and testes were missing. The evidence demonstrated that Byers had bled to death. The evidence further demonstrated that all three boys had been sexually abused.
http://courts.state.ar.us/opinions/2003b/20031030/cr991060.htm

West Memphis 3 – MySaline.com 3/6/10
Reply by Brent Standridge – I have been following the WM3 cases for some time. As an Assistant Attorney General I represented the State’s interests in the cases on appeal, handling the Misskelley case by myself before the Arkansas Supreme Court, and represented the State’s interests in the Baldwin and Echols case by orally arguing that case before the Arkansas Supreme Court. I had the benefit of reading all of the transcripts of the proceedings and have read all of the appellate decisions regarding the cases. I never put much stock in the blogs or the Hollywood crowd who evidently have not read the materials regarding the cases, and have instead based their opinions on what others have said about them….
I saw no error in the trials of the cases and the Arkansas Supreme Court unanimously affirmed their convictions and sentences (Echols also sought review of his case by the Supreme Court of the United States-that review was denied). Had Echols not received the death penalty I have serious doubts as to whether theses cases would have seen the light of day in the press, much less have received the nationwide publicity that they have received, the anti-death penalty crowd being the driving force behind much of this….
I totally reject the notion that those who were involved in the cases are corrupt persons whose interests in the cases were for purposes of political gain. Two of the attorneys I worked with on the cases at the Attorney General’s Office are still there; I left there back in 1997 to work in the prosecutor’s office in Saline County. I do not see how one can say everyone who dealt with the cases is “on the take” or has been vaulted to some lofty and lucrative gig as a result of being involved in these cases. Some would lead us to believe that the State’s appellate attorneys, the trial judge, the prosecutor and his office, and the seven Justices of the Supreme Court of Arkansas who reviewed and unanimously affirmed the convictions and sentences are all crooked. That simply isn’t the case–have a different opinion of the cases if you wish, but these conspiracy theories are getting a little bit old.
http://www.mysaline.com/forum/topics/west-memphis-3?commentId=873760%3AComment%3A179986
West Memphis 3 – MySaline.com 3/7/10 – Reply by Brent Standridge
….I think the reason the new DNA evidence is not generating a new trial is because the legal standard as is set forth under Arkansas law is if the DNA evidence “if proven and viewed in light of the evidence as a whole, would be sufficient to establish by clear and convincing evidence that no reasonable fact-finder would find the petitioner guilty of the underlying offense.” Ark. Code Ann. 16-112-201(a)(2). That is the burden that the defendant shoulders. So the standard would not be if there is a hint of doubt about the guilt of one or more of them–that wouldn’t even be the standard at the jury trial where the legal standard is highest and provides a defendant with the most protection, that of beyond a reasonable doubt (and the State must prove that at trial–in the post-conviction DNA context the defendant shoulders the burden of proof), not beyond any and all doubt or beyond a shadow of a doubt.
And so the question remains: where is this DNA evidence that meets this standard? If there is no DNA evidence, if whatever DNA evidence there may be is inconclusive, or even if there is DNA evidence that potentially shows that someone else was involved, how does this absolve any of the WM3 of their own participation in the murders given the other proof of guilt which was unanimously found by the Arkansas Supreme Court to be legally sufficient to support each and every conviction? There are many people in prison for murder who: (1) had no DNA evidence involved in their cases; or (2) had cases where DNA testing occurred and it could not conclusively show that their DNA was on anything. And the inclusion of another actor by showing that their DNA was present would not exonerate the others involved. http://www.mysaline.com/forum/topics/west-memphis-3?commentId=873760%3AComment%3A179995

Women In Crime Ink – Don’t Free the West Memphis Three 3/8/10 all accusations are alleged
Jessie Misskelley, 17, confessed to the crime in detail. Three times. He had a temper and got in fights. He had a record for shoplifting and vandalism. He was a bit slow and a follower.
Jason Baldwin, 16, had a record for vandalism and shoplifting. He was Damien’s best friend.
Damien Echols, 18, had a history of psychological problems for which he had been institutionalized. He is reported to have stomped a dog to death, attacked patients in the mental hospital sucking blood out of their wounds, starting fires at school, threatened to kill his teachers and parents, claimed he was a supernatural being, said he liked to drink blood because it gave him special power, and read Anton LeVay’s Satanic Bible. Damien exhibits psychopathic behaviors. He bragged about committing the crime. Circumstantial evidence supported the involvement of the teens in the crime. The three had no alibis.
http://womenincrimeink.blogspot.com/2010/03/dont-free-west-memphis-three.html

Scientology insider’s nightmare childhood By Sarah Collerton ABC news Australia 3/12/10 A former Scientologist who says she was a “child slave” and alleges she saw a six-year-old boy chained up in a ship’s hold is disappointed the Senate has blocked a full inquiry into the religious organisation.
Independent Senator Nick Xenophon has been calling for a full inquiry into the church since revealing claims of forced abortions and other abuses in Parliament last year. Keryn, 54, grew up in the church and has asked the ABC to identify her only by her first name. She says she was a victim of “hard labour, mental brutality and separation” on Scientology ships, which were used for the Church’s elite band of followers in the 1960s to 1970s. She is angry the motion for a Scientology probe has been blocked in Parliament….Keryn’s decision to speak openly about her experiences comes after ABC1’s Four Corners program, The Ex-Files, in which former members told of forced abortions, pressure to work extreme hours and being forced to hand over large sums of money. Members of Scientology’s elite unit of full-time staffers the Sea Organisation – or Sea Org – detailed allegations of a strict regime of discipline and punishment in place during the 1960s. Scientology has denied the claims, but Keryn says she can back up the allegations. She says she signed a billion-year contract as a 12-year-old, lived on the Scientology vessels The Royal Scotman and The Athena, and was in effect a “child slave”. “When we were on the ship, we had people working 20 hours a day, seven days a week,” she said.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/03/12/2844150.htm

Scientology: The Ex-Files Reporter: Quentin McDermott Broadcast: 08/03/2010 Reporter Quentin McDermott talks to men and women who were members of an elite unit inside the Church in Australia and the United States. They explain why they joined, how they worked tirelessly for Scientology, and how, in some cases, they were pressured, and pressured others, to hand over hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Church. http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/content/2010/s2837513.htm

French bread spiked with LSD in CIA experiment A 50-year mystery over the ‘cursed bread’ of Pont-Saint-Esprit, which left residents suffering hallucinations, has been solved after a writer discovered the US had spiked the bread with LSD as part of an experiment.
Henry Samuel in Paris 11 Mar 2010 …. H P Albarelli Jr., an investigative journalist, claims the outbreak resulted from a covert experiment directed by the CIA and the US Army’s top-secret Special Operations Division (SOD) at Fort Detrick, Maryland.
The scientists who produced both alternative explanations, he writes, worked for the Swiss-based Sandoz Pharmaceutical Company, which was then secretly supplying both the Army and CIA with LSD.
Mr Albarelli came across CIA documents while investigating the suspicious suicide of Frank Olson, a biochemist working for the SOD who fell from a 13th floor window two years after the Cursed Bread incident. One note transcribes a conversation between a CIA agent and a Sandoz official who mentions the “secret of Pont-Saint-Esprit” and explains that it was not “at all” caused by mould but by diethylamide, the D in LSD.
While compiling his book, A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments, Mr Albarelli spoke to former colleagues of Mr Olson, two of whom told him that the Pont-Saint-Esprit incident was part of a mind control experiment run by the CIA and US army. After the Korean War the Americans launched a vast research programme into the mental manipulation of prisoners and enemy troops. Scientists at Fort Detrick told him that agents had sprayed LSD into the air and also contaminated “local foot products”.
Mr Albarelli said the real “smoking gun” was a White House document sent to members of the Rockefeller Commission formed in 1975 to investigate CIA abuses. It contained the names of a number of French nationals who had been secretly employed by the CIA and made direct reference to the “Pont St. Esprit incident.” In its quest to research LSD as an offensive weapon, Mr Albarelli claims, the US army also drugged over 5,700 unwitting American servicemen between 1953 and 1965.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/7415082/French-bread-spiked-with-LSD-in-CIA-experiment.html

Fake TV Torture Show Prepares to Shock France – Theunis Bates 3/18/10
LONDON (March 17) – Would you torture a fellow TV game show contestant just to please the audience? A stunning documentary suggests that most people are willing to inflict extreme pain on an innocent person if it keeps a baying crowd happy.
The makers of the French documentary “The Game of Death” — to be aired in France tonight — set up a fake game show called “The Xtreme Zone,” complete with a beautiful hostess, a rowdy audience and a flashy set. Some 80 potential contestants were asked to put general-knowledge questions to another participant named Jean-Paul, who was played by an actor. If the actor got the answers wrong, the questioner could pull a lever and punish him with electric shocks.
Although the participants didn’t know the contestant was a plant, most were willing to give in to the presenter’s and audience’s loud demands for “punishment!” whenever an incorrect answer was given. According to director Christophe Nick, 64 of the 80 players zapped the actor with what they were told was the maximum 460 volts, even though no cash prize was offered. Sixteen people quit the quiz in disgust….
Program maker Nick said his crew was “amazed” that so many players were willing to go along with the sadistic whims of the host and crowd, albeit often reluctantly. “They are not equipped to disobey,” he told Agence France-Presse. “They don’t want to do it, they try to convince the authority figure that they should stop, but they don’t manage to.”….
Other tests have also shown the ease with which people can be persuaded to do terrible deeds. Almost 50 years ago, Stanley Milgram — a social psychologist at Yale University — examined whether ordinary citizens could be persuaded to electrically shock an unseen individual. The experiment sought to understand how accomplices in the Holocaust could have submitted to Nazi orders. Milgram discovered that most of the participants were willing to administer near-fatal zaps.
Nick notes that in the wrong hands, television can be just as dangerous as a persuasive dictator. “When it decides to abuse its power, television can do anything to anybody,” he said. “It has an absolutely terrifying power.”
http://www.aolnews.com/entertainment/article/fake-tv-torture-show-prepares-to-shock-france/19403229
French TV contestants made to inflict ‘torture’ 3/18/10 A French TV documentary features people in a spoof game show administering what they are told are near lethal electric shocks to rival contestants. Those taking part are told to pull levers to inflict shocks – increasing in voltage – upon their opponents. Although unaware that the contestants were actors and there was no electrical current, 82% of participants in the Game of Death agreed to pull the lever.
Programme makers say they wanted to expose the dangers of reality TV shows. They say the documentary shows how many participants in the setting of a TV show will agree to act against their own principles or moral codes when ordered to do something extreme….
Christophe Nick, the maker of the documentary, said they were “amazed” that so many participants obeyed the sadistic orders of the game show presenter. “They are not equipped to disobey,” he told AFP.
“They don’t want to do it, they try to convince the authority figure that they should stop, but they don’t manage to.”
Yale experiment
The results reflect those of a similar experiment carried out almost 50 years ago at Yale University by social psychologist Stanley Milgram. Participants took the role of a teacher, delivering what they believed were shocks to an actor every time they answered a question incorrectly. Mr Nick says that his experiment shows that the TV element further increases people’s willingness to obey. “With Milgram, 62% of people obeyed an abject authority. In the setting of television, it’s 80%,” he told Reuters.  http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8571929.stm

Journal articles and child abuse and trauma information

Disclosing Sexual Abuse Is Critical ScienceDaily (Jan. 22, 2010) – Half of sexual abuse survivors wait up to five years before disclosing they were victimized, according to a collaborative study from the Université de Montréal, the Université du Québec à Montréal and the Université de Sherbrooke published in The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry.
“The number of victims who never reveal their secret or who wait many years to do so is very high,” says co-author Mireille Cyr, a psychology professor of the Université de Montréal. “This is regrettable because the longer they wait to reveal the abuse, the harder and more enduring the consequences will be.”
The research team surveyed 800 Quebec men and women and found 25 percent of respondents never divulged being sexually abused as children. The scientists also found a sharp contrast between genders: 16 percent of women remain quiet about abuse, while 34 percent of men never share their secret.
The investigation found that 22 percent of women and 10 percent of men reported beings survivors of abuse, which ranged from molestation to rape, which is comparable to the findings of previous studies on the topic.
The psychological distress of victims includes anxiety, depression, troubles concentrating and irritability. Certain victims suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, some relive the abuse psychologically while others have dulled emotions or become hyper-vigilant.
The data suggests that victims are more likely to denounce their abuser when he or she is a stranger. Unfortunately, in most cases, serious abuse such as rape is committed by friends or family members. This is true in 85 percent of cases for female victims and 89 percent for male victims.
Professor Isabelle Daigneault, of the Université de Montréal Department of Psychology, conducted a separate study correlating the likelihood of young victims to become adult victims of sexual or physical abuse.
Published in The International Journal of Child Abuse & Neglect, her sample examined 9,170 women and 7,823 men throughout Canada. Her conclusions are startling: female survivors of childhood sexual abuse are three to four times likely to be victims of physical or sexual abuse as adults….
Male survivors of childhood sexual abuse are three times more likely to be victims of physical abuse as men….
Martine Hébert, Marc Tourigny, Mireille Cyr, Pierre McDuff, Jacques Joly. Prevalence of Childhood Sexual Abuse and Timing of Disclosure in a Representative Sample of Adults From Quebec. The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 2009;54(9):631-636
Daigneault et al. Men’s and women’s childhood sexual abuse and victimization in adult partner relationships: A study of risk factors. Child Abuse & Neglect, 2009; 33 (9): 638 DOI: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2009.04.003                          http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100119121422.htm

Abuse in Childhood Linked to Migraine and Other Pain Disorders ScienceDaily (Jan. 6, 2010) – Researchers from the American Headache Society’s Women’s Issues Section Research Consortium found that incidence of childhood maltreatment, especially emotional abuse and neglect, are prevalent in migraine patients. The study also found that migraineurs reporting childhood emotional or physical abuse and/or neglect had a significantly higher number of comorbid pain conditions compared with those without a history of maltreatment.
Full findings of the study appear in the January issue of Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain, published on behalf of the American Headache Society by Wiley-Blackwell.
Tietjen et al. Childhood Maltreatment and Migraine (Part II). Emotional Abuse as a Risk Factor for Headache Chronification. Headache The Journal of Head and Face Pain, 2010; 50 (1): 32 DOI: 10.1111/j.1526-4610.2009.01557.x
Tietjen et al. Childhood Maltreatment and Migraine (Part I). Prevalence and Adult Revictimization: A Multicenter Headache Clinic Survey. Headache The Journal of Head and Face Pain, 2010; 50 (1): 20 DOI: 10.1111/j.1526-4610.2009.01556.x
Tietjen et al. Childhood Maltreatment and Migraine (Part III). Association With Comorbid Pain Conditions. Headache The Journal of Head and Face Pain, 2010; 50 (1): 42 DOI: 10.1111/j.1526-4610.2009.01558.x
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/01/100106003608.htm

Parental Alienation must be excluded from all custody hearings By Preston Thymes 02/18/10  Parental Alienation is a perilous accusation that should never be recognized in courts or viewed as particularly compelling in cases deciding the custody of a child, especially when resolving profoundly difficult questions concerning the scary scenario of  placing that child back into the home of a domestic violence abuser.
By definition, Parental Alienation is a “syndrome” that manifest in the process of divorce when a parent suffering from “deflated self-esteem” as “part of a normal grieving response to interpersonal loss” to “enforce their agenda” and “The alienating parent may or may not be consciously aware of manipulating the child and the legal/social systems. Alienating parents often believe that the accusations they make are true, but have developed those beliefs by a faulty reasoning process.”
First, it is important to begin by evaluating the premise of Parental Alienation, which is not a recognized syndrome by the American Medical Association.
Second, American Psychological Association has never issued a position on Parental Alienation.
http://www.capitolweekly.net/article.php?_c=yn0preo6rdxdxf&xid=yn07qj15cqd9rl&done=.yn0preo6rehdxf
The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study is one of the largest investigations ever conducted on the links between childhood maltreatment and later-life health and well-being. As a collaboration between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kaiser Permanente’s Health Appraisal Clinic in San Diego, Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) members undergoing a comprehensive physical examination provided detailed information about their childhood experience of abuse, neglect, and family dysfunction. Over 17,000 members chose to participate….The ACE Study findings suggest that these experiences are major risk factors for the leading causes of illness and death as well as poor quality of life in the United States.  http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/ACE/

Childhood abuse, neglect, and exposure to other traumatic stressors which we term adverse childhood experiences (ACE) are common. Almost two-thirds of our study participants reported at least one ACE, and more than one in five reported three or more ACE. The short- and long-term outcomes of these childhood exposures include a multitude of health and social problems….as the number of ACE increase, the risk for the following health problems increases in a strong and graded fashion:     * alcoholism and alcohol abuse     * chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)     * depression     * fetal death    * health-related quality of life     * illicit drug use    * ischemic heart disease (IHD)     * liver disease     * risk for intimate partner violence     * multiple sexual partners     * sexually transmitted diseases (STDs)     * smoking     * suicide attempts     * unintended pregnancies
http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/ACE/findings.htm

Prevalence of Individual Adverse Childhood Experiences
Women (N = 9,367)
Men  (N = 7,970)
(N = 17,337)
Abuse           Women      Men      Total
Emotional Abuse 13.1     7.6     10.6
Physical Abuse     27.0     29.9     28.3
Sexual Abuse     24.7     16.0     20.7
http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/ACE/prevalence.htm

Early Abuse Tied to More Depression in Children ScienceDaily (Feb. 7, 2010) – Although children can be depressed for many reasons, new evidence suggests that there are physiological differences among depressed children based on their experiences of abuse before age 5. Early abuse may be especially damaging due to the very young age at which it occurs….The study appears in the January/February 2010 issue of the journal Child Development.
Children who experience maltreatment, including physical, sexual, and emotional abuse or neglect, grow up with a lot of stress. Cortisol, termed the “stress hormone,” helps the body regulate stress. But when stress is chronic and overloads the system, cortisol can soar to very high levels or plummet to lows, which in turn can harm development and health.
The researchers studied more than 500 low-income children ages 7 to 13, about half of whom had been abused and/or neglected, to find out whether abuse early in life and feelings of depression affected their levels of cortisol. High levels of depression were more frequent among children who were abused in the first five years of their lives than among maltreated children who weren’t abused early in life or children who weren’t maltreated at all.
More importantly, only children who were abused before age 5 and depressed had an atypical flattening of cortisol production during the day, whereas other children, whether they were depressed or not, showed an expected daily decline in cortisol from morning to afternoon….
“In the United States, more than 1.5 million children are abused and neglected every year, though it’s estimated that the actual rates are substantially greater,” according to Dante Cicchetti, McKnight Presidential Chair and professor of child development and psychiatry at the University of Minnesota, who led the study. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100205081811.htm
The book LIFE AFTER MPD is a book written for patients, general public, professionals, and psychology students. It’s focus is on healing.  Life After MPD is an auto-biographical account of a healing journey. It begins with a brief experience of living with MPD/DID, shares the personal struggle with the diagnosis then moves into some of the techniques utilized in the healing work. The book ends with integration and the experience of integration.  Life After MPD by Debra Lighthart ISBN 1-888125-76-4 Available at Amazon.com
Mind & Brain / Mental Health – Top 100 Stories of 2009 #61: Child Abuse Leaves Its Mark on Victim’s DNA  – The brains of people who were abused as children and then commit suicide show DNA modifications that made them particularly sensitive to stress. by Amy Barth
From the January-February special issue; published online December 28, 2009
Childhood trauma may leave a lasting imprint not just on the psyche but also in the DNA. This news comes from McGill University and the Suicide Brain Bank, a Quebec-based organization that carried out autopsies on suicide victims who had been abused as kids. Across the board, their brains showed DNA modifications that made them particularly sensitive to stress. Although gene variations are primarily inherited at conception, the findings show that environmental impacts can also introduce them later on. “The idea that abuse changes how genes function opens a new window for behavioral and drug therapy,” says study leader and neuroscientist Patrick McGowan.
During periods of adversity, the brain triggers release of cortisol, a hormone responsible for the fight-or-flight response. Due to differential gene expression associated with stress, the brains of child-abuse victims had lower levels of glucocorticoid receptors, McGowan found. Cortisol normally binds to these receptors; with fewer of them present, there is more cortisol and less resilience to feelings of stress. http://discovermagazine.com/2010/jan-feb/061

Child abuse can cause brain changes  2/26/10 DUBLIN, Ireland, Feb. 26 (UPI) — Childhood abuse or emotional neglect can result in structural brain changes, say researchers at Ireland’s Trinity College Dublin. Thomas Frodl at the School of Medicine and Trinity Institute for Neuroscience said the finding was based on a study of 24 patients 18-65, who were being treated for major depression. The researchers used high-resolution structural magnetic resonance imaging scans of the brain and childhood stress assessments. Special analysis programs were used to measure brain regions and the results were compared with 27 healthy control subjects matched for age and gender. “These structural alterations of the brain are associated with a higher vulnerability to depression and a more chronic course of the depression might be associated with further structural changes,” Frodl said….The findings are published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology. http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2010/02/26/Child-abuse-can-cause-brain-changes/UPI-24541267212440/

Therapy teaches that incest is never consensual By Elizabeth Landau, CNN February 5, 2010
Realizing that incest is not the victim’s fault is a difficult process that happens through therapy and can take many years….By definition, incest is never consensual, although often the perpetrator will convince the victim otherwise, experts say. The power dynamics of the relationship between a parent and child are such that it’s always the parent’s responsibility to maintain normal boundaries….Realizing that they are not to blame for the incident or incidents is necessary for recovery, but it is also anxiety-provoking, forcing them to confront the sadness surrounding the incestuous relationship, Zucchetto said….Of the 60,000 sexual assault cases reported in 12 states in 2000, about 25 percent were committed by family members, according to a U.S. Bureau of Justice report. Family members were involved in about half of the sexual assault cases with victims younger than 11.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/02/05/incest.therapy.phillips/index.html

Developmental trauma disorder: Towards a rational diagnosis for children with complex trauma histories. Bessel A. van der Kolk, MD Developmental trauma disorder: Childhood trauma, including abuse and neglect, is probably our nation’s single most important public health challenge, a challenge that has the potential to be largely resolved by appropriate prevention and intervention. Each year over 3,000,000 children are reported to the authorities for abuse and/or neglect in the United States of which about one million are substantiated1. Many thousands more undergo traumatic medical and surgical procedures, and are victims of accidents and of community violence (see Spinazzola et al, this issue). However, most trauma begins at home: the vast majority of people (about 80 %) responsible for child maltreatment are children’s own parents. Inquiry into developmental milestones and family medical history is routine in medical and psychiatric examinations. In contrast, social taboos prevent obtaining information about childhood trauma, abuse, neglect and other exposures to violence. Research has shown that traumatic childhood experiences are not only extremely common; they also have a profound impact on many different areas of functioning….
In the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study by Kaiser Permanente and the Center for Disease Control2, 17,337 adult HMO members responded to a questionnaire about adverse childhood experiences, including childhood abuse, neglect, and family dysfunction. 11.0% reported having been emotionally abused as a child, 30.1% reported physical abuse, 19.9% sexual abuse; 23.5% reported being exposed to family alcohol abuse, 18.8% to mental illness, 12.5% witnessed their mothers being battered and 4.9% reported family drug abuse.
The ACE study showed that adverse childhood experiences are vastly more common than recognized or acknowledged and that they have a powerful relation to adult health a half-century later. The study unequivocally confirmed earlier investigations that found a highly significant relationship between adverse childhood experiences and depression, suicide attempts, alcoholism, drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, domestic violence, cigarette smoking, obesity, physical inactivity, and sexually transmitted diseases. In addition, the more adverse childhood experiences reported, the more likely a person was to develop heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, skeletal fractures, and liver disease. http://www.traumacenter.org/products/pdf_files/Preprint_Dev_Trauma_Disorder.pdf

Cumulative Childhood Stress and Autoimmune Diseases in Adults Shanta R. Dube, PhD, MPH, DeLisa Fairweather, PhD, William S. Pearson, PhD, MHA, Vincent J. Felitti, MD, Robert F. Anda, MD, MS and Janet B. Croft, PhD….Psychosomatic Medicine 71:243-250 (2009)
Objective: To examine whether childhood traumatic stress increased the risk of developing autoimmune diseases as an adult.
Methods: Retrospective cohort study of 15,357 adult health maintenance organization members enrolled in the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) Study from 1995 to 1997 in San Diego, California, and eligible for follow-up through 2005. ACEs included childhood physical, emotional, or sexual abuse; witnessing domestic violence; growing up with household substance abuse, mental illness, parental divorce, and/or an incarcerated household member….
Results: Sixty-four percent reported at least one ACE. The event rate (per 10,000 person-years) for a first hospitalization with any autoimmune disease was 31.4 in women and 34.4 in men. First hospitalizations for any autoimmune disease increased with increasing number of ACEs (p < .05). Compared with persons with no ACEs, persons with ≥2 ACEs were at a 70% increased risk for hospitalizations with Th1, 80% increased risk for Th2, and 100% increased risk for rheumatic diseases (p < .05).
Conclusions: Childhood traumatic stress increased the likelihood of hospitalization with a diagnosed autoimmune disease decades into adulthood. These findings are consistent with recent biological studies on the impact of early life stress on subsequent inflammatory responses.
http://www.psychosomaticmedicine.org/cgi/content/abstract/71/2/243

Rape and Sexual Assault
According to the National Crime Victimization Survey, there were 198,850 rapes and sexual assaults measured in 2003. (Bureau of Justice Statistics. 2004. Criminal Victimization, 2003. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice.)
Among female victims of rape and sexual assault, 70 percent of the crimes were committed by intimates, other relatives, friends or acquaintances. (Ibid.)….
In 2003, 38.5 percent of rapes and sexual assaults were reported to the police. (Ibid.)….
More than one in four victims of a juvenile or adult sex offender was a family member.  (Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. 2004. Victims of Violent Juvenile Crime. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice.)….
Only 36 percent of completed rapes were reported to the police during the years 1992 to 2000. Thirty-four percent of the attempted rapes, and 26 percent of the completed and attempted sexual assaults were reported.  (Bureau of Justice Statistics. 2002. Rape and Sexual Assault: Reporting to Police and Medical Attention, 1992-2000. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice.)
A recently published eight-year study indicates that when perpetrators of completed rape are current or former husbands or boyfriends, the crimes go unreported to the police 77 percent of the time. When the perpetrators are friends or acquaintances, the rapes go unreported 61 percent of the time. When the perpetrators are strangers, the rapes go unreported 54 percent of the time. (Ibid.)
A recent report based on the 1995 National Survey of Adolescents (NSA) found that 13 percent of girls and 3.4 percent of boys surveyed had been sexually assaulted. (National Institute of Justice. 2003. Youth Victimization: Prevalence and Implications. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice.)
Of the sexual assault victims in the NSA, 74 percent reported that the assault was committed by someone they knew well. Almost one-third (32.5 percent) of sexual assault cases involved perpetrators who were friends, 21.1 percent were committed by a family member, and 23.2 percent were committed by strangers. (Ibid.)….
The majority of adolescent sexual assaults (86 percent) went unreported. (Ibid.)….
Between 1995 – 2000, 86 percent of all rapes/sexual assaults committed against college students were not reported to police, compared to 12 percent that were reported. Bureau of Justice Statistics. 2003. Violent Victimization of College Students. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Justice.)
http://www.ojp.gov/ovc/ncvrw/2005/pg5o.html

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