Issue 108 – January 2013

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 108 – November 2013

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 2013 – All rights reserved.   No reproduction of any material without written permission from the editor and individual authors.

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

The 16th Annual Ritual Abuse, Secretive Organizations and Mind Control Conference August 9 – 11, 2013 http://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/

Ritual Abuse And Extreme Abuse Clinician’s Conference 2013 http://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/ritual-abuse-and-extreme-abuse-clinicians-conference-2013/

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

This issue contains information on the Boy Scouts, Jimmy Savile BBC, Penn State – Sandusky, Rochdale child sex ring, Tory child sex abuse ring claim, Wales child abuse, Elmo actor,  Florida boys reform school, Delaware pediatrician child abuse case, Sugar Ray Leonard,  Army daycare scandal, New South Wales, John Merzbacher, Keyon Dooling, Yeshiva University High School for Boys, Wakefield, Mass case, The Role of Ritual in the Organised Abuse of Children, Cornish ‘white witches’, CIA brainwashing experiments, Allan Psychiatric Institute in Montreal, Frank Olson, White witch coven, ritualistic sex abuse Cornwall, Belgium To Prosecute  Scientology, Child abuse damage to brain, Childhoods Trauma Soldiers PTSD,  Elizabeth Smart, Restitution for Child Victims, Evidence for Trauma and Dissociation, Preventing Child Abuse, Abuse and Asthma, Misinformation and Disinformation about Psychotherapy for Trauma in Ritual Abuse and Mind Control, Bullying epigenetics, Genes and Immune System Childhood Poverty and Stress, Dissociative Identity States, Psychobiological and dissociative identity disorder, India rape cases, Twitter accounts with child abuse images

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

Boy Scouts

Boy Scout files on suspected abuse published by The Times
Viewable online: about 1,200 previously unpublished files kept by the Boy Scouts of America on volunteers and employees expelled for suspected sexual abuse. By Jessica Naziri and Nell Gram, Los Angeles Times

December 25, 2012 The Times on Tuesday released about 1,200 previously unpublished files kept by the Boy Scouts of America on volunteers and employees expelled for suspected sexual abuse.
The files, which have been redacted of victims’ names and other identifying information, were opened from 1985 through 1991. They can be found in a database along with two decades of files released by order of the Oregon Supreme Court in October. The database also contains summary information on about 3,200 additional files opened from 1947 to 2005 that have not been released publicly.
Together, the material in the database represents the most complete accounting of suspected sexual abuse in the Scouts that has been made public. All of the material was obtained as a result of lawsuits against the Scouts by alleged abuse victims or by media organizations. The Boy Scouts kept the files for nearly a century for internal use only, to keep suspected abusers from rejoining. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-scouts-data-20121226,0,6477648.story

Inside the ‘perversion files’
Tracking decades of allegations in the Boy Scouts
This database contains information on about 5,000 men and a handful of women who were expelled from the Boy Scouts of America between 1947 and January 2005 on suspicion of sexual abuse. The dots on the map indicate the location of troops connected in some way to the accused. The timeline below shows the volume of cases opened by year; however, an unknown number of files were purged by the Scouts prior to the early 1990s. Last up-date: Dec. 26, 2012 http://spreadsheets.latimes.com/boyscouts-cases/

Boy Scouts’ opposition to background checks let pedophiles in
Boy Scouts of America fought the trend of adopting criminal background checks for volunteers and staff, unknowingly allowing convicted child sex offenders to join.
By Jason Felch and Kim Christensen, Los Angeles Times December 2, 2012
Amid reports of widespread sexual abuse of children in the late 1980s, several leading youth organizations began conducting criminal background checks of volunteers and staff members.
Big Brothers Big Sisters ordered the checks for all volunteers starting in 1986. Boys and Girls Clubs of America recommended their use the same year. One of the nation’s oldest and largest youth groups, however, was opposed — the Boy Scouts of America.
Scouting officials argued that background checks would cost too much, scare away volunteers and provide a false sense of security. They successfully lobbied to kill state legislation that would have mandated FBI fingerprint screening. While touting their efforts to protect children, the Scouts for years resisted one of the most basic tools for preventing abuse. The result: The organization let in hundreds of men with criminal histories of child molestation, many of whom went on to abuse more children, according to a Times analysis of the Scouts’ confidential abuse files.

Scouting did not require criminal background checks for all volunteers until 2008 — despite calls from parents and staff who said its vetting system didn’t work. In 1989, a Scout committee chairman in St. Paul, Minn., decried the organization’s “half-hearted” screening in a letter to headquarters.
“BSA is only creating an illusion of performing what they claim,” K. Russell Sias wrote to Scout Chief Executive Ben Love. “It becomes quite clear that BSA is more concerned in ‘passing the buck’ than in accepting responsibility for those who are its adult leaders.” That same year, a Las Vegas scoutmaster with a criminal history of exposing himself to boys was arrested for sexually abusing a 12-year-old Scout. One parent said casinos did a better job of screening workers. “The black eye which scouting has suffered in this … could easily have been avoided if the council had taken the simple expedient of doing a background investigation,” the parent wrote to Scouting officials.
From the time national background checks became widely available in 1985 until 1991 — when the detailed files obtained by The Times end — the Boy Scouts admitted more than 230 men with previous arrests or convictions for sex crimes against children, the analysis found. The men were accused of molesting nearly 400 boys while in Scouting. They accounted for one in six of those expelled for alleged abuse during those years. Scouting officials declined to be interviewed but said in a prepared statement that they have enhanced their policies over the years and tried “to ensure we are in line with and, where possible, ahead of society’s knowledge of abuse and best practices for prevention.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-scouts-screening-20121202,0,3619516.story

Boy Scout Child Sex Abuse Files Must Be Surrendered, Court Says
12/13/12 AP LOS ANGELES — A California appellate court has upheld a Santa Barbara judge’s order saying the Boy Scouts of America must surrender decades of confidential files detailing alleged child sex abuse.
A lawsuit alleges that a local Scouts official tried to keep a boy’s mother from reporting his 2007 abuse by a volunteer leader to police.
The youth group denies the allegations.
“The BSA believes confidentiality of the files helps to encourage prompt reporting,” spokesman Deron Smith told the Times.
Lawyers for the former Scout who was sexually abused by a volunteer leader in 2007 say the files they seek will expose a culture of hidden sexual abuse….

In January, a Santa Barbara judge ordered all files since 1991 be turned over to the boy’s lawyers, but not the public. The Boy Scouts filed an appeal in April. The order involves different files than the more than 1,200 made public in October by order of the Oregon Supreme Court. Those files ranged from 1965 to 1985. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/13/boy-scout-child-sex-abuse_n_2297354.html

Jimmy Savile – BBC

Jimmy Savile ‘boasted of under-age sex’ during BBC meeting  During a meeting with Jimmy Savile, a Radio 1 researcher says the late DJ boasted that he’d “had three 14-year-old girls” in his trailer that morning.  12 Oct 2012
Richard Pearson was a 21-year-old working at Radio 1 and meeting with a senior producer in BBC Broadcasting House’s restaurant when he says Jimmy Savile joined them and claimed “not particularly quietly” that he’d just “had” three underage girls in his trailer.
“And when he said ‘had’ he didn’t mean they’d come to criticised his curtains, he meant he’d had sex with them.” Mr Pearson said.
He went onto claim that Savile openly said having sex with the girls “kept him young”.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/9605734/Jimmy-Savile-boasted-of-under-age-sex-during-BBC-meeting.html

Jimmy Savile: Children in Need had ban – Sir Roger Jones   29 October 2012  A former BBC governor for Wales and Children in Need chairman says he had suspicions about Jimmy Savile more than a decade ago and would not allow him any involvement with the charity.
Sir Roger Jones heard of rumours from London staff, and the charity decided not to allow Savile “anywhere near” it. He said he did not tell management because he did not have evidence Savile abused children while a BBC employee. Police believe Savile may have abused as many as 300 people over 40 years. Sir Roger’s comments come on the day the investigation into the BBC’s child protection and whistle-blowing policies begins. He was a member of the board of governors between 1997 and 2002, and said he would have stepped down from his Children in Need role if Savile had become involved with the charity….
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-20120302

Jimmy Savile: Agencies could have spotted ‘pattern of behaviour’ police chief admits  The Metropolitan Police Commissioner has admitted to being shocked by the scale and extent of the Jimmy Savile allegations.  By Martin Evans, Crime Correspondent  29 Oct 2012
Bernard Hogan-Howe also suggested more could have been done when complaints were originally made to spot patterns of behaviour that could have led to the entertainer being stopped.
The Commissioner said it was possible that the authorities including the police and the BBC had relied too much on Savile’s reputation when considering whether to dig deeper.
Mr Hogan-Howe told reporters: “You might have thought that people would at least have talked about it and intervened. “It does look as if from time to time people have been concerned, they’ve made the start to intervene, but probably then they’ve relied a little bit too much on his reputation and his word that he did nothing. “If you accept all the public accounts of the activity then it’s possibly spanned 50 years which is a huge amount of time….
Four police forces were contacted by seven potential victims while Savile was alive. Surrey, Sussex and Jersey all found that there was not enough evidence to proceed.

Two potential victims came forward to Scotland Yard – one of whom claimed she had been abused in the 1970s but did not want to pursue a criminal investigation.
Officers are trying to find the original file relating to a second claim made by a woman who claimed she was assaulted in the 1980s, possibly in a caravan outside BBC premises in west London….
So far around 300 potential victims have been identified, with Met officers following more than 400 lines of inquiry. Meanwhile it has emerged that the Savile scandal has led to a surge in the number of people reporting child sex abuse allegations to the authorities.
Peter Davies, the chief executive of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop), said the exposure had encouraged victims unconnected to Savile to come forward and unburden themselves….
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/jimmy-savile/9641117/Jimmy-Savile-Agencies-could-have-spotted-pattern-of-behaviour-police-chief-admits.html

Jimmy Savile: the BBC emails Emails between senior members of BBC staff give insight into whether the corporation scrapped its Jimmy Savile Newsnight investigation after coming “under pressure” from managers. 22 Oct 2012
…. 2 DEC Head of news Helen Boaden tells George Entwistle at an awards lunch that if the Newsnight programme goes ahead he might have to change the Christmas schedules, which include a handful of Savile tribute programmes.
7 DEC Email, Meirion Jones to Peter Rippon. He insists “the story is strong enough” and the danger of not running it is “substantial damage to BBC reputation”.

9 DEC The Crown Prosecution Service tells Newsnight it did not investigate Savile because of lack of evidence. Rippon axes Newsnight item on Savile.
2 OCT 2012 Blog, Peter Rippon, BBC News website. Mr Rippon says on his blog that all the women spoken to by Newsnight had gone to the police already and that no new information had been uncovered by the investigation. Both points are denied by Meirion Jones in the Panorama programme.
5 OCT 2012 Email, George Entwistle to all BBC staff: “The BBC Newsnight programme investigated Surrey Police’s inquiry into Jimmy Savile towards the end of 2011.”
5 OCT Email, Meirion Jones to George Entwistle: “George – one note – the investigation was into whether Jimmy Savile was a paedophile – I know because it was my investigation. We didn’t know that Surrey police had investigated Jimmy Savile – no one did – that was what we found when we investigated and interviewed his victims.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/jimmy-savile/9624784/Jimmy-Savile-the-BBC-emails.html

Jimmy Savile caused concern with behaviour on visits to Prince Charles
Former royal aide says TV presenter would greet young female assistants at St James’s Palace by ‘rubbing lips up their arms’ Robert Booth         The Guardian, Monday 29 October 2012
A former senior royal aide has revealed that Jimmy Savile’s behaviour when he visited Prince Charles’s official home at St James’ Palace was a cause for “concern and suspicion”.
Dickie Arbiter, who handled media relations for the Prince and Princess of Wales while spokesman for the Queen between 1988 and 2000, said the suspected paedophile TV presenter used to rub his lips up the arms of Prince Charles’s young female assistants as a greeting.
Savile is understood to have visited Prince Charles’s official London residence several times in the late 1980s when he was acting as a kind of marriage counsellor between Charles and Princess Diana. A spokesman for the Prince of Wales confirmed the prince and Savile formed a relationship in the late 1970s after coming together through their work with wheelchair sports charities. Charles led tributes to Savile when he died a year ago.
“He would walk into the office and do the rounds of the young ladies taking their hands and rubbing his lips all the way up their arms if they were wearing short sleeves,” Arbiter said of Savile. “If it was summer [and their arms were bare] his bottom lip would curl out and he would run it up their arms. This was at St James’s Palace. The women were in their mid to late 20s doing typing and secretarial work.”

Arbiter did not raise his concerns formally and there is no suggestion Savile committed any crimes while on royal premises or when he was with Prince Charles on numerous occasions from the 1970s onwards. But the concern over his behaviour expressed by a senior aide will raise questions over how Savile, who is now under investigation in relation to child abuse involving 300 potential victims, managed to develop such a long-standing relationship with the heir to the throne….
Charles reportedly sent him a box of cigars and a pair of gold cufflinks on his 80th birthday with a note that read: “Nobody will ever know what you have done for this country Jimmy. This is to go some way in thanking you for that.”
Savile used to boast of his royal connections, made sure to be photographed with Charles on numerous occasions and ingratiated himself once telling the Daily Mail the prince was “the nicest man you will ever meet”.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/oct/29/jimmy-savile-behaviour-prince-charles

Jimmy Savile, Gary Glitter and the politics of paedophile rings  2 November 2012 Michael Salter
In Britain, the sexual abuse allegations against television personality Jimmy Savile have now implicated glam rocker Gary Glitter and comedian Freddie Starr. Police have intimated that other high-profile arrests are forthcoming.
These developments have finally given credence to the accounts of many victims – who over the years have maintained that Savile was part of an organised group of men who shared his sexual interest in minors….
Victims can find it very difficult finding someone to take them seriously. An independent 2010 report into child protection in Britain, which was not made public but was quoted in the UK print media, found child victims of sexually abusive groups were often ignored by the authorities. One victim complained:
“The authorities did not understand what was happening to us, either because they did not believe us or because they could not comprehend that something as serious as this was possible.”
Until his death in 2011, Savile was a much-loved British media personality. Now, he is the subject of allegations of sexual abuse from at least 300 victims dating back decades. Questions have been raised about how much friends and colleagues knew about, and potentially colluded in, these crimes….
Accounts of organised abuse have circled around Savile for some years. They have not been acted upon until now. Investigations into Savile’s involvement in the abuse of children at the Haut de la Garenne children’s home in Jersey, dismissed in 2008 for “lack of evidence”, have now been reopened. New evidence has not emerged. Simply put, there is new pressure on the relevant authorities to be seen to be taking these allegations seriously….
https://theconversation.edu.au/jimmy-savile-gary-glitter-and-the-politics-of-paedophile-rings-10461

Top of The Pops producers who first signed up Jimmy Savile in the 1960s thought he was ‘dodgy’ because of his background on the club scene in Leeds
Savile’s background sparked initial concerns among the show’s bosses
It is claimed he was thought of as ‘dodgy’ and ‘you didn’t cross him’
But despite that the BBC hired him and he went on to be a regular Top of the Pops presenter for 20 years
The Corporation now embroiled in a sex scandal after scores of women claim they were abused by the DJ  By Leon Watson 2 November 2012
The BBC producers who first signed up Jimmy Savile to present Top of the Pops had doubts over whether he was suitable and thought he was ‘dodgy’, it was claimed last night.
Savile’s background as a club DJ and manager sparked initial concerns among the show’s bosses in the early 1960s before the allegations of sex abuse that have now engulfed the BBC emerged.
Paul Jackson, the producer of hits shows Red Dwarf and The Young Ones, and a former head entertainment at both the BBC and ITV, said BBC entertainment producers initially rejected Savile.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2227128/BBC-producers-doubts-Jimmy-Savile-1960s.html

Jimmy Savile was an emperor with no clothes – and a celebrity cloak
Savile’s invisible but dazzling cloak of fame stopped everyone from suggesting he was exactly the scary, child-catching creature he seemed to be
Deborah Orr    The Guardian, Friday 2 November 2012
It’s part of the grooming process to persuade the victim it’s wrong to think badly of the abuser. In that respect, Jimmy Savile groomed the nation. Children rarely said the emperor was naked – sometimes all too literally. But even when one did, the cry was never taken up. Adults also kept their suspicions quiet, even when they were strong. It seemed wrong to think badly of Savile, though many secretly did.
It’s telling, this collective failure to point at Savile and suggest he was just the scary, child-catching creature of nightmare he appeared to be. People tend to believe what’s easier to bear. Sadly it’s easier for a child to bear the idea that they deserve abuse than it is for them to believe the adult world does not protect the innocent….
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/nov/02/jimmy-savile-emperors-new-clothes

Jim fixed nothing: Growing up in 1970s England with Jimmy Savile – Magical figure now accused of widespread abuse Chris Jones Theater critic November 4, 2012
….There have been so many claims made against him — many of which entail stories of abuse involving girls, barely in their teens — that Savile’s estate was frozen Thursday by bankers who have realized that they will likely need to pay compensation. If Savile’s knighthood had not officially died with him in 2011, that would likely be gone too. His name has been stripped from buildings. An honorary degree has been rescinded. Even his gravestone has been broken up and sent to a landfill.

As with the Jerry Sandusky affair at Penn State University — with which the Savile affair has many horrible similarities — there has been a great deal of fallout from what appears to have been a multi-decade sequence of abuse by a TV star, cloaked in philanthropic good works, who had his own keys allowing him access to children’s hospitals and so much power that nobody dared take him on. There is the question of why his bosses and colleagues at the BBC, many of whose careers are now besmirched, did not confront him, given the repeated rumors of his attraction to young girls. As at Penn State, Savile’s bosses did nothing for, it seems, much the same reasons: It would be messy; it wasn’t entirely clear, if you didn’t want it to be; it might upset bigger bosses; and the brand of the organization (both, strikingly, are nonprofits) would be hurt by the finding out of the truth.

If the Sandusky affair revealed much that was disturbing about the culture of college sports, the Savile affair has done the same for the British media, especially in those tightly controlled pre-Internet days, when personal brands were carefully protected, bad behavior was laughed off as good showbiz fun and outside reporters could easily be manipulated or purchased. Savile, it now is clear, was a master of such manipulations, maintaining distinct private and public personas with formidable care. So potent was his brand and so associated was it with the unassailable, he just had to dangle a few threats about charities and money he raises for children, and the nosy reporter would look elsewhere for those rumors about underage girls. Ordinary pop stars didn’t raise all that cash for kids. Easier to bring them down.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/theater/theaterloop/chi-growing-up-jim-savile-england,0,1030384.column

BBC warned it could face a full public inquiry, as Jimmy Savile sex abuse scandal rumbles on  Monday 5 November 2012
THE BBC could face a full public inquiry into the Jimmy Savile sex abuse scandal if its own investigations fail to “get to the bottom” of the accusations, Culture Secretary Maria Miller has warned.
The BBC has launched an inquiry into the culture and practices at the corporation in the era of the late TV and radio presenter’s alleged sexual abuse. It is also investigating the decision-making process that saw a Newsnight investigation into the Jim’ll Fix It star’s activities shelved.
Speaking about the double investigation, Mrs Miller said: “The real challenge for the BBC is to make sure that the outcome of these reviews really gets to the bottom of these accusations.
“If the investigations are considered not to suffice because of issues around transparency, process or other such things, then a public inquiry remains an option.”….
http://www.scotsman.com/news/bbc-warned-it-could-face-a-full-public-inquiry-as-jimmy-savile-sex-abuse-scandal-rumbles-on-1-2614200

Ex-BBC producer arrested over Jimmy Savile abuse claims 11 November 2012
A former BBC producer has been arrested in connection with the inquiry into abuse claims made against Jimmy Savile. Wilfred De’Ath, who is in his 70s, was held in Cambridgeshire at 07:15 GMT. A Met Police spokesman did not confirm his name but said a man was arrested on suspicion of sexual offences and taken into police custody locally, before being bailed until December.
He added the man was held as part of the Operation Yewtree probe into claims Savile sexually abused young people. Police believe the former BBC TV presenter and DJ, who died last year aged 84, may have abused as many as 300 people over a 40-year period. Mr De’Ath once produced a Jimmy Savile radio show. Neighbours at his flat in Cambridge said detectives removed bags from the property.
A number of individuals are being investigated as part of the operation. These include people who allegedly carried out abuse with Savile as well as others who are suspected of abusing independently of Savile….
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-20286308

25 celebs probed by Savile cops   At least six more high profile figures ‘to be arrested in coming weeks’  10th December 2012
SAVILE cops are investigating claims of alleged sex offences against a staggering 25 celebrities. The high-profile names are said to be mostly television and radio entertainers, with at least six expected to be arrested in the coming weeks. They are named in a list of tip-offs to Operation Yewtree – the police inquiry set up in the wake of the Jimmy Savile sex abuse revelations. A source said: “They all tend to be white men of the Savile generation”.
The 25 celebrities are understood to have been named in phone calls to the police or to charities. Some victims will not be identified or press charges, making it difficult for the police to proceed. But cops believe there is enough evidence for at least a dozen celebrities to be detained….
About 450 potential victims have come forward since inquiry began two months ago, Scotland Yard said….
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4689140/saville-cops-probe-25-celebrities.html

Jimmy Savile abuse: Number of alleged victims reaches 450  12 December 2012 Police have confirmed that the number of alleged sex abuse victims of the late Jimmy Savile has reached 450.
The Operation Yewtree team said 589 alleged victims have come forward during their investigation of offences committed by Savile and others.
Of the alleged victims, 82% were female and 80% were children or young people.
Meanwhile, police have set up Operation Fairbank to investigate allegations by Labour MP Tom Watson of a paedophile ring in high places.
Mr Watson said in October that police should investigate claims of a “powerful paedophile ring” linked to a previous prime minister’s “senior adviser” and Parliament.
‘Exploited his position’
Savile, who died last year aged 84, was a Radio 1 DJ and the presenter of the Jim’ll Fix It show on BBC One.
Operation Yewtree, which launched 10 weeks ago, has a team of 30 officers and has so far cost about £2m.
Police said on Wednesday they have recorded 199 alleged crimes in 17 police force areas against Savile.
They said they had recorded 31 allegations of rape against Savile in seven force areas.

Met Police Commander Peter Spindler, head of Operation Yewtree, said: “Savile’s offending peaked in the 70s and what we can show, or will be showing in the New Year, is how he used his position in society across the country – the crimes relate to 17 different police force areas – how he exploited this position to get his sexual gratification.”
BBC home affairs correspondent Matt Prodger says the level of allegations against Savile – 450 in total – is unprecedented – never before have police received that number of allegations against a single person.
Our correspondent says he believes the police have a total of 20 suspects whom they wish to interview. They have interviewed seven people in total – six of whom were arrested.
Police are looking at three strands within their inquiry – claims against Savile, those against Savile and others, and those against others only…. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20697738

‘I’m staying put’: Esther Rantzen claims she will remain child abuse charity patron after claims she ignored warnings over Jimmy Savile
Rantzen is a patron of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood
Child abuse campaigner Shy Keenan says she warned Rantzen about paedophile rumours but Rantzen strenuously denies this
Television presenter faces accusations that she failed to act on information
ChildLine founder says she cannot remember the incident and denies that Jimmy Savile’s name was ever mentioned
Department of Health launches inquiry about why Savile was appointed to ‘taskforce’ overseeing management of Broadmoor hospital
Rantzen said today she would remain as patron of child abuse charity, despite founder claiming trustees would discuss if she was still appropriate
By Anna Edwards, Alex Ward and Larisa Brown 15 October 2012

Esther Rantzen has strenuously denied rumours she is facing the sack as patron of a child abuse charity after she failed to act on allegations that Jimmy Savile molested youngsters….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2217149/Im-staying-Esther-Rantzen-claims-remain-child-abuse-charity-patron-claims-ignored-warnings-Jimmy-Savile.html

Jimmy Savile abuse allegations: Timeline 2 November 2012 Allegations of sexual abuse by Sir Jimmy Savile continue to emerge after ITV broadcasts an investigation on 3 October. This timeline charts the presenter’s rise to fame, the claims against him and subsequent action by police and broadcasters. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19921658

JANET STREET PORTER: Your tragic Savile letters show this isn’t just hysteria    By Janet Street Porter 5 November 2012
The BBC has decided not to broadcast repeats of Top Of The Pops hosted by Jimmy Savile, as if belatedly culling the evil court jester from our screens constitutes an act of cultural cleansing.
Since I discussed the scandal on Question Time on October 4, the day after ITV broadcast their shocking documentary, I have received a huge number of emails and letters.
Every day brings more revelations — involving hospitals, prisons and places where vulnerable people thought they were safe….
Stories of abuse going back half a century are being told for the very first time, and there are calls for previous investigations into abuse at children’s homes in Wales and in Jersey to be re-opened.

The initial exposure of Savile has uncovered abuse that seems to have permeated every aspect of society, unacceptable behaviour that those in authority accepted for decades. Only last week, Rick Parfitt of Status Quo blithely told a female journalist ‘everybody was at it’ at Top Of The Pops ‘…there was a lot of groping’.
Yesterday, a newspaper asserted that the unit investigating sexual misconduct at the Corporation has received complaints involving 29 BBC staff and presenters.
Let’s be clear, the media are not pursuing a witch hunt against the BBC (as Jonathan Dimbleby asserts), but responding to the righteous indignation of the mistreated, ordinary men and women who were never believed up to now.
When I said on television that my hairdresser touched me inappropriately when I was about ten or 12, and my mother just slapped me and called me a liar, loads of you recounted similar stories.
They describe being abused as teenagers, never able to tell their stories, or if they did, they were routinely disbelieved. One man kept quiet about being abused by a group of older boys at school until he was in his 60s, and then had a breakdown.
Men and women have written to me who worked in television make-up and costume departments when they were young, who endured routine molesting from big stars with fragile egos as part of the job. This isn’t mass hysteria — we are at the start of a healing process, and the tragedy is that many of the perpetrators are dead.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2227852/Your-tragic-Jimmy-Savile-letters-isnt-just-hysteria.html

Savile’s sickening confession in his own memoir: ‘I said I’d do the event if I could sleep in a tent with six girls. They arrived in matching miniskirts and boots and looked good enough to eat’
He spent night with six girls wearing matching mini-skirts and white boots

They ‘fell about and over each other, making enough noise to wake dead’    Savile describes being spotted on beach by girl who took off clothes for him
New stories have come to light in his out-of-print 1974 book As It Happens
Meanwhile Leeds University could strip Savile of his honorary law doctorate
And crime experts call for probe into presenter’s links to Yorkshire Ripper
It’s claimed Savile even advised Prince Charles on senior aide’s appointment
Savile ‘hoarded toys left by public in Diana’s memory meant for sick children’ By Mark Duell  4 November 2012

….He claimed a council chairman called him as he wanted the annual mayoral ball to become a youth dance, because the event had previously only attracted a few hundred locals in the past.
The presenter told the chairman: ‘I will come if you will arrange for me to sleep in a tent up the local hillside with another tent alongside with six girls to sleep there as my bodyguards.
He added: ‘My demands really put the dance on the map and 2,000 tickets went like hot cakes.
‘My ultimatum of “no tents, no girls, no me” meant the council had to go through with it.’….
Meanwhile, Savile was said to be so close to Prince Charles that he advised him on the appointment of Sir Christopher Airy as his private secretary in 1990, it was claimed today by the Sunday Times.
Savile and Charles met former major-general Airy before he was offered the post, portraying an extraordinary close friendship between the heir to the throne and the disgraced TV star.
‘Savile was in and out of the palace at that time pretty frequently,’ a source said. ‘His bling and his tracksuits made him rather unconventional and I think that was appealing to Prince Charles.’
Ex-royal press secretary Dickie Arbiter said Savile was a ‘brought in by an aide as a sort of “Jim’ll Fix It” to fix the state of the marriage’ of Prince Charles and Princess Diana, ‘but of course it didn’t work’.
St James’s Palace said it had no record of Savile being at Airy’s interview. Airy refused to comment….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2227586/Jimmy-Savile-demanded-young-girls-stay-tent-return-charity-appearance.html

Savile guided prince in choice of top aide The shamed TV star forged close ties with Charles and helped him vet his private secretary Kate Mansey and Simon Trump Published: 4 November 2012
JIMMY SAVILE was so close to Prince Charles that he advised him on the appointment of one of his most senior aides, The Sunday Times has learnt.
In an indication of the power and privilege extended to Savile by the royal family, Charles asked the DJ and television presenter for advice before selecting Sir Christopher Airy to be his private secretary in 1990.
Savile and Charles met Airy, a former major-general, before he was offered the post, according to an informed source.
The revelation shows the close friendship between the heir to the throne and the television presenter, qho the prince grew to rely on in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It also raises questions about the judgment of Charles and his decision to befriend Saville…. http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/news/uk_news/newsuknewssavileinquiry/article1159135.ece

Jimmy Savile scandal: George Entwistle to give evidence at Newsnight inquiry    Ex-director general to appear before Nick Pollard inquiry into handling of programme’s aborted investigation of presenter
Dan Sabbagh guardian.co.uk, Thursday 22 November 2012
George Entwistle, the former BBC director general, is expected to give evidence on Monday before Nick Pollard’s inquiry into the handling of Newsnight’s aborted investigation into sexual abuse by the late Jimmy Savile, in a demanding hearing that will see him grilled on what he knew about it by a silk.
The much criticised executive spent the last days of his short-lived director generalship preparing intensively for his appearance, which is expected to last several hours, and comes as the Pollard inquiry moves into its third week of evidence, having seen most of the senior BBC executives touched by the Savile film that never aired.

It is likely to be an exacting experience for a man who clearly struggled when he had to give evidence before MPs on on the culture media and sport select committee last month, and who performed poorly when interviewed by John Humphrys on the Today programme on the morning of what turned out to be the day he resigned….
However, he is likely to come under greater pressure over his handling of the Newsnight affair in the couple of months after the Savile allegations were first aired by ITV, and in particular will be questioned on why he relied for so long on the account of events provided by Newsnight’s editor Peter Rippon, an account that had to be corrected at least three times. For instance, Rippon wrongly said that the police were aware of all Newsnight’s unbroadcast material, when in fact one of the abuse victims filmed by the programme had never gone to the police….
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/nov/22/jimmy-savile-scandal-george-entwistle-evidence

BBC cleared of coverup in Jimmy Savile case
But a report faults the British broadcaster’s decision to drop a news investigation of pedophilia allegations against the late TV host, as well as ensuing ineptitude. December 19, 2012|By Henry Chu, Los Angeles Times
LONDON — The BBC did not deliberately cover up sex abuse allegations against one of its most famous hosts in order to go ahead with tribute shows to him after his death, but its decision to drop a news investigation into the accusations was “seriously flawed,” a highly anticipated report released Wednesday says….
Pollard, a prominent former television news executive, was commissioned by the BBC to conduct an independent inquiry into why the corporation chose to kill an investigation of Savile by its program “Newsnight” that was on track to be aired in late 2011.
Savile, an eccentric figure who wore tracksuits and long hair, had died a few months earlier after many years as a children’s television host at the BBC. Other divisions of the broadcasting corporation were planning lavish holiday tributes to him.
Those tributes went ahead, and the “Newsnight” program was shelved. But this year, a rival network broadcast its own investigation of Savile, who is now suspected by police of having been a predatory pedophile responsible for molesting or raping dozens of young girls, some of them on BBC premises.

Pollard’s report, based on interviews and a review of more than 10,000 emails and other documents, concludes that there had not been any undue pressure from senior management to pull the “Newsnight” investigation in order to protect the BBC’s reputation or to continue with the tribute shows. “Newsnight” editor Peter Rippon made an honest but wrong assessment that the evidence in the investigation was not strong enough, the report says.
“The ‘Newsnight’ investigators got the story right,” Pollard said. “The decision by their editor to drop the investigation was clearly flawed and the way it was taken was wrong, but I believe it was done in good faith. It was not done to protect the Savile tribute programs.”
However, once the accusations surfaced on rival network ITV and questions began to be raised about the aborted “Newsnight” program, the BBC responded with breathtaking incompetence, the report says in a particularly damning finding.
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/dec/19/world/la-fg-britain-bbc-report-20121220

The Jimmy Savile child abuse scandal breaks
28 September: the scandal of Jimmy Savile’s child abuse allegations goes public – and the BBC investigates itself
Shelley Jofre, Panorama reporter
The Observer, Saturday 22 December 2012
When the story broke that Exposure was going to be doing a story on Jimmy Savile, and that Newsnight had somehow suppressed it, I suggested to my editor, Tom Giles, that we should do something about it. Like any journalist I just wanted to know what on earth had gone on.
The story was moving so quickly we made the film in a week – it normally takes a month. We were unravelling the whole thing on the hoof and managed to gather a huge amount of information about what happened with Savile at the BBC over four decades. From the testimonies, some of the stories seem jawdropping. Our archive producer did an amazing job of unearthing powerful footage of Savile so we saw how overtly sexual he was, groping and leering at women on the programmes we all watched as children.

The most poignant was the group of cub scouts who appeared on Jim’ll Fix It. The archive producer located footage of the boy I interviewed anonymously as a grown man. You could see the joy and happiness on his face as a nine-year-old during what should have been one of the biggest moments of his childhood, then he was molested shortly afterwards in Savile’s dressing room. He was so ashamed he didn’t tell anyone for 40 years….
Http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/dec/23/jimmy-savile-child-abuse-scandal

Jimmy Savile case may lead to inquiry against seven forces
Calls for inspectorate to assess how abuse allegations were handled by police Jamie Doward, Mark Townsend and Gemma O’Neill – The Observer, Saturday 3 November 2012
Several police forces could be investigated over their handling of sexual abuse allegations against Jimmy Savile after the police watchdog confirmed that an inquiry was a possibility and a lawyer representing alleged victims said there were urgent questions to be answered.
Alan Collins, a solicitor at the law firm Pannone, who is representing five of Savile’s alleged victims and has been approached by at least 20 others, said the case for the police to be investigated had become paramount. Collins said it should be the job of Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary (HMIC), the independent body set up to assess police forces, to investigate how and when officers had investigated Savile….
At least three forces – Surrey, Sussex and Jersey – are known to have been aware of allegations against Savile, but the true number is believed to be as high as seven.         http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/nov/03/jimmy-savile-case-inquiry

Penn State – Sandusky

Penn State charges raise questions about Paterno’s culpability
Charges that three former university administrators covered up child sexual abuse allegations against Jerry Sandusky suggest former Coach Joe Paterno could have been charged had he lived, some say.
By Peter Hall, Morning Call November 4, 2012
ALLENTOWN, Pa. — The charges filed last week accusing three former Penn State administrators of engaging in a “conspiracy of silence” to cover up child sexual abuse allegations against Jerry Sandusky raise questions about whether legendary football Coach Joe Paterno could have been charged if he were still living.
Former university President Graham Spanier and the others face charges including perjury and endangering the welfare of children.
“To be fair and consistent, you have to read this as a posthumous indictment of Joe Paterno,” said law professor Wes Oliver of Duquesne University in Pittsburgh….
Those who have watched the case said the grand jury presentment released Thursday paints Paterno as an active participant in the conspiracy.
“The reality is that he knew. He knew early on, and he chose to protect the image of the football program and to protect Penn State,” said Jennifer Storm, a victims advocate who has worked with two of the young men Sandusky molested when they were boys.
But Bruce Antkowiak, a former federal prosecutor who teaches at St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pa., said that without knowing everything that state prosecutors in the case know, it’s not fair to conclude that there was probable cause to charge Paterno. http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-paterno-20121104,0,5553402.story

Meet the Woman Who Exposed Jerry Sandusky
She’s Sara Ganim and she’s just 24. In a Glamour exclusive, she tells how she broke the story of Penn State’s sex-abuse scandal and changed college sports forever. by Liz Brody
“Anything else going on?” Sara Ganim asked her source late one night in 2009. As the crime reporter for a small newspaper in State College, Pennsylvania, it was a question she always ended with. And this evening, to Ganim’s surprise, the source replied, “Well, actually, a boy just came forward to the police and alleged sex crimes against Jerry Sandusky.”….
Ganim, a Penn State grad and a football fan herself, knew her way around the university’s online message boards. There she quickly found gossip about Sandusky getting too friendly with young boys. So she started asking around. “I’d say, ‘Hey, have you heard anything strange about Jerry Sandusky?'” And though people knew about the rumors, Ganim says, “almost no one believed they were true.”
For the next two years, Ganim tried to get real facts—”I just started knocking on doors,” she says—and pursued the story aggressively after joining the staff of Harrisburg’s The Patriot-News in January 2011…..
“Some people closed their doors in my face, and others definitely did not tell me the truth,” she says. “But many were relieved—they were done keeping the story bottled up inside.” What she uncovered was staggering: She identified two alleged victims and learned that Sandusky was under investigation by a grand jury for sexual abuse. (In Pennsylvania such proceedings are held in secret.) Ganim kept digging and, by this time last year, had enough evidence to write the first story exposing the grand jury hearing, as well as accusations that the former coach had molested at least one boy in the university’s locker room.

Some readers savaged the paper for printing “gossip.” But other media and sports reporters ignored the news, even as Ganim continued to report the story. “It felt like we were living in the Twilight Zone,” says The Patriot-News’ editor, David Newhouse. Adds Ganim, “Particularly with the local papers, I thought [that] was pretty irresponsible.” It took a full seven months—after Sandusky was arrested and publicly charged with the sexual abuse of eight boys he met through his charity, The Second Mile—for national news media to pounce. The horrifying charges included repeated oral sex and sodomy; one victim testified that he screamed in vain from the Sandusky family basement, knowing the coach’s wife was upstairs….
On November 8, based on Ganim’s reporting, The Patriot-News published a front-page editorial calling for the resignations of Penn State’s president, Graham Spanier, and its head coach of 45-plus years, Joe Paterno. The day after the editorial, the university forced out both men, and the campus erupted in student riots. It was only then that Ganim realized just how huge her story had become….

In one blistering article, she detailed how an incident witnessed by then grad student Mike McQueary had been watered down with every retelling—from “anal rape,” as McQueary described it to Paterno, to “something of a sexual nature,” as the coach retold it to the school vice president, to what Spanier eventually characterized as “conduct that made someone uncomfortable”—without ever being reported to police. (It later came out that Spanier and the board of trustees had known about the Sandusky investigation for months and done next to nothing.) Ganim’s discerning coverage made sure Penn State and other schools started taking abuse allegations seriously; soon after, similar cases drew attention at Syracuse University and The Citadel.
http://www.glamour.com/inspired/magazine/2012/02/meet-the-woman-who-exposed-jerry-sandusky

Rochdale Child Sex Ring

describes violence
Rochdale police and council ‘repeatedly warned’ about sex abuse risk in town  NHS team made 83 referrals to borough council from 2004-10 in town harbouring gang of nine finally jailed over child sex ring Rachel Williams
The Guardian, Wednesday 26 September 2012
Social workers and police in a town where nine men were found guilty of running a child sexual exploitation ring had been warned dozens of times that local girls were at risk of abuse in the years before charges were brought in that case, the Guardian can reveal.
Figures obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that an NHS team providing sexual health services to vulnerable young people made 83 referrals to Rochdale borough council about girls they thought were either being sexually exploited, or were at risk of exploitation, between 2004 and the end of 2010.

Staff on the crisis intervention team (CIT) also made 44 referrals to Greater Manchester police in the same period.
The revelations come as Rochdale’s safeguarding children board (SCB) publishes a review concluding there were “many missed opportunities” over the past five years to safeguard children and young people affected by sexual exploitation. A working group set up by the SCB in 2007 identified in its first year 50 young people affected by, or at risk of, exploitation, the report reveals.
At a Liverpool crown court trial this year, nine men were found to have “shared” five girls in Rochdale, plying them with fast food, drink and drugs so they could “pass them around” and use them for sex.

The victims, were raped, physically assaulted and forced to have sex with several men in a day, several times a week….
Rochdale MP Simon Danczuk said: “The Guardian’s investigation shows without any doubt that police and social services ignored an endemic problem of abuse.
“Time and again, the local authority were alerted to the fact these girls were being abused and they failed to do anything. We now need to know what action is being taken against these people that turned a blind eye to abuse and ignored numerous cries for help from young, vulnerable girls.”
The father of the victim referred to in the review said he believed that social workers were incompetent: “Case files show that social workers in Rochdale believed girls who were being systematically abused were ‘making their own choices’. By their neglect, they were complicit in prolonging the abuse. If they had being doing their job, they could have stopped this abuse years ago.”….
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/sep/27/rochdale-police-sex-abuse-girls

Rochdale child sex ring: council head to be questioned by MPs
Leader to be asked why social workers ‘missed opportunities’, as lawyer for victims considers legal action against authority  Lizzy Davies
The Guardian, Thursday 27 September 2012
The head of Rochdale council will be questioned by MPs over why his social workers “missed opportunities” to stop the sexual exploitation of young girls, it has emerged, as a lawyer for some of the victims said it was “very likely” they would take legal action against the local authority….

It revealed that, in 2007, a working group set up by the RBSCB had identified 50 young people – most aged between 10 and 17 – whom it believed to be affected by or at risk of exploitation.
Figures obtained separately by the Guardian showed social workers and police had made dozens of referrals concerning girls considered either to be victims or potential victims…..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/sep/27/rochdale-sex-ring-council-legal-action

Rochdale abuse scandal: Victims likely to sue Paul Keaveny  Thursday 27 September 2012 Victims of a child sex ring may take legal action against the authorities for failing to protect them after a damning report laid bare the extent of their failings.
Social workers, police and prosecutors “missed opportunities” to stop a child exploitation ring abusing young girls, a report into the scandal revealed today.
“Deficiencies” in the way children’s social care responded to the victims’ needs in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, were caused by “patchy” training of frontline staff, the Rochdale Borough Safeguarding Children Board (RBSCB) said in its 29-page report into child sexual exploitation (CSE)….
The picture which emerges from the report is one of vulnerable young girls, some as young as 10, who were being targeted for sexual abuse, being written off by those in authority who believed the girls were “making their own choices” and “engaging in consensual sexual activity”.

In reality, girls were being raped and often violently beaten.
The judge who sentenced the nine men said they treated their victims “as though they were worthless and beyond any respect”.
Richard Scorer, a solicitor for some of the abused girls, said it was “very likely” they would be taking legal action against the authorities for failing to protect them….
The gang of nine men received jail sentences of between four and 19 years in May.
The offences happened in and around Rochdale in 2008 and 2009.
The five girls – aged between 13 and 15 – were given alcohol, food and money in return for sex but there were times when violence was used.
Police said the victims were from “chaotic”, “council estate” backgrounds and as many as 50 girls could have been victims of the gang.
A chance to stop the gang was missed in 2008 and both the police and the CPS were forced to apologise for their failings….
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/rochdale-abuse-scandal-victims-likely-to-sue-8181056.html

Rochdale child abuse case: exploited girls faced ‘absolute disrespect’
MPs question why the NHS crisis team that was praised for raising the alarm about sexual abuse in Rochdale has suffered job cuts Rachel Williams    The Guardian, Tuesday 20 November 2012
It was a simple yet powerful piece of evidence. Asked what lay behind the failures in Rochdale over sexual exploitation of teenage girls, Sara Rowbotham, co-ordinator of the local NHS crisis intervention team, paused before answering. “It was about attitudes towards teenagers,” she told the home affairs select committee earlier this month. “It was absolute disrespect that vulnerable young people did not have a voice. They were overlooked. They were discriminated against. They were treated appallingly by protective services.”

Since nine men were jailed in May for “sharing” five girls, plying them with fast food, drink and drugs so they could use them for sex, a picture has emerged of missed opportunities to help young girls being exploited – based on a mistaken belief they were simply “making their own choices”. The NHS team has emerged as one of the few services that got it right. But staff numbers on the team, which offers one-to-one sexual health advice to vulnerable teenagers, have been cut from 10 to seven over the past three years.
A Guardian investigation this year found the crisis intervention team made more than 100 referrals about girls it thought were either being sexually exploited, or at risk of it, to Rochdale borough council social services and Greater Manchester police between 2004 and the end of 2010. A report published in September by the local safeguarding children board (SCB) was damning of the “poor response” of Rochdale’s children’s social care department. It also praised the crisis intervention team’s ability to understand that girls were victims of abuse, rather than consenting young adults. Its work, Rowbotham told the select committee, had helped secure the recent convictions, because the victims’ evidence was corroborated by the service’s case notes….
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/nov/20/rochdale-child-abuse-case

Other Cases

Tory child sex abuse ring claim: Cameron races to control scandal
• PM’s office unveils two inquiries into child sex abuse claim
• North Wales inquiry and police response to be reviewed
• As many as five child abuse inquiries ‘imminent’
• Tom Watson praises PM but calls for wider investigation
Patrick Wintour, political editor
guardian.co.uk, Monday 5 November 2012
The government is racing to stay ahead of the swirl of allegations about child abuse in the UK by announcing two further inquiries into an alleged abuse ring in north Wales in the 1970s and 1980s.
The first inquiry will look into the conduct of the original official inquiry into the child sex abuse ring and the second into the police handling of complaints at the time.
Faced by allegations that senior Conservative politicians may have been involved in the scandal at the time, David Cameron, while on an official visit to the Middle East, announced he would establish an urgent investigation into the conduct of the official inquiry held between 1996 and 2000.

In addition, the prime minister’s spokesman in London said a separate inquiry will be held into the way in which the police handled the investigation.
The spokesman conceded as many as five different inquiries were now underway, or imminent, looking into aspects of child abuse.
The spokesman did not rule out an over-arching figure being asked to look at the lessons to be drawn from the inquiries now covering the BBC, the NHS, the police and government.
Cameron rushed to act as the media threatened to identify the senior Tory figure close to Lady Thatcher alleged to have been involved in the child abuse.
The Labour MP Tom Watson also urged the government to act after victim Steve Messham said that the Waterhouse inquiry of 2000 only covered a fraction of the alleged assaults…..
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/nov/05/tory-child-sex-ring-claim

Wales child abuse: PM orders sex abuse inquiry probe  5 November 2012
The prime minister is appointing a “senior independent figure” to look into the way allegations of sexual abuse at north Wales children’s homes in the 1970s and ’80s were dealt with. Victim Steve Messham has said that the Waterhouse inquiry of 2000 only covered a fraction of the alleged assaults.
Another of the homes’ residents says it did not hear all of the abuse claims. Earlier, Downing Street said it would investigate Mr Messham’s claims of abuse by a 1980s Tory politician. Mr Messham is to meet the Welsh secretary on Tuesday….
Mr Cameron also urged anyone who knows anything about the allegations of abuse to contact police.

Abuse allegations
Allegations of abuse centred around the Bryn Estyn care home in north Wales and involving almost 40 children’s homes in Wales began to emerge in the 1990s, but a report commissioned in March 1994 by Clwyd County Council was never published amid legal concerns.
The-then Welsh Secretary William Hague ordered an inquiry in 1996 into the abuse, which heard from 650 people over three years who had been in care from 1974, and was published in 2000 by Sir Ronald Waterhouse, who died in 2011.
Carwyn Jones urged abuse victims who felt their cases were not investigated properly to contact the police.
Concerns have now been raised that the remit of the inquiry had been too narrow and that it had failed to consider allegations about children being taken out of the homes to be made available to abusers.
Speaking on BBC Newsnight on Friday, Mr Messham said he believed the Waterhouse inquiry had not heard all the available evidence.
“I don’t understand why on earth we had an inquiry if we had to leave out 30% of the abusers, and basically I was told to do that. I was told I couldn’t go into detail about these people, I couldn’t name them, and they wouldn’t question me on them.”

“They didn’t give me a reason, they just said ‘you were not allowed to do so’.” A source close to Mr Hague – who is now foreign secretary – has told the BBC that no concerns were raised with him about the terms of the inquiry he established when he was Welsh secretary, and that as the report was published more than two years after he left office, his successor could have changed those terms.
Keith Gregory, a Wrexham county borough councillor, told the BBC he was sexually, physically and mentally abused at Bryn Estyn in the 1970s, by staff and others from the local community.
He said he was “shocked and really devastated” that the Waterhouse inquiry had not looked into allegations children had been brought out of homes to be made available to abusers….
The inquiry identified 28 alleged perpetrators but they were never identified in public. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-20204687

Cyril Smith ‘sexually and physically abused young boys’ Simon Israel Home Affairs Correspondent    Tuesday 27 November 2012 UK
Greater Manchester police have concluded that the former Liberal MP, Sir Cyril Smith, was guilty of physical and sexual abuse of young boys over a period of many years.
Allegations came from eight young men back in 1970. They alleged that Cyril Smith subjected them to various forms of abuse in the early sixties.

All were living were living at the privately run children’s home Cambridge House hostel, in Rochdale, at the time, or were dependent on Cyril Smith for employment, money or welfare.
Lancashire Police opened a file and sent that off to the director of public prosecutions with 80 pages of evidence and a one-page letter from the then chief constable of Lancashire. He wrote – “Any charges of indecent assault founded on these allegations, as well as being stale, would be, in my view, completely without corroboration. Further, the characters of some of these men young men would be likely to render their evidence suspect.”
Outdated way of thinking
Today the Crown Prosecution Service says that way of thinking has gone and that, given the same today, Sir Cyril Smith would have been prosecuted
Nazir Afzal, chief crown prosecutor, said: “Prosecutors and police now recognise such crimes normally occur in private and that victims are often targeted because the offender doubts they will be believed.
http://www.channel4.com/news/cyril-smith-sexually-and-physically-abuse-young-boys

describes abuse
Exclusive: Eyewitness ‘saw Thatcher aide take boys to abuse’  Tuesday 06 November 2012 UK A former resident of the Wrexham care home at the centre of abuse allegations tells Channel 4 News that he saw evidence of abuse, and remembers seeing Sir Peter Morrison at the care home five times.
The former resident told Channel 4 News that although he did not recognise Sir Peter at the time, he later realised it was him.
Sir Peter, who died in 1995, was Margaret Thatcher’s parliamentary private secretary and was at the heart of the Tory establishment during the 1980s. Recently, he has been publicly linked to abuse at the care home.

The former resident, who was not abused himself, said: “Going through some stuff recently and I saw his face. I know now he was the MP for Chester at the time. Morrison. Red, wavy hair. I recognised him straight away.
“I saw him at Bryn Estyn, he turned up in a car, boy went off in his car, don’t know if he was in it. It was definitely his car, I saw him arrive in it then we went to bed and we saw it drive off….
David Cameron ordered an urgent investigation into whether the north Wales child abuse inquiry “properly did its job” after fresh allegations of abuse at Bryn Estyn emerged. It is alleged that a senior Thatcher-era politician, who has not been named, was involved….
Describing allegations of abuse from other residents, the former resident told Channel 4 News: “They said there was more than one, they said they were made to drink, there was a lot of people there, there was a party almost….”

The resident said he did inform police: “I made a statement to South Wales Police with regard to some alleged offences in SW area – a statement was taken but didn’t hear anything else about it.”
However, describing the effect the events had had on him, he said: “I’ve been carrying this around for 35 years. It’s destroyed every relationship in my life. I don’t trust anybody.
http://www.channel4.com/news/exclusive-eyewitness-saw-thatcher-aide-take-boys-to-abuse

Elmo actor faces sex abuse claim from fourth accuser  By Courtney Hazlett, TODAY  12/10/12 A fourth man is accusing Kevin Clash, the puppeteer and actor who for many years portrayed “Sesame Street” character Elmo, of sexual abuse.
In a lawsuit filed Monday in Miami, the accuser — using the name John Doe — claims that Clash befriended him in late 1995 or early 1996, when Doe was 16 or 17. In 1996, he says, Clash flew him from Miami to New York at Clash’s expense. It was during Doe’s stay in New York that the abuse allegedly happened.  In a statement, the victim’s attorney Jeff Herman said, “According to our lawsuit, Kevin Clash knowingly paid to transport a minor across state lines for the purpose of satisfying his sexual interests.”
Herman also represents two other men who’ve accused Clash of sexual abuse: second accuser Cecil Singleton and the third accuser, who is also using the name John Doe.
http://todayentertainment.today.com/_news/2012/12/10/15819226-elmo-actor-faces-sex-abuse-claim-from-fourth-accuser

Prosecutor: Pediatric dentist facing child porn possession charges By Laura Ly and Rande Iaboni, CNN Thu December 27, 2012
(CNN) — A pediatric dentist charged with possession and distribution of child pornography can still treat children at his Framingham, Massachusetts, dental office under a judge’s ruling, according to a news release from the Middlesex district attorney’s office.
Melvin A. Ehrlich, 52, was arraigned Thursday in Framingham District Court on three counts of possession of child pornography and two counts of distribution of child pornography, according to the release.
Ehrlich, who was arrested Wednesday, pleaded not guilty at his arraignment, according to Stephanie Chelf Guyotte, spokeswoman for the district attorney’s office.
“While the case remains under development and investigation, there is currently no evidence that presently leads law enforcement to believe that Ehrlich physically abused any children or manufactured any images of child pornography,” the news release said….
Authorities immediately launched an investigation that they say revealed Ehrlich had used the laptop “under various user names to download and distribute commercially traded child pornography images,” the release said….
http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/27/us/massachusetts-pediatric-dentist-charged/index.html

Abuses at infamous Florida boys reform school even more widespread, report says  By M. Alex Johnson, NBC News 12/10/12 Scientists have found 19 previously unknown grave shafts on the grounds of a notorious Florida reform school, suggesting that many more boys died there amid brutal conditions than had previously been known, the researchers said Monday.
The Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, which was also known as the Florida State Reform School, closed in June 2011 after state investigators and the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division confirmed widespread abuse over many decades.
The state attributed its decision to close the school to budgetary reasons. Yet long before then, the institution had been the target of investigations and lawsuits alleging not only physical and mental abuse but also forced labor, rape and even murder of the young charges sent to its care since it opened in 1900.
The prominent writer Roger Dean Kiser, author of “The White House Boys — An American Tragedy,” about the horrors he experienced while incarcerated there in the 1950s as a child, has called the school a “concentration camp for little boys.”….

They’re called the White House Boys because much of the abuse occurred in an 11-room building on the school grounds known as the White House, where former students say they were beaten with leather straps. A group of the former students sued the state in 2010, but the case was dismissed because the statute of limitations had expired….
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/10/15823192-abuses-at-infamous-florida-boys-reform-school-even-more-widespread-report-says

Documentation of the Boot Hill Cemetary (8JA1860), at the former Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, Marianna, Florida
http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/NEWS/AJDocs/20121210_DozierSchoolReport.pdf

School abuse victim wins $23 million in damages By Melissa Pamer, NBCLosAngeles.com LOS ANGELES — A former student in Los Angeles was awarded $23 million in damages Tuesday for sexual abuse he endured at the hands of his elementary school teacher.
A Los Angeles Superior Court jury deliberated for less than five hours before finding in favor of the teen.
The lawsuit, filed on his behalf in October 2009, concerned abuse by Forrest Stobbe, the boy’s fifth-grade teacher at Queen Anne Elementary School in the Mid-Wilshire area.
Stobbe was sentenced to 16 years in prison after pleading no contest to criminal charges in the case in 2011. He had been arrested in 2010, when he was 39….
Stobbe abused the boy 10 to 15 times in the classroom during the 2008-9 school years, and another five times during the summer of 2009, according to Estey. http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/19/16014572-school-abuse-victim-wins-23-million-in-damages

Merzbacher victim: Archdiocese has much to answer for December 6, 2012
Regarding Baltimore Archdiocese Vice-Chancellor Sean Caine’s recent letter justifying the church’s response to allegations of child sexual abuse, I am glad that in 1993 Maryland’s attorney general made it clear that all abuse cases should be reported (“Archdiocese acted responsibly,” Dec. 2)….
When I returned to the archdiocese in 1993 to again report the abuse I had suffered, it was through Fr. William Mannion. At that point I had been in touch with 17 other victims of John Merzbacher.
I was never contacted directly by the diocese. Instead I was sent a message from the diocese through Fr. Mannion: “The diocese is going to contact the police and give them your name only.” Eventually I and the other victims reached out to an attorney, who contacted the Baltimore City police. They reported the crimes to the state’s attorney’s office.

The archdiocese knew full well of my fear of contacting the police on my own after the death threats I had received at gunpoint from Mr. Merzbacher. Nor did the diocese contact any other former Catholic Community Middle School students during this time.
For seven years after the trial of Mr. Merzbacher I wrote repeatedly to Cardinal William Keeler and the superintendent of Catholic Schools asking that Eileen Weisman be removed from her position as principal of the Cathedral School. It was only after I contacted the head of the lay board that action was finally taken to remove Ms. Weisman from her position. It wasn’t until seven years after the Merzbacher trial that she was forced to resign, and not only did the diocese allow her to retire but stood by while the parents at the school collected money to dedicate a playground in her name…. http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/readersrespond/bs-ed-abuse-archdiocese-20121206,0,7429725.story

Catholic officials knew of teacher’s abuse, court files indicate
John Merzbacher, sent to prison, now seeks release  By Tricia Bishop, The Baltimore Sun November 25, 2012 The Catholic-school teacher had a pre-teen student pinned to the ground in his Baltimore classroom, the girl’s blouse open and her chest exposed when the doorknob suddenly turned and the school principal — a nun — burst in.
The screaming girl thought she was about to be rescued, according to court records that describe the scene at the Catholic Community Middle School in Locust Point. But Sister Eileen Weisman, who had a key to the room, merely chastised the teacher, John Joseph Merzbacher, for locking the door.

“[Weisman] looked down and her exact words were ‘John, oh John, I told you never to lock the classroom door,'” Linda Tiburzi, who described the incident in a civil court deposition in the mid-1990s, said in a recent interview. “And then she looked at me and said ‘I never want you staying after school again.’ … That’s all she said, that’s all she did, there was nothing, there was no investigation, there were no questions.”
That incident is one of several outlined in court documents, analyzed in a Baltimore Sun investigation, indicating that Weisman and other Catholic officials were aware of the lay teacher’s sexual abuse of students in the 1970s but did not report it until Merzbacher was criminally investigated in the 1990s.
Recent accounts from more than two dozen former pupils and a review of hundreds of pages of documents describe several situations in which critics claim the church had opportunities to protect schoolchildren from Merzbacher, but did not notify police of the allegations against the teacher.

The alleged failures took place in two phases. In the 1970s while the abuse was occurring, Weisman and at least two archdiocesan priests ignored the behavior, even when confronted with it directly, according to accusations in court records. Years later, Weisman and archdiocesan officials delayed reporting Merzbacher to enforcement agencies, despite a victim’s allegations of abuse….
In court records, former students describe Merzbacher, now 71, as a charmer who drew them in with rock records, forbidden foul language, alcohol and marijuana, then terrorized them. The potbellied English teacher beat the boys and humiliated the girls, engaging in sexual acts with both genders and forcing the kids to turn against one another, his accusers claim in the documents. He once fired a revolver in class, students testified during Merzbacher’s trial, and routinely used the weapon to threaten children with death….

Weisman and two archdiocesan priests — identified in court documents as Herbert Derwart and Richard Tillman — were involved in firing another teacher who said he brought concerns about Merzbacher to them in 1974. The officials allegedly told the teacher, Gary Homberg, that he could continue in his position “only under the condition [he] made no mention to anyone of [his] observations of John Merzbacher’s sexual misconduct, the allegations and rumors about John Merzbacher, or the school’s or church’s knowledge of these allegations.”
Weisman went to the archdiocese for guidance after Homberg’s allegations, telling officials that Merzbacher may have brought a gun to school and may have been “interacting inappropriately with the students.” Merzbacher was placed on leave, but reinstated after Weisman said she conducted an internal investigation….
Merzbacher was put on administrative leave while Weisman investigated the claims against him and reinstated shortly thereafter via a Feb. 22, 1974, letter from archdiocese attorney Joseph P. McCurdy Jr., which was submitted in court during the criminal case. That same day, the attorney sent a letter to Homberg advising him of his termination….
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/bs-md-archdiocese-merzbacher-20121124,0,163396.story

$123M settlement approved in Del. child abuse case – Esteban Parra, The (Wilmington, Del.) News Journal Share – The former pediatrician last year was found guilty of raping or assaulting more than 100 girls he treated. His own videos helped to convict him.            November 20. 2012 – GEORGETOWN, Del. — A Superior Court judge approved a $123 million class-action settlement related to the child sexual abuse committed by former Lewes, Del., pediatrician Earl Bradley.

Under the Monday settlement’s terms, the money would be put into a pool for victims, similar to the system used for victims in priest sex-abuse cases.
A mediator will evaluate each claim and separate them into different categories based on the severity of abuse. A settlement amount then will be assigned to each category and all approved for that category will be paid.
“The approval of this class-action settlement marks the end of litigation arising from Dr. Bradley’s 15-year reign of terror and abuse in Sussex County,” Superior Court Judge Joseph R. Slights III wrote in his 56-page decision….
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2012/11/19/delaware-child-abuse-case/1715867/

Historic child abuse investigation will now cost £19m, Assembly told
By Lesley-Anne McKeown Wednesday, 21 November 2012
Costs for an inquiry into historical institutional child abuse in Northern Ireland could reach £19m, the Assembly has been told.
Ulster Unionist MLA Mike Nesbitt, who chairs Stormont’s OFMDFM committee, said MLAs had been informed in September that predicted costs had doubled from initial estimates.
The Strangford MLA added: “On the estimated costs of the inquiry the committee sought clarification from the department whether the figures in the financial and explanatory memorandum of between £7.5m and £9m remained accurate.

“Officials advised the committee that the estimated costs had been revised upwards — doubled in fact to £15-19m to take into account the complexities of the inquiry and the associated legal costs.”….
Initially, the inquiry was to look at cases between 1945 and 1995, but MLAs have since agreed to extend it back to 1922.
The probe comes after the Ryan Report uncovered decades of endemic abuse in some religious institutions in the Republic of Ireland.
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/northern-ireland/historic-child-abuse-investigation-will-now-cost-19m-assembly-told-16240341.html

45 children a day at risk from sexual exploitation by gangs, warns inquiry
Local authorities, police and healthcare professionals ignoring warning signs displayed by those at risk, says interim report
Alexandra Topping    The Guardian, Tuesday 20 November 2012
As many as 45 children a day are at risk of rape, violence and sexual exploitation at the hands of gangs who prey on their vulnerability, according to the biggest study of its kind carried out in England….
The inquiry’s interim report found that 2,409 children had been sexually exploited in a 14-month period form August 2010 to October 2011, but the real figure was likely to be “far greater” because of lack of data and confusion in reporting sexual exploitation. As many as 16,500 children were identified as being at “high risk” of sexual exploitation – displaying three or more warning signs including running away from home, drug or alcohol misuse and criminality.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/nov/21/child-risk-sex-exploitation-gang?intcmp=239

describes crimes
The victims of child sexual exploitation: groomed, raped, frightened – Children living in residential care are particularly at risk of sexual exploitation, according to report
Alexandra Topping The Guardian, Tuesday 20 November 2012
Teegan, a white British girl, told report authors she had been sexually exploited from the age of 12. After being groomed she was taken to “parties” across England in nice houses, sometimes mansions, where men could choose which girls they wanted to have sex with from a book with photographs and ages of all of the girls available. Teegan thought she cost around £500 a hour, and said in some cases one girl could be hired for a group of men over an evening. If Teegan refused, she would be beaten and her family threatened. After the abuse, she took several overdoses, was placed in secure accommodation, and self-harmed – sometimes on a daily basis. She said she was too scared to make a formal complaint.
Marina, 16, and her 14-year-old sister were sexually exploited after being groomed by white British shop owners in return for alcohol and cigarettes. Marina also had a “boyfriend” in his late 30s, of North African origin, who would pass her around his friends for sex. She told the report that she was driven to “parties” where she would be raped by multiple men before being dropped off at home.
In another case, when Sahida, a 17-year-old British Pakistani girl, said a family member had sexually abused her she was threatened with a forced marriage. After the threats she began spending time with older Asian males, and was moved to multiple locations by them. She is now pregnant and has been physically assaulted by her family as a punishment.

Children living in residential care are particularly at risk of sexual exploitation, according to the report. A specialist sexual exploitation service told the report that a particular home was repeatedly targeted by groomers, and that new girls coming into the home were likely to be sexually exploited….
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/nov/21/groomed-raped-victims-sexual-exploitation

Sugar Ray Leonard: I was child sex abuse victim Reuters October 29, 2012
STATE COLLEGE, Pa. — Boxing legend Sugar Ray Leonard recounted his own sexual abuse by coaches he trusted, telling a Penn State audience Monday he hoped to encourage other victims to report abuse to police. Leonard spoke at a sold-out conference on child sex abuse hosted by Penn State weeks after former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, 68, was sentenced to prison for 30 to 60 years for sexually assaulting 10 boys he befriended through his charity for at-risk youth. Leonard, 56, who retired after winning world boxing titles in five different weight classes, said as a youth he was sexually assaulted by men he trusted as his boxing coaches.

“Trust is a very sacred thing, especially for young people, kids, or a young boxer, so I trusted these people, these individuals who impacted my life,” said Leonard said. “They told me everything I wanted to hear, and more.” The former champion said he used drugs and alcohol to “numb” his shame of being a victim of child sexual abuse. “I beat myself up for years,” said Leonard as the two-day conference got underway with Hurricane Sandy quickly approaching Pennsylvania.
Now Leonard said he wants to step into the spotlight as a leader in the fight against child sex abuse in the hopes it will help other victims find the courage to report crimes to police.
“I’m going to be the poster child. I don’t care,” Leonard said to applause.
“I will be that leader. I will stand right there and say, ‘Yes, something must be done now. Not later, now,’” Leonard said….
http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/breaking/chi-sugar-ray-leonard-child-sex-abuse-victim-20121029,0,3918081.story

New children’s home sex abuse probe Nov 6 2012 The National Crime Agency (NCA) is to mount an investigation into fresh allegations of abuse in children’s homes in North Wales amid claims that a senior Tory was among the perpetrators.
Home Secretary Theresa May said the director general of the NCA Keith Bristow would review the original police handling of the case – which dates back to the 1970s and 1980s – as well as looking at the latest allegations by one of the victims.
“The Government is treating these allegations with the utmost seriousness,” she told MPs in a Commons statement. “Child abuse is a hateful, abhorrent and disgusting crime and we must not allow these allegations to go unanswered.”

Mrs May said she would also consider Labour calls for a wider, over-arching inquiry into child abuse – including the allegations involving the late DJ and BBC presenter Jimmy Savile – if the evidence was shown to justify it.
Labour backbencher Tom Watson, who has raised claims of a past paedophile ring linked to No 10 and of a former Cabinet minister allegedly involved in child abuse, dismissed the latest moves as simply “the next stage of a cover-up”.
The announcement comes after David Cameron said he would be appointing a senior figure to review the original public inquiry into abuse at the Bryn Estyn children’s home led by Sir Ronald Waterhouse, a retired high court judge.

The investigations followed renewed allegations last week by one of the victims, Steve Messham, who said the inquiry examined only a fraction of the claims of abuse. He told BBC2’s Newsnight that he was taken out of the home and “sold” to men for sexual abuse at a nearby hotel and that a senior Tory from the time was among the perpetrators….
http://www.chesterchronicle.co.uk/chester-news/uk-world-news/2012/11/06/new-children-s-home-sex-abuse-probe-59067-32177960/

Officials: 31 people fired in Army daycare scandal By LOLITA C. BALDOR | Associated Press  12/19/12
WASHINGTON (AP) — At least 31 people were fired from two Army day care centers at Fort Myer, Va., last week after officials scrutinized their backgrounds and found criminal convictions ranging from fourth-degree sexual assault and drug use to other assaults, a defense official said Wednesday….
According to officials, one person was charged with four counts of assault on children and the other was charged with five counts of assault. The alleged actions included hitting, grabbing or pushing the children. In the days after the arrests, the two administrators were dismissed, others were brought in and town hall meetings took place with parents.
http://news.yahoo.com/officials-31-people-fired-army-daycare-scandal-012217735–politics.html

Former priest alleges ‘system of abuse cover-ups’ 11/9/12 A former New South Wales priest claims to have witnessed a “system of cover-ups” within the Catholic Church to hide child sexual abuse.
Kevin Lee was ordained as a priest 20 years ago and worked as a police chaplain for some of that time, but was relieved of his parish responsibilities in Western Sydney this year when he admitted to marrying a woman in secret.
His comments follow those of Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox who told Lateline on Thursday night that the Catholic Church is involved in cover-ups and paedophile priests have destroyed evidence to avoid prosecution. Mr Lee told Lateline on Friday that abuse is widely covered up in the church and that he first became aware of it as soon as he was in the seminary.

“People used to tell me and people in the first parish I was in started to confess their frustration with the authorities and the church for not dealing with the abuse that happened to their sons,” he said.
“I became aware that some of the other priests were actually paedophiles and were not necessarily becoming priests because they wanted to help people, but because they were paedophiles who wanted the opportunity,” he said.
Mr Lee says a church protocol was in place for dealing with cases of child sexual abuse, but it was not actually used.
“I saw a system of cover-ups, a system of blind-eye turning and just ignorance of the fact that it was happening,” he said. He says he took his concerns to superiors within the church but was knocked back.

“In my earlier years as a priest, I was having these people coming to me in confession or just sharing in counselling sessions their experience of frustration and anger with the church that had ignored their pleas of justice when their children had been abused and I started writing the notes down,” he said.
“I was speaking to a barrister at one point and I thought he was going to help my case by putting it forward in some legal process. “He said ‘document everything you have’, and everything I had I took to authorities within the church and I was told I needed more evidence.”
Mr Lee says church authorities told him the allegation he brought them were hearsay. “In the end I got frustrated with the fact that it was like the hierarchy in the Church was saying we don’t believe you, you’re a liar, you’re making it up,” he said….
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-11-10/former-priest-claims-to-have-seen-child-sex-abuse-cover-ups/4364572

Brother convicted of sex abuse a church ‘treasure’ By Emma Alberici  11/26/12 The head of the Patrician Brothers in Australia has apologised after a brother jailed for child sexual abuse was referred to as a “treasure” in a church publication. Patrician Brother Thomas Grealy was convicted of molestation and buggery charges in 1997.
He spent four years in jail for the rape and indecent assault of two boys when he was principal at the Patrician Brothers’ Primary School at Granville in Western Sydney.
During his trial the court heard Brother Augustine, as Grealy was then known, would cover the statue of the Virgin Mary in his office with a coat to hide his shame before abusing the nine and 10-year-old boys in his care.

Not only does he remain a Patrician brother, but in a September newsletter Grealy is pictured standing alongside leaders of the Patricians in Australia and is referred to in the caption as one of three “Patrician treasures”. Lawyer Jason Parkinson represents five men who allege they were abused by Grealy in the 1970s.
“It’s had such a detrimental effect on their life that there’s been a number of suicide attempts and a number of serious issues in relation to self-harm,” he said. “[I] just couldn’t believe that the order would refer to a child molester as a treasure.
“It just goes beyond belief that they would even be inviting him to remain within their group. He should’ve been shunned, should’ve been sent away. Shouldn’t be allowed in the order.” Nearly 40 years later, Mr Parkinson said the Patrician Brothers had not taken responsibility for Grealy’s behaviour and was squabbling with The Archdiocese of Sydney over responsibility….

Brother Philip Mulhall, the head of the Patrician Order in Australia, was until recently also the executive officer for national standards around dealing with child sex abuse claims for the entire Catholic Church in Australia.
He says the publication describing Grealy as a treasure was a “dreadful, sad mistake”….
Brother Mulhall said Grealy had never been dismissed from the order….
Another Patrician Brother was charged with child sexual abuse at the Patrician Brothers College at Blacktown about 12 months ago but remained at the school for two months before his removal….
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-11-27/brother-convicted-of-sex-abuse-a-church-treasure/4393618

Keyon Dooling stayed in a psychiatric hospital this summer, talks with Katie Couric about his history of abuse (VIDEO) By Eric Freeman | Ball Don’t Lie – 11/12/12
In late September, veteran Boston Celtics guard Keyon Dooling surprised the NBA world when he announced his retirement less than two months after signing a new contract. However, it turned out that Dooling had an excellent reason for his decision. After years of suppressing a history of sexual abuse, Dooling understood that he had to open up about his experiences, that he needed a change in his life, and that he had to spend more time with his family. It was a brave choice for a man who had earned the respect of teammates, opponents, coaches, and employers over the course of 12 seasons in the league.

Until now, though, we haven’t heard much about the experiences this summer that led Dooling to step away from basketball. As detailed by David Aldridge of NBA.com, Dooling dealt with hallucinations and related issues brought on by a form of post-traumatic stress disorder and had to spend a significant amount of time in a psychiatric hospital….
Dooling was exhibiting behaviors familiar to soldiers returning from war zones. But Post Traumatic Stress Disorders aren’t limited to those who fight in wars. Police officers, firefighters, anyone subject to a severe emotional episode can suffer from PTSD.
http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nba-ball-dont-lie/keyon-dooling-stayed-psychiatric-hospital-summer-talks-katie-225458656–nba.html

Report of ’80s Sexual Abuse Rattles Yeshiva Campus By VIVIAN YEE December 13, 2012
A tall, imposing rabbi with a black goatee who served as assistant principal and principal during his 27 years at Yeshiva University High School for Boys, George B. Finkelstein was the face of authority to Mordechai Twersky, who graduated in 1981.
So when Rabbi Finkelstein asked Mr. Twersky to “hit him hard” during a meeting in his office in 1980, Mr. Twersky said in an interview on Thursday, he was mortified. When Mr. Twersky refused, the rabbi knocked him to the ground and sat on him, goading him to wrestle. He could feel the rabbi’s erection, Mr. Twersky, now 48, said.

Mr. Twersky’s account was published Thursday on the Web site of The Jewish Daily Forward, which also reported that another former student said that in the same year, when he was 16, the Talmud teacher, Rabbi Macy Gordon, visited him in his dormitory room. Rabbi Gordon inspected his genitalia, the student told The Forward. Then he sodomized him with a toothbrush.
Both rabbis have denied engaging in any inappropriate sexual behavior.
Rabbi Gordon’s accuser said his parents had complained to administrators, who promised action but did nothing. Several years later, Mr. Twersky, who said he wrestled with Rabbi Finkelstein twice more, also raised concerns with administrators, and several other students also complained about the rabbi’s wrestling. Yet administrators of Yeshiva University, the prestigious Modern Orthodox institution in Washington Heights that runs the high school, allowed each man to simply leave.
The university president from 1976 to 2003, Norman Lamm, who is now its chancellor, told The Forward that he never notified the police….

On Thursday, as the news spread across the campus shared by the university and the high school, Rabbi Hershel Schachter, 71, said he knew of another staff member who was dismissed for inappropriate behavior with students around the same time. He also said he once knew a university student who said Rabbi Finkelstein had touched him inappropriately, but was afraid to speak out.
Mr. Twersky, now a journalist in Jerusalem, says he threatened to sue in 2000 unless Dr. Lamm publicly apologized or offered compensation, but was rebuffed. A Yeshiva official had said Rabbi Finkelstein’s “condition” would be treated, but nobody at Yeshiva reached out to victims, Mr. Twersky said.
“It dawned upon me that I had not merely been wrestled with and violated, but knowingly abandoned by the high school leadership,” he said Thursday.

That approach was not unusual for the time; an article in The New York Times Magazine in June described how teachers of the prestigious Horace Mann School in the Riverdale section of the Bronx had behaved inappropriately with students around the same era. By the late 1980s, several high-profile cases involving schools and youth organizations had begun to raise awareness of sexual abuse, said David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/14/nyregion/report-of-sexual-abuse-rattles-manhattan-yeshiva-campus.html

Bleach Attack on Advocate for Jewish Victims of Sexual Abuse
A fishmonger hurled bleach at an advocate for victims of sexual abuse. Both are members of Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community. By Chana Ya’ar 12/14/2012
A Williamsburg fishmonger hurled a cup of bleach Tuesday at a rabbi who advocates for victims of sexual abuse. Both are members of Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community.
Police have charged 36-year-old Williamsburg resident Meilech Schnitzler, for allegedly throwing the chemical at Rabbi Nuchem Rosenberg as he walked near Schnitzler’s fish store on Tuesday. For years, Rosenberg has been blogging about sexual abuse in the hareidi-religious Jewish community.

The rabbi’s face and eyes were burned by the bleach, and his clothes were ruined as well, according to a police report….
Rosenberg, 62, has told media that in the past, efforts to intimidate him have not been taken seriously by the office of Brooklyn District Attorney Charles J. Hynes. He also accused Hynes of turning a blind eye to crime in the Brooklyn hareidi-religious community for financial and political gain. The position of district attorney in New York is an elective office.
Tensions are high this week, due to the conviction on Monday of Rabbi Nehemia Weberman, a prominent self-styled “counselor” in New York’s hareidi-religious Jewish community. Weberman was convicted on 59 counts of sexual abuse.
However, police said there appeared to be no connection between the attack on Rosenberg and the conviction of Weberman, who had the backing of the community’s rabbinical leaders as well as much of the Jewish community both in the United States and abroad.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/163119#.UNFBMax1tPg

Policeman says inquiry should spur church to change 11/13/12 The senior policeman who blew the whistle on an alleged police cover-up of church sex abuse in New South Wales has called on the Catholic Church to make radical changes to fix problems plaguing the church.
Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox spoke to Lateline just hours after Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced the creation of a royal commission into institutional responses to instances of child sexual abuse.
Pressure had been building on the Government to react to growing social and political outrage at the latest series of revelations of paedophilia in society. Most are centred on the Catholic Church, but Ms Gillard says that it is not the only focus of the inquiry, which will look into claims across the breadth of society. http://www.abc.net.au/news/4368086

Gillard launches royal commission into child abuse By Simon Cullen and staff Mon Nov 12, 2012 Prime Minister Julia Gillard has announced the creation of a national royal commission into institutional responses to instances of child sexual abuse. The decision was taken at a meeting of federal cabinet this afternoon.
Ms Gillard had been under pressure to act following growing calls for a national inquiry into explosive allegations by a senior New South Wales police investigator that the Catholic Church covered up evidence involving paedophile priests.
A number of senior Labor MPs, as well as key independents, had already voiced their support for action on a national scale.
Opposition Leader Tony Abbott also declared his support for a “wide-ranging” royal commission into child sex abuse but said it should not just focus on claims involving the Catholic Church….
http://www.abc.net.au/news/4367364

Ex-teacher, Catholic brother face assault charges Lateline By Matthew Carney and staff  11/13/12 Sydney police have arrested a former teacher and a Catholic brother over alleged assaults against children dating back more than two decades.
Detectives from the Sex Crimes Squad arrested the 58-year-old former teacher in Blacktown in the city’s west late on Monday afternoon. A 59-year-old Catholic brother was arrested an hour later at The Entrance on the NSW central coast….
Police allege the offences involved two 13-year-old boys in 1987 and an eight-year-old girl in 1985, with some of the incidents taking place at a Catholic college in Blacktown and a primary school at Lalor Park.
ABC TV’s Lateline program reported the arrests are linked to an alleged paedophile ring, and it understands more arrests are to follow….
http://www.abc.net.au/news/4367886

Lawyer alleges church cover-up as late as 2005 By Suzanne Smith   Wed Nov 14, 2012 The senior lawyer who reviewed the Catholic Church’s Towards Healing protocols says the church was still covering up sexual abuse as late as 2005.
Professor Patrick Parkinson was cited by Cardinal George Pell as the man who had reviewed the church’s protocols on two occasions and had given them his tick of approval. But Professor Parkinson has told Lateline he has withdrawn his support for the protocol because the church failed to take action over clergy who do not comply. He alleges a church cover-up as late as 2005 put children at risk. And he says the church behaviour alleged by New South Wales Detective Chief Inspector Peter Fox and Victorian police amounts to “organised criminality”.

Responding to the announcement of a royal commission into institutionalised child sexual abuse, Cardinal Pell drew on the authority of Professor Parkinson. “We follow the Towards Healing procedures here in Sydney. They were set in place in early 1997. They have been twice reviewed by Professor Parkinson, one of the leading authorities in the area,” Cardinal Pell said.
“Since 1997 one of the significant protocols that’s in place is, [it’s] completely prohibited to shift priests who have been charged, to shift them around. “If and where that has been done, that is against the protocols.”
Professor Parkinson was involved in regularly reviewing the Towards Healing protocol up until 2009. He says he no longer supports the document, or the church body that it established to investigate any failures.

“My disagreement with the Catholic Church has been that I have challenged them over failures to comply with the letter and spirit of the protocols,” he said.
“As a matter of integrity I could no longer support the National Committee of Professional Standards while there was a gap between their rhetoric and their actions.” http://www.abc.net.au/news/4372512

describes abuse – More boys sexually abused at M’sian orphanage: NGO
Asia News Network By R.S.N. Murali in Malacca/The Star | Asia News Network – Fri, Nov 23, 2012
Malacca (The Star/ANN) – An NGO has claimed that more underage boys are being sexually abused at a government home for boys in Durian Daun in the Malaysian state of Malacca. Three boys, aged 13 and 14, lodged police reports on Nov 12 at the state police headquarters in Malacca, Malaysian Welfare and Social Organisation (Perbak) president Muhammad Khairul Hafiz claimed….
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/more-boys-sexually-abused-msian-orphanage-ngo-090002503.html

may be very triggering
Prosecutor: Man raped, abused 13 infants, children and videotaped attacks By NBC News staff 6 Dec 2012
A Massachusetts man raped and sexually abused more than a dozen young children in their homes and videotaped the assaults, a prosecutor said Thursday. The purported victims were as young as 8 days old, Middlesex District Attorney Gerry Leone said….
John Burbine, 49, of Wakefield, was indicted Thursday by a Middlesex grand jury on more than 100 counts of child sex offenses. He gained access to many of the children through a child care service operated by his wife, Leone said at a news conference Thursday.
According to authorities, Burbine and his wife advertised child care and tutoring services on various websites including parenting websites and coupon service websites. They also transported children to another family’s home for day care and ran a summer activities program in which they took children to various places, prosecutors said.

Burbine raped and sexually assaulted at least 13 infants and young boys and girls who were in his care from August 2010 through August 2012, according to the indictment. Many of the children were abused multiple times over several months or years, the charges allege.
The victims ranged in age from 8 days to 3½ years old and are from Stoneham, Medford, Newton, Reading, Melrose, Woburn and Waltham, prosecutors said. Investigators said they found images and videos on Burbine’s home computer of the victims “posed in various states of nudity and engaged in sexual acts” “It is alleged the defendant videotape recorded the assaults on the victims,” the prosecutor’s office said.
“He committed these unspeakable crimes in the victims’ homes and communities. Further, the defendant filmed the repeated, unthinkable abuse,” Leone said. “The defendant gained access and opportunity to abuse young children through advertising child care services with his wife, who operated a tutoring and child care business, which was not licensed. Children are our most vulnerable victims and we will continue to prosecute to the fullest extent those who harm or exploit them.”
Burbine’s wife, Marian Burbine, 46, of Wakefield, has been indicted on charges of reckless endangerment of a child and operating an unlicensed day care business. Prosecutors said she was not present during the alleged rapes and did not know about them….
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/06/15735891-prosecutor-man-raped-abused-13-infants-children-and-videotaped-attacks

Ritual Abuse and Mind Control Information

The Role of Ritual in the Organised Abuse of Children Michael Salter 13 NOV 2012   Child Abuse Review Vol. 21 Issue 5 DOI: 10.1002/car.2215
Over the last 30 years, allegations of ritual child sexual abuse have emerged from child protection cases and legal proceedings and from adults and children in psychotherapy. These allegations have been met with disbelief from many practitioners and academics. Children and adults disclosing ritual abuse continue to present in a range of circumstances and recent substantiations of ritual abuse allegations call for a grounded analysis of their claims. This paper is based on qualitative interviews with 16 adults who described experiencing ritual abuse in childhood. They described the ways in which sexually abusive groups generated shared rationales of religious or mythological justifications for organised abuse. Participants were forced to internalise these rationales in degrading and dehumanising ordeals, whereupon they became active in facilitating their own abuse and/or the abuse of others. Ritual abuse can therefore be conceptualised as a device or strategy that enjoins the participation of victims in organised abuse whilst simultaneously accomplishing exculpation for perpetrators.

“The evidence base for ritual abuse is complex, including successful convictions in child sex prosecutions where ritual abuse was alleged, and a range of studies documenting long-term and serious psychological harm amongst children and adults disclosing organised and ritual abuse (for a summary, see Noblitt and Perskin, 2000, chapter 6). In recent years, ritual abuse has been substantiated in criminal investigations in North America (for newspaper reports, see Gyan, 2010; Lemoine, 2008a, 2008b), the UK and Europe (de Bruxelles, 2011; Kelly, 1998), and it has been documented in African and European child trafficking networks (International Organization of Migration, 2001). A recent resurgence in publications on ritual abuse highlights that adults and children are continuing to disclose ritual abuse in a variety of settings (Epstein et al., 2011; Noblitt and Perskin-Noblitt, 2008; Sachs and Galton,  2008; Sarson and MacDonald, 2008).”

“Conclusion
This analysis of survivors’ accounts of ritual abuse has shown how rituals serve as legitimising practices within organised abuse. In participants’ accounts, abusive groups utilised ritual practices to generate a private discourse about the righteous domination of abusive men over women and children, a discourse often marked with references to the ‘natural’ or ‘supernatural’ order. In this context, ritualistic practices were not simply a deviant form of religious activity, but rather they served to imbue organised abuse with metaphysical or religious overtones, thereby recasting sexual abuse as a masculine right, even a duty, rather than as a practice of control and power. The internal and private discourses of abusive groups, with their copious mentions of Satan, magical powers and eternal damnation, may appear jarringly naive and even garish to those unfamiliar with the abusive contexts in which they have arisen. However, for victims of ritual abuse, they invoke a metaphysical order in which they are required to submit to further abuse and torture. Within traumatic rituals in which they were forced into contact with a range of taboo substances, participants’ views of themselves ultimately came to accord with the view of their abusers. In accordance with the mythos of the abusive group, they came to view themselves as polluted and contaminated vessels whose lot was to endure ongoing abuse and violence at the hands of men who claimed a natural or supernatural mandate to do so.” http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/car.2215/abstract

may be very triggering
Cornish ‘white witches’ guilty of ritual sex abuse on girls
Police say children as young as three may have been involved in coven’s ceremonies    Steven Morris         guardian.co.uk, Friday 14 December 2012
Two members of a Cornish white witch coven have been convicted of carrying out ritualistic sex abuse on young girls.
Peter Petrauske, 72, who claimed to be a high priest, and Jack Kemp, 69, donned robes and carried pagan artefacts when they attended ceremonies during which children were forced to strip and then abused. Police believe children as young as three may have been involved.

The abuse only emerged after Kemp was arrested on an unrelated charge, prompting victims of past offences to come forward.
The pair showed little emotion as they were led from the dock at Truro crown court on Friday. Petrauske, who described himself as the high priest of a white witches’ coven in St Ives, was convicted of one count of rape, one count of aiding and abetting an attempt to rape and one count of indecent assault.
Kemp was found guilty of indecent assault and indecency with a child. He was cleared of four other sexual offences. The jury is still considering verdicts on several other sexual offences.
Police launched an investigation last year when Kemp’s arrest caused rumours to spread around their home town of Falmouth.
Alleged victims claimed that Kemp, an ex-soldier and tin miner, and Petrauske, a former member of the merchant navy, had taken part in rituals during which children as young as three were plied with alcohol, forced to strip in front of men wearing white robes and abused. They were given money and sweets to buy their silence and were too frightened to report what had happened, it was claimed.
Prosecutor Jason Beal said children’s wrists were tied and some reported having hot wax poured over their bodies; one said a dagger had been drawn over her body.
Beal said the duo “used the cloak of paganism” to commit the offences against children, arguing they were not pagans but child abusers.

One woman told how, at the age of five, she and other children attended a ritual at a stone circle with a fire in the centre. Petrauske and Kemp were among the men there, wearing “gown things” and necklaces, she said….
The woman, who cannot be named, also said she was raped by another man, a former parish councillor called Peter Solheim who was associated with witchcraft in Cornwall.
Solheim’s body was found by fishermen five miles off the Lizard Peninsula in 2004. He had been drugged and mutilated with a machete or an axe.
The woman told the Truro jury that she was bound and raped by Solheim when she was nine on a bed fitted with chains and a black whip with “star things on the ends”.
In the witness box Petrauske – also known as German Pete – said he had been a pagan for 55 years and had an altar in his bedroom. He accepted he had a dagger and whip but insisted they were all for ceremonial purposes only. He said he had no doubt the victims who gave evidence had been abused by men in robes but said he was not involved….
The pair had denied all the offences, which date back to the 1970s.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/dec/14/cornish-white-witches-guilty-ritual-abuse

Pair jailed over witches’ coven ‘ritualistic’ sex abuse Ryan Hooper  Friday 14 December 2012 Two men accused of being part of a paedophile ring involving murdered “witch” Peter Solheim have been given lengthy jail sentences for their part in “ritualistic, sickening” sex abuse of young girls.
Jack Kemp and Peter Petrauske spent years tormenting their female victims, one said to be as young as three. Both men had denied any involvement in the abuse, claiming they were victims of a witch hunt or conspiracy.
But a jury at Truro Crown Court dismissed their protestations, convicting the pair of a string of offences dating back to the 1970s, as well as finding Kemp guilty of several more recent sexual assaults unconnected to Petrauske.
Jailing Kemp for 14 years and Petrauske for 18, Judge Graham Cottle told them: “The offences range from the extremely serious to the truly horrifying.

“You are two of the surviving members of a paedophile ring, together with others whose names have repeated frequently in this trial who were members of a ring that operated in Falmouth (Cornwall) in the 1970s and 1980s….
“It (the trial) has featured ritualistic, sickening abuse of young, young children. The scars left on (two victims, who cannot be named for legal reasons) are so obvious that it would seem extremely unlikely that either of them have any real prospect of recovery….”
Petrauske was convicted of rape, aiding and abetting an attempted rape, and indecent assault. Judge Cottle sentenced him to 18 years in prison.
Kemp was guilty of 10 sexual offences including indecent assault and indecency with a child, and was handed a 14-year term.
Both men were given a discount because of their age, the judge telling Petrauske he was likely to die in prison.
Petrauske was said to be the “high priest” of a witches’ coven in St Ives, Cornwall, and ordered the girls to carry out his sick fantasies. The court heard Kemp videoed the abuse, but also took part in the assaults, along with friends Solheim and Stan Pirie – a notorious paedophile who died in jail following his conviction for sex abuse in the mid-2000s.
The duo’s victims gave harrowing evidence from behind a screen during the three-week trial. They said they were then abused by their tormentors, before being given money and sweets to buy their silence.

The abuse was only investigated further by police last year when Kemp was arrested in connection with another incident, causing rumours to spread around his home town of Falmouth and prompting the alleged victims of the historic offences to contact detectives.
Speaking after the case, Detective Constable Rick Milburn praised the bravery of the pair’s victims, adding: “It was truly horrific abuse, the worst my officers and myself have ever seen. It was truly distressing for everyone involved….
“I have no doubt Kemp and Petrauske were key players (in child sex abuse in Cornwall).”
Prosecutor Jason Beal said some of the assaults took the form of rituals with the young girls’ wrists tied.
Mr Beal said: “(One victim) was taken to a house where pagans were present, Jack Kemp was present and ‘German Pete’ (Petrauske) was also there….
When Petrauske was arrested last year, detectives discovered daggers, sheets, candles and a mask, the court heard. He immediately mentioned the names Kemp and – in a dramatic twist in the case – Solheim.
The latter was a 56-year-old parish councillor whose body was found five miles off the Lizard Peninsula, Cornwall, by fishermen on June 18, 2004. He had been drugged and mutilated by a machete or an axe….
But counsel for the defendants told the jury that Petrauske and Kemp played no part in the abuse….
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/pair-jailed-over-witches-coven-ritualistic-sex-abuse-8417739.html

‘White witch coven’ took part ritualistic sex abuse of young girls, court told – Two men deny string of attacks in Cornwall on children as young as three from late 1970s to 2009  Steven Morris and agency guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 28 November 2012
Members of a “white witch coven” in Cornwall donned ceremonial robes and used daggers in ritualistic sex abuse of young girls, a court has heard.
Peter Petrauske, 72, who allegedly told police he was high priest of the coven, and Jack Kemp, 69, were said to have been involved in criminal “pagan ceremonies” over a 30-year period.
Children were plied with alcohol before being made to undress in front of a crowd of men wearing robes, it was claimed.
The alleged victims, the youngest of whom aged three to five, were then abused by their tormentors before being given money and sweets to buy their silence, Truro crown court was told.

When Petrauske was arrested last year, detectives discovered daggers, candles, incense and lavender at his home, the court heard.
The men, both from Falmouth, deny a string of charges relating to the abuse of children from the late 1970s to 2009. Petrauske also denies one charge of rape….
Jason Beal, prosecuting, said some of the assaults took the form of rituals with the young girls’ wrists tied. He said a dagger had been involved and wax poured onto the bodies, according to testimony from some of the victims.
One witness had told police that Petrauske claimed to be involved in a coven of white witches. Beal said: “She was taken to a house where pagans were present. Jack Kemp was present and ‘German Pete’ [Petrauske] was also there. She was given alcohol, told to dance and take her clothes off.”….
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/nov/28/witches-sex-abuse-allegations-children-court

Girl ‘was abused in churchyard’ STEPHEN WARD Tuesday 08 June 1993
A COURT at the Old Bailey was told yesterday that a young girl was taken to a churchyard each Hallowe’en by three men, then sexually abused in front of a group of adults who wore black cloaks and balaclavas, writes Stephen Ward.
The girl, now 11, is one of seven children who were allegedly victims of sexual and physical abuse by a man aged 67, his daughter, 29, and his two sons- in-law, aged 41 and 31. The offences span 1978 to 1989. The defendants deny 28 specimen charges.
The court was told that all the defendants and all the victims are related. None can be identified to protect the children.
The rector of St Mary’s church, Northolt, west London, is to testify that over 10 years witchcraft has taken place in the church at Hallowe’en.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/girl-was-abused-in-churchyard-1490250.html

describes crimes
Girl, 10, tells of sexual abuse in ‘devil church’: Child accuses relatives in video shown to jury Wednesday 09 June 1993
A VIDEO in which a 10-year-old girl wept as she told of being sexually abused in a church by her father and grandfather was shown to a court at the Old Bailey yesterday. The one-and-a-half hour interview was conducted by a policewoman in the presence of the girl’s foster mother and a social worker last autumn. The girl also described a catalogue of abuse at the hands of her uncle and other adults.
The father, 41, grandfather, 61, another uncle, 31, and an aunt, 29, variously deny 28 specimen charges against seven children, including rape, buggery, indecent assault and cruelty.

The girl, now 11, described her father as ‘horrible’ and said he frequently beat her. She said he started sexually abusing her when she was three and having full sex with her when she was five.
She described being taken late at night by her father and others to a ‘devil church’ where she was stripped, tied up, had knives held in front of her face and was abused by adults in black cloaks and balaclavas….
Linda Stern QC, for the prosecution, has told the jurors they will hear from the rector of St Mary’s Church, Northolt, west London, who had noticed ‘unpleasant practices connected with witchcraft’ had taken place at Hallowe’en ‘in various parts of the church’.
Once the taped interview was over, the girl was cross-examined through a live video link running between the court and a private room in the Old Bailey. She said other children were at the church – four or five, along with 20 adults. She denied that she had made up details of the church from watching horror videos.
Mrs Stern has alleged that the defendants made the children watch obscene tapes. Several of the children described seeing ‘rude’ videos.
She said that as well as being sexually abused, the children were physically neglected and were kept silent through fear and threats.
They were cowed into submission, and ‘sexual abuse and neglect of their other needs was the only way of life they knew’.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/girl-10-tells-of-sexual-abuse-in-devil-church-child-accuses-relatives-in-video-shown-to-jury-1490468.html

Four people in one family are jailed for child sex DAVID TAYLOR Wednesday 30 June 1993 FOUR MEMBERS of the same family were jailed at the Old Bailey yesterday for sexually abusing seven children over an 11-year period, writes David Taylor. A father, aged 41, who was found guilty of 16 charges of rape, indecent assault, buggery, cruelty and indecency, was jailed for life with an order that he serve a minimum of 12 years. He was said to have ‘behaved like a monster’.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/four-people-in-one-family-are-jailed-for-child-sex-1494769.html

Richmond homemaker was innocent victim of CIA brainwashing experiments
By Kent Spencer, The Province December 2, 2012
Fifty years ago Richmond homemaker Gina Blasbalg was a victim of physical and psychological torture and unethical experiments. As a teen she was part of a CIA-sponsored program into mind control at the Allan Psychiatric Institute in Montreal. Today, times are happier, but Ralph and Gina Blasbalg still have a favourite bench to sit on at Garry Point Park in Richmond. Gina was an unsuspecting patient in the CIA-sponsored brainwashing program in Montreal, a young Ralph Blasbalg rescued Gina from daily rounds of pills she was being coerced to take. While she was withdrawing from the medication, they had a place they would walk to at night in Montreal. They called it their “crying bench.”….

Gina Blasbalg was brainwashed by the CIA. The Richmond homemaker was a victim of physical and psychological torture and unethical experiments. The “medical misadventure” took place in Canada more than 50 years ago at the Allan Institute in Montreal. Although traumatized by the experience, her story is one of triumph, and today her life is about giving back to young people….
The Allan Psychiatric Institute has been called a “House of Horrors” for good reason.
The so-called treatment of the teenaged Gina consisted of ingesting twice daily doses of 16 pills, under a nurse’s strict supervision. The drug types varied widely and often had opposing effects.
In no particular classification, they included uppers and downers, depressants and anti-depressants, tranquillizers, barbiturates and truth serum. The capsules came in a rainbow of colours: blue and brown, turquoise, yellow and red, azure, salmon, pink and white. “We had to take our medication. If I didn’t I was told I would be put in the insane asylum,” she says. The effects left her very weak. “I was a zombie. I wanted to sleep.” In additon to the pills there was physical and psychological torture.

She says one the worst things done to her was drug-induced contortions which twisted her muscles into unnatural forms. “It was extremely painful and traumatizing. They wanted to measure the effect of the contortions so they could add it to their research,” she says. The nitrous oxide given to her, called laughing gas, was anything but funny. “I felt like I was spinning forever. I didn’t know if I’d ever come out of it. I dreaded it. I remember thinking, is this what it’s like to die?”
She was also given mind-altering LSD. “I had a dream that I was flying continuously into a massive sticky spider’s web. I was screaming and somebody held me down.”
After long periods of artificially-prolonged sleep, doctors posed questions while she was hypnotized under a truth serum. “They were able to penetrate my thoughts.,” says Gina.
She was one of hundreds of unsuspecting patients who never gave their informed consent to be used as guinea pigs. And there was no way to dispute medical orders. “Welfare patients could not sue doctors,” she says. She feels fortunate not to have received massive doses of electric shocks to the brain which many received at the Allan.

The CIA and Dr. Strangelove
At the top of the Allan’s chain of command was an enigmatic man called Dr. Ewen Cameron. He was an imposing, Scottish-born figure who was later dubbed “Dr. Strangelove.”
“The chief,” as he was known, had made his mark as a member of a select team which studied Nazi leader Rudolph Hess in Germany after the Second World War. He was a giant of international medicine who was the first president of the World Psychiatric Association. Cameron wanted to delve into the inner depths of the human psyche and receive international acclaim — perhaps a Nobel Prize — for his work. He thought the mind could be deprogrammed through extra-large doses of electric shock, sensory deprivation, drug concoctions and long periods of induced sleep. Once the mental slate was wiped clean, he believed that minds could be reprogrammed by playing reassuring taped comments through pillows as patients slept.
The messages — things such as ‘You are a good wife and people appreciate you’ — were played over and over each day for hours at a time, and repeated for weeks on end. “He wasn’t liked by the patients,” says Gina. “They were terrified of him. They tried to run away. I heard people begging for no more  treatments.”

During a climate of fear engendered by the Cold War, the CIA gave him money to find out how to control the human mind. It took two decades for it to be made public that the CIA and the Canadian government secretly contributed more than $500,000 to the now discredited program. Cameron’s actions have been widely criticized since news of his work surfaced during the 1980s. A 1986 Department of Justice report concluded that his therapeutic techniques were a “medical misadventure.” The report’s author said it was an unjustifiable form of assault on the human brain. He recommended the government award victims $100,000; 77 people have collected. Montreal lawyer Alan Stein, who has successfully sued on victims’ behalf, says many patients didn’t qualify for the compensation, Gina among them. Their records were lost (Gina was told her records couldn’t be found) or they didn’t meet the standard of mistreatment that was set. Victims had to prove that they had been “put in a childlike state.”
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/health/Richmond+homemaker+innocent+victim+brainwashing+experiments/7636790/story.html

describes violence
CIA Accused of Coverup in Military Scientist’s 1953 Fatal Fall
By Tom Schoenberg Bloomberg News Thursday, November 29, 2012
CIA employees murdered military scientist Frank Olson in 1953 after he raised concerns about testing chemical and biological weapons on human subjects without their consent, according to a lawsuit brought by his two sons.
Eric and Nils Olson, in a complaint filed Wednesday against the United States in Washington, said the agency has covered up the cause of their father’s death for 59 years. Frank Olson, who the CIA admitted was given LSD a few days before his death, didn’t jump from a 13th-floor window of the Statler Hotel in New York City, but rather was pushed, they claim.
Assassination manual
“The circumstances surrounding the death mirrored those detailed in an assassination manual that, upon information and belief, the CIA had drafted that same year,” Scott Gilbert, a lawyer for the Olsons, wrote in the complaint.

Olson’s family has tried to piece together how Frank Olson died and the circumstances surrounding his death ever since a 1975 government report on CIA activities in the U.S. said that he committed suicide after being given LSD without his knowledge.
The family’s lawsuit includes one claim of negligent supervision by the agency and requests that damages be decided at trial.
CIA spokesman Preston Golson said in an emailed statement that the agency doesn’t comment on pending court cases. He said that the agency’s covert behavioral research program known as MK-ULTRA was investigated in 1975 by the Rockefeller Commission and the Church Committee, and in 1977 by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research.

“Without commenting on this specific legal matter, CIA activities related to MK-ULTRA have been thoroughly investigated over the years, and the agency cooperated with each of those investigations,” Golson said. “In addition, tens of thousands of pages related to the program have been declassified and released to the public.”
Olson’s sons said in the suit they have asked repeatedly “to be told the truth” about their father’s death and “each time, the government has responded with falsehoods.”….
http://www.concordmonitor.com/home/3066923-95/olson-cia-agency-according

Belgium To Prosecute Scientology As Criminal Organization; Church Faces Charges Of Extortion, Fraud
The Huffington Post  |  By Andres Jauregui    12/28/2012
Federal public prosecutors in Belgium will institute legal proceedings against the church of Scientology in that country and seek to recognize it as a criminal organization.
The church of Scientology — which is not recognized as a faith in Belgium — and several of its top-ranking members face charges including extortion, fraud, illegal practice of medicine and violation of privacy laws, according to Flanders News.
The complaint stems from an investigation of fraudulent labor contracts issued by the church of Scientology in an effort to recruit new volunteers and members. A judge ordered raids on Scientology offices in 2008 that allegedly uncovered a “wealth of evidence” that the organization had spied on and extorted money from its members, according to De Standaard.
An estimated 500 people belong to the church of Scientology in Belgium. The organization’s European headquarters are located in Brussels.

Belgium is not the only European country in which Scientology has faced criticism and legal action.
Scientology came under fire in France in 2009 when it was convicted of fraud for “[pressuring] members into paying large sums for questionable remedies,” according to the Associated Press. That conviction was upheld in a French appeals court in February 2012.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/28/belgium-prosecutes-scientology-extortion-fraud_n_2375823.html

Child Abuse and Trauma Information

Light Entertainment Andrew O’Hagan writes about child abuse and the British public  London Review of Books Vol. 34 No. 21 · 8 November 2012 pages 5-8 | 7344 words
On 23 May 1949, Lionel Gamlin, producer of the Light Programme’s Hello Children, wrote to Enid Blyton to ask whether she would be willing to be interviewed about the best holiday she could remember. `Dear Mr Gamlin,’ Blyton wrote the next day. `Thank you for your nice letter. It all sounds very interesting but I ought to warn you of something you obviously don’t know, but which has been well known in the literary and publishing world for some time – I and my stories are completely banned by the BBC as far as children are concerned.’….

In the issue of Lilliput magazine for May 1943 Gamlin wrote an essay called `Why I Hate Boys’, which is signed `A School-Master’. It was a developing theme, boys, children, whatever, and in 1946 Methuen published a book written by Gamlin and Anthony Gilbert called Don’t Be Afreud! A Short Guide to Youth Control (The Book of the Weak). The book is just about as funny as it wants to be, with author photographs (`aged 7 and 8 approx’) and a caption: `The authors on their way to the Psychoanalyst’. Gamlin, in common with later youthquakers such as Jimmy Savile, never liked children, never had any, never wanted any, and on the whole couldn’t bear them, except on occasion to fuck. And, again like Savile, Gamlin managed all this quite brilliantly, hiding in plain sight as a youth presenter full of good sport but who didn’t really care for youth and all its pieties. This was in the days before `victims’ – days that our present media and their audiences find unimaginable – but it gives context and background to the idea of an eccentric presenter as a teasing anti-hero within the Corporation. Auntie was essentially being joshed by a child abuser posing as a child abuser. `Before we examine the second stage of the malignant disease of Youth with a capital Y (sometimes conveniently glossed over by the mystic term “adolescence”),’….
A friend of Gamlin’s remembers going to see him in a flat in All Souls Place in the 1950s, just round the corner from Broadcasting House. A man from Light Entertainment used the flat during the working week and Gamlin often stayed there with young boys. It was clear to the friend that both men were renting the boys, and that the boys were young: `They were boys with the kind of good looks that would seem very lewd in a woman.’ He also remembers going for a coffee with one of the boys from the flat. `The boy was nice,’ he said, `very young. He thought he might get a job or something of that sort. And it was clear the men were using him for sex.
Broadcasting House was well stocked with men interested in sleeping with young boys. It was a milieu back then. And people who sought to be sexual predators knew that. It wasn’t spoken about.’….
Day by day over the past month details have emerged about the shelving of the Newsnight investigation into Savile. Girls from Duncroft children’s home had given evidence: some of them were 14 when Savile began coercing them into giving him blow-jobs. They felt it would be `an honour’ to be in the company of someone so famous. He promised them visits to the BBC studios….

The Newsnight programme was well sourced and strong, but it clashed – in the old-fashioned, scheduling sense – with two tributes to Savile the BBC had planned. The investigations will continue, but the bigger story is missing from all the discussions around Savile, the bigger story being the milieu that existed not only at the BBC but in the light entertainment firmament.
http://cdn.lrb.co.uk/v34/n21/andrew-ohagan/light-entertainment

Embattled Childhoods May Be the Real Trauma for Soldiers With PTSD
ScienceDaily (Nov. 19, 2012) – New research on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in soldiers challenges popular assumptions about the origins and trajectory of PTSD, providing evidence that traumatic experiences in childhood — not combat — may predict which soldiers develop the disorder….
“Most studies on PTSD in soldiers following service in war zones do not include measures of PTSD symptoms prior to deployment and thus suffer from a baseline problem. Only a few studies have examined pre- to post-deployment changes in PTSD symptoms, and most only use a single before-and-after measure,” says Berntsen.

The team aimed to address these methodological issues by studying a group of 746 Danish soldiers and evaluating their symptoms of PTSD at five different timepoints. Their study is published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
Five weeks before the soldiers were scheduled to leave for Afghanistan, they completed a battery of tests including a PTSD inventory and a test for depression. They also completed a questionnaire about traumatic life events, including childhood experiences of family violence, physical punishment, and spousal abuse….

Rather than following some sort of “typical” pattern in which symptoms emerge soon after a particularly traumatic event and persist over time, Berntsen and colleagues found wide variation in the development of PTSD among the soldiers.
The vast majority of the soldiers (84%) were resilient, showing no PTSD symptoms at all or recovering quickly from mild symptoms.
The rest of the soldiers showed distinct and unexpected patterns of symptoms. About 4% showed evidence of “new-onset” trajectory, with symptoms starting low and showing a marked increase across the five timepoints. Their symptoms did not appear to follow any specific traumatic event.
Most notably, about 13% of the soldiers in the study actually showed temporary improvement in symptoms during deployment. These soldiers reported significant symptoms of stress prior to leaving for Afghanistan that seemed to ease in the first months of deployment only to increase again upon their return home.

What could account for this unexpected pattern of symptoms?
Compared to the resilient soldiers, the soldiers who developed PTSD were much more likely to have suffered emotional problems and traumatic events prior to deployment. Childhood experiences of violence, especially punishment severe enough to cause bruises, cuts, burns, and broken bones actually predicted the onset of PTSD in these soldiers. Those who showed symptoms of PTSD were more likely to have witnessed family violence, and to have experienced physical attacks, stalking or death threats by a spouse. They were also more likely to have past experiences that they could not, or would not, talk about. And they were less educated than the resilient soldiers….
The findings challenge the notion that exposure to combat and other war atrocities is the main cause of PTSD.
“We were surprised that stressful experiences during childhood seemed to play such a central role in discriminating the resilient versus non-resilient groups,” says Berntsen. “These results should make psychologists question prevailing assumptions about PTSD and its development.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121119140625.htm

Peace and War Trajectories of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms Before, During, and After Military Deployment in Afghanistan – Dorthe Berntsen, Kim B. Johannessen, Yvonne D. Thomsen, Mette Bertelsen, Rick H. Hoyle and David C. Rubin

Abstract
In the study reported here, we examined posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms in 746 Danish soldiers measured on five occasions before, during, and after deployment to Afghanistan. Using latent class growth analysis, we identified six trajectories of change in PTSD symptoms. Two resilient trajectories had low levels across all five times, and a new-onset trajectory started low and showed a marked increase of PTSD symptoms. Three temporary-benefit trajectories, not previously described in the literature, showed decreases in PTSD symptoms during (or immediately after) deployment, followed by increases after return from deployment. Predeployment emotional problems and predeployment traumas, especially childhood adversities, were predictors for inclusion in the nonresilient trajectories, whereas deployment-related stress was not. These findings challenge standard views of PTSD in two ways. First, they show that factors other than immediately preceding stressors are critical for PTSD development, with childhood adversities being central. Second, they demonstrate that the development of PTSD symptoms shows heterogeneity, which indicates the need for multiple measurements to understand PTSD and identify people in need of treatment.
http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/11/02/0956797612457389

Utah kidnap victim Elizabeth Smart preparing memoir. The Associated Press  Nov 23, 2012 SALT LAKE CITY — Ten years after her kidnapping, Elizabeth Smart is preparing her story of being held captive by a homeless street preacher, her improbable rescue after nine months, and how she advocated for children after the ordeal. St. Martin’s Press bought the rights to the memoir from the now 25-year-old senior at Brigham Young University….
Smart has said she waited for the March 2011 sentencing of Brian David Mitchell before collaborating on the telling of her story, which has been in the works for nearly a year. Mitchell, a onetime itinerant street preacher, was convicted of Smart’s kidnapping and sexual assault. He is serving two life sentences at a federal prison in Arizona. Authorities say he snatched the then-14-year-old Smart from her bedroom at knifepoint on June 5, 2002.
The book won’t just be the story of Smart’s captivity but also will depict how she organized the Elizabeth Smart Foundation and brought more attention and law enforcement techniques to the cases of missing and abused children, said her publicist Christopher Thomas.
“She started the foundation to get her message across, and book was another way to do it,” Thomas said. It will be the fourth book about the kidnapping that caused a national sensation. http://www.pjstar.com/free/x1978608178/Kidnap-victim-Elizabeth-Smart-preparing-memoir

Restitution for Child Victims Returns to the Supreme Court By James R. Marsh on November 27, 2012
Today, the Marsh Law Firm, along with co-counsel Paul G. Cassell and Carol L. Hepburn, filed a petition for a writ of certiorari in the United States Supreme Court.
Almost 20 years ago, Congress enacted the Mandatory Restitution for Sexual Exploitation of Children Statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2259, to benefit victims of federal child pornography crimes, including petitioners like Amy and Vicky, whose child sex abuse images are traded and collected over the internet by countless individuals worldwide….

The question presented in this cert petition is whether the Mandatory Restitution for Sexual Exploitation of Children Statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2259, excuses a defendant from paying restitution for the itemized loss categories unless there is proof that the victim’s losses were the proximate result of an individual defendant’s child pornography crime.
The Supreme Court is expected to decide whether or not to grant this petition early next year. If the Court decides to hear the case, oral arguments and a decision are likely this term which ends on October 1, 2013.
http://www.childlaw.us/2012/11/restitution-for-child-victims-.html

Evaluation of the Evidence for the Trauma and Fantasy Models of Dissociation – Constance J. Dalenberg, Bethany L. Brand, David H. Gleaves, Martin J. Dorahy, Richard J. Loewenstein, Etzel Cardeña, Paul A. Frewen, Eve B. Carlson, and David Spiegel Psychological Bulletin Online First Publication, March 12, 2012. doi: 10.1037/a0027447

The relationship between a reported history of trauma and dissociative symptoms has been explained in 2 conflicting ways. Pathological dissociation has been conceptualized as a response to antecedent traumatic stress and/or severe psychological adversity. Others have proposed that dissociation makes individuals prone to fantasy, thereby engendering confabulated memories of trauma. We examine data related to a series of 8 contrasting predictions based on the trauma model and the fantasy model of dissociation. In keeping with the trauma model, the relationship between trauma and dissociation was consistent and moderate in strength, and remained significant when objective measures of trauma were used. Dissociation was temporally related to trauma and trauma treatment, and was predictive of trauma history when fantasy proneness was controlled. Dissociation was not reliably associated with suggestibility, nor was there evidence for the fantasy model prediction of greater inaccuracy of recovered memory. Instead, dissociation was positively related to a history of trauma memory recovery and negatively related to the more general measures of narrative cohesion. Research also supports the trauma theory of dissociation as a regulatory response to fear or other extreme emotion with measurable biological correlates. We conclude, on the basis of evidence related to these 8 predictions, that there is strong empirical support for the hypothesis that trauma causes dissociation, and that dissociation remains related to trauma history when fantasy proneness is controlled. We find little support for the hypothesis that the dissociation–trauma relationship is due to fantasy proneness or confabulated memories of trauma.
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/221695375_Evaluation_of_the_evidence_for_the_trauma_and_fantasy_models_of_dissociation

Klobuchar, Franken, Walz, McCollum Introduce Bipartisan Legislation to Help Train Child Protection Professionals to Detect and Prevent Child Abuse
An estimated 695,000 children were victims of child abuse in 2010, and yet studies indicate that many child protection professionals ? such as teachers, doctors, and prosecutors ? are not adequately trained to identify and respond to abuse  Tuesday, December 4, 2012
U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken and Representatives Tim Walz and Betty McCollum today introduced bipartisan legislation to help train child protection professionals to detect and prevent child abuse. The bill would create regional training centers – including the National Child Protection Training Center in Winona, MN – that would create new curricula for undergraduates and graduates in fields where they will most likely be involved in identifying and reporting cases of abuse. The legislation also increases coordination between federal, state and local officials in creating best practices for the training of child protection professionals. Senator Klobuchar authored the legislation in the Senate and Representative Walz introduced companion legislation in the House of Representatives….

According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, an estimated 695,000 children were victims of child abuse in 2010. Yet studies indicate that those in the best position to identify and respond to child abuse – such as teachers, doctors, and prosecutors – are often not adequately trained to do so. For example, a 2001 survey of teachers found that 74% received minimal training on child abuse while earning their degrees and 58% had minimal training on the job.
http://www.franken.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=2240

Abuse During Childhood Linked to Adult-Onset Asthma in African-American Women Dec. 7, 2012 — According to a new study from the Slone Epidemiology Center (SEC) at Boston University, African-American women who reported suffering abuse before age 11 had a greater likelihood of adult-onset asthma compared to women whose childhood and adolescence were free of abuse.
The study, which is published online in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, was led by Patricia Coogan, DSc, senior epidemiologist at SEC and associate professor of epidemiology at the Boston University School of Public Health.

This study followed 28,456 African-American women, all of whom are participants in the Black Women’s Health Study, between 1995-2011. They completed health questionnaires and provided information on physical and sexual abuse during childhood up to age 11 and adolescence, ages 12-18.
The results indicate that the incidence of adult-onset asthma was increased by more than 20 percent among women who had been abused during childhood. The evidence was stronger for physical abuse than for sexual abuse. There was little indication, however, that abuse during adolescence was associated with the risk of adult-onset asthma….
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121207133240.htm

Abuse during childhood and adolescence and risk of adult-onset asthma in African American women Patricia F. Coogan, ScD, Lauren A. Wise, ScD, George T. O’Connor, MD, Timothy A. Brown, PsyD. Julie R. Palmer, ScD, Lynn Rosenberg, ScD    ….In this large cohort of African American women, there was a positive association between adult-onset asthma and childhood physical abuse and weaker associations for childhood sexual abuse and any abuse during adolescence. http://www.jacionline.org/article/S0091-6749%2812%2901691-0/abstract

Fewer Child Abuse and Neglect Incidents for Fifth Straight Year
December 12, 2012 | ACF Public Affairs  Picture of child hiding behind door with text: Child Abuse and Neglect in DeclineThe number of reported child abuse and neglect incidents has dropped nationwide for the fifth consecutive year, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families (ACF)….
53.6 percent of the abusers were women.
48.4 percent were Caucasian, 20.2 percent were African-American, and 19.2 percent were Hispanic.

80.8 percent of the abusers were the victim’s parent.
Of the children who were reported as maltreatment victims, 11.2 percent were physically or mentally disabled….
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/blog/2012/12/fewer-child-abuse-and-neglect-incidents-for-fifth-straight-year

Common Forms of Misinformation and Tactics of Disinformation about Psychotherapy for Trauma Originating in Ritual Abuse and Mind Control
By Ellen Lacter, Ph.D., December 18, 2012.
This page on my website seeks to expose a number of common forms of misinformation and tactics of disinformation about psychotherapy for trauma originating in ritual abuse and mind control. Disinformation is distinguished from misinformation in that it is intentionally fraudulent.
Misinformation and disinformation about ritual abuse and mind control trauma and psychotherapy to treat such trauma appear in both paper and electronic media, but are particularly abundant on the Internet on websites of individuals and organizations, bookseller reviews, blogs, newsletters, online encyclopedias, social networking sites, and e-group listservs….
Therefore, the Internet serves as something of an unregulated court of public opinion, where, to a large degree, allegedly falsely accused perpetrators of child abuse and their advocates and alleged victims of child abuse and their therapists and advocates, argue about:

(a) whether child abuse is in itself traumatic
(b) the existence of ritual abuse and mind control
(c) the validity of recovered memories of abuse
(d) the validity of dissociative disorders, especially DID
(e) the practice of psychotherapy in relation to all of the above
All of this occurs with no rules of order, no penalties for perjury, and an uneven playing field that causes psychotherapists and psychology researchers to have to pull their punches.
I believe that this fight is being waged, in great part, to prevent child abuse survivors, especially survivors of ritual abuse and mind control, from receiving the help and support that they need to heal from their abuse, from receiving any sense of validation about their abuse, from recalling any dissociated parts of their abuse, from reporting their abusers to the authorities, from suing their abusers, from activism against child abuse, ritual abuse, and mind control, and in some cases, from even breaking away from their abusers.
http://endritualabuse.org/activism/common-forms-of-misinformation-and-tactics-of-disinformation-about-psychotherapy-for-trauma-originating-in-ritual-abuse-and-mind-control/

E Diane Champé’s work on behalf of adult survivors includes hosting a survivors’ website (www.wearesurvivors.org) and speaking publicly about the long-term effects of child abuse and neglect.  Ms. Champé is also a member of Maryland’s Victim Services Professional Network.  Her more recent work includes participation in a national trauma campaign for SAMHSA (a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) and in the State Public Systems Coalition on Trauma.  She has presented before the U.S. Congress, state and local officials and institutions of higher learning.  Ms. Champé recently established a 501(c)(3) social service agency, the E. Diane Champé Institute (EDCI), which will provide safe havens for adult survivors of child abuse and neglect (www.edcinstitute.org). EDCI’s Facebook address is www.facebook.com/EDCInstitute. Her autobiography Conquering Incest: My Life as a Trauma Survivor was published in 2011.

Bullying by Childhood Peers Leaves a Trace That Can Change the Expression of a Gene Linked to Mood Dec. 18, 2012 — A recent study by a researcher at the Centre for Studies on Human Stress (CSHS) at the Hôpital Louis-H. Lafontaine and professor at the Université de Montréal suggests that bullying by peers changes the structure surrounding a gene involved in regulating mood, making victims more vulnerable to mental health problems as they age.
The study published in the journal Psychological Medicine seeks to better understand the mechanisms that explain how difficult experiences disrupt our response to stressful situations. “Many people think that our genes are immutable; however this study suggests that environment, even the social environment, can affect their functioning. This is particularly the case for victimization experiences in childhood, which change not only our stress response but also the functioning of genes involved in mood regulation,” says Isabelle Ouellet-Morin, lead author of the study.
A previous study by Ouellet-Morin, conducted at the Institute of Psychiatry in London (UK), showed that bullied children secrete less cortisol — the stress hormone — but had more problems with social interaction and aggressive behaviour. The present study indicates that the reduction of cortisol, which occurs around the age of 12, is preceded two years earlier by a change in the structure surrounding a gene (SERT) that regulates serotonin, a neurotransmitter involved in mood regulation and depression….
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/12/121218081615.htm

Increased serotonin transporter gene (SERT) DNA methylation is associated with bullying victimization and blunted cortisol response to stress in childhood: a longitudinal study of discordant monozygotic twins. Ouellet-Morin, C. C. Y. Wong, A. Danese, C. M. Pariante, A. S. Papadopoulos, J. Mill, L. Arseneault.  Psychological Medicine, 2012; DOI: 10.1017/S0033291712002784
Increased serotonin transporter gene (SERT) DNA methylation is associated with bullying victimization and blunted cortisol response to stress in childhood: a longitudinal study of discordant monozygotic twins

Background
Childhood adverse experiences are known to induce persistent changes in the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis reactivity to stress. However, the mechanisms by which these experiences shape the neuroendocrine response to stress remain unclear….
Results
Bullied twins had higher SERT DNA methylation at the age of 10 years compared with their non-bullied MZ co-twins. This group difference cannot be attributed to the children’s genetic makeup or their shared familial environments because of the study design. Bullied twins also showed increasing methylation levels between the age of 5 years, prior to bullying victimization, and the age of 10 years whereas no such increase was detected in non-bullied twins across time. Moreover, children with higher SERT methylation levels had blunted cortisol responses to stress.
Conclusions
Our study extends findings drawn from animal models, supports the hypothesis that early-life stress modifies DNA methylation at a specific cytosine–phosphate–guanine (CpG) site in the SERT promoter and HPA functioning and suggests that these two systems may be functionally associated. http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8777435

Genes and Immune System Shaped by Childhood Poverty, Stress
Oct. 18, 2012 — A University of British Columbia and Centre for Molecular Medicine and Therapeutics (CMMT) study has revealed that childhood poverty, stress as an adult, and demographics such as age, sex and ethnicity, all leave an imprint on a person’s genes. And, that this imprint could play a role in our immune response.
The study was published last week in a special volume of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that looks at how experiences beginning before birth and in the years after can affect the course of a person’s life.

Known as epigenetics, or the study of changes in gene expression, this research examined a process called DNA methylation where a chemical molecule is added to DNA and acts like a dimmer on a light bulb switch, turning genes on or off or setting them somewhere in between. Research has shown that a person’s life experiences play a role in shaping DNA methylation patterns.
The research team discovered that childhood poverty, but not socioeconomic status as an adult, was correlated with the marks or methylation patterns left on genes.
“We found biological residue of early life poverty,” said Michael Kobor, an associate professor of medical genetics at UBC, whose CMMT lab at the Child & Family Research Institute (CFRI) led the research. “This was based on clear evidence that environmental influences correlate with epigenetic patterns.”….
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121018123052.htm

L. L. Lam, E. Emberly, H. B. Fraser, S. M. Neumann, E. Chen, G. E. Miller, M. S. Kobor. Factors underlying variable DNA methylation in a human community cohort. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2012; 109 (Supplement_2): 17253 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1121249109
http://www.pnas.org/content/109/suppl.2/17253

Amicus Support Victim Restitution – Brief Filed in Supreme Court By James R. Marsh on December 21, 2012
Today, the National Crime Victim Law Institute (NCVLI) moved for leave to file, as amicus curiae, this brief in support of the Marsh Law Firm’s recent Petition for a Writ of Certiorari concerning whether the Mandatory Restitution for Sexual Exploitation of Children Statute, 18 U.S.C. § 2259, excuses a defendant from paying restitution for the itemized loss categories unless there is proof that the victim’s losses were the proximate result of an individual defendant’s child pornography crime.

NCVLI is a nonprofit educational and advocacy organization located at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon. NCVLI’s mission is to promote balance and fairness in the criminal justice system through crime-victim centered legal advocacy, education, and resource sharing.
NCVLI actively participates as amicus curiae in cases involving victims’ rights nationwide. In particular, NCVLI seeks to highlight the difficulties that children who have been sexually exploited and filmed face in procuring restitution under federal law, and to explain the remedies that Congress crafted to help them over-come these hurdles.
http://www.childlaw.us/2012/12/amicus-support-victim-restitut.html

Victims of child pornography seek restitution from men who downloaded and traded horrific images By Jenifer B. McKim Globe Staff December 27, 2012
The woman, now in her twenties, lives in relative anonymity on the West Coast, but to child pornography collectors worldwide she will always be known as “Vicky,” a little girl raped by her father in a series of videos illegally disseminated online thousands of times during more than a decade.
Now the woman and a small but growing number of other child pornography victims are seeking restitution from those who collected or traded pictures and videos depicting their abuse, filing claims for damages against convicted child pornographers in Massachusetts and around the country. In court papers, victims describe living with the knowledge that their images can never be cleansed from the Internet.

“Many people somewhere are watching the most terrifying moments of my life and taking grotesque pleasure in them,” the woman said in court statement provided by her Seattle attorney, Carol Hepburn. “They are being entertained by my shame and pain.”
Since 2008, six federal child pornography cases in Massachusetts have resulted in defendants being ordered to pay restitution, according to the US attorney’s office in Boston.
The amounts range between $2,000 and $2.5 million, and more than a dozen local cases are pending as courts across the country grapple with questions about whether victims deserve restitution and, if so, how much.
The recent restitution efforts come as the scourge of child pornography has accelerated during the last decade, aided by improved technology and the Web’s promise of anonymity.
While most sexually exploited children go unidentified, nearly 5,000 nationwide have been located during the last 10 years by law enforcement officials and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
The Virginia nonprofit manages a database to aid prosecutors and help identify exploited children….
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/2012/12/27/victims-child-pornography-seek-restitution-from-men-who-downloaded-and-traded-horrific-images/LPHPAEuOjJGACBwBTA485K/story.html

Fact or Factitious? A Psychobiological Study of Authentic and Simulated Dissociative Identity States. Reinders AATS, Willemsen ATM, Vos HPJ, den Boer JA, Nijenhuis ERS (2012) PLoS ONE 7(6): e39279. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.003927

Methodology/Principal Findings
DID patients, high fantasy prone and low fantasy prone controls were studied in two different types of identity states (neutral and trauma-related) in an autobiographical memory script-driven (neutral or trauma-related) imagery paradigm. The controls were instructed to enact the two DID identity states. Twenty-nine subjects participated in the study: 11 patients with DID, 10 high fantasy prone DID simulating controls, and 8 low fantasy prone DID simulating controls. Autonomic and subjective reactions were obtained. Differences in psychophysiological and neural activation patterns were found between the DID patients and both high and low fantasy prone controls. That is, the identity states in DID were not convincingly enacted by DID simulating controls. Thus, important differences regarding regional cerebral bloodflow and psychophysiological responses for different types of identity states in patients with DID were upheld after controlling for DID simulation.

Conclusions/Significance
The findings are at odds with the idea that differences among different types of dissociative identity states in DID can be explained by high fantasy proneness, motivated role-enactment, and suggestion. They indicate that DID does not have a sociocultural (e.g., iatrogenic) origin
http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0039279

Psychobiological characteristics of dissociative identity disorder: a symptom provocation study. Reinders AA, Nijenhuis ER, Quak J, Korf J, Haaksma J, Paans AM, Willemsen AT, den Boer JA. Biol Psychiatry. 2006 Oct 1;60(7):730-40.

Abstract
BACKGROUND:
Dissociative identity disorder (DID) patients function as two or more identities or dissociative identity states (DIS), categorized as ‘neutral identity states’ (NIS) and ‘traumatic identity states’ (TIS). NIS inhibit access to traumatic memories thereby enabling daily life functioning. TIS have access and responses to these memories. We tested whether these DIS show different psychobiological reactions to trauma-related memory.

METHODS:
A symptom provocation paradigm with 11 DID patients was used in a two-by-two factorial design setting. Both NIS and TIS were exposed to a neutral and a trauma-related memory script. Three psychobiological parameters were tested: subjective ratings (emotional and sensori-motor), cardiovascular responses (heart rate, blood pressure, heart rate variability) and regional cerebral blood flow as determined with H(2)(15)O positron emission tomography.
RESULTS:
Psychobiological differences were found for the different DIS. Subjective and cardiovascular reactions revealed significant main and interactions effects. Regional cerebral blood flow data revealed different neural networks to be associated with different processing of the neutral and trauma-related memory script by NIS and TIS.
CONCLUSIONS:
Patients with DID encompass at least two different DIS. These identities involve different subjective reactions, cardiovascular responses and cerebral activation patterns to a trauma-related memory script.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17008145

One Brain, Two Selves.  Reinders AA, Nijenhuis ER, Paans AM, Korf J, Willemsen AT, den Boer JA. Neuroimage. 2003 Dec;20(4):2119-25.
ABSTRACT:  Having a sense of self is an explicit and high-level functional specialization of the human brain. The anatomical localization of self-awareness and the brain mechanisms involved in consciousness were investigated by functional neuroimaging different emotional mental states of core consciousness in patients with Multiple Personality Disorder (i.e., Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)). We demonstrate specific changes in localized brain activity consistent with their ability to generate at least two distinct mental states of self-awareness, each with its own access to autobiographical trauma-related memory. Our findings reveal the existence of different regional cerebral blood flow patterns for different senses of self. We present evidence for the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) and the posterior associative cortices to have an integral role in conscious experience.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14683715

Paedophiles behind a face of respectability
By Tracey Spicer The Daily Telegraph September 21, 2009
A PAEDOPHILE lives in Sydney’s East Ryde. He doesn’t have a facial tic or a stutter. He doesn’t look like the sex offender from central casting. And his name is not Dennis Ferguson.
He is one of tens of thousands of paedophiles, living in the suburbs, who don’t walk around with big signs on their foreheads.
In about 90 per cent of child sex abuse cases, the perpetrator is a family member or friend, not some rock spider who abducts kids in the street.
“Offenders look like everybody else,” Carol Ronken from Bravehearts, a support group for child sex victims, said….
http://www.news.com.au/opinion/paedophiles-behind-face-of-respectability/story-e6frfs99-1225777275022

Indian teen kills self after pressed to drop rape case AFP December 28, 2012 AMRITSAR, India (AFP) – A 17-year-old Indian girl who was gang-raped committed suicide after police pressured her to drop the case and marry one of her attackers, police and a relative said on Thursday.
Amid the ongoing uproar over the gang-rape of a student on a bus in New Delhi earlier this month, the latest case has again shone the spotlight on the police’s handling of sex crimes.
One police officer has been sacked and another suspended over their conduct after the assault during the festival of Diwali on November 13 in the Patiala region in the Punjab, according to officials….
The victim’s sister told Indian television that the teenager had been urged to either accept a cash settlement or marry one of her attackers.
“The police started pressuring her to either reach a financial settlement with her attackers or marry one of them,” her sister told the NDTV network.
Meanwhile, the Press Trust of India reported that a police officer has been suspended for allegedly refusing to register a rape complaint in the northern state of Chhattisgar….
Official figures show that 228,650 of the total 256,329 violent crimes recorded last year in India were against women.
The real figure is thought to be much higher as so many women are reluctant to report attacks to the police.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/world/15727354/indian-teen-kills-self-after-pressed-to-drop-rape-case/

Twitter shuts down string of accounts containing child abuse images after hackers expose indecent content
NSPCC says hacking groups exposed the files last night
The charity says it has received a ‘flurry’ of reports
Unclear whether images came from British users or those abroad
Cases will now be investigated in the US where the site is based
Another child protection group received 30 reports of such images
By James Black
24 December 2012
A string of Twitter accounts have been closed after they were revealed to contain disturbing images of child abuse.
The graphic pictures were apparently made public late last night after hacking groups claimed to have broken into the private accounts to expose their indecent content, the NSPCC said.
The charity said it received a ‘flurry’ of reports overnight relating to at least half a dozen Twitter accounts which were later disabled.

They will now be investigated in the US, where the micro-blogging site is based. An NSPCC spokesman said: ‘Apparently these were pretty disturbing images of child abuse.
“We understand the authorities in the US are now looking at the accounts.’The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop) said it had also received around 30 reports, relating to at least four accounts….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2252951/Twitter-shuts-string-accounts-containing-child-abuse-images-hackers-expose-indecent-content.html

Piero Corsi, Italian Priest, Says ‘Provocative’ Women To Blame For Spate Of Domestic Violence (VIDEO)
The Huffington Post  |  By Meredith Bennett-Smith 12/28/2012
An Italian priest found himself embroiled in a national controversy this week after a Christmas bulletin he posted in his church went viral.
Perio Corsi’s flier, entitled “Women and femicide – healthy self-criticism. How often do they provoke?” claimed that women in Italy may be to blame for a spate of domestic violence attacks, Raw Story notes. Members of the priest’s congregation then posted the text on the Internet:
How often do we see girls and mature women going around scantily dressed and in provocative clothes?
They provoke the worst instincts, which end in violence or sexual abuse. They should search their consciences and ask: did we bring this on ourselves?
The flier went on to decry “increasingly provocative,” “arrogant” and “self-sufficient” women who abandon their children, don’t clean their houses and serve cold meals.
Corsi is the leader of a church in the small parish of San Terenzo in northwest Italy, according to The Journal.
The Daily Beast’s Barbie Latza Nadeau notes that this year 120 women have been killed in domestic disputes in the European nation, “a third more than last year.” In fact, the problem has even caught the attention of the United Nations Human Rights Council, which urged the country to take action last June.
As calls for the priest to resign intensified, Euronews reported that Corsi issued an apology, only to quickly take it back. He also used an anti-gay slur when debating a reporter from Rai Radio, L’Huffington Post reports.
Meanwhile, local officials have been quick to distance themselves from the church leader’s comments….
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/28/piero-corsi-italian-priest-provocative-women-to-blame-domestic-violence_n_2376702.html

• Please use caution while reading all of these papers. Some of the information may be very heavy for survivors. If in doubt, download the page and wait to read it until you are with your therapist or a trusted support person.

  Subscribe to SMART (RSS)
• Subscribe to print or email version

• Recent Newsletters

  • Issue 179 – November 2024
  • Issue 178 – September 2024
  • Issue 177 – July 2024
  • Issue 176 – May 2024
  • Issue 175 – March 2024

• Newsletters By Year

  • Newsletter 1995 – Issues 1 – 5
  • Newsletter 1996 – Issues 6 – 11
  • Newsletter 1997 – Issues 12 – 17
  • Newsletter 1998 – Issues 18 – 23
  • Newsletter 1999 – Issues 24 – 29
  • Newsletter 2000 – Issues 30 – 35
  • Newsletter 2001 – Issues 36 – 41
  • Newsletter 2002 – Issues 42 – 47
  • Newsletter 2003 – Issues 48 – 53
  • Newsletter 2004 – Issues 54 – 59
  • Newsletter 2005 – Issues 60 – 65
  • Newsletter 2006 – Issues 66 – 71
  • Newsletter 2007 – Issues 72 – 77
  • Newsletter 2008 – Issues 78 – 83
  • Newsletter 2009 – Issues 84 – 89
  • Newsletter 2010 – Issues 90 – 95
  • Newsletter 2011 – Issues 96 – 101
  • Newsletter 2012 – Issues 102 – 107
  • Newsletter 2013 – Issues 108 – 113
  • Newsletter 2014 – Issues 114 – 119
  • Newsletter 2015 – Issues 120 – 125
  • Newsletter 2016 – Issues 126 – 131
  • Newsletter 2016 – Issues 132 – 137
  • Newsletter 2017 – Issues 132 – 137
  • Newsletter 2018 – Issues 138 – 143
  • Newsletter 2019 – Issues 144 – 149
  • Newsletter 2020 – Issues 150 – 155
  • Newsletter 2021 – Issue 156 – 161
  • Newsletter 2022 – Issue 162 – 167
  • Newsletter 2023 – Issue 168 – 173
  • Newsletter 2024 – Issue 174 – 179
  • Uncategorized

• Archives

  • November 2024
  • August 2024
  • June 2024
  • April 2024
  • March 2024
  • January 2024
  • October 2023
  • September 2023
  • July 2023
  • May 2023
  • March 2023
  • January 2023
  • November 2022
  • September 2022
  • July 2022
  • May 2022
  • March 2022
  • January 2022
  • November 2021
  • September 2021
  • June 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • December 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • March 2020
  • January 2020
  • November 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • May 2019
  • March 2019
  • January 2019
  • November 2018
  • September 2018
  • July 2018
  • May 2018
  • March 2018
  • January 2018
  • November 2017
  • September 2017
  • July 2017
  • May 2017
  • March 2017
  • January 2017
  • November 2016
  • September 2016
  • July 2016
  • May 2016
  • March 2016
  • January 2016
  • November 2015
  • September 2015
  • July 2015
  • May 2015
  • March 2015
  • January 2015
  • November 2014
  • September 2014
  • July 2014
  • May 2014
  • March 2014
  • January 2014
  • November 2013
  • September 2013
  • June 2013
  • April 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • November 2012
  • September 2012
  • June 2012
  • April 2012
  • February 2012
  • December 2011
  • October 2011
  • August 2011
  • June 2011
  • April 2011
  • February 2011
  • December 2010
  • October 2010
  • August 2010
  • June 2010
  • April 2010
  • February 2010
  • December 2009
  • October 2009
  • August 2009
  • June 2009
  • April 2009
  • February 2009
  • December 2008
  • October 2008

• Related Sites

  • Articles on “Capturing The Friedmans”
  • Child Abuse Data - Child Abuse Data with Ritual Abuse and Satanic Ritual Abuse Information
  • Child Abuse Wiki - The Child Abuse Wiki has been created to make public accurate and scientific information on child abuse issues.
  • Extreme Abuse Survey News - Extreme Abuse Data with Ritual Abuse and Satanic Ritual Abuse Information
  • McMartin Preschool Child Abuse Case - McMartin Case Information with Ritual Abuse and Satanic Ritual Abuse Information
  • Ritual Abuse Articles with Satanic Ritual Abuse Information - Ritual Abuse Data with Ritual Abuse and Satanic Ritual Abuse Information