Issue 112 – September 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 112 – September 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.

CDs are now available from the 2013 Child Abuse and Ritual Abuse Conference – CDs include Nick Bryant talking about the Franklin Scandal continuing cover up, Janet Thomas, author of “The Battle of Seattle” and “Day Breaks Over Dharamsala”, and deJoly LaBrier, author of “Altogether Now, A Multiple’s Story of Hope and Healing.”   http://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/

This issue contains information on the Friedman case,   Jesse Friedman, Penn State, Jerry Sandusky, Michael Jackson, child abuse images, global pedophile ring, Charles Napier, Operation Pallial, Jillings report, north Wales children’s homes, Jersey States, Benedictine order, Scotland schools child abuse scandal, Ariel Castro, Gina DeJesus, Amanda Berry, Michelle Knight, Cleveland kidnapping, Michael Madison, Daniel Fino Galvan,  Spanish paedophile pardoned in Morocco, Silvio Berlusconi convicted,  Roman Catholic priest, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Rev. Ruben Martinez, John Paul II, Caldicott Prep School, child sex grooming gangs, International Criminal Court in The Hague, Cardinal George Pell, United Nations committee, Vatican, Shefford Catholic boys’ home, Northern Ireland, residential institutions, Jimmy Savile, Margaret Thatcher, Hasidic cantor, Sam  Kellner, Baruch Lebovits, Yeshiva University High School, BBC, Stuart Hall, Rolf Harris, RCMP sexual harassment class-action lawsuit, child sex trafficking case, Haiti, Matthew Andrew Carter, Army’s child abuse epidemic, online pedophile ring, Ritual Abuse, Mind Control, Brian Moss, False Memory Syndrome, Mind Control, Dissociative Identity Disorder, The Media, Ritual Abuse, The Nazis,  Programming, Zombie Ward, Royal Waterloo’s Ward 5, Narcosis Room, William Sargant, ECT, Judy Byington, Extreme Abuse Survey, Satanic Ritual Abuse, Toos Nijenhuis, Kevin Annett, International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State, ITCCS, Neil Brick, Stop Mind Control and Ritual Abuse Today, SMART,  Child Abuse Recovery, CAR, Ritual Killers, Nigeria,  Cult Killing, Kirsty Theologo, Satanic ritual killings, Italian sex slavery cult, Aboriginal children in medical tests, Satan worshiper, Against Their Will   The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America, Allen  Hornblum, Night Stalker serial killer, Peter Moses Jr., Black Hebrew Israelites, Frank Olson, Area 51 declassified,  Female inmates sterilized in California prisons, Guatemalan syphilis victims, Rape, Facebook,Women Action Media, Childhood neglect, Sexual Abuse of Children with Disabilities, statute of limitations, food addiction, Brain Structure, Rehtaeh Parsons, cyberbullying, Human Trafficking, Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault, Recovered Memories, child pornography restitution case, Dissociative Mental States, posttraumatic stress disorder, Structural dissociation,  Holocaust survivors, Roman Polanski Rape Victim, Samantha Geimer, HONORING THE TRUTH: A RESPONSE TO THE BACKLASH, THE COURAGE TO HEAL

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

Capturing the Friedmans

Committee Report on the Friedman case   Report: “Jesse Friedman Was Not Wrongfully Convicted”
Independent advisory panel says that the Review Team was “prepared to recommend without reservation that Friedman’s conviction be overturned. But that was not how the facts played out.”
MINEOLA – The District Attorney affirms the 1988 child sexual abuse conviction of Jesse Friedman. In a 155-page report released Monday by Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice, the Review Team tasked with conducting the conviction integrity investigation wrote that “.by any impartial analysis, the re-investigation process has only increased confidence in the integrity of Jesse Friedman’s guilty plea and adjudication as a sex offender.” An independent advisory panel appointed to guide the process found the Review Team’s conclusion to be “reasonable and supported by the evidence.”….

Three victims affirmed their prior accounts to the Review Team, and at least three others maintained their accusations at various points within the last decade. None of the five individuals who Friedman advocates suggest “recanted” have, in fact, recanted to any degree of legal certainty. Three have not recanted at all. Reviews of transcripts concerning these individuals reveal that abuse occurred. Another who spoke to the Review Team stood by his account, in contrast to the statement he gave to filmmakers. The subject of the most recent purported recantation has refused to speak to the Review Team or even confirm he wrote the letter outlining the claim, which was provided to the Review Team by Jesse Friedman’s lawyer…..

Friedman codefendant Ross Goldstein privately confessed to a childhood friend in 1989. Unedited film transcripts of Judge Abbey Boklan and Detective Anthony Squeglia show that each was the subject of selectively edited and misleading film portrayals in Capturing the Friedmans. The “Meyers Tape” – one of only two pieces of direct evidence of heavy-handed police interviewing techniques cited by Friedman, his advocates and the Court – is, in fact, no tape at all….

A sworn affidavit from the therapist who treated former student “Computer Student One,” stated that she never performed hypnosis on the child. A portion of an unedited transcript of the film’s interview with “Computer Student One” contradicted his claim of pre-outcry hypnosis and had been edited out. “Computer Student One” claimed in a 2004 media report that Capturing the Friedmans “twisted” his account….

While maintaining his innocence prior to his eventual guilty plea, Friedman commissioned and failed at least two lie-detector tests….
Howard Friedman, brother of Arnold and uncle of Jesse, admitted to the Review Team that Arnold had privately confessed to him shortly after his arrest, and that Arnold admitted to him that Jesse was also involved in the abuse that occurred in the Friedman house, and that Arnold admitted molesting Jesse. In a post-conviction interview by law-enforcement personnel, Arnold Friedman admitted to abusing 41 children and denied abusing 12 others….

In a separate letter written by the Advisory Panel following the conclusion of the investigation, the independent experts involved in the case wrote that the DA’s Review Team “approached their work with no preconceived notions about Jesse Friedman’s guilt, and no agenda to preserve his conviction.the Review Team was prepared to recommend without reservation that Friedman’s conviction be overturned. But that was not how the facts played out.” (p. ii)

“While it was not the role of the Advisory Panel to make an ultimate judgment about Jesse Friedman’s culpability or make factual findings, we do have an obligation to express a view as to whether we believe the conclusions expressed in the Review Team’s Report are reasonable and supported by the evidence it cites. We think they are.” (p. iii) http://www.nassaucountyny.gov/agencies/DA/NewsReleases/2013/062413friedman.html

Teenager’s 1988 Sexual-Abuse Conviction Was Justified, Report Says By PETER APPLEBOME June 24, 2013   Jesse Friedman, the Great Neck, N.Y., teenager whose role in a sexual abuse case a quarter-century ago was portrayed in the Oscar-nominated documentary “Capturing the Friedmans” and came to symbolize an era of sensational, often-suspect accusations of child molesting, was properly convicted and should not have his status as a sexual predator overturned, according to a three-year review that was released on Monday.

In a 155-page report written with very little ambiguity, the Nassau County district attorney, Kathleen M. Rice, concluded that none of four issues raised in 2010 in a strongly worded ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit were substantiated by the evidence.

Instead, it concluded, “By any impartial analysis, the reinvestigation process prompted by Jesse Friedman, his advocates and the Second Circuit, has only increased confidence in the integrity of Jesse Friedman’s guilty plea and adjudication as a sex offender.”

The review concludes another chapter in a case that came to national attention after the 2003 release of the film, which portrayed both the breakup of a deeply troubled family and what was characterized as a flawed, biased police investigation and judicial process. The case led to guilty pleas in 1988 by Jesse Friedman, then 18, and his father, Arnold Friedman, who ran a popular computer class at his house on Piccadilly Road in the affluent Long Island community of Great Neck.

The report’s conclusion was not entirely unexpected, even by Mr. Friedman and his advocates, given the explosive nature of the charges, the impossibility of a definitive finding on many of the allegations more than 25 years in the past and the high bar for prosecutors to overturn convictions, especially those based on confessions.

Still, Mr. Friedman’s lawyer, Ron Kuby, and the film’s director, Andrew Jarecki, reacted with disappointment and anger, saying the report was a biased whitewash by the office that originally botched the case. Mr. Kuby promised to pursue appeals….

Yet Ms. Rice’s report, in all instances, found that the preponderance of evidence pointed toward upholding the conviction. And her report comes with a limited, but potentially powerful, seal of approval in a case that is also being played out in the court of public opinion.

When she began her review, Ms. Rice, a Democrat first elected in 2005, appointed a four-member independent advisory panel to guide and oversee the work. It included Barry Scheck, a founder of the Innocence Project and one of the country’s leading advocates for overturning wrongful convictions….

The report centered on four points raised in the film and by the appeals court: that the case may have been tainted by repeated police interviews that pushed children toward confessions; that children may have been hypnotized to recover memories not based on fact; that the case was distorted by a “moral panic” that created false accusations and a predisposition toward conviction; and that Jesse Friedman’s guilty plea may have been unlawfully coerced by the police, prosecutors and a hostile judge.

The review rejected them all. It said that though some interviews late in the case may have been flawed, the rapid pace and early flow of accusations from children in the classes indicated that the allegations arose from spontaneous accounts, not from investigators pushing children toward accusations. It said the first child interviewed reported improper behavior, 12 children leveled accusations of illegal sexual behavior at Arnold Friedman in the investigation’s first two weeks and, five weeks into the investigation, 13 boys described criminal behavior by Jesse Friedman.

It said, that despite one student’s account in “Capturing the Friedmans” of making allegations after being hypnotized, any use of group therapy or hypnosis came after all the indictments were filed. It disputed the one account of hypnosis in the film….
It cited other evidence damaging to Mr. Friedman’s case — students and parents who stuck by their accounts and added fuller details, a psychiatric evaluation conducted for his defense that labeled him “a psychopathic deviant” and a telephone interview with Arnold Friedman’s brother, Howard Friedman, in which, according to the report, he said: “Jesse is guilty and you’re going to ask me how I know. Because Arnold told me.” He said Arnold Friedman had confessed that both he and his son had “misbehaved” with children in the class, but it is not clear from his statements what that misbehavior might have entailed….

Most glaring of the conflicting accounts was the one given by Mr. Goldstein, who said that “every single thing” in his grand jury testimony had been a lie and that he had been “coached, rehearsed and directed” by a prosecutor and a detective to tell the story they wanted, which was devastating for Jesse Friedman’s defense. The review said his recantation was unreliable.

Ms. Rice said in a statement that “instances of wrongful conviction are real and exist in far greater numbers than any of us would like to admit.” But she added: “The case against Jesse Friedman is not one of them.”

Guilty plea by ‘Capturing the Friedmans’ sex offender Jesse Friedman was just: official review
By KENNETH GARGER and BRUCE GOLDING  June 24, 2013
They captured the Friedmans — and they were right.
Jesse Friedman — who proclaimed his innocence in the Oscar-nominated documentary “Capturing the Friedmans” — “was not wrongfully convicted” in the notorious child-molestation case that sent him and his pedophile father to prison, according to an official report released today.

Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice said a comprehensive review guided by a blue-ribbon panel of legal experts had affirmed Friedman’s 1988 guilty plea, which he now disavows.
The three-year probe was spurred by a federal appeals court ruling that upheld Friedman’s conviction on a technicality, but urged the Nassau DA to conduct a “complete review” of his claim that he was railroaded when cops used questionable tactics to obtain “recovered memories” from his accusers.

“We were fully prepared to exonerate Mr. Friedman if that’s where the facts led us,” Rice said.
“But the facts, under any objective analysis, led to a substantially different conclusion.”
“This exhaustive and impartial process has only strengthened the justice system’s confidence that Jesse Friedman was involved in the sexual abuse of children,” she added.

Friedman and his late father, Arnold, both pleaded guilty to shocking charges that they sexually abused more than a dozen underage boys who took computer classes inside the Friedman’s home in Great Neck, LI….
The 155-page report from a “Review Team” led by three senior Nassau prosecutors says that Jesse’s allegations regarding “aggressive” police interrogations of his accusers are “exaggerated,” and that the cops’ interview techniques were “appropriate.”

The report also says the claim that four of the accusers have since recanted “is simply not accurate,” and that “Capturing the Friedmans” used selectively edited interviews to suggest that Jesse was the victim of public hysteria, police misconduct and judicial bias.
“The Review Team committed itself to follow the facts wherever they might lead, and found that the whole truth diverged significantly from the edited version of events portrayed in the film,” the report concluded. http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/review_affirms_guilty_plea_jesse_YCws6DgLFLPO5gb7seFoOO

Jesse Friedman’s Child Abuse Conviction Backed Despite Documentary’s Claim
Were L.I. Man and Dad Computer Class Sex Fiends? By Reuters  June 24, 2013.
A New York man who spent 13 years in prison for the sexual abuse of minors in the 1980s was rightfully convicted, prosecutors said on Monday, a legal setback in a decade-long campaign to exonerate Jesse Friedman after an Oscar-nominated documentary questioned his prosecution and guilt.

An extensive three-year review “has only increased confidence in the integrity of Jesse Friedman’s guilty plea and adjudication as a sex offender,” Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice said in a 155-page report.
Friedman was 18 in 1988 when he and his father, Arnold Friedman, were accused of molesting more than a dozen boys during computer classes taught in their home in the upscale Long Island town of Great Neck.

Both Friedmans pleaded guilty, and Jesse served 13 years in prison before being released on parole in 2001.
In 2004, he began efforts to overturn his conviction, saying he had been railroaded by the criminal justice system amid a fervor to jail child molesters….
Supporters of Friedman, hoping to clear his name, say five of the 14 children who accused him of molestation have recanted.
The review panel referred to “misleading film portrayals” of the judge and detective who helped prosecute the case.

“Thirteen children accused Jesse Friedman of criminal misconduct within the first five weeks of the investigation,” the report said.
“None of the five individuals who Friedman advocates suggest ‘recanted’ have,” it concluded.
Friedman’s attorney Ron Kuby said the report was “disappointing but hardly surprising.”….
The review panel included a half dozen prosecutors and an independent review team.

“The four principal concerns raised by the Second Circuit are not substantiated by the evidence,” the report said. “In fact, by any impartial analysis, the re-investigation process prompted by Jesse Friedman, his advocates, and the Second Circuit, has only increased confidence in the integrity of Jesse Friedman’s guilty plea,” it concluded.
http://forward.com/articles/179235/jesse-friedmans-child-abuse-conviction-backed-desp/

Jesse Friedman is 100% guilty of sexually abusing children, reinvestigation by Nassau County district attorney concludes
The subject of the documentary ‘Capturing the Friedmans’ is in fact a ‘psychopathic deviant’ who molested 17 children in his parents’ Long Island home, a 172-page report finds.
By Dareh Gregorian / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Tuesday, June 25, 2013

He’s guilty as sin.  That’s the conclusion reached by the Nassau County District Attorney’s three-year reinvestigation into the case of Jesse Friedman, the subject of the documentary “Capturing the Friedmans.” Friedman, his supporters and the makers of the Academy Award-nominated documentary have long maintained he was railroaded into pleading guilty to charges he molested 13 kids in the late 1980s, and were expecting the report to exonerate him. It did the opposite.

Friedman, they found, was labeled a “psychopathic deviant” by his own shrink, and had actually sexually abused a total of 17 children. “The District Attorney concludes that Jesse Friedman was not wrongfully convicted,” the blistering 172-page report says. “In fact, by any impartial analysis, the investigation process prompted by Jesse Friedman . . . has only increased confidence in the integrity of Jesse Friedman’s guilty plea adjudication as a sex offender.”

The panel said it interviewed three of Friedman’s now-adult victims. “Each confirmed that he was sexually abused by Jesse Friedman. Each told their separate story, marked by pain and recovery,” and “recounted years of shame and humiliation,” the report said….  At a Monday afternoon press conference, (Jesse) Friedman said, “It’s painful when people lie about you and it’s really painful when the district attorney lies about you.”…. The exhaustive report also took aim at the makers of “Capturing the Friedmans,” director Andrew Jarecki and producer Marc Smerling. It accused them of using misleading, out-of-context snippets of interviews to further their campaign to exonerate Friedman, 44…. One said he was “tricked” into the statement by Jarecki’s “manipulative” questioning, the report said. The director also suppressed a statement from Friedman’s uncle – who’d said in the movie that he thought Jesse was innocent – that his nephew was indeed a molester and “cannot tell right from wrong,” the report said….

Lawyer Ron Kuby, who’s represented (Jesse) Friedman pro bono for almost a decade, maintained the report ignored the facts…. Arnold Friedman pleaded guilty four months later. With the charges against him piling up – he was hit with over 100 counts of sodomy – Jesse, then 19, eventually copped a plea as well. Arnold was sentenced to 10-30 years in prison, and died behind bars of a heart attack in 1995. Jesse was sentenced to 6-18 years behind bars, and was released after serving 13 years….

The review found none of that was true: police generally didn’t ask leading questions, and there’s no record of any child being visited 15 times. The victim who said he’d been hypnotized was unreliable and likely wasn’t. The children had shown signs of abuse, but they weren’t immediately recognized as such, the report said. Some were scared of attending the class, one developed a stutter and another started losing his hair….

(Jesse) Friedman also went on Geraldo, against his lawyer’s advice, and said then that he’d been sexually abused by his father, and forced “to pose in hundreds of photos for my father in all sorts of sexual positions (with) the kids.”

He “reveled in public discussions of his guilt,” the report says.
He’s since denied he was ever abused by his father, or that his father abused any of his students, but the panel found those claims “not credible.”….
The panel said it interviewed Jesse’s uncle, Howard Friedman, who told them, “Jesse is guilty, and you’re going to ask me how I know. Because Arnold told me.”

He said his brother had tearfully confessed to him after his arrest that he and Jesse had “misbehaved with children,” but swore him to secrecy “until he was dead and Jesse was out of prison.”
He told the panel he’d lied about Jesse’s innocence when he was interviewed for “Friedmans,” and said he felt like “a huge rock had been lifted from my chest” after he made the admission, the report said.

It also said he’d come clean before – he told Jarecki what his brother had told him a couple of years ago, but the director had never mentioned the startling admission to the review team….
It was a documentary loaded with fiction. The Nassau County DA’s office blasted the 2003 film “Capturing the Friedmans” as misleading, and accused the moviemakers of interfering with the probe they were responsible for reopening. The report said the filmmakers misrepresented comments from an investigator and the judge presiding over the case, and took at face value comments by one victim that he was “hypnotized,” when there’s no evidence of such.

The report also claimed filmmakers Andrew Jarecki and Marc Smerling would not hand over some of the evidence under their control, and refused to hand over the unedited versions of interviews with Jesse Friedman, his family members and another co-defendant in the case.
Jarecki told the Daily News his investigation was far more thorough than the DA’s “superficial” probe. He said they provided investigators with more than 1,700 pages of exonerating evidence, and “they never even asked us a single question about it.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/jesse-friedman-100-guilty-child-abuse-article-1.1380786

describes abuse stories
Convicted child molester Jesse Friedman wrote porno stories during his time in prison By SELIM ALGAR June 27, 2013   The convicted Long Island child molester who was the subject of the Oscar nominated documentary “Capturing the Friedmans” stashed a sick collection of pornography in his cell, including depraved tales about child sex, incest and bestiality, The Post has learned.
The shocking revelation comes as Jesse Friedman seeks to have his sex offender status lifted so he and his wife can raise children of their own.

Just this week, the Nassau County DA released the scathing results of a three-year probe — spurred by the 2003 film’s stance that Friedman was innocent — that affirmed Friedman’s guilt and blasted the film for claiming he’d been wrongfully prosecuted.
Now a bombshell report obtained by The Post, reveals that the 44-year-old, was disciplined in July 2000 after prison guards found the stomach-churning smut in his cell — including one tale that describes a fictional father’s sexual encounters with his three children aged 13 to 14.

Named Josh, the father directs the sexual activity between his kids, Lisa, Lucy, and Tom for his own pleasure.
A note at the end of the story warns readers not to practice incest or have sex with minors. “It could get you arrested!” the letter states.
Another story found on Friedman’s person describes a mother who has children with her son and engages in sexual relations with their dog….
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/perv_was_horny_jailbird_smut_writer_NqC3D8fMMoSZhnxIDNsRKM

Penn State

Penn State trustees authorize settlements with victims of Jerry Sandusky
At least 30 men have come forward to claim that Jerry Sandusky, pictured leaving the Centre County (Penn.) Courthouse after having been sentenced in October, sexually abused them as children.
By M. Alex Johnson, Staff Writer, NBC News  July 12, 2013
Penn State University trustees gave the go-ahead Friday for the school to start making settlement offers to some of the child sexual abuse victims of former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.

No settlement agreements have been signed, the university said in a statement, adding that negotiations with men who have made claims against the school are confidential.
Freeh found that Graham Spanier, then the university’s president, two other senior executives and legendary football coach Joe Paterno “failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children for over a decade.” Paterno died last year.

Spanier — who is awaiting trial on charges of perjury in connection with his grand jury testimony in the Sandusky case, as well as charges of obstruction, conspiracy, endangering the welfare of children and failure to properly report suspected abuse — filed a notice Thursday that he is suing Freeh for libel and defamation…..
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/12/19443833-penn-state-trustees-authorize-settlements-with-victims-of-jerry-sandusky

Ex-Penn State president to sue Freeh for libel over report on Sandusky abuse scandal  By M. Alex Johnson, Staff Writer, NBC News July 11, 2013  Former Penn State University President Graham Spanier filed a notice Thursday that he intends to bring a libel and defamation lawsuit against former FBI Director Louis Freeh, whose exhaustive investigation of the Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse scandal sharply criticized Spanier’s handling of the case.
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/11/19423087-ex-penn-state-president-to-sue-freeh-for-libel-over-report-on-sandusky-abuse-scandal

Michael Jackson

describes abuse
Michael Jackson ‘spent $35 million to silence at least two dozen boys he abused’ according to secret explosive FBI files By Daily Mail Reporter 29 June 2013
Michael Jackson paid $35 million in hush money to at least two dozen young boys he sexually abused over 15 years, it has been alleged.
Sunday People has published explosive `secret FBI files’ suggesting the King of Pop groomed and molested children from at least 1989, despite his insistence he was just spending time with them.
The damning files claim the deceased popstar was a ‘pedophile’ who watched porn while assaulting a boy, molested a famous child star, fondled a child’s genitals in his private cinema and groped another child whose mother wasn’t `bothered’ by it….

While Pellicano is now in jail for racketeering and wire-tapping, his investigator told Sunday People he was hired to help dig the dirt on Jackson and make potential problems disappear.
He claims Jackson was obsessed with child porn and preyed on the sons of friends….
The sleuth said at least three boys were paid to stay silent, with the family of a famous film actor given about $596,300 not to talk to the media.

He said a Neverland maid was allegedly paid $2 million after accusing her boss of molesting her son, while another woman who knew her son was being assaulted `turned a blind eye to it because if it didn’t bother him, it didn’t bother her’.
The files on the alleged victims were reportedly compiled when lawyers drew up a list of `potential threats’ to Jackson’s image in the early 1990s, when he was on a world tour.

But after the father of Jordan Chandler publicly claimed his son had been abused, other similar accusations began flooding the media.
Chandler was paid a hefty sum to stay out of the limelight….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2351783/Michael-Jackson-spent-35-million-silence-dozen-boys-abused.html

Court document requesting to introduce “homosexual and heterosexual picture books, videos and magazines” into the 2005 Michael Jackson trial, that were found at the Neverland Valley Ranch.
http://www.sbscpublicaccess.org/docs/ctdocs/011805pltreqaseemd.pdf

UK articles

US formally seeks extradition over child abuse images  15 August 2013
The Four Courts in Dublin, home to the Irish Supreme Court, High, Circuit and District Courts The accused appeared before the High Court in Dublin The US has formally requested the extradition of an Irish man described by the FBI as the “largest facilitator of child porn on the planet”. Eric Eoin Marques, 28, of Mountjoy Square in Dublin, is wanted on four charges linked to website images. He appeared before the High Court in Dublin on Thursday. The court heard a formal request for extradition has been received from the US and a certificate granted by Irish Justice Minister Alan Shatter. Patrick McGrath, senior council for the Irish attorney general, said the accused – who has Irish and US citizenship – was wanted in connection with the advertising, distribution and conspiracy to advertise and distribute child pornography.

The charges date from July 24, 2008 to July 29, 2013. He was arrested in Dublin on 31 July. He is accused of being the sole administrator of a hosting server where multiple websites were held and where it is alleged pornographic images were shared http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23713578

Charles Napier arrest: Half-brother of Tory MP John Whittingdale questioned over ‘sexual assault’ by police probing alleged VIP paedophile ring By Keir Mudie 26 Jun 2013
In a Sunday People picture exclusive, the arrest was made in connection with claims made by campaigning MP Tom Watson in the House of Commons last year

The half-brother of senior Tory MP John Whittingdale was arrested today on suspicion of sexual assault by police probing an alleged VIP paedophile ring.  Charles Napier, 65, from Sherborne, Dorset, was arrested at the home he shares with his elderly mother, at around 8.30am in connection with the historical allegation of sexual abuse….

The arrest was made in connection with the Met’s Operation Fairbank which was set up to investigate claims made by campaigning MP Tom Watson in the House of Commons last year. Operation Fairbank – set up to investigate historical allegations of child abuse – was set up to investigate the claims. This arrest is part of a new strand of Operation Fairbank entitled Operation Cayacos, which has now reached the criminal threshold….
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/charles-napier-arrest-half-brother-tory-1998917

Police investigating over 50 allegations of sexual and physical abuse at former children’s home
Police investigating abuse at council-run Beechwood home in Mapperley
Six victims previously came forward in 2011, five years after the home shut
Also looking at claims of abuse at three other Nottinghamshire homes
By Daily Mail Reporter 14 July 2013
Police are investigating more than 50 allegations of physical or sexual abuse at a former children’s home. Nottinghamshire Police said they are investigating claims that people were abused at the council-run Beechwood Children’s Home in Mapperley, Nottinghamshire. Some of the allegations date back nearly 30 years. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2362813/Bechwood-home-Police-investigating-50-allegations-sexual-physical-abuse.html

Woman and five men face trial in February over child sex charges 05 July 2013
A woman and five men have made their first appearance at crown court accused of a string of child sex offences including child prostitution and rape. The alleged offences relate to 17 victims, 16 girls and one boy, aged as young as 12, between 2004 and 2011 in the Sheffield area. Many were vulnerable and in care at the time of the alleged offences, Sheffield Crown Court heard. The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, is accused of 41 offences relating to victims aged between 12 and 20. She is charged with arranging or facilitating a child sexual offence, inciting or causing a child to become a prostitute and inciting or arranging or facilitating the prostitution of a child. The offences are said to have taken place between 2006 and 2010….
http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/main-topics/general-news/woman-and-five-men-face-trial-in-february-over-child-sex-charges-1-5825404

North Wales

Leicester paedophile arrest: second as part of “Operation Pallial” Wed 26 Jun 2013
Operation Pallial was launched last November after detectives identified 140 allegations relating to 18 care homes in North Wales. The arrest of a 62-year-old man in Leicester is the second arrest conducted by Operation Pallial.
The first took place on April 23 and the man from Ipswich, Suffolk – accused of “a number of serious sexual offences against a number of individuals” – was bailed until the end of July.
A report published in April, which outlined phase one of the inquiry, revealed that the alleged victims in the case were aged between seven and 19.

The report said a total of 84 people – 75 male and nine female – had been named by complainants.
Of these, 16 were named by more than one alleged victim and 10 may now be dead.
The large number of alleged victims and care homes, and the duration of the period involved, is much wider than previously thought….
The NCA (National Crime Agency) was selected at the request of North Wales Police to ensure the inquiry’s independence.  It was set up to re-examine claims of sex crimes and look again at the original police investigations into abuse at care homes in North Wales.
The investigation is being carried out by 31 officers drawn from Soca, the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop) and police forces from across England.

Detectives are hoping to develop forensic leads through scientific advancements which might not have been previously available. In 2000 the Waterhouse Inquiry was established to study claims linked to homes in the former council areas of Gwynedd and Clwyd since 1974. Following Waterhouse, eight people were prosecuted and seven were convicted.
Around 140 compensation claims were settled on behalf of the victims. But victims have since said that the inquiry examined only a fraction of the abuse which took place.
http://www.itv.com/news/central/2013-06-26/leicester-paedophile-arrest-second-as-part-of-operation-pallial/

Third arrest over 1980s guest house child abuse claims Tue 9 Jul 2013
Detectives investigating claims of historical child abuse at a guest house in the 1980s have made a third arrest, Scotland Yard said.
A 69-year-old man was held in west London on suspicion of possessing indecent images of children and has been released on bail until September….
http://www.itv.com/news/update/2013-07-09/third-arrest-over-1980s-guest-house-child-abuse-claims/

Jillings report confirms ‘extensive’ abuse at north Wales children’s homes   Heavily redacted version of 300-page report finally published after 20 years following freedom of information requests Steven Morris   guardian.co.uk, Monday 8 July 2013
A report into physical and sexual abuse at children’s homes that was suppressed for almost 20 years concluded there was “extensive” mistreatment of young people over a “substantial” number of years. The Jillings report into residential care units in north Wales, which has finally been released, said the lives of many children had been blighted by the abuse they suffered while living at the homes….

But it concluded: “Our investigations have led us to conclude that the abuse of children and young people in Clwyd residential units has been extensive and has taken place over a substantial number of years. “It’s clear in a significant number of cases the lives of young people who have been through the care system in Clwyd have been severely disrupted. At least 12 young people are dead.”
The report said the role of other agencies including North Wales police and the Welsh Office needed “careful and detailed scrutiny”. It expressed concern there was “no mechanism to ensure that independent investigations are conducted of allegations against former and serving police officers”.

The report added: “Time and time again the responses to indications that children may have been abused has been too little and too late. The criticisms apply not only to Clwyd county council but also to the Welsh Office and North Wales police.”….
A police investigation ordered by David Cameron at the height of the McAlpine scandal is under way. So far more than 140 people have told police they were victims of abuse at children’s homes across north Wales between 1963 and 1992.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk-news/2013/jul/08/jillings-report-north-wales-child-abuse

describes abuse
The truth behind the child abuse cover-ups
The report that first exposed child abuse in North Wales care homes has finally been published. But, says Eileen Fairweather, damning details have still been left out
By Eileen Fairweather 13 Jul 2013
Seventeen years ago, a nervous-sounding woman rang and asked me to publicise a top-secret report. She was not the whistleblower, she explained, but a go-between. She would not give me her name: “It’s safer if you don’t know.”
That secret report revealed the extensive rape and savage beating of countless children in North Wales children’s homes. It was titled “Child Abuse: An independent investigation commissioned by Clwyd County Council, period 1974-1995”. Last week, John Jillings’s report on the Clwyd scandal was finally published. But Flintshire county council – successor to Clwyd – has heavily censored it. I dug out the original and discovered, unsurprisingly, that the cover-up continues….

as one investigation rapidly led to another, and I realised that paedophiles had comprehensively infiltrated Britain’s children’s homes since the 1970s.
Back in 1996, only a handful of local politicians and officials were allowed a copy of Jillings’s report. They were told – by police, insurers and the council – that they risked their careers, arrest and being personally sued if a word reached the media. The uncensored Jillings report includes these chilling threats.
Every report had a number, imprinted as a large watermark on every page. Any journalist who quoted it would supposedly be ordered by the courts to produce their copy or photocopy or face jail, and the watermark would expose their source….

Jillings, in the non-redacted report, reveals that one head of a home who allegedly cruelly beat boys even had a post secured for him by Clwyd at an exotic holiday destination abroad. Might some who failed to act now be investigated for neglect or conspiracy? When does inertia become criminal?
Many children ran away, but police returned them, weeping, to their abusers. At Bryn Estyn – famously described by Jillings as “the Colditz of residential care” – one boy was crammed into a laundry basket, the lid tied shut and tossed into a swimming pool. Other children saved him from drowning….

The real martyrs are the care children who killed themselves or died violently. Jillings lists 12. He called them R1, R2, etc, with just a few poignant lines about their deaths by hanging or falling from heights. My hand ached after I wrote out that report, and so did my heart.
I later learnt of four other abused boys who died tragically or mysteriously. I rang the secretariat of the Waterhouse tribunal and asked if it would examine the deaths of these 16 boys. The official said no and, when I asked why not, became supercilious. If they’re dead, he snapped, they can’t give evidence – can they?….
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/10177681/The-truth-behind-the-child-abuse-cover-ups.html

Survivor of paedophile network that killed two of his brothers blasts report for failing to name the guilty 9 Jul 2013   By Tom Pettifor, Luke Traynor
Chris Johns suffered at the hands of abusers in North Wales care homes for years
The survivor of a paedophile ring blamed over the death of his two brothers last night slammed a report into the scandal for failing to name the beasts involved.
Chris Johns, who suffered at the hands of abusers in North Wales care homes for years, said the full truth was still being hushed up despite the files being released yesterday – 17 years after they were written.

He said his brothers Adrian and Leander were killed to stop them revealing the horrific details of sex attacks carried out on children from all over Britain. He said: “It’s just another cover-up. This report doesn’t even name names. Half of them got away with what they did.”
The 300-page Jillings Report was thought to have been destroyed, but it resurfaced last year when the North Wales children’s home scandal came back into focus with explosive claims the number of victims could be as high as 200. It lists details of 12 young men whose deaths were thought to have been linked to the abuse they suffered between the late 60s and 80s. It even suggests serving police officers from the time and council staff could have been named as suspects….

Mr Johns’ brother Adrian, 32, died in 1992 in an arson attack before he had a chance to give a statement about the abuse he suffered at the Bryn Alyn home in the 1970s.
He suffered at the hands of paedophile John Allen, who made a fortune running a number of homes.
Leander survived the attack in Brighton with awful burns and in 1995 both he and Chris gave evidence against Allen. Leander, 34, known as Lea, died days later from an overdose, which Chris and his family have always questioned. During the week between Leander’s evidence and his death, Allen had absconded from bail. His whereabouts were never explained. He claimed he had a breakdown and wandered lost in a wood. But £16,500 was taken from his bank accounts during that time. Allen was given six years for sex assaults on boys and is now free….
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/survivor-paedophile-network-killed-two-2039341

Fifth man arrested in north Wales care homes child abuse inquiry – The 62-year-old man was arrested under Operation Pallial investigation for alleged offences against two boys in 1980s      Josh Halliday theguardian.com, Thursday 15 August 2013
A fifth man has been arrested under the Operation Pallial investigation into historic abuse at care homes in north Wales. The 62-year-old man was arrested in Wrexham, north Wales, on Thursday morning on suspicion of buggery and indecent assault on two boys in the 1980s. The offences are alleged to have taken place when the boys were 14 and 15 years old, police said. The man has been taken to a police station in north Wales, where he will be interviewed. He is the fifth arrest under Operation Pallial, the police investigation ordered by David Cameron last year into allegations of abuse at care homes in north Wales. One man has been charged under the inquiry….
The Crown Prosecution Service said last month that 187 people were now speaking to investigators about alleged abuse…. http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/15/fifth-man-arrested-north-wales-child-abuse

Jersey

Jersey States appoint UK judge to lead abuse inquiry 16 July 2013  Jersey politicians have voted unanimously in favour of having a senior UK judge lead an investigation into historical child abuse. Deputy High Court Judge Sally Bradley QC will chair the £6m committee of inquiry into abuse in the care system. She has 35 years of experience in family law and worked on physical, sexual and emotional abuse cases. The inquiry will look into allegations of abuse in children’s homes and fostering services from 1960….  A three-year long £7.5m investigation by Jersey police into historical child abuse in the island’s care homes began in 2007 after allegations of abuse at former children’s home Haut de la Garenne…. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-jersey-23325898

Scotland

Benedictine order plans inquiry into Scotland schools child abuse scandal
Senior figures plan own investigation into allegations that monks abused boys at Fort Augustus and Carlekemp Priory schools     Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent     theguardian.com, Tuesday 30 July 2013 Senior figures in the Benedictine religious order are planning their own inquiry into harrowing allegations that monks sexually and physically abused dozens of boys at two schools in Scotland.
Police in Scotland have launched an investigation into disclosures by former pupils at Fort Augustus in the Highlands and Carlekemp Priory school near Edinburgh that monks subjected them to systematic violence and sexual assaults, including claims that one now deceased monk raped five boys.

Dom Richard Yeo, the head of the UK’s largest Benedictine group of congregations, said he had already been contacted by detectives from Police Scotland over the allegations, detailed in a BBC Scotland documentary on Monday.
In May the Observer revealed that a police investigation had begun into Fort Augustus after one pupil, Andrew Lavery, accused monks there of “systematic, brutal, awful torture”, which included being locked alone for days at a time in a room.
That included sexual assaults by monks, while other ex-pupils spoke of repeated bullying and sexually predatory behaviour….
The BBC programme, Sins of the Fathers, alleged that nine monks at the schools repeatedly beat, sexually assaulted and, in one case, raped boys in their care over several decades. Victims of the abuse complained but their testimony was ignored. One priest allegedly involved, now living in Sydney, Australia, has been suspended by the Australian church after the BBC tracked him down….
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/jul/30/benedictine-monks-inquiry-scotland-child-abuse

Ex-pupils allege they were raped and abused by monks at schools in Scotland   Men tell BBC documentary they suffered sexual and physical assaults while at two exclusive schools which have since closed      Severin Carrell, Scotland correspondent      The Guardian, Monday 29 July 2013

Dozens of pupils at exclusive Roman Catholic boarding schools in Scotland have alleged they were sexually and physically abused by monks, one of whom allegedly raped at least five boys.
Nine Benedictine monks who taught at the Fort Augustus Abbey school in the Highlands and its preparatory school in East Lothian have been accused of repeatedly beating, sexually assaulting and verbally abusing boys in their care over several decades.
One monk, Father Aidan Duggan, who taught at Fort Augustus and Carlkemp prep school, which both closed in the 1990s, was accused by five ex-pupils of raping and sexually abusing them, but they claim their allegations were ignored and rejected by two headteachers, according to the BBC.

Duggan, an Australian, died in 2004 after returning to become a parish priest in Sydney.
Another priest, Father Chrysostom Alexander, now 77, is also alleged to have abused one pupil at the Fort Augustus school in the 1970s.
Alexander, also an Australian, returned to work in Sydney and has now been suspended by the Catholic church after he was challenged about the allegations by a BBC journalist. Alexander did not respond to the allegations.
The allegations, in a BBC documentary Sins of the Fathers, broadcast on BBC1 Scotland on Monday, are now being investigated by Police Scotland in the latest in a series of scandals about abuse by priests and misconduct by senior figures within the Scottish church….

One former pupil, Donald Macleod, told the documentary that Duggan had effectively groomed him before raping him when he was 14.
Macleod tried to raise the alarm but the then headteacher refused to hear about the alleged rape, warning him that lies were a mortal sin.
The BBC documentary alleges the Benedictine authorities failed to warn their Australian counterparts about the allegations against Duggan, who continued to abuse in Sydney.
The Benedictines are also accused of using Fort Augustus as a secret “dumping ground” for problem priests who were removed from their parishes after being accused of abusing children.
Their superiors are alleged to have used that transfer to cover up the abuse….
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/jul/29/pupils-allege-rape-catholic-schools-scotland

Head of Benedictines apologises over abuse 29 July 2013 The Abbot President of the Benedictines, which ran Fort Augustus, has apologised to any victims of child abuse, after the BBC uncovered evidence of serious physical and sexual abuse at the boarding school. Accounts of abuse at the now-closed Fort Augustus Abbey School, in the Highlands, and feeder school Carlekemp, in East Lothian, span 30 years…. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-23490806

Police investigate Australian priest over Scottish abuse allegations Tue Jul 30, 2013 AEST
A six month investigation by the BBC has found a multitude of allegations of sexual and physical abuse over 30 years at the prestigious Fort Augustus Abbey School in Scotland. Two Australian men are at the centre of the allegations, including one who’s been suspended from the Catholic Church pending an investigation. Ashley Hall

Transcript
ASHLEY HALL: Donald McLeod was 13 when he went to the Abbey in 1961.
DONALD MCLEOD: Um…
INTERVIEWER: He raped you?
DONALD MCLEOD: Yeah, I guess so. Yes.
ASHLEY HALL: The man who attacked him was an Australian, Aidan Duggan. Donald McLeod says Duggan groomed him during piano and photography lessons, and then, when he was 14, Duggan sexually assaulted him. Donald McLeod raised the alarm, but no one believed him.
MARK DALY: The headmaster refused to believe the allegation, told the boy that he was lying and that if he continued to lie about Father Aidan, that he would go to hell. And nothing was done to Father Aidan. He was allowed to continue teaching and continue abusing.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-30/police-investigate-australian-priest-over-scottish/4853630?section=nsw

Bishop apologises over claims of decades of abuse at Catholic boarding school  ONE of Scotland’ s most senior Catholic clerics has apologised for decades of physical and sexual abuse of pupils at a church boarding school.  By Auslan Cramb, Scottish Correspondent 04 Aug 2013

The Rt Rev Hugh Gilbert, Bishop of Aberdeen, expressed his “horror and shame” during a mass at Fort Augustus and said abuse by monks at the former Fort Augustus Abbey School was a terrible tale of broken trust and integrity. His statement followed a television documentary that found evidence of physical and sexual abuse by monks at the Highland school, and its prep school in East Lothian.
The Benedictine order that ran the schools, has already apologised, but Bishop Gilbert’s address was the first time a senior cleric had spoken publicly about abuse at the abbey school, which closed in 1998….  Alleged victims who attended the school told a BBC Scotland programme they were molested and beaten by monks over a period of three decades from the 1950s. Five men claimed they were raped or sexually abused by Father Aidan Duggan, an Australian monk who taught at Carlekemp, the East Lothian prep school, and Fort Augustus between 1953 and 1974….  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/10221629/Bishop-apologises-over-claims-of-decades-of-abuse-at-Catholic-boarding-school.html

Ariel Castro

Ariel Castro case: Was a fourth Ohio abduction planned? Drew Thomas, USA TODAY June 4, 2013
Investigators question whether Ariel Castro was planning a fourth abduction after police found chains, tie-downs and padlocks in a third-floor room of the home where he is accused of holding three women captive. The upstairs room was off-limits to Gina Dejesus, Michelle Knight and Amanda Berry, the women told police. Similar constraints were found in the lower rooms of the house where police say the women were held for multiple years….  Castro is accused of kidnapping the three women and forcing one of them into miscarriages through starvation and beatings.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/04/ariel-castro-ohio-kidnapping-amanda-berry/2389015/

Ariel Castro faces 329 charges for rape, kidnapping  Donna Leinwand Leger, USA TODAY June 8, 2013   The indictment charges Castro as a ‘sexually violent predator’ who committed the murder and rapes in the course of a kidnapping    Ariel Castro, 52, the former school bus driver accused of holding three women captive in his Cleveland home for a decade, was charged late Friday with murder and more than 300 counts of rape and kidnapping.  The Cuyahoga County grand jury’s 329-count indictment charges Castro with one count of aggravated murder for allegedly terminating one of his captives’ pregnancies, 139 counts of rape and 177 charges of kidnapping, seven counts of gross sexual imposition, three counts of felony assault and one count of possession of criminal tools dating from the time of the first woman’s disappearance until February 2007.
County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty said in a statement that the investigation is still underway. Additional charges could follow in a superseding indictment.

The indictment charges Castro as a “sexually violent predator” who committed the murder and rapes in the course of a kidnapping. Those charges are considered aggravating factors that call for stiffer penalties. The murder charge is tied to one victim’s fourth pregnancy, the indictment said….
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/07/ariel-castro-charges/2402349/

Ariel Castro Pleads Not Guilty to Imprisoning Three Women for a Decade By RUSSELL GOLDMAN  June 12, 2013 Ariel Castro, the Ohio man accused of keeping three kidnapped women captive in his home for a decade, pleaded not guilty today to 329 counts of rape, torture and murder. A bearded Castro remained silent during his first court appearance since his arrest in May, keeping his head down during a brief appearance in which his attorneys entered a plea for him. Castro,52, is accused of kidnapping Gina DeJesus, Amanda Berry and Michelle Knight and imprisoning them, sometimes restrained by chains, in his Cleveland home….  Castro is accused of kidnapping the women, imprisoning them in his home and repeatedly raping them….  http://abcnews.go.com/US/ariel-castro-pleads-guilty-imprisoning-women-decade/story?id=19381420

‘Sordid details’: Ariel Castro’s alleged kidnapping victims want case to be over
By Matthew DeLuca, Staff Writer, NBC News 6/26/13  The three young women allegedly held captive for a decade in a Cleveland home where they were raped and tortured want to get the case to court as quickly as possible, their attorneys said on Wednesday, adding that they want “this whole thing behind them.”  Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight escaped Castro’s home on May 6 after Berry broke through a front door and screamed to neighbors for help.
“The longer this process lasts, the more painful it is for them. And the more sordid details of this horror that get disclosed in this process, the more painful it is for them,” attorney Kathy Joseph, who is representing Knight, said in a statement.
Ariel Castro, who is accused of keeping three women captive for a decade in his Cleveland home, appeared before Judge Michael J. Russo for a pre-trial hearing.

“Again, they have faith in the process, but the simple, honest truth is they would like it to be over,” said James Wooley, attorney for Berry and DeJesus. “They want this whole thing behind them. Any date by which this may end is like light at the end of a tunnel.”

Ariel Castro has pleaded not guilty to 329 charges including kidnapping and rape. On Wednesday, Judge Michael Russo in Cuyahoga County ordered Castro to undergo a competency evaluation regarding his ability to understand the trial proceedings and work with his attorney.
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/26/19154558-sordid-details-ariel-castros-alleged-kidnapping-victims-want-case-to-be-over

Ariel Castro deemed mentally fit to stand trial, denied access to 6-year-old daughter
Ariel Castro, the man accused of kidnapping three teens and holding them captive in his home for about a decade, attends a competency hearing in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, and asks Judge Michael Russo visitation permission to see his 6-year-old daughter with alleged victim Amanda Berry  By Sophia Rosenbaum, NBC News  7/3/2013 The Cleveland man who allegedly kidnapped and held captive three women in his basement for more than a decade has been deemed mentally fit to stand trial. A judge said during a hearing Wednesday morning that an examination found that 52-year-old Ariel Castro is mentally able to understand the charges and assist attorneys in his defense.
Castro has pleaded not guilty to a 329 count indictment that includes multiple kidnapping and rape charges. He’s being held on an $8 million bond.    Authorities accuse him of kidnapping the women between 2002 and 2004 when they were 14, 16 and 20 years old. A trial is tentatively scheduled for Aug. 5….

The most Castro spoke was when he asked the judge to allow him to see the 6-year-old girl he fathered with one of his alleged victims while she was held captive at his home. Castro asked about visitation rights twice to prosecution objections that the request went against an order of no contact…. http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/03/19267380-ariel-castro-deemed-mentally-fit-to-stand-trial-denied-access-to-6-year-old-daughter

Ariel Castro’s home an oasis of calm on chaotic block, police records show 25 Jun 2013 By Bill Dedman and Matthew DeLuca  Staff Writers, NBC News

During the more than a decade that Ariel Castro allegedly held kidnapped teenagers and young women captive in his home at 2207 Seymour Ave., police officers were within shouting distance of the house more than a thousand times, according to Cleveland Police Department records analyzed by NBC News.

From the time the first kidnap victim vanished in August 2002 until the three women and a 6-year-old girl emerged from the Castro house on May 6, 2013, police responded to calls on that block 1,099 times — or about once every three and a half days….
The records — police dispatch logs and a few follow-up reports – offer a clue to a central mystery of the case: How could the women have gone undiscovered for so long? Castro’s whitewashed home – despite its plywood-covered windows and padlocked front door — was one of the quietest on a chaotic block, one of the houses making the fewest reports to police….
http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/06/25/18958755-ariel-castros-home-an-oasis-of-calm-on-chaotic-block-police-records-show

Ohio kidnappings: Watch Ariel Castro’s alleged victims break their silence to thank public
9 Jul 2013 By Chris Bucktin They spoke out in a video, saying the encouragement of family, friends and the public has enabled them to restart their lives  The brave victims of the Ohio kidnappings have revealed how they are restarting their lives after their ordeal in the house of horror. In a moving video released today, Amanda Berry, 27, Gina DeJesus, 23, and Michelle Knight, 32, flashed big smiles as they spoke for the first time since being rescued. Former bus driver Ariel Castro, 52, has been charged with 329 offences including multiple counts of kidnap, torture and rape….
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/ohio-kidnappings-watch-ariel-castros-2039581

Ariel Castro, Cleveland kidnapping suspect, appears in court – video
Ariel Castro, who is suspected of kidnapping and raping three women in Cleveland, Ohio, appears in court on Wednesday. During the hearing, at which charges against the 53-year-old are read out, the judge repeatedly has to ask Castro to lift his head and open his eyes. Amanda Berry, Gina Dejesus and Michelle Knight escaped from the man’s property in May
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2013/jul/18/ariel-castro-cleveland-arraignment-court-video

Ariel Castro pleads not guilty to new indictment (video) CLEVELAND, Ohio — Accused kidnapper and murderer Ariel Castro pleaded not guilty this morning to a 977-count indictment…,  but not before he was admonished by a judge to raise his head and open his eyes during his appearance in court.
Castro was charged anew last week in an indictment that covers the entire 10-year period prosecutors say Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight were imprisoned and repeatedly raped in Castro’s Seymour Avenue home.
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/07/ariel_castro_pleads_not_guilty.html

Cleveland kidnapping suspect Ariel Castro will return to court Wednesday morning 7/23/13  Josh Boose, newsnet5.com CLEVELAND – The man accused of kidnapping, raping and holding three Cleveland women captive for nearly ten years will return to court Wednesday morning. A pre-trial hearing for Ariel Castro is scheduled for 9:00 a.m. His trial is set to begin August 5, 2013. Last week during his arraignment, when Castro pleaded not guilty to 977 kidnapping and rape charges against him….
http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/news/local_news/cleveland_metro/cleveland-kidnapping-suspect-ariel-castro-will-return-to-court-wednesday-morning

Plea deal talks ongoing for Cleveland kidnap suspect Ariel Castro From Associated Press  July 24, 2013  CLEVELAND — Prosecutors and lawyers for a Cleveland man accused of holding three women captive in his home for more than a decade signaled Wednesday that they are talking about a possible plea deal. With a trial less than two weeks away, there was no mention of whether the prosecutor will seek the death penalty. Attorneys for Ariel Castro, 53, say a deal is dependent on taking the death penalty off the table. “My understanding is that the parties have discussed possible pleas and that you’re working to see if that would be an effective resolution, is that correct?” Judge Michael Russo asked. Both sides responded “yes” without elaboration and left the courtroom without commenting. Last month, the judge had mentioned the possibility of a plea deal raised by the defense….
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-ariel-castro-plea-deal-possible-20130724,0,850507.story

Ariel Castro victims relieved by guilty plea  Marisol Bello and Laura Petrecca, USA TODAY July 26, 2013  The three women whom Ariel Castro kidnapped, raped and tortured over an 11-year span are relieved by his guilty plea that spares them from testifying. The three Cleveland women kidnapped, raped and tortured by Ariel Castro over an 11-year span are relieved that his guilty plea spares them from testifying. Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight “are satisfied by this resolution to the case, and are looking forward to having these legal proceedings draw to a final close in the near future,” said a statement released by the law firm Jones Day, which is representing the women.

“They continue to desire their privacy. They do not wish to speak to the media or anyone else, and they thank people for continuing to respect their privacy as they grow stronger,” the statement said.
Castro, 53, pleaded guilty Friday to 937 criminal counts of kidnapping, rape and aggravated murder. The terms of the plea mean he will likely receive life in prison with no possibility for parole, plus 1,000 years. He will be formally sentenced Thursday.
Mental health and legal experts say it is a good thing the women do not have to testify….
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/07/26/ariel-castro-guilty-plea-victims/2590451/

Cleveland Kidnapping Update: Victim could face Ariel Castro in court, source tells CBS  July 26, 2013  By Crimesider Staff
(CBS/AP) CLEVELAND – One of the three Cleveland kidnapping victims is set to testify against the man charged with holding them captive for up to ten years in his home, a source tells CBS News. It would be their first meeting between victim and captor since the three women escaped from the Cleveland home on May 6. As part of a plea deal yet to be accepted by a judge, Ariel Castro pleaded guilty to holding the three women captive for about a decade. Sources tell CBS News’ investigative unit that one of the three women is expected to testify live in court during the Thursday hearing, during which Ariel Castro will be formally sentenced. The two other women may confront Castro via video, though those plans have not yet been finalized….

As a part of the deal, Castro pleaded guilty Friday to 937 charges, including aggravated murder, kidnapping and rape….
Earlier Friday, the three women said they are relieved that Ariel Castro has pleaded guilty to the charges that will keep him in prison for life.  “Amanda, Gina, and Michelle are relieved by today’s plea,” read a statement released Friday by a law firm representing the women. “They are satisfied by this resolution to the case, and are looking forward to having these legal proceedings draw to a final close in the near future. ”
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-57595767-504083/cleveland-kidnapping-update-victim-could-face-ariel-castro-in-court-source-tells-cbs/

Ariel Castro avoids death penalty with plea deal in Cleveland kidnappings July 26, 2013  CLEVELAND — A former Cleveland school bus driver, Ariel Castro, agreed  today to plead guilty and be imprisoned for life for kidnapping and raping three women he held captive in his house for about a decade in one of the most sensational criminal cases in the United States in recent years.
At a court hearing, Ohio prosecutors in turn agreed that Castro will not be eligible for the death penalty over the disappearance of the women from 2002 to 2004 before they were freed in May along with a 6-year-old girl who, according to DNA evidence, was fathered by Castro with one of his captives.

Many Americans were alternately elated when the three women were freed from Castro’s house in a rundown neighborhood of Cleveland on May 6, and stunned by the details of his brutal treatment of them. The women had been bound for periods of time in chains or ropes and endured starvation, beatings and sexual assaults, according to court documents and a police report.
The avoidance of a trial spares the women from having to testify….
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-castro-plea-deal-20130726,0,728821.story

Judge sentences Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro to life, plus 1,000 years By Drew Griffin, Chelsea J. Carter and Eliott C. McLaughlin, CNN  Thu August 1, 2013 Cleveland (CNN) — In handing down a sentence of life in prison plus 1,000 years to Ariel Castro, an Ohio judge told the kidnapper on Thursday that there was no place in the world for his brand of criminal.

Castro pleaded guilty to 937 counts, including murder and kidnapping, in connection with the kidnapping and abuse of Michelle Knight, Georgina DeJesus and Amanda Berry, whom he held captive for a decade in his Cleveland home. As part of the plea deal, the death penalty was taken off the table.
“You don’t deserve to be out in our community,” Cuyahoga County Judge Michael Russo said after an hours-long hearing in which Castro, at times, appeared to defend his actions. “You’re too dangerous.” In his oft-disjointed statement to the court, Castro referred to himself as “very emotional” and “a happy person inside.” Despite his repeated insistence that he wasn’t making excuses for his conduct, Castro played the victim….

Russo handed down the stiffest sentence allowed as part of the deal after investigators, psychologists and one of the victims painted a horrifying picture of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of Castro, including brutal beatings and repeated rapes that resulted in pregnancies that he would terminate by punching the women in the stomach. All three women kept diaries, with Castro’s permission, that provided many of the details of their abuse….

In a pre-sentencing evaluation, Dr. Frank Ochberg, a pioneer in trauma science, wrote that Knight suffered “the longest and most severely.” “It was Michelle who served as doctor, nurse, midwife and pediatrician during the birth (of Berry’s child). She breathed life into that infant when she wasn’t breathing,” he wrote. “At other times, she interceded when Castro sought to abuse Gina, interposing herself and absorbing physical and sexual trauma. But each survivor had a will to prevail and used that will to live through the ordeal.”….

Wearing eyeglasses and an orange prison uniform, the shackled Castro characterized his crimes in a far gentler light than did the book-length indictment against him: “I’m not a violent person. I simply kept them there so they couldn’t leave.” Testimony from authorities and mental health experts didn’t jibe with Castro’s recollection, however. Police recalled how the women were forced to play Russian roulette and how Castro would throw money at them after raping them…. http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/01/justice/ohio-castro/index.html

Diaries kept by Ariel Castro’s captives paint picture of torment, trauma By Emma Lacey-Bordeaux , CNN Thu August 1, 2013 (CNN) — Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus weren’t in the Cleveland courtroom Thursday for the sentencing of their captor, Ariel Castro. But their words, recorded in diaries, gave authorities a window into the horror they suffered for a decade.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty wrote about the diaries in a sentencing memo. Berry, DeJesus and Michelle Knight did “everything humanly possible to retain a sense of normalcy” McGinty said, including marking the passage of time through written diaries. The diaries provide further details of the women’s life and torment. McGinty reveals that one diary’s descriptions of abuse provided evidence his office used for many of the specific counts against Castro. Castro has pleaded guilty to 937 counts of kidnapping, rape and murder. Diaries kept by the women contain descriptions of these crimes, including sexual abuse, being locked in a dark room and being chained to a wall. McGinty says other entries contain anticipation of abuse yet to come, including Castro’s death threats. But the diaries also showed traces of hope, including “the dreams of someday escaping and being reunited with family.” Amanda Berry’s entries focused on her mother, according to psychiatrist Frank Ochberg’s assessment of the women’s captivity as part of the sentencing statement. Ochberg, an expert in trauma, wrote that the diaries showed the women’s “will to prevail.”….
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/01/justice/castro-diaries/index.html

Castro’s statement: Classic signs of a narcissistic sociopath, experts say  By Jeff Black, Staff Writer, NBC News 8/1/2013 Ariel Castro’s rambling 20-minute statement in court Thursday, in which he repeatedly said, “I am not a monster,” showed signs of a criminal sociopath whose narcissism doesn’t allow him to express remorse, experts say. Sure, Castro apologized to the three Cleveland women he kidnapped, raped and held captive for a decade, but he spent most of his statement denying personal responsibility.
In opening remarks, Castro’s defense attorney Craig Weintraub said his client suffered from “significant undiagnosed mental illness” that did not rise to the legal definition of insanity.
That may be true, but Dr. Mark Levy, a forensic psychiatrist in California who frequently testifies at criminal trials, told NBC News Thursday that Castro is showing classic signs of sociopathic behavior….

“Many, many people in prison have the diagnoses of antisocial personality. They’re people who have limited, if any conscience and are very narcissistic,” noted Levy. “They see the world through their own eyes and have an exploitive view toward interpersonal behavior.     “The kinds of statements he’s making are antisocial. He won’t take ownership. He’s paying lip service to an apology. Everything  is self-serving and self-gratifying,” Levy said….
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/01/19823989-castros-statement-classic-signs-of-a-narcissistic-sociopath-experts-say

‘Most of the sex … was consensual’: Castro’s blame-the-victim act all too familiar, abuse experts say Maggie Fox NBC News   Aug. 1, 2013 Ariel Castro’s words at his sentencing hearing on Thursday are almost jaw-dropping. Given a chance to speak before he was sentenced to life in prison, plus a thousand years for aggravated murder and for holding three young women captive for 11 years, he repeatedly blamed his victims.

He denied he raped and beat Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus, claiming instead that they asked him for sex and that his sexual addiction was to blame. He even said the abuse couldn’t have been that bad because DeJesus “looks normal.” While many onlookers were astonished, abuse experts said they hear that kind of language and justification every day.

NBC News asked them to weigh in on specific comments Castro made:
“Most of the sex that went on in that house, probably all of it, was consensual,” Castro said. “These allegations about being forceful on them — that is totally wrong. Because there was times where they’d even ask me for sex –many times. And I learned that these girls were not virgins. From their testimony to me, they had multiple partners before me, all three of them.”
The denial and rationalization comes as no shock to experts on rape and abuse. In fact, they say, it’s typical that men who rape or batter women will deny they did anything wrong, and even that the victim was “asking for it”….

“I was taken aback [by Castro’s statements] but at the same time not shocked by it,” says Jennifer Marsh, vice president of victim services for RAINN, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. “It’s somebody who was not willing to accept that what they did was wrong and who may have convinced themselves that what they are doing is not wrong or justified. It read like the way that a perpetrator thinks.”
According to RAINN, someone is sexually assaulted in the United States every two minutes, and only three out of every 100 rapists ever spends any time in jail….

“Until society decides this is unacceptable, it will continue to happen,” says Flowers. “People really have to move from colluding with battering behavior. They have to interrupt the silence.”
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/most-sex-was-consensual-castros-blame-victim-all-too-familiar-6C10821794

Ariel Castro’s home to be demolished Wednesday  Jennifer Lindgren, WKYC-TV, Cleveland August 6, 2013  CLEVELAND — The Cleveland home where Ariel Castro held three young women for more than a decade will be begin to be demolished Wednesday morning. The demolition comes less than a week after he was sentenced. After Ariel Castro’s sentencing last week, Cuyahoga County (Ohio) Prosecutor Tim McGinty said the plan was to raze the house as soon as possible. Castro, who was sentenced to life, plus 1,000 years, without the possibility of parole repeatedly denied during his sentencing that he had tortured Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight after he kidnapped them between 2002 to 2004, holding  them captive in his home until Berry managed to escape and alert a neighbor May 6. Castro, 53, pleaded guilty to 937 charges, including aggravated murder, rape and kidnapping, to avoid the death penalty.
The house on Seymour Avenue is not only condemned, it represents the horrors the three survivors faced for 10 years…. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/06/ariel-castro-home-coming-down/2625501/

Ariel Castro’s house of horror leveled in Cleveland   Neighbors, victims and family clapped and cheered on the street as the heavy equipment clawed away at the roof and walls of Ariel Castro’s house where he kept three women captive for more than a decade. Jennifer Lindgren, Doug Stanglin and Yamiche Alcindor,  August 7, 2013  One of his victims brought yellow balloons in memory of other missing children. CLEVELAND — Demolition crews leveled Ariel Castro’s former house of horror Wednesday not long after one of three young women held captive there for 11 years brought a bundle of yellow balloons in memory of other missing children.

Cheers erupted on Seymour Avenue as the heavy equipment clawed away part of the roof and walls of the rundown house where Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight were rescued after years of living in chains. Crews reduced the two-story house to rubble in a little more than an hour. The demolition was carried live online and also drew crowds of neighbors and onlookers.
Castro, 53, pleaded guilty last month to 937 charges including rape, kidnapping and aggravated murder charges in connection with the abduction of the three young women, who were rescued May 6.
Knight, who also spoke at Castro’s sentencing in a moving condemnation of his crimes, made a brief statement and asked God to grant strength to those still missing and told their families to have hope. She says the yellow balloons represented those still out there waiting to be found….
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/07/ariel-castro-cleveland-house-abduction/2626855/

Michelle Knight: ‘I feel very liberated’ Nightly News August 07, 2013
Since her rescue, Cleveland kidnap survivor Michelle Knight has chosen to speak publically several times, which may be her way of bringing closure. On Wednesday, Ariel Castro’s home was demolished, as neighbors prayed. NBC’s John Yang reports.
http://www.nbcnews.com/video/nightly-news/52698653#52698653

Defense: Ohio Kidnapper Fits Profile of Sociopath CLEVELAND August 19, 2013 (AP) The lawyers who defended a Cleveland man who held three women captive for a decade say their client clearly fits the profile of sociopathic disorder and that they hope researchers study him for clues that could be used to stop other predators.
Attorneys Craig Weintraub and Jaye Schlachet told the Cleveland Jewish News in a wide-ranging interview that while the public can easily label Ariel Castro a monster and evil, studies must be conducted to determine whether his issue is genetic, organic or “limited simply to mental health.”

Castro admitted to kidnapping and repeatedly raping the women until they escaped his home in May. He has was sentenced this month to life in prison plus 1,000 years and during his sentencing attributed his “sickness” to an addiction to pornography and sexual abuse he himself suffered as a child. But, Weintraub said, “there are a lot of people walking the streets who were victims of sexual abuse and addicted to pornography who aren’t kidnapping women off the streets, holding them hostage for 10 years and terrorizing them. “A lot of people don’t do that. They get help. For whatever reason, he lacked the insight to get help, or desire, which exacerbated his mental health issues.”….
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/defense-ariel-castro-plea-spared-victim-anguish-20003086

Other Cleveland Cases

Volunteers join hunt for bodies in East Cleveland CBS/AP/ July 21, 2013
Officials identified the suspect in the women’s deaths as Michael Madison, according to CBS affiliate WOIO in Cleveland. Officials said it was Madison himself who alluded that there may be more bodies in the area, which prompted the ongoing search.
Madison is a 35-year-old registered sex offender, and he is in custody as a suspect in the deaths. The suspect, who was arrested Friday after a police standoff, has indicated he might have been influenced by Cleveland serial killer Anthony Sowell, who was convicted in 2011 of killing 11 women and sentenced to death, Norton said.
“He said some things that led us to believe that in some way, shape, or form, Sowell might be an influence,” Norton told The Associated Press.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57594760/volunteers-join-hunt-for-bodies-in-east-cleveland/

describes crimes
Michael Madison Indicted For Deaths Of 3 Ohio Women By REGINA GARCIA CANO 07/29/13
COLUMBUS, Ohio — A man accused in the deaths of three women whose bodies were found wrapped in trash bags was indicted Monday on 14 counts including multiple charges of aggravated murder and kidnapping. Michael Madison is being charged in connection with the deaths of Shirellda H. Terry, Angela H. Deskins and Shetisha D. Sheeley….
A Cuyahoga County grand jury charged Madison with six counts of aggravated murder, two for each victim under different legal theories, plus three counts of kidnapping, three counts of gross abuse of a corpse, one count of rape and one count of having weapons under disability, the county prosecutor’s office announced Monday….

The indictment states that Madison raped Terry between July 10 and July 19. Terry’s family has said she was last seen July 10, leaving a Cleveland elementary school where she had a summer job. Madison was classified as a sex offender in 2002, when he was sentenced to four years in prison for attempted rape, according to Cuyahoga County court records. He had previous convictions in 2000 and 2001 for drug-related charges…. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/29/michael-madison-indicted-_n_3673198.html

Morocco/Spain

Thousands protest freeing of Spanish pedophile in Morocco (PHOTOS) August 03, 2013
Riot police broke up a rally in Morocco where thousands of people protested a decision by the country’s king to pardon a Spanish pedophile who raped 11 local children. The pardon came at the request of Spain’s King Juan Carlos.
Spanish citizen Daniel Fino Galvan, 64, was jailed for 30 years in 2011 by a court in the city of Kenitra, some 40 kilometers north of the Moroccan capital, Rabat, for raping 11 children, aged between 4 and 15. He was convicted after the videos he made of his crimes were used as evidence.
Moroccans infuriated by the pardon gathered in their thousands to the center of Rabat on Friday, where they clashed with police in front of the parliament building. Dozens of protesters, including reporters and photographers, were injured in clashes after police were ordered to disperse the rally…. http://rt.com/news/morocco-pedophile-pardon-protests-991/

Spanish paedophile pardoned in Morocco arrested in Spain  8/5/13
MADRID (Reuters) – Spanish police have arrested a convicted paedophile who was pardoned by Morocco’s King Mohamed VI last week, a source at Spain’s Interior Ministry said on Monday.
Daniel Galvan Vina, who was serving a 30-year sentence in Morocco and was among 48 jailed Spaniards pardoned at the request of Spain’s King Juan Carlos, was arrested in the south-eastern region of Murcia. He will be taken to Madrid where one of Spain’s top courts will handle the judicial proceedings, according to the source. Morocco’s interior ministry confirmed in a statement, Galvan has been arrested in Murcia, southern Spain, after the North African kingdom had issued an international arrest warrant against him. The pardon was revoked by King Mohamed VI on Sunday following a protest in front of parliament on Friday over the decision to release Galvan, who had raped and filmed at least 11 children aged four to 15. The king has promised an investigation into Galvan’s release and said he did not know the gravity of the paedophile’s offences when the royal pardon was issued….
http://news.yahoo.com/spanish-paedophile-pardoned-morocco-arrested-spain-165729292.html

Berlusconi (Italy)

Italy court convicts Berlusconi on sex charges  By Silvia Aloisi and Sara Rossi
MILAN Mon Jun 24, 2013 (Reuters) – Silvio Berlusconi was handed a seven-year jail sentence on Monday for abuse of office and paying for sex with a minor, adding to the complications facing Italy’s fragile left-right government.
The former prime minister will not have to serve any jail time before he has exhausted an appeals process that could take years, but the conviction angered members of his centre-right party who questioned whether he should continue to support the coalition.
The 76-year-old media tycoon expressed outrage at the verdict which he said was politically motivated….

Berlusconi was found guilty of paying for sex with former teenage nightclub dancer Karima El Mahroug, better known under her stage name “Ruby the Heartstealer”, during “bunga bunga” sex parties at his palatial home near Milan.
The panel of three women judges also convicted him of abuse of office by arranging to have El Mahroug released from police custody when she was held in a separate theft case.
The verdict closes a two-year trial that has mesmerized Italy with its accounts of wild sex parties at the billionaire’s villa outside Milan while he was premier in 2010….
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/24/us-italy-berlusconi-verdict-idUSBRE95N0VK20130624
Italy court convicts Berlusconi on sex charges _ Reuters.htm

Berlusconi Sex Trial Verdict: Italy’s Former Prime Minister Convicted, Sentenced To 7 Years  6/24/2013 Italy’s former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has been convicted in a sex-for-hire trial, the Associated Press reports on Monday.  According to Reuters, Berlusconi was sentenced to seven years in jail and the Milan court banned the 76-year-old politician from holding public office.

More from the Associated Press:
MILAN — A Milan court on Monday convicted former Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi of paying for sex with an underage prostitute during infamous “bunga bunga” parties at his villa and then using his influence to try to cover it up.
Berlusconi, 76, was sentenced to seven years in prison and barred from public office for life – a sentence that could mean the end of his two-decade political career. However, there are two more levels of appeal before the sentence would become final, a process that can take months….
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/24/berlusconi-sex-trial-verdict-convicted_n_3490210.html

Clergy Abuse

Priest, former teacher punished in sex-abuse case June 12, 2013  PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A judge on Wednesday handed down prison terms of at least six years to a Roman Catholic priest and a former teacher in a sex-abuse case that brought down a Philadelphia church official. The Rev. Charles Engelhardt and Bernard Shero maintained their innocence, and the judge threw out the most serious conviction against Engelhardt for lack of evidence. Still, Engelhardt, a 66-year-old Oblate who had not previously been accused of abusing children, was sentenced to six to 12 years in prison. And Shero, convicted of rape, was sentenced to eight to 16 years…. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/12/priest-punished-for-abuse/2416053/

Pennsylvania: Priest and Ex-Teacher Get Prison for Abuse  By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS June 13, 2013
Exceeding sentencing guidelines, a judge on Wednesday gave prison terms to a Roman Catholic priest and a former teacher in a sexual abuse case that brought down a Philadelphia church official. The priest, the Rev. Charles Engelhardt of Wynnewood, and the former teacher, Bernard Shero of Levittown, maintained their innocence, and the judge threw out the most serious conviction against Father Engelhardt for lack of evidence. Still, Father Engelhardt, 66, who had not previously been accused of abusing children, was sentenced to 6 to 12 years in prison. Mr. Shero, convicted of rape, was sentenced to 8 to 16 years.

Paedophile Priest ‘Exposes Satanic Vatican Rent-Boy Sex Ring’ Huffington Post UK  By Sara C Nelson 8/06/2013  A convicted paedophile priest has claimed a gay prostitution ring has been operating within the Holy Roman Church, with clergymen hiring underage rent-boys for sex. Don Patrizio Poggi, who served a five-year prison sentence for abusing teenage boys at his Rome parish, also told Italian authorities a former Carabinieri police officer recruited boys for nine clergymen, IBTimes reports.  http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/06/28/paedophile-priest-exposes-satanic-vatican-rent-boy-sex-ring_n_3517013.html

Cardinal Dolan (Milwaukee)

Cardinal Dolan and the Sexual Abuse Scandal  By THE EDITORIAL BOARD July 3, 2013
Tragic as the sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church has been, it is shocking to discover that Cardinal Timothy Dolan, while archbishop of Milwaukee, moved $57 million off the archdiocesan books into a cemetery trust fund six years ago in order to protect the money from damage suits by victims of abuse by priests.
Cardinal Dolan, now the archbishop of New York, has denied shielding the funds as an “old and discredited” allegation and “malarkey.” But newly released court documents make it clear that he sought and received fast approval from the Vatican to transfer the money just as the Wisconsin Supreme Court was about to open the door to damage suits by victims raped and abused as children by Roman Catholic clergy.

“I foresee an improved protection of these funds from any legal claim and liability,” Cardinal Dolan wrote rather cynically in his 2007 letter to the Vatican. The letter was released by the Milwaukee Archdiocese as part of a bankruptcy court fight with lawyers in 575 cases of damage claims. The archdiocese filed for bankruptcy protection in 2011. The law bars a debtor from transferring funds in a way that protects one class of creditors over another.
The release of about 6,000 pages of documents provided a grim backstage look at the scandal, graphically detailing the patterns of serial abuse by dozens of priests who were systematically rotated to new assignments as church officials kept criminal behavior secret from civil authority….
The documents showed how the Vatican slowly took years to allow dioceses to defrock embarrassing priests. Yet the same bureaucracy approved Cardinal Dolan’s $57 million transfer just days after the Wisconsin court allowed victims’ damage suits.

Dolan Sought to Protect Church Assets, Files Show  By LAURIE GOODSTEIN July 1, 2013
Files released by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee on Monday reveal that in 2007, Cardinal Timothy F. Dolan, then the archbishop there, requested permission from the Vatican to move nearly $57 million into a cemetery trust fund to protect the assets from victims of clergy sexual abuse who were demanding compensation.
Cardinal Dolan, now the archbishop of New York, has emphatically denied seeking to shield church funds as the archbishop of Milwaukee from 2002 to 2009. He reiterated in a statement Monday that these were “old and discredited attacks.”
However, the files contain a 2007 letter to the Vatican in which he explains that by transferring the assets, “I foresee an improved protection of these funds from any legal claim and liability.” The Vatican approved the request in five weeks, the files show….
Cardinal Dolan has been regarded by many Catholics as part of the solution. In public appearances, he has expressed personal outrage at the harm done to children, apologized profusely and pledged to help the church and the victims heal.

But the documents lift the curtain on his role as a workaday church functionary concerned with safeguarding assets, persuading abusive priests to leave voluntarily in exchange for continued stipends and benefits, and complying with Rome’s sluggish canonical procedures for dismissing uncooperative priests who he had long concluded were remorseless and a serious risk to children. In one case, the Vatican took five years to remove a convicted sex offender from the priesthood….
In his letter, Archbishop Listecki said the documents showed that 22 priests were “reassigned to parish work after concerns about their behavior were known to the archdiocese,” and that 8 of those “reoffended after being reassigned.”….

New York Times editorial calls allegations against Cardinal Timothy Dolan “shocking”
Claims “church officials kept criminal behavior secret from civil authority” in Milwaukee
By JAMES O’SHEA, IrishCentral Staff Writer Thursday, July 4, 2013
The New York Times has launched a strong attack on Cardinal TImothy Dolan over his alleged shifting of $57 million in funds when he ran the Milwaukee diocese to avoid paying off child abuse victims.
The New York Times editorial called the Cardinal’s actions “shocking” and stated Milwaukee “church officials kept criminal behavior secret from civil authority,”citing evidence newly available in 6,000 pages of documents.

The hard hitting editorial states “Tragic as the sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church has been, it is shocking to discover that Cardinal Timothy Dolan, while archbishop of Milwaukee, moved $57 million off the archdiocesan books into a cemetery trust fund six years ago in order to protect the money from damage suits by victims of abuse by priests.”
Cardinal Dolan, has denied the allegation and described the charges as “old and discredited” allegation and “malarkey.”
However The Times says the new documents make clear “he sought and received fast approval from the Vatican to transfer the money just as the Wisconsin Supreme Court was about to open the door to damage suits by victims raped and abused as children by Roman Catholic clergy.”….
http://www.irishcentral.com/news/New-York-Times-editorial-calls-allegations-against-Cardinal-Timothy-Dolan-shocking-214266971.html

Los Angeles Clergy Abuse

Religious order priest admitted abusing 100 boys; new files add to LA clergy abuse picture August 01, 2013  Associated Press
LOS ANGELES –  In therapy sessions, the priest confessed the shocking details he’d kept hidden for years: He had molested more than 100 boys, including his 5-year-old brother. He had sex with male prostitutes, and frequented gay strip clubs.
The admissions of the Rev. Ruben Martinez are included among nearly 2,000 pages of secret files unsealed Wednesday that were kept on priests, brothers and nuns who belonged to religious orders but were accused of child molestation while working within the Los Angeles archdiocese.

The papers, which were released under the terms of a $660 million settlement agreement reached in 2007, are the first glimpse at what religious orders knew about the men and women they posted in Roman Catholic schools and parishes in the Los Angeles area. The archdiocese itself released thousands of pages under court order this year for its own priests who were accused of sexual abuse, but the full picture of the problem remained elusive without the orders’ records. Several dozen more files are expected to be released by the fall.
The documents cover five different religious orders that employed 10 priests or religious brothers and two nuns who were all accused in civil lawsuits of molesting children. Among them, the accused had 21 alleged victims between the 1950s and the 1980s….
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/08/01/religious-order-priest-admitted-abusing-100-boys-new-files-add-to-la-clergy/

Court orders release of additional priest files Sharon McNary | May 28th, 2013′
A Superior Court judge on Tuesday set September 10 as the deadline for Catholic religious orders to release confidential personnel files of members who were accused of sexually abusing children.  The files are related to lawsuits that have already been settled.  Attorney Raymond Boucher said the deadline affects more than 50 religious orders that operate independently from the Los Angeles Archdiocese, which has already  made public thousands of pages of files.

The order is part of litigation against the Los Angeles Archdiocese that resulted in a $660 million settlement.  The archdiocese released personnel files about its priests within the past year, but files of the independent orders that report to the Vatican through a different authority structure had not been released.
The religious orders were defendants in the original lawsuits that alleged victims brought against the archdiocese in 2002 and 2003. The orders agreed to the same 2007 settlement that required the files to be released, but the logistics of the document release were litigated first with the archdiocese,  said Raymond Boucher, attorney for the plaintiffs.

With Tuesday’s order, the new files for as many as 100 priests and brothers will be made public as they are provided to the court, but no later than the Sept. 10 deadline, Boucher said….
http://www.scpr.org/news/2013/05/28/37454/court-orders-release-of-additional-priest-files/

John Paul II close to sainthood Wednesday, July 3, 2013  By Gary J. Remal
Word leaked from the halls of St. Peter yesterday that Pope John Paul II needs only a final OK from current Pope Francis to become a saint, and a Boston College expert said the effort would never have gotten this far unless the pope was ready to sign off….
Although some of the Holy See’s deep-seated problems — clerical sex abuse, dysfunctional governance and financial scandals at the Vatican bank — date from John Paul II’s tenure, his supporters say people are canonized, not pontificates. Bretzke said saints are not expected to be perfect….
http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2013/07/john_paul_ii_close_to_sainthood

Other Cases

Headmaster at top private school says men accusing him of sex attacks were ‘frustrated underachievers looking for an excuse’
Roland Wright, 82, worked at Caldicott Prep School from 1959 until 1993
Denies 13 charges of indecent assault and two of indecency with a child
Claimed allegations he sexually abused his pupils were malicious
Elite prep school counts deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg among alumni
By Kerry Mcdermott 31 May 2013

….Wright, is facing 13 charges of indecent assault and two of indecency with a child at the school where Nick Clegg was a pupil.
Wright was asked about an allegation that he once stroked the inside of a boy’s groin in his car as he drove him home after a rugby match.
He replied: ‘I deny that. I might have patted him or touched him, but not stroked. There’s a big difference there. Tapping and patting are not sensual, but stroking is.’
The jury has been told Wright encouraged an atmosphere of sexual freedom among the boys at the school, and abused boys as they slept at night in their dormitories, touched them in his car, and on a school trip to Scotland….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2333980/Headmaster-private-school-says-men-accusing-sex-attacks-frustrated-underachievers-looking-excuse.html

Police probe at least 54 more evil child sex grooming gangs  19 May 2013  Officers are preparing to bust the biggest paedophile network ever seen in the country, with police set to swoop within days
At least 54 evil child -grooming gangs are being investigated by police.
It comes as officers in the North of England are preparing to bust the biggest paedophile network ever seen in the country, with police set to swoop within days.

Our disturbing figures can be revealed after reporters contacted every force across England and Wales, but the true number is likely to be much higher as many failed, or -refused, to reply.
Child exploitation came into focus this week when seven paedophiles were convicted of sexually torturing girls as young as 11 in Oxford.
Thames Valley Police missed several opportunities to rescue the girls from the abuse over six years.  The same force has now revealed it is  investigating 14 more networks – with some gangs even using women to help groom the youngsters…. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/police-probe-least-54-more-1896991

Police investigating 64 missing children’s cases by TPN/ Lusa, in General · 25-05-2013
The Portuguese justice minister has revealed police were currently investigating the cases of 64 missing children, 31 of which occurred this year….
http://www.theportugalnews.com/news/police-investigating-64-missing-childrens-cases/28502

Hague Court Vatican Investigation Rejected

Pope Benedict XVI International Criminal Court Investigation Requested By Clergy Sex Abuse Victims Rejected AP  By RACHEL ZOLL  06/13/2013    NEW YORK — The International Criminal Court has rejected a longshot request by clergy sex abuse victims to investigate former Pope Benedict XVI and Vatican cardinals for possible crimes against humanity.
The tribunal, based in The Hague, told attorneys for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests that “there is not a basis at this time to proceed with further analysis.”
“The matters described in your communication do not appear to fall within the jurisdiction of the court,” a court official wrote in a May 31 letter to the Center for Constitutional Rights, the nonprofit legal group that represents the victims. The legal organization released the letter Thursday.

Jeffrey Lena, the U.S. attorney for the Vatican, had called the 2011 request to the court a “ludicrous publicity stunt.”  “The common thread running through all these cases is the mistaken idea that ‘everything is controlled by Rome,'” Lena said Thursday.  Pam Spees, senior staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, said her group was confident it could collect enough evidence as new abuse victims come forward to press the tribunal to reconsider.
The odds against the court opening an investigation have been enormous. The prosecutor has received more than 9,700 independent proposals for inquiries since 2002, when the court was created as the world’s only permanent war crimes tribunal, and has never opened a formal investigation based solely on such a request…. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/13/pope-benedict-international-criminal-court-_n_3436720.html?ir=Religion

Int’l court case against ex-pope fizzles  By RACHEL ZOLL  AP Religion Writer  Thursday, 06.13.13
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/06/13/3449145/intl-court-case-against-ex-pope.html

Hague Court Declines Inquiry Into Church Abuse Cover-Up  By LAURIE GOODSTEIN June 13, 2013
The International Criminal Court in The Hague has decided not to investigate or prosecute the former pope and other leaders of the Roman Catholic Church on allegations of covering up the sexual abuse of children by priests.
Victims of sexual abuse filed a complaint in 2011 asking the court to prosecute Benedict XVI, then the pope, and three other Vatican officials for what they called an international and systemic cover-up of sexual abuse that amounted to “crimes against humanity.”
The court responded in a letter dated May 31 that after analyzing the complaint, it had determined that the matters “do not appear to fall within the jurisdiction of the court.” The letter said that “some of the allegations” fell outside the court’s jurisdiction, which is to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

In addition, the case did not appear to meet the court’s time limits. For the most part, the court may prosecute only crimes committed after it was constituted in July 2002, and even though the cases submitted by the victims involved more recent allegations, some of the supporting material predated 2002…. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/world/europe/hague-court-declines-inquiry-into-church-abuse-cover-up.html

Australian Clergy Abuse

Australia cardinal apologises over clergy child sex abuse  27 May 2013  Australia’s most senior Catholic official has apologised for decades of child sex abuse by priests. During questioning at a state parliamentary inquiry, Cardinal George Pell said a culture of silence within the church was partly responsible.
The Catholic church in Victoria state confirmed more than 600 cases of child abuse by its clergy since the 1930s. The hearings in Victoria are running alongside a national inquiry into abuse in state and religious institutions.
“I am fully apologetic and absolutely sorry,” Cardinal Pell said during the final day of the hearings, which lasted for several hours. He denied being personally involved in the cover-up of paedophile priests, but acknowledged it happened.
“I don’t think many of any persons in the leadership of the Catholic church knew what a horrendous widespread  mess we were sitting on,” he said. He has been accused of wilful blindness and what one parent called a sociopathic lack of empathy towards the victims and their families.

Maximum compensation
He added that church leaders have previously been reluctant to share information about accused priests.
But he said the number of child abuse cases have significantly dropped since the church started taking stronger action, like better background checks.
He acknowledged, however, that his predecessor as Melbourne archbishop, Frank Little – who died in 2008 – “did cover up” child sex abuse cases. “Archbishop Little did cover up but he inherited a situation where there were no protocols, no procedures. And for some strange reason he never spoke to anybody about it,” he said….  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22679770

Cardinal George Pell admits Church covered up cases of child sex abuse By Brigid Andersen Mon May 27, 2013 Australia’s top-ranking Catholic has admitted to a Victorian parliamentary inquiry that some members of the Church tried to cover up child sexual abuse by other members of the clergy.
Cardinal George Pell told the inquiry he was “fully apologetic and absolutely sorry” about decades of child sex abuse within the Church….

Key points: What Pell told the inquiry
Apologised for decades of abuse in Melbourne diocese.
Admitted a systemic cover-up of child abuse within the Church.
Said former Ballarat bishop Ronald Mulkearns destroyed documents relating to abuse cases.
Said former Melbourne archbishop Frank Little covered up cases of abuse.
Said abuse became widespread because the clergy did not talk about the problem.
Defended the Melbourne Response, which he established to deal with abuse cases.
Defended maximum compensation level of $75,000 for victims of abuse….
In its submission to the inquiry, the Catholic Church said at least 620 Victorian children had been abused by its clergy in the past 80 years….
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-05-27/cardinal-george-pell-appears-at-sex-abuse-inquiry/4714964

UN/Vatican

UN tells Vatican to hand over details of child sex abuse cases
A United Nations committee has demanded that the Vatican reveal potentially explosive details about the systematic cover-up of child sex abuse by Catholic clergy.
By Nick Squires, Rome 09 Jul 2013
Campaigners have called on Pope Francis, who was elected in March, to make tackling the issue of sexually abusive priests an urgent priority of his papacy.
The UN’s Committee on the Rights of the Child released its demands for information from the Holy See on Tuesday.

The committee said that “in the light of the recognition by the Holy See of sexual violence against children committed by members of the clergy, brothers and nuns in numerous countries around the world, and given the scale of the abuses”, the Vatican should provide detailed information on all cases of child sexual abuse committed by clergy.
The Vatican was told to show whether it had implemented measures “to ensure that no member of the clergy currently accused of sexual abuse be allowed to remain in contact with children,” amid claims from around the world that bishops often moved abusive priests from one parish to another.
The UN committee demanded to know about specific cases in which bishops or other Catholic leaders had failed to report suspected abuse to the police.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/vaticancityandholysee/10170080/UN-tells-Vatican-to-hand-over-details-of-child-sex-abuse-cases.html

Pope updates Vatican law, criminalizing sex abuse, leaks  New laws apply to clergy, others in the city-state By Nicole Winfield  |  Associated Press July 12, 2013 VATICAN CITY

Pope Francis overhauled the laws that govern the Vatican city-state on Thursday, criminalizing leaks of Vatican information and specifically listing sexual violence, prostitution, and possession of child pornography as crimes against children that can be punished by up to 12 years in prison.
The legislation covers clergy and laypeople who live and work in Vatican City and is different from the canon law which covers the universal Catholic Church.
It was issued at a critical time, as the Vatican prepares for a grilling by a UN committee on its efforts to protect children under a key UN convention and prevent priests from sexually abusing children. The Vatican signed and ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990 yet only now — 23 years later — has it updated its legislation to reflect some of the treaty’s core provisions….
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/world/2013/07/11/pope-updates-vatican-law-crminalizing-sex-abuse-leaks/URHItA5fuIxJNruXaGO2jI/story.html

Shefford Catholic boys’ home abused urged to tell police By Nic Rigby BBC News 3 July 2013
A former resident of a Catholic orphanage at the centre of historic child abuse allegations has waived his right to anonymity to urge others to contact the police.
Tony Walsh, 65, was sent to St Francis Boys Home in Shefford, Bedfordshire, in the 1950s.
He says he was sexually abused by Father John Ryan at the home.
His allegations led to the priest’s arrest in 2003 but he was released without charge and died in 2008.

Mr Walsh, who was born in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk but now lives in Spain, is the third man to inform the BBC he was sexually and physically abused by Father Ryan.
The BBC has also learned of a large number of cases of alleged physical abuse by the same priest…..
A spokesman for the Northamptonshire Diocese of the Catholic Church, which ran the home, said it “deeply regrets” any hurt caused, but stressed the “claims are not proven”.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-22980505

Priest personnel files released in California court case reveal alleged abuser in N.J.
Mark Mueller/The Star-Ledger By Mark Mueller/The Star-Ledger  August 01, 2013
A court-ordered release of personnel files involving religious-order clergy members in California has revealed the name of another New Jersey priest accused of sexual abuse.
The Rev. Joseph Di Peri, now deceased, was removed from ministry in New Jersey in 2003 after the Archdiocese of Newark learned he had been credibly accused of molesting a teenage boy in the late 1970s at Chaminade College Preparatory High School in West Hills, Calif….

“We urge New Jersey Catholic officials to come clean about proven, admitted and credibly accused child molester clerics who live or work in the state, regardless of where they are, where they molested and which Catholic entity signs their paychecks,” Clohessy added. “Secrecy around sex offenders protects sex offenders. Openness about child molesters protects children.”….
“Once again, it appears that an abusive priest was allowed to leave the East Coast under the guise of health issues to serve on the West Coast,” Hoatson said. “In short order, the priest was engaged in the sexual abuse of a minor in Los Angeles.”
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2013/08/priest_personnel_files_released_in_california_court_case_reveal_alleged_abuser_in_nj.html

Ireland Clergy Abuse

Paedophile priest told boy (7) he could get dead grandfather into heaven if he performed sex act 02 July 2013 A paedophile priest told a distraught seven-year-old boy that he could get his dead grandfather into heaven if he performed a sex act on him, a court has heard.
Belfast Crown Court heard that the boy was quite distressed about his grandfather being in purgatory but that 55-year-old James Martin Donaghy told the child “he could get him into haven if he helped him” and performed a sex act.
Last month just before his trial was due to begin Donaghy, originally from Lady Wallace Drive in Lisburn but now languishing in Magilligan prison, pleaded guilty to four charges of indecently assaulting the boy and one of common assault against the schoolboy on dates between January and May 1989.
Following a lengthy trial at the end of 2011, Donaghy was convicted of a total of 17 sex offences including indecent assault and committing acts of gross indecency against all three victims.
Those charges all happened on various dates between 1983 and 2000….
http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/northern-ireland/paedophile-priest-told-boy-7-he-could-get-dead-grandfather-into-heaven-if-he-performed-sex-act-29389769.html

Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry: NI victims launch joint campaign 29 May 2013
Abuse victims whose cases are excluded from a Stormont inquiry into historical child abuse have united in a campaign for their allegations to be included. The Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry is examining allegations of abuse in state-run children’s homes and other institutions in Northern Ireland. However, victims of clerical child abuse and former residents of Magdalene laundry-style institutions in Northern Ireland are excluded from the remit. They have launched a joint campaign.

The two groups were due to call for the remit of the Historic Institutional Abuse Inquiry to be widened. The inquiry, chaired by retired judge Sir Anthony Hart, was set up by the Stormont Executive and is examining cases from 1922 to 1995. It will also determine if there were systemic failings by the state, or institutions, in their duties towards children under 18. It was originally set up to investigate cases going back as far as 1945, but it was later extended to cover the period back to the foundation of the state in 1922…. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-22690033

Survivors of abuse in residential institutions in Northern Ireland asked to come forward
Inquiry into child abuse over 74-year period seeks survivors now living in the United States
By JANE WALSH, IrishCentral Staff Writer Sunday, August 11, 2013
A major inquiry into historical institutional abuse in Northern Ireland is launching an international appeal for victims and survivors to come forward. The inquiry seeks to investigate child abuse which occurred in residential institutions in Northern Ireland over a 74-year period, from 1922 up to 1995.
The Inquiry recognizes that there has been considerable migration from Northern Ireland to various parts of the United States and is anxious to encourage any survivors who suffered childhood abuse in Northern Ireland institutions but who now live overseas to get in touch….
http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Survivors-of-abuse-in-residential-institutions-in-Northern-Ireland-asked-to-come-forward-218869881.html

Jimmy Savile

Jimmy Savile: West Yorkshire Police reveal abuse figures  30 May 2013
Jimmy Savile’s offending took place in locations including hospitals, public toilets, a cemetery and nightclubs, allegations collated by police show. Across West Yorkshire, 79 offences have been recorded against 71 people, the figures have revealed. Thirty-five attacks by the broadcaster in hospitals involved complainants ranging in age from five to 45. The West Yorkshire Police figures show Savile targeted 18 victims at private addresses in Leeds and Bradford.
Savile’s hospital attacks
29 at Leeds General Infirmary
2 at St James’s
2 at High Royds
1 at Dewsbury
1 at LGI or St James (unknown)
The figures, from West Yorkshire Police’s Operation Newgreen victim and crime survey, suggest Savile was most prolific in his offending in the region – including at the Leeds General Infirmary (LGI) and the city’s St James’s Hospital – in the 1960s and 70s.
In January, Operation Yewtree detectives revealed they had recorded 214 alleged sex offences committed nationwide by the BBC presenter, who died in October 2011, aged 84.
By March, 450 claims had been made against Savile since the launch of Yewtree in October 2012…. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-22716302

Revealed: Lady Thatcher’s FIVE attempts to secure knighthood for Jimmy Savile while her aides warned of his ‘strange and complex’ life
Tory PM first asked he be made ‘Sir’ Jimmy in 1984, secret documents show
Civil servants warned her off because of his boasts about his ‘lurid’ sex life
He was finally knighted in 1990, Lady Thatcher’s final year in office
By Vanessa Allen 17 July 2013 Margaret Thatcher made repeated attempts to win a knighthood for Jimmy Savile  despite warnings about his ‘manner of life’. The former prime minister made at least five requests for the now-disgraced DJ to be considered for the top honour, but senior civil servants voiced fears about his ‘strange and complex’ private life. Previously unseen documents from the Cabinet Office reveal the extent of unease about the BBC presenter, almost three decades before he was finally unmasked as a predatory paedophile. There is no suggestion that Baroness Thatcher or her aides were aware of his vile abuse of children as young as eight. But the official documents show that while BBC bosses were apparently willing to ignore the presenter’s private life, Whitehall mandarins privately voiced their misgivings about handing him a knighthood. The files, made public under the Freedom of Information Act, show Mrs Thatcher wanted to bestow the honour to reward Savile’s charity work….
It was only after his death in 2011, aged 84, that he was finally unmasked as a predatory paedophile with more than 450 victims….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2366576/Revealed-Lady-Thatchers-FIVE-attempts-secure-knighthood-Jimmy-Savile.html

Jimmy Savile ‘took his Passion Wagon to Scout camp’ PREDATORY paedophile Jimmy Savile is feared to have been allowed unsupervised access to a Boy Scout camp  overnight in the motorhome he called his “Passion Wagon”. Mark Branagan Sun, June 2, 2013
Scout leaders are under pressure over allegations that disgraced DJ Savile and his friend Jimmy Corrigan spent the night in a tent just feet from where the youngsters slept.
It is alleged the two men visited the campsite, in Doncaster, as part of a fund raising effort by Savile. Concern about the late Jim’ll Fix It star’s links with the movement have been growing since claims surfaced that he abused a Scout in his BBC dressing room in 1976.

The new allegations are the latest in a file of evidence into Savile’s sordid past being built up by residents in Whitby, North Yorkshire. The northern seaside town has been visited by Scotland Yard officers working on Operation Yewtree. The Scouting Association has made it clear that their current safeguarding policy means such access would now  never be allowed. It is unlikely today’s rigorous rules would have been in place in the Sixties and Seventies…..  “This was a type of vehicle he is known to have used to commit sexual offences safely and securely without being seen or discovered.”
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/404335/Jimmy-Savile-took-his-Passion-Wagon-to-Scout-camp

Jimmy Savile police arrest man aged 72 Tuesday 04 June 2013 Police investigating the Jimmy Savile abuse scandal have arrested a man aged 72 on suspicion of sex crimes. The suspect was detained in east London by officers from Operation Yewtree… http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/jimmy-savile-police-arrest-man-aged-72-8644686.html

BBC: New Child Abuse Allegations Emerge 5/31/2013   Twenty current or former employees of the U.K. public broadcaster have faced a total of 36 allegations since the Jimmy Savile scandal last fall.
Twenty BBC employees have faced a total of 36 allegations of sexually abusing children and teenagers since the Jimmy Savile scandal rocked the U.K. public broadcaster last year, according to the Guardian….  The complaints, regarding an unknown number of victims under the age of 18, have come to light in the six months since OctJune 6, 2013ober, according to the response to a Freedom of Information request to the BBC…. The complaints were among a total of 152 recent and past allegations of sexual abuse against 81 BBC employees and freelancers, including 48 about Savile. Half of the accused are current members of BBC staff or contributors said the Guardian, and cases against five are being examined by the police. Three people have been suspended pending the outcome of the police investigations, it said. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/bbc-new-child-abuse-allegations-560959

Jimmy Savile photograph proves he took out Rampton patients   SERIAL sex abuser Jimmy Savile was photographed with potentially dangerous patients from high security Rampton mental hospital on a fun day trip to Scarborough, writes James Murray.   James Murray  Sun, June 9, 2013
Health chiefs had doubted Sunday Express revelations in March that Savile took inmates from the “Broadmoor of the North” on two extraordinary day trips to the Yorkshire resort in the Seventies, saying Savile had visited just once. However, an investigation by Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust found 10 patients and some staff took a coach trip with Savile on August 2, 1971….
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/406159/Jimmy-Savile-photograph-proves-he-took-out-Rampton-patients

Jimmy Savile: BBC warned 40 years ago of risk to teenage girls   The BBC was officially warned more than 40 years ago it was putting girls in the Top of the Pops audience at risk of sexual predators.  By Robert Mendick, and Edward Malnick  05 Jun 2013
A leading QC led an investigation into sexual misconduct at the corporation’s flagship music programme in 1972 following concerns at the time and uncovered what he described as “immorality”.
But the inquiry’s conclusions were kept secret for four decades and only unearthed after a Freedom of Information request by The Telegraph.
The emergence of the 64-page report – which was circulated to the then director general and chairman – will further fuel allegations that the BBC failed to protect teenage girls from Jimmy Savile, the corporation’s then most feted star who was unmasked last year as Britain’s most prolific sex offender. It will also bolster a series of legal claims being brought by Savile’s victims against the BBC….
A BBC spokeswoman said: “In 1971 allegations of corruption at Top of The Pops were made by a newspaper. The BBC took these allegations extremely seriously and commissioned Brian Neill QC to prepare an independent report to establish what had happened….
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/jimmy-savile/10101940/Jimmy-Savile-BBC-warned-40-years-ago-of-risk-to-teenage-girls.html

Top Tory blocked news of Margaret Thatcher’s knighthood plan for perv Jimmy Savile
NEWS of Margaret -Thatcher’s attempts to have paedo Jimmy Savile knighted was blocked by the Government’s transparency “champion”.   By Jonathan Corke 21st July 2013
Last month we told how the Cabinet Office had been battling for months to keep documents about Savile’s award secret. And we revealed an unnamed minister had argued against their -disclosure but was overruled by the Information Commissioner’s Office.
Today he can be identified as -Minister for the Cabinet Office Francis Maude.

The 60-year-old served in Mrs Thatcher’s government and -organised her funeral in April.
He also leads the current -Government’s transparency “agenda” but suggested releasing the papers could harm ongoing Savile investigations by the Department of Health.
Cabinet Office officials also argued the -confidentiality of the honours system might be -under– mined by -disclosure. But the ICO ruled there was a “compelling public interest” in releasing the files and told the Cabinet Office to hand them over.
Last week they were made public and showed Mrs Thatcher’s repeated attempts to have Savile knighted despite warnings of his behaviour. They show she tried four times to make him a “Sir” without success, before getting her way in 1990. And they reveal aides described him as a “strange and complex man” and voiced fears over revelations about his private life. One document describes – “continued misgivings” about him, although there is no suggestion they or Mrs Thatcher knew that he was a paedophile….. http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/327746/Top-Tory-blocked-news-of-Margaret-Thatcher-s-knighthood-plan-for-perv-Jimmy-Savile

Victims claim Jimmy Savile recruited NHS staff to deliver him young patients to abuse By Andy Gardner 28 Jul 2013  THE late DJ is believed to have abused children in an office in a hospital basement, before his accomplices took them back to their wards.
JIMMY SAVILE recruited NHS staff to bring him young patients to abuse, victims have claimed.
The paedophile DJ attacked children in an office in a hospital basement before his accomplices took them back to the wards. One victim has told how a porter delivered her to Savile at Leeds General Infirmary, where the star preyed on youngsters while doing volunteer work.

And she claims nurses knew what was going on. The woman, who has given a statement to police, said: “The porter said Jimmy Savile wanted to see me.
“I was flattered so I followed him to the basement. He knocked on the door and Savile said, ‘Come in.’ The porter shut the door behind me.
“I suffered a serious sexual assault, then Savile said, ‘You’ve got to go now.’ He opened the door and a different porter took me back to the ward.”
The woman alleges that when she told nurses what was going on, they laughed.
“It was apparent they knew what had happened,” said the victim, just 16 at the time.
The woman fears Savile’s “helpers” will escape exposure in the Speaking Out probe into his crimes at Leeds hospitals. Lawyer Liz Dux, acting for more than 70 victims, said there were three others who claim he was helped by staff.
“The stories are almost identical,” she said….
http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/victims-claim-jimmy-savile-recruited-2096556

Celebrity arrests could soar after horrified police discover Jimmy Savile’s secret lair at record shop By Ben Glaze 28 Jul 2013
Names and sexual details of hundreds of girls were scrawled across huge wall in a scene from a horror film
Stunned officers chipped away plaster at a -record shop wall and unveiled a hidden list of names thought to belong to young victims of Jimmy Savile.
The vile register, which contained the names, ages and a disgusting ratings system seemingly used to mark their sexual performance, was scrawled on a secret wall buried behind layers of wallpaper and plaster.

A source revealed: “The wall looked like something straight out of a horror movie. There were lists and lists of names of the victims – it’s a shocking discovery.”
The list of girls and young women is thought to identify -hundreds of potential new victims abused at the hands of the BBC DJ and it raised fears Savile was at the centre of a celebrity paedophile ring.
Police believe the major breakthrough could lead to further arrests – including other well-known celebrities.
The wall also appeared to contain the names of girls the sick group hoped to target in the future. Officers who raided the shop in -Greater Manchester after a tip-off will now try to trace the alleged victims. A source said the raid had provided the clearest evidence yet to show Savile was part of a larger group of monsters…. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/jimmy-savile-celeb-arrests-could-2097740

Jimmy Savile Sex Scandal: Sick List of Victims Found in Manchester Record Shop By Fiona Keating July 28, 2013  http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/495035/20130728/jimmy-savile-paedophile-victims.htm

Abuse home was visited by Savile Written by BY STEVE LOWE 02/08/2013 MORE claims that Jimmy Savile visited a Catholic boys home accused of sexually and physically abusing its children.    For many years there have been allegations of abuse at the former St Francis Boys Home in Shefford. The home was run by the St Francis Society, as part of the Catholic Church.
Two former boys have won out of court settlements against the church, which still refuses to admit to former priests abusing the residents of the home. Many of them are now taking out a ‘class action’ against the church, which guarantees them anonymity, as potential victims of sexual abuse.

There is evidence that Savile used to visit the home, as a Catholic church is part of the complex and he used to visit the church when staying at Henlow Grange health and beauty farm.
Two former boys have said they remember Savile being at the home, while another said he was told that Savile had a ‘twin brother’.
Police are investigating the claims of abuse and have interviewed many of the former boys….
http://www.bedfordshire-news.co.uk/News/Abuse-home-was-visited-by-Savile-20130802170000.htm

Jimmy Savile abuse inquiry: eighty-year-old man arrested   Pensioner held on suspicion of sexual offences in south London is 14th person to be arrested under Operation Yewtree     Press Association     theguardian.com, Monday 12 August 2013
An 80-year-old man has been arrested over sex crime allegations linked to disgraced TV presenter Jimmy Savile. The pensioner was held on suspicion of sexual offences in south London on Monday and has been taken into custody, Scotland Yard said. He is the 14th person to be arrested under Operation Yewtree, the investigation prompted by abuse claims made against late DJ Savile. The investigation has been run in three strands – those involving Savile, those involving Savile and others, and those involving others. http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/aug/12/jimmy-savile-abuse-man-arrested

Jimmy Savile abuse payouts: 120 victims of paedophile presenter to receive average of £33,000 from BBC  By Tom Pettifor 21 Aug 2013  The BBC is expected to pay out around £4million – less than the £4.1million the broadcaster gave its executive board in 12 months
The BBC is expected to pay out around £4million to 120 of paedophile presenter Jimmy Savile’s alleged victims. It works out at an average of £33,000 per person – but is less than the £4.1million the broadcaster gave its executive board in 12 months. The level of compensation is expected to be agreed towards the end of the year when former high court judge Dame Janet Smith, 71, publishes the findings of her probe into the “culture and practices” at the BBC during the Savile era. The review has uncovered two more alleged suspects linked to the pervert, who died aged 84 in 2011. Solicitor Alan Collins, whose firm Pannone represents a number of victims, said: “Many have suffered substantial damage because of the sexual abuse they were subjected to by the now disgraced Jimmy Savile and to all right thinking people they should come first.” He added: “To think that any compensation they receive would be a fraction of that paid to executives in the wake of the scandal seems manifestly unjust.”
He confirmed he is still being contacted by alleged Savile victims….

About 40 of the Savile abuse claimants were quizzed in detail about what allegedly happened to them while giving evidence in Dame Janet’s review.She heard allegations that women were abused by Savile on BBC premises or in outside broadcast vehicles while other staff were present….

The police watchdog has been blasted for probing just one force out of nine accused of failing to investigate Jimmy Savile. So far only the West Yorkshire force has referred itself to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. Now forces in Surrey, Sussex, Thames Valley, Lancashire, Greater Manchester, Cheshire, North Yorkshire and the Met have been asked to explain why they did not do the same. A Savile victim said last night: “The police shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it….
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/jimmy-savile-abuse-payouts-120-2195306

UK Celebrities

Roache in court today over ‘sex assault on girl aged 11’  Lancashire Police have charged William Roache with five indecent assaults against four girls aged between 11 or 12 and 16   Three of the offences allegedly took place in 1965 and two in 1968  By Stephen Wright  6 June 2013
Coronation Street actor Bill Roache was last night charged with sexually assaulting another four girls, one as young as 11. A month after the soap star, 81, was charged with twice raping a schoolgirl in 1967, he was re-arrested and accused of further child sex offences.

The new allegations against Roache, who has played Ken Barlow over six decades, are claimed to have happened in the Manchester area between 1965 and 1968 and involve four girls who were aged between 11 or 12 and 16 at the time.
Roache, who has strenuously denied the previous rape allegations, is due in Preston magistrates’ court over the new charges this morning.  He is one of the best-known stars to be held over child sex allegations in the aftermath of the Jimmy Savile scandal. His friend Stuart Hall, the disgraced BBC TV presenter, is due to be sentenced later this month after he admitted indecently assaulting 13 girls during the 1960s, 70s and 80s…. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2337020/Roache-court-today-sex-assault-girl-aged-11.html

Stuart Hall

Attorney General to investigate if sentence ‘too lenient’ after veteran BBC broadcaster Stuart Hall gets 15 months for indecently assaulting 13 girls
Hall had claimed his victims were lying as part of ‘vendetta against people in public eye’
Paul Bignell Author Biography, James Legge
Monday 17 June 2013
The Attorney General is to examine whether disgraced former BBC broadcaster Stuart Hall’s 15-month sentence for indecent assault was “unduly lenient”, as politicians and charities said it should be extended.    The 83-year-old former BBC sports presenter was sent to jail on Monday after admitting a series of indecent assaults on girls as young as nine, but may only serve half of his sentence. Despite initially telling police his victims were all lying as part of a “vendetta going on against people in the public eye,” the former It’s a Knockout host admitted his guilt at Preston Crown Court in April and was jailed on 14 counts of indecent assault. But MPs and campaigners last night reacted with anger at what they felt was a light sentence. A series of complaints prompted the Attorney General, Dominic Grieve, to examine the sentencing and whether it might be referred to the Court of Appeal….
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/attorney-general-to-investigate-if-sentence-too-lenient-after-veteran-bbc-broadcaster-stuart-hall-gets-15-months-for-indecently-assaulting-13-girls-8661738.html

An insult to all his victims: Sex predator Stuart Hall will serve just TWO WEEKS in jail for every one of the 13 girls he attacked
Hall jailed for 15 months after admitting 14 counts of indecent assault
But court heard he first told police allegations were part of a ‘vendetta’
Former It’s A Knockout presenter, 83, was at Preston Crown Court
Attorney General’s office has received complaints about sentence length
By Stephen Wright and Nazia Parveen  17 June 2013

Stuart Hall will serve barely two weeks in prison for each of the young girls he sexually abused. The sentence prompted a wave of outrage and fury last night, with victims saying it made a mockery of their horrific ordeal and politicians and campaigners condemning it as ‘incredibly lenient’.
The disgraced It’s A Knockout presenter, 83, was jailed for 15 months yesterday after admitting that he indecently assaulted 13 girls between 1967 and 1986. His youngest victim was nine.
Under sentencing rules Hall will be released automatically after serving just half the term.
The Attorney General has already been forced to agree to review the sentence after being inundated with complaints….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2343061/Stuart-Hall-Former-BBC-star-jailed-15-months-sexually-abusing-girls-young-nine.html

Judge who gave pervert Stuart Hall just 15 months was forced to quit after being caught visiting a gay brothel  Judge Anthony Russell QC criticised for ‘unduly lenient’ sentence
He resigned in 1996 in wake of gay brothel scandal, it emerges
Alleged to have entered ‘dark room’ with doctor and hospital porter
Later reinstated and rose up the ranks to become a senior judge By Jaya Narain 24 June 2013 A judge who provoked outrage by jailing Stuart Hall for just 15 months for child sex offences once quit his post after being caught in a gay brothel. Anthony Russell’s legal career looked to be over when he was forced to admit visiting the male-only sauna. He was said to have gone into  a ‘dark room’ inside the club  with a leading doctor and a hospital porter. Following a ‘sting’ by a Sunday newspaper in 1996, he resigned as part-time recorder of Bolton and gave up his position as the top lawyer for the Inland Revenue. Five years later he was reinstated, however, and has since gone on to become a senior judge –  the role in which he handed Hall his jail sentence last week. Hall had admitted indecently assaulting 13 girls between 1967 and 1986, the youngest being just nine years old. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2347141/Judge-gave-pervert-Stuart-Hall-just-15-months-forced-quit-caught-visiting-gay-brothel.html

Stuart Hall faces new rape allegations  Fresh allegations of rape and sexual assault against Stuart Hall have emerged, after he was jailed for 15 months for a string of child sex offences. By Daniel Johnson 15 Jul 2013
Five new claims, including the alleged rape of a 12-year-old girl, have been made against the former BBC broadcaster, it has been reported.
The former It’s A Knockout presenter, 83, was jailed last month after admitting 14 counts of indecent assault against girls as young as nine between 1967 and 1987.
A Lancashire Police spokesman said: “We can confirm that we have received further allegations against Mr Hall and we are working closely with the Crown Prosecution Service to determine the most appropriate course of action….
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/10179390/Stuart-Hall-faces-new-rape-allegations.html

Former Radio 1 DJ Chris Denning held on suspicion of sexual offences   Former colleague of Jimmy Savile is 72-year-old man arrested earlier this week under Operation Yewtree  Josh Halliday      guardian.co.uk, Thursday 6 June 2013   Chris Denning, a former Radio 1 DJ from the 1960s, can be named as the 72-year-old man arrested earlier this week under Operation Yewtree on suspicion of sexual offences.  Denning, a former colleague of Jimmy Savile and one of the first Radio 1 DJs, was detained by Scotland Yard detectives on Monday but was not initially identified.
He was arrested in east London and questioned by Operation Yewtree officers before being released on bail until a date in July.  Denning is the 13th person arrested under Operation Yewtree, the investigation into sexual offences by Savile and others launched last October….
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/06/chris-denning-held-suspicion-sexual-offences

Rolf Harris faces new Yewtree sex offences allegations  Rolf Harris Rolf Harris has been a fixture on British TV screens for more than 40 years   5 August 2013  Australian entertainer Rolf Harris has been re-arrested by police over further allegations of sexual offences.
He was first arrested in March by officers from Operation Yewtree, set up after claims of sex abuse were made against BBC presenter Jimmy Savile. His arrests are not connected to the Savile investigation. The Metropolitan Police said an 83-year-old had been “further arrested in connection with further allegations”, and rebailed until later in August. Operation Yewtree was set up following the death of Savile in 2011, when hundreds of sex abuse allegations came to light. The Met Police have not named Mr Harris, instead describing him as Yewtree 5. He has been a fixture on British TV screens for more than 40 years, having arrived in the UK from his native Australia in 1952. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23581847

282 join RCMP sexual harassment class-action lawsuit
121 of the plaintiffs, who are either current or former Mounties, are from B.C. CBC News Jun 11, 2013 Almost 300 current and former female Mounties have come forward to join a class-action lawsuit alleging harassment within the ranks of the RCMP.
Documents filed in B.C. Supreme Court Monday in support of class-action certification say the action now includes 282 women from all territories and provinces across Canada, with the exception of P.E.I. The largest provincial contingent of women who joined, 121, are from B.C., while 46 of the women are from Ontario. Another 35 are from Alberta.
The lawyers arguing the lawsuit say 100 of the complainants are still with the force, either as officers, civilian members, or public service employees.
The civil suit was filed last year by Janet Merlo, a former RCMP officer who was based in Nanaimo. Merlo, who alleges she suffered bullying and verbal abuse throughout a career that began in March 1991 and ended in March 2010, says she is overwhelmed by the number of other women who have come forward. http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2013/06/11/bc-rcmp-harassment-lawsuit.html

Scots charity demands crackdown on child sexual abuse images STV 1 June 2013
A Scottish children’s charity has called for a review of how the justice system deals with people convicted of viewing online images of children being sexually abused.
Children 1st is writing to Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill as part of its demand for a consistent approach to the prosecution and sentencing of such offences across the country.
The charity is also calling for police and the courts to use the full range of powers available to them in cases involving sexual abuse images.

The demand is part of the charity’s ongoing See.Hear.Speak.Act campaign on sexual abuse, and comes in the wake of the recent conviction of Mark Bridger for the murder of five-year-old April Jones in Wales last year.
Bridger had viewed images of children being sexually assaulted on his computer. In a separate case earlier this year, the Old Bailey heard how Stuart Hazell, jailed for murdering 12-year-old Tia Sharp, had searched for images of children being sexually abused on the internet.
The cases have prompted UK-wide calls for greater action to tackle the problem….
http://news.stv.tv/scotland/227707-scots-charity-wants-abuse-images-crackdown-after-april-jones-murder/

Hasidic Case – Brooklyn

After Sexual Abuse Case, a Hasidic Accuser Is Shunned, Then Indicted By MICHAEL POWELL June 17, 2013  Sam Kellner is a man twice shunned and living in a deepening shadow.
Five years ago, this gray-bearded and excitable man with a black velvet yarmulke spoke out about the sexual abuse of his 16-year-old son by a prominent Hasidic cantor. As Mr. Kellner helped investigators with the Brooklyn district attorney’s office search for other young Orthodox victims of this man, the Orthodox establishment grew ever angrier at him. The rabbi at his Hasidic synagogue in Borough Park, Brooklyn, denounced Mr. Kellner as a traitor and forbade parishioners to talk with him on the street. Yeshivas barred his sons. His businesses dried up — he pawned his silverware to meet his bills. And he still fears that he will never find a marriage match for his son.
“I felt murdered and abandoned,” Mr. Kellner said. “I’m ruined.”
This, however, was a prologue to a worse situation. In April 2011, after the district attorney’s office gained a conviction against that cantor, Baruch Lebovits, the prosecutors turned around and obtained an indictment of Mr. Kellner. They said, based on a secret tape and the grand jury testimony of a prominent Satmar supporter of Mr. Lebovits, that he had tried to extort hundreds of thousands of dollars from Mr. Lebovits.

District Attorney Charles J. Hynes has shown great deference to the politically powerful Hasidic community over the years, and it has rewarded him with large margins on election days. Even his heralded crackdown on Hasidic sexual abuse was a velvet glove wrapped around a velvet fist, as he took the unusual step of refusing to publicize the names of defendants — even the convicted.
Mr. Hynes extended no such courtesy to Mr. Kellner. “We allege that Kellner sent emissaries to Lebovits’s family telling them that he controlled the witnesses against Baruch Lebovits,” the district attorney said at a 2011 news conference, “and that in return for $400,000, he would ensure that the witnesses would not testify.” ….

Mr. Lebovits’s lawyers used his indictment and other technicalities to persuade a state appeals court to overturn his conviction….
Two weeks ago, I talked with the three-member rabbinical court — known as a Beit Din — in Monsey. These rabbis rarely grant interviews, but spoke now of their moral obligation. Their community for too long has resisted coming to grips with sexual abuse.
They view Mr. Kellner as a brave pioneer. He did not seek out witnesses at random; rather their court, with the help of local leaders in Williamsburg, gave him the name of a victim.
“Lebovits is known to have a long history” of sexual abuse, Rabbi Chaim Flohr said. But Mr. Lebovits has powerful supporters, and people are fearful, he added.
Mr. Lebovits’s lawyers maintain that he is innocent of all charges….

Prosecution Backtracks in Sex-Abuse Fraud Case By MOSI SECRET July 8, 2013
Brooklyn prosecutors had been scheduled on Monday to open the trial of an Orthodox Jew charged with paying a child to falsely testify that he was a victim of sexual abuse.
But in a dramatic reversal, they told the trial judge that their key witness was no longer trustworthy, indicating the potential collapse of a controversial case that highlighted the complicated relationship between District Attorney Charles J. Hynes and the politically influential Orthodox community.

The case against the defendant, Sam Kellner, has been unusual from the start. Mr. Kellner had accused a prominent Hasidic cantor, Baruch Lebovits, of molesting his son, and Mr. Kellner helped the district attorney’s office identify other victims, leading to Mr. Lebovits’s conviction in March 2010.
But four months later, one victim who testified against Mr. Lebovits before a grand jury told prosecutors that he had testified only because Mr. Kellner paid him $10,000. Prosecutors turned around and won the indictment of Mr. Kellner, using the original accuser, now an adult, as their key witness in the new case. Mr. Kellner was also charged with trying to extort $400,000 from the Lebovits family to keep other children from making accusations….
In State Supreme Court in Brooklyn on Monday, prosecutors told the judge, Ann M. Donnelly, that they learned a couple of weeks ago that their witness had made the accusations against Mr. Kellner after accepting financial assistance from Mr. Lebovits’s supporters. That money went to paying for his lawyer; his travel to and from Israel, where he is a student; his apartment; and his school fees.

The judge delayed the trial until July 29 to give prosecutors time to investigate the witness, who previously had said Mr. Lebovits had raped him. A lawyer for Mr. Kellner, Niall MacGiollabhui, said after the hearing that he approached Mr. Hynes’s office months ago with evidence that supporters of Mr. Lebovits were manipulating the accuser….
The concerns come even from inside the district attorney’s office, where some have worried that Mr. Lebovits’s lawyer, Arthur L. Aidala, had undue influence.
Mr. Aidala, who used to work in the office, had brought the allegations against Mr. Kellner directly to the chief of the district attorney’s rackets division, Michael F. Vecchione. Mr. Aidala turned over an audio recording of a conversation that he said showed Mr. Kellner trying to extort money from Mr. Lebovits’s son, according to discovery material in the case. A translation of the conversation issued by the prosecutor’s office is ambiguous.
Mr. Aidala, who is a campaign contributor to Mr. Hynes and the vice president of Mr. Hynes’s nonprofit foundation, has boasted to prosecutors about his access to and influence with Mr. Hynes and Mr. Vecchione, according to a law enforcement official with knowledge of the case….

As Kellner Case Collapses, Abuse Advocates Mobilize   New demands that ‘unfounded charges’ against abuse whistleblower be dropped.  07/10/13 Hella Winston
With the Brooklyn district attorney’s case against chasidic sex abuse whistleblower Sam Kellner seemingly falling apart amid mounting evidence that Kellner’s main accuser may have been manipulated and paid to lodge false charges against him, sexual abuse survivors and advocates are taking to the streets to protest the DA’s conduct in the case.

Abuse survivor, advocate and writer Chaim Levin has organized a protest for Thursday outside the Jay Street offices of Brooklyn DA Charles Hynes to support Kellner and, according to Levin’s Facebook post about the protest, “demand that the unfounded charges against [Kellner] be dropped immediately.”
In an interview with The Jewish Week on Tuesday, Levin said that Kellner — who reported his son’s allegations against Baruch Lebovits to police and helped bring forward more alleged Lebovits victims to the DA — is “paying a really big price for what he did and we need to stand up for him.”

“He did more than my parents did,” Levin continued. “He reported a crime. He lost his job, his housing, for a case where they have nothing on him. And we still don’t have any idea about what is happening with Lebovits.” (Lebovits, a cantor and prominent member of the Munkacs chasidic community, was convicted in 2010 and sentenced to 10 to 32 years in jail; his conviction was overturned on a technicality and no new trial date has been set.)….
http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/new-york-news/kellner-case-collapses-abuse-advocates-mobilize

Yeshiva University High School former students file $380 million sex abuse lawsuit
The school ‘was allowing known sexual predators to roam the school at will seeking other victims,’ says attorney Kevin Mulhearn, who filed the suit on behalf of the 19 plaintiffs.
By Michael O’keeffe / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS  Monday, July 8, 2013

Chancellor of Yeshiva University Rabbi Norman Lamm announced his retirement on Monday, July 1, 2013, Lamm said he was wrong in the way he handled allegations of sexual abuse at the university’s high school decades ago. Lamm is stepping down after decades at the university amid an ongoing investigation into accusations of abuse by alumni.
Nineteen former students at Yeshiva University High School have filed a bombshell $380 million lawsuit against the prestigious Jewish institution claiming horrific acts of sexual abuse that went unchecked for two decades at the Manhattan school.
“Yeshiva University High School held itself out as an exemplary Jewish secondary school when in fact it was allowing known sexual predators to roam the school at will seeking other victims,” said attorney Kevin Mulhearn, who filed the suit on behalf of the 19 plaintiffs. “Childhood sexual abuse in the Orthodox Jewish community can no longer be condoned and excused.”

One victim claims administrators ignored his protests when he told them a Judaic studies teacher sodomized him with a toothbrush. Other victims — the children of Holocaust survivors — say a former principal persuaded them not to tell their parents after he sexually assaulted them because their mothers and fathers had already suffered through so much….
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/yeshiva-university-high-school-students-file-380-million-sex-abuse-lawsuit-article-1.1393327

Child Sex Trafficking

Durham girl testifies in alleged child sex trafficking case   June 12, 2013 DURHAM, N.C. (WTVD) — A Durham teenager detailed how she was lured away from her family on social media and kidnapped in a court room Wednesday. Two men are accused of running a possible child sex trafficking ring. Authorities say 20-year-old Ryan Wurvel and 22-year-old Hang Wu were in a stolen car and were moving teens across the country. Deputies said it was mostly teenage girls and that child sex trafficking was potentially taking place. The 14-year-old girl from Durham said she met Wurvel on a website called Experience Project. The website is a forum for teens who want to runaway. She then started chatting with Wu and Wurvel on Skype…. http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news%2Flocal&id=9136824

National sex trafficking ring possibly cracked with Durham arrests May 31, 2013  DURHAM (WTVD) — Local authorities have busted a possible child sex trafficking ring across several states.
Investigators say the suspects were using the internet to encourage underage kids to meet up with them. It all started when a car was pulled over early Thursday morning along U.S. Highway 70 in Durham. Deputies suspected DWI, but the Sheriff’s Office said deputies learned 22-year-old Hang Wu and 20-year-old Ryan Wurvel were in a stolen car and that child sex trafficking was potentially taking place. There were runaway teens inside the car. According to the Sheriff’s Office there were four girls, and one boy. They came from Michigan, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and one from Durham. Authorities said Wurval and Wu meet the teens online. The men are being held at the Durham County Jail….
http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=news/local&id=9123395

Child Sex Trafficking Rescue: FBI Saves 105 Victims in ‘Operation Cross Country’ 07/29/2013
The FBI has rescued 105 child sex-trafficking victims, FBI Assistant Director Ronald Hosko announced Monday. The youngest of the rescued children was 9 years old, according to Reuters….
“Many times the children that are taken in in these types of criminal activities are children that are disaffected, they are from broken homes, they may be on the street themselves,” FBI Acting Executive Assistant Director Kevin Perkins said, according to the network. “They are really looking for a meal, they are looking for shelter, they are looking for someone to take care of them.”
Another victim, identified as “Alex,” told interviewers she became a prostitute at the age of 16, when she felt she had no other options to feed and clothe herself. The raids also resulted in the arrests of 150 “pimps” and other individuals, according to an FBI press release. The rescues were the product of Operation Cross Country, a three-day nationwide initiative to aid victims of underage prostitution…. Since 2003, the Innocence Lost National Initiative has netted the rescue of more than 2,700 children. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/29/child-sex-trafficking-rescue-fbi-announcement_n_3670749.html

Man sentenced to 165 years in prison for sexually abusing children in Haiti By Elisha Fieldstadt, NBC News  7/31/2013  A man who sexually abused children at a center for poor youth that he operated in Haiti was sentenced to 165 years in prison in Florida on Wednesday, according to prosecutors.
Matthew Andrew Carter, 68, was charged in February with five counts of travelling in foreign commerce from the U.S. to Haiti in order to pursue illicit sexual conduct with children and one count of attempting to do so, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of Florida. Judge Joan A. Lenard sentenced Carter to 165 years in prison — the maximum prosecutors requested during Carter’s February hearing. The judge tacked on a lifetime of supervised release if he’s ever freed.
A U.S. Department of Justice statement said the evidence presented at Carter’s trial showed he traveled to Haiti under the guise of helping impoverished children at a home he ran called Morning Star. The children who lived at Morning Star came from homes in which their families could not financially support them.
“For 15 years, Matthew Carter, under the guise of serving as an international humanitarian, sexually abused more than 50 Haitian children,” said acting Assistant Attorney General Mythili Raman. “He held himself out as a savior to vulnerable children in Haiti, but in fact cruelly forced those children to choose between poverty and submitting to repeated sexual abuse,” he added….
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/31/19801515-man-sentenced-to-165-years-in-prison-for-sexually-abusing-children-in-haiti

Army Child Abuse Cases

Army Child Abuse Cases Jump 40% From 2009: Report (PLUS: What’s Being Done About It) The Huffington Post By Eleanor Goldberg 07/31/2013
Incidents of child abuse in the Army are on the rise, an alarming trend that coincides with the return of tens of thousands of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
According to an investigation conducted by the Army Times, 3,698 cases of Army child abuse and neglect were reported last year, a 40 percent increase from 2009.
While the military has not drawn any concrete conclusions as to why such crimes are on the rise, some experts say that abusers may be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, which could lead to their taking their frustrations out on their children. Others cited in the report were quick to note that this type of maltreatment doesn’t always come at the hands of the spouse wearing a uniform.
A 2007 Pentagon study concluded that mothers were three times more likely to mistreat their children while their soldier husbands were away, than when they were home.
Whatever the cause, the disturbing spike raises questions about how the Army investigates such cases of child abuse and the effectiveness of its advocacy programs….
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/31/army-child-abuse_n_3677851.html

The Army’s hidden child abuse epidemic
30,000 kids abused, 118 killed; Army saw 40 percent increase in cases from 2009 to 2012 Jul. 29, 2013 ….While the Army’s intense public attention has been focused on suicides, domestic violence and sex assaults in the ranks, Liyah is part of an epidemic of child abuse inside the Army so under the radar that even top brass were unaware of its scope and an alarming spike in cases. Nearly 30,000 children have suffered abuse or neglect in Army homes over the past decade, an Army Times investigation shows. Beatings, torture and starvation claimed the lives of 118 Army children. More than 1,400 children were subjected to sexual abuse. “The Army put a lot of focus on domestic violence because there’s been a lot of political pressure,” said Dr. Rene Robichaux, social work programs manager at Army Medical Command. “There hasn’t been a concurrent interest in child abuse.” Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. John Campbell said he was not aware of the extent of the epidemic. When the Army suspects child abuse or neglect, Campbell said, “we’ll investigate and prosecute and try to make sure we have the right program in place to take care of the soldiers and their families and do what’s right there.”

Of the 29,552 cases of child abuse and neglect in active-duty Army families from 2003 through 2012, according to Army Central Registry data, 15,557 were committed by soldiers, the others by civilians — mostly spouses. The Army’s rate of child abuse was 4.5 cases per 1,000 children for 2011. The civilian rate was 27.4 per 1,000 children, according to the Children’s Bureau of the Department of Health and Human Services. But the number of Army cases has spiked 28 percent between 2008 and 2011, while the number of civilian cases has increased by 1.1 percent….
http://www.armytimes.com/article/20130729/NEWS06/306170030/The-Army-s-hidden-child-abuse-epidemic

Ukraine police unit stormed after brutal rape By MARIA DANILOVA Associated Press  Tuesday, 07.02.13 KIEV, Ukraine — Protesters hurling firebombs stormed a local police station unit in southern Ukraine after authorities refused to detain one of two police officers implicated in the brutal gang-rape of a young woman. Residents of Vradiyevka, some 330 kilometers (200 miles) south of Kiev, continued to rally outside the station Tuesday, booing the local governor and vowing to continue their vigil until the officer is arrested. During the storming late Monday, protesters smashed windows, broke doors and set fire to the building, while police fought back with tear gas.

The case has caused widespread anger among Ukrainians, who say that corruption, lawlessness and the impunity of government officials and their wealthy friends has increased markedly since President Viktor Yanukovych came to power three years ago.
The victim, a 29-year-old local woman, was returning home from a bar last Wednesday when she says she was shoved into a car, driven to the woods, raped and savagely beaten by two policemen, aided by a driver. The woman remains in the hospital in a serious condition, having sustained multiple fractures to her skull and bruises all over her body….
http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/07/02/3481202/ukraine-police-unit-stormed-after.html

Ex-teacher faces 47 charges of historical sexual abuse Mon 15 Jul 2013
A man has been charged following an investigation into historical sexual abuse at a school in Trafford, Greater Manchester. Alan Morris, 63, of Hale has been charged with 47 offences. The charges are for offences alleged to have taken place between 1972 and 1991 and involve 29 boys aged between 11 and 17 during their time at St Ambrose RC School in Hale Barns. http://www.itv.com/news/update/2013-07-15/man-faces-47-charges-over-sex-abuse-in-a-school/

Sweep snares 255 suspected child predators, rescues 61 children, officials say  By Andy Gross and Daniel Arkin, NBC News  July 14,2013  Law enforcement officials announced Monday that a recent five-week sweep snared more than 250 suspected child predators, including nine teachers and three clergymen. Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement John Morton said that 255 child predators were arrested and 61 child victims were rescued in so-called “Operation iGuardian,” which targeted online sexual abusers as well as those who possess, produce or trade child pornography.
Morton said that the international investigation, which ran from May 28 to June 30, revealed that online sexual abuse is pervasive and growing….

Twenty-two of the victims were 9 years old or younger — including four under the age of 3. The remaining 39 children were between the ages of 10 and 17, according to the ICE news release.
Of those arrested, 20 people were charged with online sexual enticement of a minor, with the remaining 235 people charged with child pornography production, possession or distribution of child pornography, traveling with the intent to have sex with a minor, or other offenses, including rape, according to the ICE release….
Investigators have arrested 1,674 people in similar investigations this fiscal year alone, ICE officials said.
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/15/19486786-sweep-snares-255-suspected-child-predators-rescues-61-children-officials-say

Massive online pedophile ring busted by cops   Five Americans among 184 people arrested; 230 abused children taken to safety   msnbc.com staff and news service reports   An Internet pedophile ring with up to 70,000 members — thought to be the world’s largest —has been uncovered by police, a security official said Wednesday. The European police agency Europol said in a statement that “Operation Rescue” had identified 670 suspects and that 230 abused children in 30 countries had been taken to safety. More children are expected to be found, Europol said. It said that so far 184 people had been arrested and investigations in some countries were continuing. Most of those detained are suspected of direct involvement in sexually abusing children. They include teachers, police officers and scout leaders, AP reported. One Spaniard who worked at summer youth camps is suspected of abusing some 100 children over five years. Europol director Rob Wainwright said Wednesday the ring, which communicated using an Internet forum, was “probably the largest online pedophile network in the world.” Cori Bassett, a public affairs officer for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said in an email that there had been five arrests and four convictions in connection with Operation Rescue in the U.S….
“The website operated from a server based in the Netherlands and, at its height, boasted up to 70,000 members worldwide,” it added….
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/42108748/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/t/massive-online-pedophile-ring-busted-cops/

Massive child porn bust in Atlantic Canada  By QMI Agency June 26, 2013
DARTMOUTH, N.S. — Police have arrested 22 people and rescued two children in a massive bust of suspected child predators that reached across Atlantic Canada.
At a news conference in Dartmouth, N.S., Wednesday, police said they seized 43 computers and millions of child porn images in Operation Snapshot 2, which targeted “high-risk offenders who collect, possess and/or distribute child sexual exploitation material online.”

“These are not images of a 16-year-old standing topless at a swimming pool, these are images of children being raped, some are in diapers, this is the worst of the worst,” Det. Const. Chris Purchas of the Toronto Police said.  A total of 64 charges have been laid or are pending, including, among others, making child pornography and voyeurism. Police said one of the suspects is a registered sex offender and another worked with children. The suspects range in age from their 20s to 60s….
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/Crime/2013/06/26/20929226.html

Ritual Abuse and Mind Control articles

Disinformation and DID: the Politics of Memory  Brian Moss, MA, MFT
Information on the False Memory Syndrome, Mind Control, Dissociative Identity Disorder, The Media, Ritual Abuse, The Nazis and Programming.

Disinformation and DID: the Politics of Memory

Websites with information on programming and survivor issues. https://survivorship.org/programming/

The Zombie Ward: The chilling story of how ‘depressed’ women were put to sleep for months in an NHS hospital room – leaving mental scars that remain 40 years on
Women with postnatal depression and anorexia passed through Royal Waterloo’s infamous Ward 5
They were drugged and subjected to horrendous levels of ECT
Unluckiest were taken to the ‘Narcosis Room’ and put to sleep for weeks
By Barbara Davies  8 August 2013
There are many horrors that Elizabeth Reed recalls from her time at London’s Royal Waterloo Hospital, but one in particular lingers in her mind. She describes a small, windowless room at the top of the red-brick Edwardian building, just lit by a night lamp on a nurse’s desk.
Six beds are jammed together. The deep breathing of women in a drug-induced sleep. The fetid stench of unwashed bodies.
‘It was like being buried alive,’ she says. ‘I was lying there in the dark, hour after hour, and couldn’t move. I wasn’t aware of my body,  just my head in this darkness. You could hear people moving around and other people breathing and moaning.’  While Elizabeth is one of only a handful of women prepared to speak out, her story is not unique. Up to 500 women, suffering from conditions such as postnatal depression and anorexia, passed through the Royal Waterloo’s infamous Ward 5 before it shut 40 years ago.

Heavily drugged and subjected to horrendous levels of electro-convulsive therapy (ECT) and even lobotomies, the unluckiest were taken to the ‘Narcosis Room’, where they were put to sleep for weeks at a time. Almost all teenage girls and women in their early 20s, they were treated as little more than guinea pigs by controversial psychiatrist William Sargant as he conducted a bizarre experiment to ‘repattern’ their brains and cure them of depression.
If all this sounds like the stuff of science-fiction horror, it is no coincidence a new psychological thriller, The Sleep Room, by clinical psychologist-turned-novelist F.R. Tallis, draws heavily on Sargant’s scandalous treatments. But behind the fiction, questions remain about why the women of Ward 5 were subjected to such cruelty at an NHS hospital. Two of them, now in their 60s, spoke about their experiences to Femail this week….

Officially, the Department of Health says it no longer has records of Sargant’s work at the Royal Waterloo, affiliated to London’s St Thomas’s Hospital. However, Elizabeth has a copy of her referral letter from January 1973, stamped with the ominous words: ‘Admit to Ward 5.’ Notes reveal she was given a ‘course of narcosis’….
She was admitted to the Royal Waterloo in spring 1973 when she was 22 and engaged to be married. After arriving on the 22-bed Ward 5, she was sedated and underwent ECT — sometimes every other day.
‘I can remember the sound of the ECT machine being wheeled down the corridor and it being switched on and off in other rooms,’ she says.
‘It was so frightening. First of all, they injected you and you had an awful feeling of falling backwards into yourself. After ECT, you didn’t know who you were.’….

Eventually, Elizabeth was moved into the Narcosis Room beside Ward 5 and put into a drug-induced sleep. ‘I was awake, but couldn’t move or speak. It was torture, lying there for hours in the darkness’
Women there were occasionally woken to be taken to the toilet or to be fed. ‘We were like zombies,’ says Elizabeth. ‘I couldn’t walk. I had to be lifted. Afterwards, they put you back to sleep again.  Sargant, a founding member of St Thomas’s department of psychological medicine, who advocated the use of drugs to treat mental illness, operated his ‘sleep room’ for ten years until 1973.
Four patients are known to have died there and yet no one stepped in to stop him….

At the heart of his treatment was his belief that the brain could be ‘repatterned’ to erase bad memories. His fame – due to TV and radio interviews and best-selling books – ensured a steady stream of patients….
The secrecy surrounding Dr Sargant’s work has even led to claims he was being bankrolled by British intelligence and the CIA. He certainly had links to the military in World War II, working at Porton Down, the Ministry of Defence biological and chemical weapons research base.
But long before he died in 1988, Sargant destroyed all his records, which might have shed light on his sinister treatments….
A leading psychiatric expert, Professor Malcolm Lader of King’s College, London, recalls how, as a junior doctor, Sargant showed him his sleep room several times in 1966. ‘To be frank, I was horrified by what I saw,’ he says. ‘The women were really cramped together. It was dark. It was like twilight. There was a terrible smell of unwashed bodies. ‘It was a fraught procedure to be sedated for that amount of time. Most importantly, there was no evidence that narcosis had any effect. ‘He was doling out drugs in large doses that were way above the recommended maximum dose. I resolved never to send anyone there.’….

There were also rumours, says Professor Lader, that Sargant was untouchable because he was supported by British intelligence or the CIA. He was a frequent traveller to the U.S. and wrote in his autobiography of being entertained at the White House during one of his trips. ‘He was interested in brainwashing and so was the CIA. He may have been protected by his contacts.’ Perhaps it is no coincidence that Ward 5 and Sargant’s sleep room closed when he retired in 1973 — the same year the CIA officially ended its top-secret mind-control experiments, codenamed Project MKUltra…. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2386477/NHS-Zombie-Ward-How-depressed-women-sleep-months-Londons-Royal-Waterloo-Hospital.html

What do Rosanne Barr, Herschel Walker, J.Hill and 2,186 others have in common? Child Safety     June 19, 2013 Judy Byington    Emmy, People’s Choice and Golden Globes Award Winner Rosanne Barr claims that her multiple personalities resulted from childhood parental abuse; Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker unveiled his multiplicity from child abuse in “Breaking Free: My Life with Dissociative Identity Disorder”; the 2007 Extreme Abuse Survey documents DID sufferers of extreme abuse like Barr and Walker from different countries http://extreme-abuse-survey.net/, while the biography, “Twenty-Two Faces: Inside the Extraordinary Life of Jenny Hill and Her Twenty-Two Multiple Personalities” by Judy Byington (Tate Publishing) is digging up the 1980s DID “Satanic Panic.” http://youtu.be/ 8SECeoTGRgE and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F626Lsrdwg4  ….

This Satanic Ritual Abuse controversy was buried in the 1990s, though evidently didn’t completely disappear. Six year-old Jenny Hill plus DID respondents to the EAS survey, claimed they were ritually abused into multiplicity by a satanic cult. http://extreme-abuse-survey.net/ and http://youtu.be/ 8SECeoTGRgE Hill claims to be the only known survivor-intended-victim of a human sacrificial ceremony that took place on June 21 1965 in Garden Grove, California. Author of her biography, Judy Byington, MSW, LCSW, ret, states, “SRA is the extreme abuse of a child done to deliberately create multiple personalities or DID for the purpose of having life-long control over the victim.”
SRA appears to be a global issue. Recent media coverage in the Jimmy Savile Satanic Sex Abuse scandal has uncovered hundreds of stories about the ritualized abuse of children in the UK. Author Laurie Matthew in her 2002 “Where Angels Fear” identifies locations in the Dundee area of Scotland where survivors say that as children, they were ritually abused in groups….
Toos Nijenhuis is a psychotherapist and ritual abuse survivor who explains her torture and experience with human sacrifice in Holland on this UTube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=PyrPEu7nk1Q ….
Hundreds of ritual abuse survivors are speaking out by publishing their biographies and the annual SMART conference in Hartford Conn. (August 9,10,11 2013) draws ritual abuse survivors and therapists across the nation. http://ritualabuse.us
The EAS also showed that the Roman Catholic Priest scandal was not limited to sexual abuse, revealing 139 victims who claimed being ritually abused by Catholic Priests. In 2004 a case found the court room. On the 1980 Easter weekend in Toledo, Ohio the Reverend Gerald Robinson was convicted of killing Sister Margaret Ann Pahl in a Catholic Black Mass ceremony….
For more information visit: www.ChildAbuseRecovery.com, www.22faces.com, Utah Woman Jenny Hill Sees Human Sacrifice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F626Lsrdwg4
http://www.examiner.com/article/what-do-rosanne-barr-herschel-walker-j-hill-and-2-186-others-have-common

Are US and Canadian Officials Torturing Children? Judy Byington August 13, 2013
Exposing national and international child exploitation and trafficking networks by uniting child abuse survivors is the goal of an early September New York Press Conference with Kevin Annett, International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State ( ITCCS http://www.itccs.org); Neil Brick, Stop Mind Control and Ritual Abuse Today (SMART http://ritualabuse.us) and Judy Byington of Child Abuse Recovery (CAR http://www.ChildAbuseRecovery.com).
….The coalition expects to bring together thousands of child sex abuse, ritualized abuse, Satanic Ritual Abuse and mind-control survivors, victims and therapists. Annett recently joined Catholic Priest Abuse survivors from 21 nations to hold their first convention in Italy on September 20. ….Considering present testimonies of severe abuse survivors, it is believed that government-funded mind-control experimentation continues. The history dates to the CIA’s 1950s Project Bluebird, Artichoke, MK-Ultra and MK-Delta brainwashing programs. After World War II the CIA exported experts on human experimentation in Nazi concentration camps into the US via Project Paperclip.

Of the 987 ritual abuse, mind control and other extreme abuse survivors who responded to the 2007 Extreme Abuse Surveys, 234 stated that as children they remember being used in US government-sponsored mind-control experiments, while 83 said they were used in Canadian government-sponsored tests.  http://extreme-abuse-survey.net/ ….
The 16th Annual SMART Child Abuse and Ritual Abuse Conference went ahead as scheduled…. Neil Brick held the conference for US, Canadian and worldwide ritual abuse and mind control survivors, their helpers and therapists August 9-11 in Connecticut.
Among the SMART Conference speakers was CAR’s Judy Byington, author of “Twenty-Two Faces” the biography of mind-control victim Jenny Hill. www.22faces.com. Hill was diagnosed with 22 multiple personalities that resulted from childhood trauma. The 2007 Extreme Abuse Surveys document 502 survivors like her who were forced by their perpetrators to participate in murder. She explained one experience in a YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/wat?v=F626Lsrdwg4 ….            http://www.examiner.com/article/are-us-and-canadian-officials-torturing-children

3,000 Survivors Form Coalition with Kevin Annett to Fight Child Trafficking Child Safety    June 10, 2013 Judy Byington CEOs of four ritual abuse survivor organizations have joined forces with Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Kevin Annett to expose national and international child trafficking networks.
Judy Byington, MSW, LCSW, ret, author of “Twenty-Two Faces” www.22faces.com, the biography of human sacrifice survivor Jenny Hill http://www.youtube.com/wat`?v=F626Lsrdwg4 and CEO of Child Abuse Recovery (CAR) www.ChildAbuseRecovery.com; Felicity Lee of Ivory Garden: a survivor support group with membership of over 1,700 www.igdid.com and Neil Brick, founder of Stop Mind Control and Ritual Abuse (SMART) http://ritualabuse.us, along with Reverend Annett’s International Tribunal www.itccs.org, www.itccs.tv, www.hiddennolonger.com and http://kevinannettinternational.blogspot.fr/, are compiling evidence of crimes from thousands of survivors across the globe in efforts to bring to trial human trafficking networks and their practice of child exploitation, torture and murder.
http://www.examiner.com/article/3-000-survivors-form-coalition-with-kevin-annett-to-fight-child-trafficking-ring

Survivors Unite to Expose Church & State Child Trafficking Networks Child Safety     July 6, 2013    By: Judy Byington What’s going on? 180,000 indigent Canadian and British children disappeared or endured serial abuse? Over 2,000 adults of the 2007 Extreme Abuse Surveys report that as children they were ritually abused? Government mind-control experiments on children and satanic rites tie into the Catholic priest abuse scandal? Survivors of abuse from 21 nations are uniting to expose the Catholic Priest sex abuse church and state cover-ups.

Representatives will meet in Italy September 20-23 2013 for a media event, conference and convergence at the Vatican organized by Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Kevin Annett and the International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State (ITCCS)., www.itccs.org, www.itccs.tv, and www.hiddennolonger.com.
“Problems of these ‘throw-away children’ who have no protectors is real, vast and can be connected to crimes of church and state on a global level,” says Judy Byington, author of ritual abuse survivor Jenny Hill’s biography, “Twenty-Two Faces.” (Tate Publishing: Oklahoma 2012) www.22faces.com and founder of Child Abuse Recovery www.ChildAbuseRecovery.com. Byington is working with the ITCCS and Neil Brick of the US survivor group, S.M.A.R.T. http://ritualabuse.us, to educate on how secret groups perform ritualized abuse and mind-control of children…. Http://www.examiner.com/article/survivors-unite-to-expose-church-state-child-trafficking-networks

US Abuse Survivor Networks Unite with ITCCS Child Safety July 10, 2013 Judy Byington
The ITCCS has joined members of over fifty survivor groups in twenty one nations including the USA, Canada, England, Ireland, Australia, South Africa, Italy, France, Spain and Holland. Neil Brick, founder of Stop Mind Control and Ritual Abuse Today (SMART) and Author-retired therapist Judy Byington of Child Abuse Recovery represent ritual abuse, Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) and government mind-control survivors and therapists in the US.
On Monday, September 2, the directors will hold a joint press conference with Kevin Annett in New York City to disclose their plans for a joint campaign to unite cult abuse survivors and expose and prosecute the guilty persons and institutions. (Time and place to be announced at www.itccs.org).

On August 9 –11, 2013 at the DoubleTree Hotel in Windsor Locks, CT at the 16th Annual Ritual Abuse, Secretive Organizations and Mind Control Conference http://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/ Kevin Annett will do a live video feed on “Overcoming Adversity: Advocacy Efforts, Achieving Justice, Abused Children and Government Mind Control Experiments” while Judy Byington will address the “Nine Secrets of Dissociation: How Jenny Hill’s 22 Multiple Personalities Formed, Function and Protect.”….
In 2007, the global nature of child rape, torture, murder and trafficking was verified by 1,471 abuse survivors from 20 countries who responded to the Extreme Abuse Surveys: http://extreme-abuse-survey.net/ ….On May 8, 2013 in Holland, Kevin Annett interviewed Toos Nijenhuis, a psychotherapist who was the victim of ritualized torture similar to the kind Hill explained in “Twenty-Two Faces.” Ms. Nijenhuis discussed her victimization in an international trafficking network involving prominent politicians and Catholic Cardinals during the 1960’s, including her knowledge of a child sacrificial ceremony that took place in rural Holland in 2010….
To learn more visit the websites of SMART, Child Abuse Recovery and the ITCCS: www.ChildAbuseRecovery.com, www.22faces.com, http://ritualabuse.us,
www.itccs.org, www.itccs.tv, www.hiddennolonger.com, http://kevinannettinternational.blogspot.fr/
http://www.examiner.com/article/us-abuse-survivor-networks-unite-with-itccs

Led by the Catholic Pope, Do Church and State Continue to Cover-up Child Abuse? Child Safety  July 24, 2013 By: Judy Byington  “Catholic Pope Francis’s July 2013 ruling to protect perpetrators rather than their child victims and the 20 years it took Kevin Annett of the International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State (ITCCS) to bring justice for 150,000 missing children from Canadian, Catholic and other church-run residential schools are only a few examples where church and state are blatantly covering up crimes against children,” stated Judy Byington, CEO of Child Abuse Recovery (CAR www.ChildAbuseRecovery.com) and author of “Twenty-Two Faces: Inside the Extraordinary Life of Jenny Hill and Her Twenty-Two Multiple Personalities” (Tate Publishing, Oklahoma: 2012 www.22faces.com).

“That’s why CAR and Neil Brick of Stop Mind Control and Ritual Abuse Today (S.M.A.R.T. http://ritualabuse.us) are joining forces with the ITCCS on September 2 in New York to unite severe abuse survivors and expose child trafficking networks (time and place to be announced on www.itccs.org).”
SMART’s annual conference which draws severe abuse survivors, their helpers and therapists from across the US, will be held August 9-11 in Windsor Locks, Connecticut, (http://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/ ).

….Saturday night of the SMART conference features Kevin Annett of the ITCCS (via live feed) and Judy Byington, author of “Twenty-Two Faces,” the biography of Jenny Hill, the only-known survivor of a human sacrifice ceremony. Hill was made to witness the murder of another six year-old identified as Kathleen Shea. Although the murder took place back on June 21 1965, Hill’s and Shea’s cases in Garden Grove California and Tyrone Penn. remain unsolved.
“One complication for investigators is the often-inability of survivors like Hill, who are severely affected by their childhood torture, to come forward until they are adults – also a major problem for prosecutors in Catholic Priest sex abuse scandals,” Byington says. “Another commonality is the very effective cover-ups of child abuse by perpetrators who have high ranking in church and state.”

….Another example was when over an almost 20-year period, the Walter E. Fernald State residential school in Waltham Mass. enrolled children who were fed a steady diet of radioactive isotopes and placed in solitary confinement if they refused to cooperate. Allen Hornblum, Judith Newman, and Gregory Dober painfully describe the state residential school atrocities in their chilling new book, “Against Their Will: The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America.”….  http://www.examiner.com/article/led-by-the-catholic-pope-church-and-state-continue-to-cover-up-child-abuse

Why Bench Warrants on Vatican, Queen, Government, Church Officials?      Child Safety     August 3, 2013 Judy Byington August 4 2013, Brussels
On Sunday Pope Francis Bergoglio, Queen Elizabeth and 28 other government and church officials were issued bench warrants for the second time according to an order signed by George Dufort of a Brussels International Common Law Court. The case, filed in behalf of 150,000 missing Canadian indigent children, was successfully prosecuted last February by the International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State (ITCCS). http://www.itccs.tv , http://www.itccs.org

Six judges and 58 jurors from 21 nations determined that between 1870 and 1990, crimes were committed against native children who from age six, were ordered to attend residential schools jointly operated by the government of Canada and Roman Catholic, Anglican and United Church of Canada….

Nobel Peace Prize Nominee Kevin Annett of the ITCCS who brought this Canadian Child Holocaust before the international court, chronicles the case in his book, “Hidden No Longer,” which is available for free at: http://www.hiddennolonger.com
Early September in New York Annett will announce a coalition with the US abuse survivor organizations of Neil Brick, S.M.A.R.T. (Stop Mind-control and Ritual Abuse Today: http://ritualabuse.us) and Judy Byington, CAR ( http://www.ChildAbuseRecovery.com ) for the purpose of further exposing international child exploitation and trafficking networks.

On September 20-23 Annett will host the first Catholic Abuse Survivor Convention in Italy which is expected to draw groups from 21 nations in a campaign to end secular power of the Vatican.
On August 10 Annett (on live feed) and Byington will speak at SMART’s 16th Annual Ritual Abuse, Secretive Organizations and Mind Control Conference at the DoubleTree Hotel in Windsor Locks, CT http://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/.

The organized torture of children appeared to be a global problem when documented in the 2007 Extreme Abuse Surveys. Survivors of extreme child abuse from 20 countries responded and of them, 451 reported that at least one of their abuser groups was national or international in scope. http://extreme-abuse-survey.net/ ….
Byington authored the biography of a mind-control survivor, “Twenty-Two Faces: Inside the Extraordinary Life of Jenny Hill and Her Twenty-Two Multiple Personalities.” (Tate Publishing: Oklahoma, 2012 www.22faces.com  ….
http://www.examiner.com/article/why-bench-warrants-on-vatican-queen-government-church-officials#sthash.BGVOZVzH.dpuf

Nigeria

describes crimes  Nigeria: The Education Ritual Killers Need 15 August 2013
editorial   The news of the recent arrest of an ostensibly struggling Nigerian herdsman who beheaded his 5-year-old son for money-making ritual purposes has broken many hearts. The bizarre incident happened because the obviously mad man thought it was the fastest means to get his business back on track. He is not alone: The media are filled with one ritual-related cold-blooded murder of Nigerians, especially children, hunchbacks, albinos and young women for the purpose of harvesting their body parts that the criminals consider efficacious for money-making or election-winning rituals….
http://allafrica.com/stories/201308150161.html

Nigeria: Nasarawa Poly Suspends 12 Over Cult Killing By Hir Joseph, 18 August 2013
Lafia — Barely a week after students suspected to be members of a cult at the Nasarawa State Polytechnic (Naspoly), in Lafia, shot and killed a fresh student, sparking up a reprisal violence, the school management has announced the suspension of 12 students suspected in the cult activities.
A statement by the Acting Rector of the polytechnic, Engr. Emmanuel Jatau, said at the weekend that the affected students have been suspended indefinitely, after an investigation proved that they defied the rules and regulations of the school in respect of cultism.
The statement said the affected students have been warned to steer clear of the institution pending police investigation on the matter. The rector, who lamented the incidence of cultism and other ant-social vices by students in the institution, said that the decision was taken as part of measures towards eradicating cultism in the school…. http://allafrica.com/stories/201308191513.html

South Africa

I took blame, ritual murder accused says 2013-05-20  Johannesburg – Murder-accused Harvey Isha had to take the blame for an apparent satanic ritual in which teenager Kirsty Theologo died, a Johannesburg court heard on Monday. Isha told the South Gauteng High Court sitting in the Palm Ridge Magistrate’s Court he had been fingered by Theologo’s mother. “Kirsty’s mom had already mentioned that ‘Harvey and his friends did this to Kirsty’ and so Jeremy [King] said, from what I understood, that because my name was mentioned by Kirsty’s mom, I had to take the blame.” Isha, 24, is on trial with Robin Harwood, Lindon Wagner, and Courtney Daniels for the murder of Theologo, the attempted murder of her 14-year-old friend, and for assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. They have all pleaded not guilty. Two other accused, Jeremy King and Lester Moody, confessed to the crime and were each sentenced to 17 years’ imprisonment, five of them suspended.
http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/I-took-blame-ritual-murder-accused-says-20130520

Ritual killing application fails 2013-05-20  Johannesburg – Moves to have charges dropped against two of the people accused of killing Kirsty Theologo in an apparent satanic ritual, were dismissed on Monday. Their lawyers argued in the South Gauteng High Court sitting in the Palm Ridge Magistrate’s Court, that the quality of evidence against their clients was suspect. Judge Geraldine Borchers ruled that the credibility of witnesses was not an issue at this stage of the trial.
“At least 90% of what the witnesses said in court is in their respective statements,” she said.
http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Ritual-killing-application-fails-20130520

describes violence Gauteng sees rise in Satanic ritual killings Thursday 30 May 2013 SABC
Gauteng police say there has been a notable increase in the number of reported cases involving alleged Satanic ritual killings. The latest incident involves a 14 year old boy accused of killing three of his family members. The teenager apparently said an unusual prayer before midnight last Thursday – in what may have been a Satanic ritual. Early this year, a learner, Keamogetswe Sefularo was stabbed to death in an alleged satanic ritual in Randfontein on the West Rand….The Church of Satan in South Africa has meanwhile distanced itself from murder as part of their religious rituals. There have been allegations that the boy is a member of the Satanist church….
http://www.sabc.co.za/news/a/cc9fe2804fcebb7d874ee70b5d39e4bb/Gauteng-sees-rise-in-Satanic-ritual-killings-20133005.

describes crimes
‘Satanic’ South Africa Greg Nicolson  6/7/13  Reports of Satanism linked to gruesome crimes in South Africa beggar belief, but does it exist to the extent suggested by media, where does it come from and how does it fit into the broader narrative of South Africa?
According to a testimony at the Palm Ridge Magistrate’s Court, that’s* the Bible verse that convinced youths to allegedly drug, bind, and set alight Kirsty Theologo and a friend in petrol last October.
Participator-turned-state-witness Lester Moody, who admitted to using drugs heavily, said the group decided Theologo was Johannesburg’s “great prostitute” during a game where one asks questions and burns tissue paper with matches to see the answer. It was decided the “whore of Babylon” would be sacrificed. “Drinking her blood, eating her flesh and burning her with fire” would be rewarded with “power, wisdom, fame and money” thought the youths.
Satanism sounds too farcical to believe – too similar to The Craft or Stigmata and distant from facts and motives. Sceptics view it as an excuse used to sensationalise murders that are likely linked to poverty, violence in society, broken families, and psychopathic characters. Yet, media reports suggest it’s a key motive for a number of murders and Satanism is indeed practiced by South Africans, in particular youth.

In May, a 14-year-old boy allegedly murdered four family members in Johannesburg’s East Rand. Reportedly, he was fueled by drugs and Satanism. “This guy said he is a satanist. If he kills he is sacrificing his family for the boss,” told a neighbour. “He said it came from his mind and told him to kill them because of the full moon.” ….
Satanism was racialised. “Both white and black youth were implicated in the scare but only white youth retained access to its supernatural elements. Where black youngsters were concerned, the possibility of Satanism only opened another channel for state mediation in their lives, while for many young white people, Satanism became another mechanism of enforcing orthodoxy and the political compliance that went with it,” writes Falkof….. http://ewn.co.za/2013/06/07/OPINION-Satanic-South-Africa

Teen Accused Of South Africa Family Murders   A teenager is due in court accused of killing his mother, baby sister, brother and gran with an axe in an apparent satanic ritual.  Monday 27 May 2013
A South African teenager has been arrested for allegedly hacking to death four family members with an axe, including his mother and an infant sister, in an apparent satanic attack. The 14-year-old boy’s mother, 42, was found dead in the family’s corrugated iron-shack home, and the body of his three-month-old sister in a nearby field. His 58-year-old grandmother and seven-year-old brother died in hospital….

The youngster, from the Etwatwa informal settlement east of Johannesburg, was captured by police within hours of fleeing the scene. He was due to appear at Benoni Magistrates’ Court on Monday where he is expected to face charges of murder.  Police have not disclosed a possible motive for the murders, but community members told Eyewitness News the killings may have been part of a satanic ritual. http://news.sky.com/story/1096015/teen-accused-of-south-africa-family-murders

Death sentence passed on police officer who killed his wife for ritual July 5, 2013
The Supreme Court on Friday affirmed the death sentence passed on Usman Maigari, a former policeman, for killing his wife, Sa’adatu. ….The appellant committed the offence on January 11, 1999, at his house in Yabo, Yabo Local Government Area of Sokoto State. The former police officer had strangulated his wife to death for ritual purposes and conveyed her corpse and dumped it in a culvert near Janzomo Village along Kanjiji-Shagari road….
http://www.africanspotlight.com/2013/07/05/death-sentence-passed-on-police-officer-who-killed-his-wife-for-ritual/

Gabon Senator Arrested in Ritual Killing Case 09 Jun 2013  REUTERS  A member of Gabon’s senate has been arrested in an investigation into the ritual killing of a 12-year-old girl in the central African nation four years ago, the first time a senior politician has been detained in such a case.
Rising public anger at a spate of ritual killings in Gabon, an oil-rich former French colony on the Gulf of Guinea, sparked a march by thousands of people in the capital Libreville last month after mutilated bodies washed up on beaches, reports Reuters.  President Ali Bongo promised the protesters that anyone convicted of such killings would be jailed for life. Senator Gabriel Eyeghe Ekomie, who was stripped of his parliamentary immunity in December, was arrested on Friday after failing to appear before a court on May 31, his lawyer said. Eyeghe Ekomie was summoned for questioning by the court after a man convicted of the girl’s killing said at his trial in May 2012 that he did it on the senator’s orders. Eyeghe Ekomie has denied the accusation…. http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/gabon-senator-arrested-in-ritual-killing-case/149818/

describes graphic crimes
Police Pick Body in Another Ritual Murder Published July 7, 2013 By George Mwenya
Police have picked up a body of a man who died in suspected ritual murder after he was found….
The body of a man who is yet to be identified was found near the rail line on Zaoga Road in Kamwala south. The man was wearing a blue faded jeans and red jacket….
http://zambiareports.com/2013/07/07/police-pick-body-in-another-ritual-murder/

describes graphic crimes
How we shot, cut head, hands of Okada rider — Ritual murder suspects  Written by  Oluwatoyin Malik   Saturday, 15 June 2013  ….That was part of the chilling facts revealed during the week about the circumstances surrounding the ritual killing of an okada rider at Idi-Mango area of Sanyo, in Ibadan, Oyo State, as the two suspects arrested, Femi Taiwo (30) and Kazeem Bamidele (35), confessed that the deceased was actually killed for money-making ritual purposes. But they claimed that they thought he was an armed robber, as they had been specifically instructed to look for body parts of an armed robber.  ….In an interview with Saturday Tribune, Taiwo, an indigene of Abeokuta, Ogun State, who is married with three kids, said:  “My wife and kids are with my mother in Abeokuta. I am an okada rider. I also work as a security guard. I am an OPC member. I had a boss called Baba Oodua. He was the one who first suggested that we could do money-making ritual if we could lay hands on body parts of a thief or armed robber. He, myself and Kazeem, the cobbler, were at the meeting where we discussed and decided on the issue. We also contacted one Alfa who promised to do the charm for us if we could bring some body parts….. http://tribune.com.ng/news2013/en/component/k2/item/14367-how-we-shot,-cut-head,-hands-of-okada-rider-%E2%80%94ritual-murder-suspects.html

describes graphic crimes
Witness gives chilling account of ritual murder July 6, 2013
THE trial of former permanent secretary in the ministry of lands, Frederick Chunga, who is accused of murdering a farmer and severing his genitals for business rituals, continued at the High Court yesterday with one of the State witnesses giving a chilling account of how the murder was allegedly executed. REPORT BY CHARLES LAITON
Chunga’s former security guard Lovemore Zulu, who was at one point arrested and detained for two weeks over George Nyachumbu’s murder, told the court he was present when the latter’s body was chopped into pieces with an axe and stacked in a fertilizer bag after he was run over by Chunga.
“Before burying the body one Kenias cut his private parts and placed them in a plastic bag which he later gave to our boss (Chunga),” Zulu said.
http://www.newsday.co.zw/2013/07/06/witness-gives-chilling-account-of-ritual-murder/

describes graphic crimes
Satanic cult blamed for ritualistic killing of Dartmoor foal which was horrifically mutilated in centre of ring of fire during full moon     ….There are fears the stricken animal may have been alive during its ordeal    The pony was found in a remote part of Devon National Park on Tuesday      Patches of burned grass surrounded it and it had white paint on it’s leg  By Stuart Woledge  25 July 2013
A Satanic cult has been blamed for the sickening death of a pony, which was found horrifically mutilated and laying in the remnants of a ring of fire after full moon….
It was also surrounded by circular patches of burnt moorland, which experts believe were left by a ring of torches or candles. The two-month old pony seemed to have been dragged into a clearing and placed at the foot of a slope to face the previous night’s full moon. It was found on Tuesday morning by a horse rider at Yennadon Down, a remote, area of Devon National Park….
Horse carers believe the butchery was part of an evil occult or Pagan ceremony by Devil worshippers…. Dartmoor and the surrounding countryside in Devon and Cornwall has been dogged by rumours of Satanic rituals for years. In 2012 a two-year-old horse called Eric belonging to Dawn Jewell, 27, was found mutilated on the day of satanic animal sacrifice….

The horrific attack happened on St Winebald Day, a date in the satanic calendar traditionally celebrated with bloody rituals. In 2006 around 100 sheep animals were found slaughtered….
The bodies had been arranged in a Satanic star shape, known as a pentangle, or laid out in a circle….  In June of this year police appealed for information after two horses were found … in neighbouring fields in the village of Stokeinteignhead, Devon. Locals feared the two thoroughbred were attacked to mark the summer solstice, a key date in the Satanic calender.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2377782/Satanic-cult-blamed-ritualistic-killing-Dartmoor-foal-horrifically-mutilated-centre-ring-moon.html

Former priest among four probed in Italian sex slavery cult Aug. 23, 2013 FLORENCE, Italy, Aug. 23 (UPI) — Four people, including a former priest, were under investigation Friday for a cult involving sex slavery in Tuscany, Italian police said.
Authorities were looking into allegations of mistreatment of nine men and a woman in a religious cult based in Montecchio di Cortona, as well as misappropriation of funds, the newspaper Gazetta del Sud reported Friday. Florence investigators said cult members were subjected to sexual and psychological violence, and identified the cult leader as Mauro Cioni, 68, a former priest who left the Catholic clergy in 1985. In the late 1980s Cioni found adherents to what he termed living “another form of Christianity,” forcing them to cut ties to family and work, hand over their financial holdings and submit themselves to his sex-related orders, investigators said….
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2013/08/23/Former-priest-among-four-probed-in-Italian-sex-slavery-cult/UPI-28311377291312/

Aboriginal children used in medical tests, commissioner says   Truth and Reconciliation Commission seeks further documentation on tests  CBC News Jul 31, 2013    Aboriginal Canadians were not only subjected to nutritional experiments by the federal government in the 1940s and 1950s but were also used as medical test subjects, says the chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
In an interview with CBC Radio’s All Points West on Tuesday, Justice Murray Sinclair told host Jo-Ann Roberts that commission staff has “seen the documents that relate to the experiments that were conducted in residential schools.”
Other documents related to experimentation in aboriginal communities outside of residential schools have not yet been obtained, Sinclair said.

“We do know that there were research initiatives that were conducted with regard to medicines that were used ultimately to treat the Canadian population. Some of those medicines were tested in aboriginal communities and residential schools before they were utilized publicly.”
Sinclair said some of those medicines developed were then withheld from the same aboriginal children they were originally tested on….
The residential schools system, which ran from the 1870s until the 1990s, removed about 150,000 aboriginal children from their families and sent them to church-run schools under a deliberate policy of “civilizing” First Nations.
Many students were physically, mentally and sexually abused. Some committed suicide. Mortality rates reached 50 per cent at some schools….
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2013/07/31/medical-testing-on-aboriginals-murray-sinclair-trc.html

describes graphic crimes
Satan worshiper gets life in prison for killing, skinning mom   By Matt Hamilton  July 17, 2013
A Maywood man whom prosecutors described as a Satan worshiper was sentenced Wednesday for strangling and killing his mother, then dismembering her body.
Moises Meraz-Espinoza, 21, was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for the Feb. 2, 2011, slaying of Amelia Espinoza, 42. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Thomas I. McKnew Jr. said Meraz-Espinoza’s crime “ranks right up there at the top” among “the most disgusting, hideous, and vulgar” cases he’s seen in more than 50 years in the legal profession….
Prosecutors argued that Meraz-Espinoza was a follower of the church of Satan, and that he was performing a ritual human sacrifice.  During the trial this spring, defense attorney Jonathan Roberts disputed that his client acted alone. After the sentence Wednesday, Roberts explained that the church of Satan has renounced ritual human sacrifice and said the prosecutor’s argument relied on dated interpretations of satanic rituals….
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-satan-worshipper-gets-life-sentence-for-killing-skinning-mother-20130717,0,6990193.story

Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War

Against Their Will   The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America  Allen M. Hornblum, Judith L. Newman, and Gregory J. Dober Palgrave Macmillan, June 2013 ISBN: 978-0-230-34171-5, ISBN10: 0-230-34171-3
During the Cold War, an alliance between American scientists, pharmaceutical companies, and the US military pushed the medical establishment into ethically fraught territory. Doctors and scientists at prestigious institutions were pressured to produce medical advances to compete with the perceived threats coming from the Soviet Union. In Against Their Will, authors Allen Hornblum, Judith Newman, and Gregory Dober reveal the little-known history of unethical and dangerous medical experimentation on children in the United States.  Through rare interviews and the personal correspondence of renowned medical investigators, they document how children—both normal and those termed “feebleminded”—from infants to teenagers, became human research subjects in terrifying experiments. They were drafted as “volunteers” to test vaccines, doused with ringworm, subjected to electric shock, and given lobotomies. They were also fed radioactive isotopes and exposed to chemical warfare agents. This groundbreaking book shows how institutional superintendents influenced by eugenics often turned these children over to scientific researchers without a second thought. Based on years of archival work and numerous interviews with both scientific researchers and former test subjects, this is a fascinating and disturbing look at the dark underbelly of American medical history.  http://us.macmillan.com/againsttheirwill/AllenHornblum

New book documents Cold War experiments on kids By Joann Loviglio of The Associated Press Monday, July 8, 2013 PHILADELPHIA — A half century later, Charlie Dyer still vividly remembers the day he was picked to join the “Fernald Science Club.”
It was 1954 and at 14, he had already spent nearly half his life in a succession of Massachusetts institutions that unflinchingly labeled kids like him “morons.” But his new place, the Fernald State School in Waltham, seemed like it might be different.
“They picked some of the oldest guys and asked us if we wanted to be in this club,” Dyer, 72, said in an interview from his home in Watertown, Mass. “We all got together and decided, why not? We’ll get time off the grounds.”….
It took decades before Dyer learned that he and the boys he still considers brothers were little more than guinea pigs. A state task force in 1994 found Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists fed the unwitting boys radioactive oatmeal and milk for a Quaker Oats nutrition study.
His story is one of many told in a new book, “Against Their Will,” the result of five years of gathering data from medical and university libraries and archives, medical journals and records from many of the now-shuttered state hospitals and orphanages where experiments were conducted….

“These are throwaway, unwanted, damaged people,” said Allen Hornblum, one of the book’s authors. “You had the best and the brightest minds doing this stuff, doing it very cavalierly and doing it exclusively to the most vulnerable.”
While researching his 1998 book “Acres of Skin” about medical experiments on inmates in Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia, Hornblum came across documentation about similar experiments conducted on children and even infants.
Thousands of children warehoused in overcrowded orphanages and facilities for “feebleminded” children underwent spinal taps, lobotomies and electric shock. They were also exposed to viruses, radioactive and hazardous chemicals and were administered psychotropic drugs.
Often lacking legal or family advocates, they were treated in the decades after World War II as cheap and abundant raw material for trials that proved lucrative for scientists who conducted the tests and for the institutions housing the kids….

In one of the most egregious cases in the book, more than 90 children as young as 6 were given large twice-daily doses of LSD — some for a year or more — as an experimental treatment for schizophrenia and autism at Creedmoor State Hospital in the New York City borough of Queens in the 1960s.
On New York’s Staten Island from the 1950s to the early 1970s, mentally disabled children at the Willowbrook State School — famously called a “snake pit” by Sen. Robert Kennedy after a 1965 visit — were intentionally infected with viral hepatitis by feeding them an extract made from the feces of infected patients.
In dozens of orphanages and sanitariums, children were exposed to hepatitis, meningitis, ringworm, influenza, measles, mumps and polio in the name of medical advancement. Dietary experiments induced severe vitamin and mineral deficiencies to observe the effect on the children’s health.
….Dyer, a retired truck driver, makes ends meet with yard sales and odd jobs. He and about 30 former “Fernald Science Club” boys filed a class-action lawsuit that settled out of court in 1998; Dyer says they ended up with around $30,000 apiece….
http://www.news-sentinel.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130708/ENT/130709709/0/FRONTPAGE

Book Review
‘Against Their Will’ looks at children used for tests  By Dennis Rosen  Globe Correspondent     July 08, 2013 Unfortunately, as Allen Hornblum, Judith Newman, and Gregory Dober painfully describe in their chilling new book, “Against Their Will: The Secret History of Medical Experimentation on Children in Cold War America,’’ Fernald was not the only institution in the country, or even in the state, where children were conscripted into sometimes deadly medical experiments. These were conducted by ambitious physicians and scientists whose belief in what they were trying to accomplish often blinded them to the potentially horrific consequences of their actions.
“Against Their Will’’ opens with an overview of the eugenics movement in the United States, which found sympathizers among many luminaries of American medicine in the 19th and early 20th centuries. With its disdain for the disabled, who were considered genetically inferior, the movement paved the way for use of “defective’’ children in research. The book then provides multiple examples of medical experiments perpetrated on developmentally delayed and physically disabled children at multiple institutions across the country over the course of decades.

Often reading like case studies straight out of the 1947 Nazi doctors’ trial, these include the forced castration of dozens of boys to prevent or halt regular masturbation; infecting developmentally delayed children as young as 4 with gonorrhea; and treating children as young as 6 who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia or autism with twice-daily doses of LSD for months on end.
One of the most famous examples of the abuse of institutionalized children occurred at the Willowbrook State School on Staten Island, where hundreds of mentally and physically disabled children were purposely infected with hepatitis. While the experiments did yield information about the disease, there is no escaping the fact that these were conducted on children who were supposedly under the protection of the state and who had nothing to gain, but everything to lose, by participating….
http://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/books/2013/07/07/book-review-against-their-will-dober-secret-history-medical-experimentation-children-cold-war-america-allen-hornblum-judith-newman-and-gregory/mvRMIO8Zt7HakY7HWSLESO/story.html

Sex initiation ritual another blight on ADFA June 22, 2013 David Wroe   Defence correspondent
Male Defence Force recruits performed sexual acts on each other as an initiation ritual in a Canberra nightclub in the latest military scandal. Just a week after the army revealed the ”Jedi Council” sex email affair, Defence announced on Friday about 20 young male cadets and midshipmen had engaged in ”serious misconduct” in an incident last weekend. Fairfax Media understands the incident happened in a Canberra nightclub and involved drunken sexual acts performed by men on other men. The recruits were from the Australian Defence Force Academy, the Canberra military training institution that was also the site of the 2011 ”Skype affair”. The ”hazing” or initiation ritual appears to have involved members of the ADFA rugby club. The Vice Chief of the Defence Force, Air Marshal Mark Binskin, said most other recruits would be ”disgusted” by the activities of the group. He said seven cadets and midshipmen had been suspended and further suspensions could be expected soon….
http://www.smh.com.au/national/sex-initiation-ritual-another-blight-on-adfa-20130621-2oo9e.html

Night Stalker serial killer who terrorized California with a spree of satanic murders dies in hospital after 24 years on death row
Richard Ramirez, 53, died of liver failure while awaiting execution
Ramirez was convicted in 1989 of 13 murders and later tied to several more. He was a self-proclaimed follower of Satan
His trial was a horror show in which jurors heard about one victim’s eyes being gouged out and another’s head being nearly severed
He earned the nickname Night Stalker
By Associated Press Reporter and Daily Mail Reporter  7 June 2013
….Satanic symbols were left at murder scenes and some victims were forced to ‘swear to Satan’ by the killer, who entered homes through unlocked windows and doors.
After his conviction, Ramirez flashed a two-fingered ‘devil sign’ to photographers and muttered a single word: ‘Evil.’….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2337625/Night-Stalker-serial-killer-terrorized-California-spree-Satanic-murders-dies-hospital-24-years-death-row.html

describes crimes
Convicted killer guilty of ritualistic murder of Welsh pensioner told he will die in prison 2 Jul 2013 By WalesOnline
Judges to consider appeal of Kenneth Mark Shirley, who was jailed for raping a woman after being released from prison for 1987 murder of Mary Wainwright
A convicted murderer who was told he will probably die in prison after he was convicted of a horrific knifepoint sex attack while out on licence is appealing against the convictions.
Kenneth Mark Shirley, 43, was back living in the community, working stacking shelves in Sainsbury’s, when he is alleged to have attacked a woman in her own home in Bristol in December 2005.
Last September, Shirley, originally jailed for a murder in Cardiff in 1987, was caged for life after he was found guilty at Bristol Crown Court of wounding and numerous counts of rape and sexual assault….

Shirley was caged for life for the ritualistic murder of 67-year-old Mary Wainwright in Cardiff in 1987 and convicted again of a violent and prolonged sex attack on a Bristol woman in 2009.
The intervening 2005 incident did not come to light until the victim, also from the Bristol area, went to police after he was sentenced in 2009 and told of her alleged ordeal at his hands.
After a meeting in a pub, she said he turned up at her home in a white van, burst in wearing a mask and subjected her to a prolonged and horrific sexual ordeal, stabbing her several times.
Shirley did not give live evidence at his trial, but denied the attack. The jury were left having to decide whether there had been any attack at all and whether the alleged victim correctly identified Shirley.
http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/convicted-killer-guilty-ritualistic-murder-4808591

Cult leader gets two life sentences for the murders of a little boy and one of his wives
Peter Moses Jr. will spend the rest of his days locked up after prosecutors in Durham, N.C., found him responsible for the deaths of Jadon Higganbothan and Antoinetta McKoy. The former leader of the ‘Black Hebrew Israelites’ apologized in court for his actions.
By Carol Kuruvilla  NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Friday, July 5, 2013
The head of a polygamous sect was given two life sentences on Friday for the murders of a 4-year-old boy and a wife who tried to escape his cult.
Prosecutors in Durham, N.C., found Peter Moses Jr. responsible for the shooting deaths of little Jadon Higganbothan and 28-year-old Antoinetta McKoy — two innocent victims of the “Black Hebrew Israelites.”

Moses called himself the chosen leader of one of the ancient tribes of Israel….
From his house on Pear Tree Lane, Moses managed to closely monitor and control his five “wives.” The women called one another sisters, studied the Bible together and shared chores. They would periodically share Moses’ bed.
The women handed any money they earned over to their leader, while Moses sat at home and brooded over his theology….
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/cult-leader-life-sentences-murders-boy-ex-wives-article-1.1391193

Sex cult leader who paraded his girlfriend around on a leash is jailed for three years  By Daily Mail Reporter 5 June 2013  The leader of a sex cult who paraded his girlfriend round a town centre on a leash has been jailed for three years. Inspired by science fiction novels Lee Thompson, 34, launched the cult from his pebble-dashed semi-detached house in Darlington. His followers lead a sadomasochistic lifestyle inspired by a series of 1960s fantasy novels, Chronicles of Gor.  In the books, written by US college professor John Norman, women are viewed as natural slaves to men.  Heavily-tattooed Thompson, a self-styled sex master, came to the attention of police when he paraded his girlfriend round the town on a leash as she wore a dog collar and wrist cuffs.
Businesses in the town centre were incensed by his behaviour and the local butcher’s banned him from his store. Thompson claimed that his grandmother was a pagan high priestess and she passed on her powers to him.

Yesterday he was jailed for three years for forcing one of his lover’s to have sex with other men against her will. At Teesside Crown Court, Thompson – who describes himself as a pagan – admitted two counts of procuring a woman to have sexual intercourse….
Thompson had a conviction for serious sexual assault, and one for making threats to kill, for which he was sent for treatment to Rampton Secure Hospital.  After the case Detective Constable Scott Denham said: ‘He is a self-styled sex cult leader. He is a very intimidating character with a very forceful personality. He has children all over the world.’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1091295/Sex-cult-leader-paraded-girlfriend-leash-jailed-years.html

Head of Family cult settles claim by accuser out of court  Mark Dunn     Herald Sun     July 29, 2011  ANNE Hamilton-Byrne, the former head of the Family cult, has made a secret out-of-court settlement with one of her alleged victims, who claimed he was routinely injected with LSD at her behest. Ms Hamilton-Bryne, who bleached the hair of children in the sect, and kept them hidden from the world, agreed to the settlement on Monday. Supreme Court documents show at least five former cult members in the past four years have sued the self-appointed mystic for treatment they claimed to have suffered at her hands or under her direction. It is believed Ms Hamilton-Byrne, who has dementia that her lawyers say renders her unable to remember the past, has settled at least two other actions and paid an undisclosed amount to shut down the legal actions….

In this week’s settlement, Robert Rosanove, now aged 59, claimed he was regularly abused between 1961 and 1974, when he was raised as a member of the Family in a range of locations in Victoria, including Ferny Creek. Mr Rosanove’s statement of claim accuses Ms Hamilton-Byrne or her followers of subjecting him to abuse, including:
FORCIBLY administering psychoactive and hallucinogenic drugs, including  LSD. FALSELY “imprisoning” and “brainwashing” him. FORCING him to take medications not legally prescribed and involuntary admissions to psychiatric institutions. DEPRIVING him of “normal social interaction with other children and adults”. Mr Rosanove said he suffers bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress, severe depression, anxiety and sleep problems as a result of the alleged abuse….

Ms Hamilton-Byrne, through her litigation guardian, denied the abuse claims. In her defence statement, Ms Hamilton-Byrne argued the courts should not allow Mr Rosanove’s law suit to continue because it was too long ago. The Family’s Lake Eildon property was raided by the federal police and child welfare officers in 1987 when six children were removed and authorities identified 14 children who had been raised by the cult. In 1993, Anne and husband Bill Hamilton-Byrne were arrested by the FBI in the Catskill Mountains, New York, and extradited to Melbourne.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/cult-leader-pays-accuser/story-e6frf7jo-1226103806879

The Family Friday, October 2, 2009  Reporter: Karl Stefanovic  Producers: Stephen Rice, Hugh Nailon ….For years, Anne Hamilton-Byrne ran a bizarre cult known as The Family. But, this was no ordinary family. Children stolen at birth … brainwashed … beaten …even given mind-altering drugs like LSD.
The list of abuses at her isolated retreat outside Melbourne goes on. It was a true house of horrors. Throughout it all, Hamilton-Byrne was helped by a group of unquestioning followers, including a sinister inner-circle of women known as the Aunties. To these disciples she was the re-incarnation of Jesus Christ. Her word gospel…. http://sixtyminutes.ninemsn.com/stories/870619/the-family

describes graphic events
Jerry Davich: Highland woman claims ritual abuse: `I’m not lying’ JERRY DAVICH July 27, 2013
….”I know how all this sounds, but it’s true, sadly true,” she told me at the Portage Riverwalk, an oddly picturesque setting to discuss such ugly subject matter.
Zandstra, who can be shy as a shadow, chronicled all this and more in her 2010 self-published book, “Am I Alive?,” which is available on Amazon. It’s a sad, disturbing yet intriguing book about her tormented yet outwardly idyllic childhood while being raised in Highland. She tells it through a series of chronologically arranged recollections.

She recalls being driven by her father to a clearing in the woods during the middle of the night to take part in sadistic rituals and other unfathomable atrocities. They took place under the stars involving respected, robe-wearing elders from her Dutch Reform Christian Church, she claims.
“The men are eating something and drinking from the silver cup, one by one, and I just hope that since us kids aren’t standing in a circle with them, we won’t have to eat and drink the sacrifice with them,” she writes in the 295-page book. “I hate how the little bite of heart is all tough and rubbery and hard to chew and I hate how the blood tastes.”

She recalls being forced to kill her pet kitten when she was 6 years old, and repeated visits to her home from the FBI, investigating claims of the cult and its late-night activities in the woods….
“But maybe the right person will read my book and realize they’re not alone,” she says.
Her book was written in part by the 100 or so personalities she created in her head as a kid to cope with the abuse. Clinically it’s called dissociative identity disorder or multiple personality disorder. Zandstra simply calls them “the others,” and each one had a name, such as Luke her big brother protector, Martha the grandmotherly nurturer, and Thaddeus, who kept mental notes on everything….

“I totally believe Ruth and what she’s gone through as a child,” LeClercq told me. “She suffered obvious trauma showing me early on that something horrendous happened to her. Ruth doesn’t lie. She’s not crazy. And she’s honest to a fault.”….
But then she started receiving letters and emails from readers who had similar experiences involving sexual abuse, ritual abuse and other childhood abuse. It convinced her that writing the book was all worth it. It’s been a long process of psychological integration within her own mind involving all those personalities she created as a kid to cope with her abuse. Each one has eventually left her psyche. “It feels a bit lonely to not have them inside me any longer,” sighed Zandstra, who still sometimes refers to herself as “we” instead of “me.” “It’s still a struggle.” It was only after her mother’s death in 2000 when Zandstra and her sister, who lives in Wisconsin, found something in their parent’s belongings that confirmed decades of torment, suspicion, and repressed memories. They unearthed a thick and heavy gold chain with an intricately-carved goat’s head satanic emblem…. http://posttrib.suntimes.com/news/davich/21490912-452/jerry-davich-highland-woman-claims-ritual-abuse-im-not-lying.html

Books – Finding Our Way
I wrote a book.  Well, I had help from the “inside others” so I guess I should say we wrote a book.  Am I Alive? (available at amazon.com) is the story of my childhood in Indiana;  some good days, some terrible days and even more terrible nights.  Blueberry picking, Church, and the abuse and terror that caused the “inside others” to come to be inside my mind, to lend a hand and to help me survive.
For so much of my life I couldn’t really tell if I was alive;  if anyone could see me or hear me.  I often said I was just pretending to be alive and that there was a story being written in my head about someone else’s life, and that there were lots of voices in my head contributing to the story.  It was hard to sort out.  As I progressed through years of therapy, I began to write down what had to be written.  I often feared that I was lying, but from the most inside place of me would always come the cry, “I’m not lying.  I’m telling the truth.  This is the truth of me!”  So I invite you to read our story.  Some parts are hard to read, I’m told, but it is not without hope.  Never without hope.
http://www.ruthzandstra.com/books/

On this edition of CF.  Jerry and Karen talk with the local author of “Am I Alive?”  In “Am I Alive?”, Ruth Zandstra ruminates on her childhood, which was often centered around her father’s involvement in a cult. It’s a childhood that most readers will find, at times, unfathomable, yet along with bloodletting and animal sacrifice, the author recalls typically serene moments like picking blueberries at a nearby blueberry farm and quiet moments with her sister.  As Zandstra searches for the truth of what remains of her earliest memories, no matter how ugly, hurtful, or painful, she offers a poignant account of surviving the cult lifestyle and inherently knowing something was amiss even though she’d never known any other life.  From Federal Bureau of Investigation visits to being forced to kill her pet kitten when she was six years old, this autobiography is ultimately, if strangely, triumphant.  By opening a meaningful, candid dialogue on satanic ritual abuse and dissociative identity disorder, Zandstra allows others a chance to make sense of their own past.
http://lakeshorepublicmedia.org/am-i-alive/

Frank Olson Family’s Lawsuit Against Alleged CIA Murder Dismissed  By FREDERIC J. FROMMER  07/17/13 WASHINGTON — A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by the sons of a Cold War scientist who plunged to his death in 1953, just days after unwittingly taking LSD in a CIA mind-control experiment. Frank Olson’s sons claimed that the CIA murdered their father by pushing him from a 13th-story window of a New York hotel – and that he didn’t jump to his death, as the agency contends. But Judge James Boasberg cited the statute of limitations and a prior settlement agreement, among other things, in dismissing the suit Wednesday. Eric and Nils Olson had sought compensatory damages to be determined at trial…. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/17/frank-olson-lawsuit-dismissed_n_3611911.html

Area 51 ‘declassified’ in U-2 spy plane history 16 August 2013  The CIA has officially acknowledged the secret US test site known as Area 51, in a newly unclassified internal history of the U-2 spy plane programme. The document obtained by a US university describes the 1955 acquisition of the Nevada site for testing of the secret spy plane….The remote patch of desert surrounding Groom Lake was chosen because it was adjacent to a nuclear testing facility. “The U-2 was absolutely top secret,” Chris Pocock, a British defence journalist and author of histories of the programme, told the BBC. “They had to hide everything about it.”
The U-2 plane, developed to spy on the Soviet Union during the Cold War, is still flown by the US Air Force. The document, a secret 1992 internal CIA history of the U-2 programme, was originally declassified in 1998 with heavy redactions. Many of the blacked-out details were revealed this month after a public records request by the National Security Archive at the George Washington University in Washington DC. The site was selected for the U-2 programme in 1955 after an aerial survey by CIA and Air Force staff. According to the history, President Dwight Eisenhower personally signed off on the acquisition. Officials from the CIA, Air Force and Lockheed, the contractor building the U-2, began moving into the facility in July 1955…. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23731759

Female inmates sterilized in California prisons without approval  Jul 07, 2013 Corey G. Johnson
Doctors under contract with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation sterilized nearly 150 female inmates from 2006 to 2010 without required state approvals, The Center for Investigative Reporting has found.

At least 148 women received tubal ligations in violation of prison rules during those five years – and there are perhaps 100 more dating back to the late 1990s, according to state documents and interviews. From 1997 to 2010, the state paid doctors $147,460 to perform the procedure, according to a database of contracted medical services for state prisoners. The women were signed up for the surgery while they were pregnant and housed at either the California Institution for Women in Corona or Valley State Prison for Women in Chowchilla, which is now a men’s prison. Former inmates and prisoner advocates maintain that prison medical staff coerced the women, targeting those deemed likely to return to prison in the future….

California still grapples with an ugly past: Under compulsory sterilization laws here and in 31 other states, minority groups, the poor, the disabled, the mentally ill and criminals were singled out as inferior and sterilized to prevent them from spreading their genes. It was known as eugenics. Between 1909 and 1964, about 20,000 women and men in California were stripped of the ability to reproduce – making the state the nation’s most prolific sterilizer. Historians say Nazi Germany sought the advice of the state’s eugenics leaders in the 1930s….
http://cironline.org/reports/female-inmates-sterilized-california-prisons-without-approval-4917

Hungry aboriginal people subject of experiments, paper finds  Food historian published details of experiments that began in the 1940s  The Canadian Press  Jul 16, 2013
The Canadian government says it’s appalled to hear hungry aboriginal children and adults may have been used as unwitting subjects in nutritional experiments by federal bureaucrats.
Recently published research by food historian Ian Mosby has revealed details about one of the least-known but perhaps most disturbing aspects of government policy toward aboriginal people immediately after the Second World War. “It was experiments being conducted on malnourished aboriginal people,” Mosby, a post-doctoral fellow in history at the University of Guelph, told CBC’s As It Happens program on Tuesday. “It started with research trips in northern Manitoba where they found, you know, widespread hunger, if not starvation, among certain members of the community. And one of their immediate responses was to design a controlled experiment on the effectiveness of vitamin supplementation on this population.” Mosby also found that plans were developed for research on aboriginal children in residential schools in British Columbia, Ontario, Nova Scotia and Alberta….
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/story/2013/07/16/mb-aboriginal-nutritional-experiments-canada.html

Guatemalan syphilis victims lose hope in legal battle against US Thousands of Guatemalans were intentionally infected with STDs in the 1940s by US public health researchers. An appeal on their case against the US government was dismissed this week.
By Romina Ruiz-Goriena, Contributor  June 14, 2013
As a nine-year-old child, Marta recalled seeing her name on a list to go to the doctor’s office. An orphan, she had been living in the National Education Center since the age of six.

Before long, she would be prodded and poked every week for a year, receiving shots in her hip and shoulder, and having blood drawn.
“My mother tells us that she would ask over and over again, ‘why are you doing this if I am not even sick?'” says Luis Estuardo Vasquez Orellana, one of Marta Lidia Orellana Guerra’s five children. His mother, who is still alive today, also underwent unnecessary back surgery and was left to rest hanging upside down on and off in post-surgery recovery for months. It was 1946, and Ms. Orellana was one of thousands of Guatemalans who were unwittingly subjected to secret human experiments led by US doctors. The experiments were brought to light by a US researcher in 2009, and a legal battle on behalf of victims and their families ensued. But now, nearly three years after beginning the legal battle in US courts, attorneys representing an estimated 5,000 Guatemalan victims used as guinea pigs and infected with sexually transmitted diseases in the 1940s by US public health researchers withdrew their appeal earlier this week, virtually ending the case against the US government…..

The dismissal comes a year after a US District Court ruled the United States was protected under two immunity laws, the Federal Tort Claims Act and the International Organization Immunities Act.
“We pulled out rather than prolong litigation,” says Christian Levesque, an attorney with DC-based Conrad & Scherer LLP who is working on the case. “At this time it is more appropriate to pursue political redress.” Pursuing justice for these victims in the US could include reparations through lobbying Congress.
The alleged victims include soldiers, inmates, sex workers, mental health patients, and schoolchildren. Of these, some 1,300 were deliberately infected with syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases.
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2013/0614/Guatemalan-syphilis-victims-lose-hope-in-legal-battle-against-US

Milford’s newest Living Treasure is a military hero and a knight  By Milford Mirror Staff on July 10, 2013  ….Before all this, military life absorbed Muth. He volunteered to become a “victim” of government experiments on brainwashing techniques, both physical and chemical.
These experiments were authorized by the Department of Defense, orchestrated by Army Intelligence, funded by the CIA and conducted by the Army Chemical Corps, according to documents. The programs and experiments were so risky that several of the 7,800 men who were test subjects died.

According to online documentation, the research programs at issue concentrated at the Army’s facilities at the Edgewood Arsenal and Fort Detrick, Md., allegedly tested more than 400 different chemical and biological substances during five decades in locations throughout the U.S. and abroad, and involved an estimated 100,000 active duty military personnel.
“I was one of the fortunate ones who was able to lead a normal life, raise normal children and enjoy my career and family, although I have permanent physical disabilities that are attributable to my military career,” Muth said, though he declined to specify or elaborate on those disabilities.
Muth received an honorable discharge from the Army in 1959. The experiments were so secret, however, that it wasn’t until the spring of 2004, some 45 years later, that a former high-ranking government official who participated in administration of these experiments acknowledged his contributions….

A Government Accounting Office report in 1994, which the Mirror obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, acknowledged that during Word War II and the Cold War era, the Department of Defense and other national security agencies conducted or sponsored extensive radiological, chemical and biological research programs. Part of the report states:
“The effects of the tests and experiments are often difficult to determine. Although some participants suffered immediate acute injuries and some died, in other cases adverse health problems were not discovered until many years later — often 20 to 30 years or longer.”
The Edgewood vets have in recent years sued the government and expect to go to trial in October….http://www.milfordmirror.com/7709/milfords-newest-living-treasure-is-a-military-hero-and-a-knight/

Child Abuse, Legal Information and Research Articles

How Facebook Learned Rape is Bad for Business – Sandy Garossino 5/30/2013 For years Facebook has maintained an imperious and stony silence against pleas from users and victims about its most objectionable content. Not a word when Amanda Todd took her life after being relentlessly stalked and blackmailed by a sexual predator on Facebook. Even the suicides of teens Rehtaeh Parsons and Audrie Pott (whose gang-rapes were posted to Facebook) brought no response from the $60 billion company.
But on May 27th, Facebook finally flinched. And then it cratered, caved and capitulated in the course of a single phone call after a one-week #fbrape campaign by the smartest feminists on the planet.

The Scent of a Dollar
In the end, it was all about the money.
WAM (Women Action Media), feminist Soraya Chemaly and Everyday Sexism in the UK took direct aim at Facebook’s advertising revenue stream. They publicly showed major advertisers their own paid ads prominently displayed (Trigger Warning) on horrific rape-oriented Facebook pages. The most objectionable content can’t ever be shown, but it includes graphic images of gore and horror, beaten children, naked children, women bound and gagged, or thrown down stairs. All supported by advertising dollars of the world’s best-known brands.
It was too much for Nissan and the insurance giant Nationwide, which both pulled their ads immediately. Organizers then aimed a blistering barrage of social media messages to Dove, American Express, ZipCar and other brands, demanding that they too withdraw their ads. Twitter and Facebook were used to spread some 60,000 messages and 5,000 emails.

Followers of the campaign fanned out as if in a coordinated strategy. They disseminated the location of Facebook’s upcoming shareholder meeting on June 11, and the names of all its major advertisers, including Disney and McDonalds….
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/sandy-garossino/wam-facebooks-pr-disaster_b_3357187.html

Google donates just 90 seconds’ profit to charity policing child abuse
Internet giant pledged only £20,000 to Internet Watch Foundation last year, despite multibillion-dollar turnover     Josh Halliday and Alexandra Topping The Guardian, Friday 31 May 2013  Google donated little more than £20,000 last year to the charity responsible for policing child abuse images online – the equivalent of 90 seconds’ profit for the internet firm.
The search giant was one of a number of firms, including Facebook and Microsoft, that pledged relatively small amounts to the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) in 2012, despite their multibillion-dollar turnovers. Facebook made a baseline donation of around £10,000 and Microsoft’s Bing search engine gave about £20,000, according to the IWF’s own records….

Google was singled out for criticism by Liz Longhurst, whose daughter Jane was murdered by extreme pornography user Graham Coutts in 2003, prompting her to campaign for internet firms to ban such images. She said internet firms must “get their act together” and start tackling violent online imagery. “What annoys me immensely is that Google won’t block these sites. They say we’ve got to have freedom. All I ask them is where was my daughter’s freedom – tell me that.”
There have been calls for Google to enforce its “safe search” option as the default setting, which would block pornographic material in search results. However, insiders insisted the move would be ineffectual as the stricter setting operates as an algorithm for legal content – and child abuse imagery is illegal, so is covered by extra blocking measures.

Scott Rubin, Google’s director of communications outside America, said the company has a “zero-tolerance approach” on child abuse images and added: “The SafeSearch filter, which is designed to prevent sexually explicit material of all kinds from showing up in your search results, should not be conflated or confused with our dedication to keeping illegal abuse imagery out of our products. We don’t rely simply on filtering technology to block child abuse images; we go beyond that….
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/may/31/google-child-abuse-donates-profit-internet-watch

Google in firing line over net child porn images
GOOGLE will come under intense pressure this week to show “moral leadership” and take action against a  “tsunami” of internet child pornography. James Fielding  Sun, June 2, 2013
Police are struggling to cope, with reports of online images showing children being abused shooting up by 40 per cent in the past year. Images depicting rape or torture account for 61 per cent while the victims are getting younger, with 88 per cent now aged under 10.

John Carr, an adviser to the Government on online child safety, said the scale of the problem in the UK is “mind boggling” with up to 60,000 individuals swapping or downloading child abuse images online. Yet annual arrests have never been above 2,500. It is estimated 360 million illegal images were seized in the two years to April 2012. In 1995, when the internet was in its infancy, there were just 7,000…. Scott Rubin, Google’s communications director, said: “When we discover child abuse imagery or are made aware  of it we respond quickly to remove and report it.”
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/404358/Google-in-firing-line-over-net-child-porn-images

Internet giants planning to wipe out child abuse images Olivia Goldhill – 06 July 2013
Major companies, including Facebook, Microsoft, Google and Twitter, are in secret discussions to create a system that could banish child abuse images from the web. The plan would be the first collaborative effort across the industry to block paedophiles from sharing images online, and would involve a single database of the worst child abuse images.

At the moment, each company has its own process for removing abusive photos but does not share details of the images for legal and technical reasons. According to The Times, internet giants including Facebook, Microsoft, Google, Twitter and at least three other major companies have been in negotiations for about nine months to work together on combating the explicit images.
The database would be maintained by a Los Angeles charity Thorn: Digital Defenders of Children, which was founded in 2009 by the actors Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore. To take part in Thorn’s project, each company would use Microsoft’s PhotoDNA software to create a “hash” or digital signature for each abusive image. The companies could then use the hashes to easily identify and remove pictures from their own sites….
http://www.independent.ie/business/technology/internet-giants-planning-to-wipe-out-child-abuse-images-29400360.html

‘Some women enjoy rape,’ Tel Aviv judge says   Retired magistrate Nissim Yeshaya makes inflammatory remark while hearing appeal in the case of rape of 13-year-old girl  By Gavriel Fiske June 5, 2013 A judge in Tel Aviv sparked outrage on Wednesday after he reportedly remarked, during an appeals hearing on a rape case several days ago, that some women enjoy rape. Nissim Yeshaya later apologized for his remark….
The hearing involved the case of a 13-year-old Israeli girl who was raped by four Palestinian teenagers from the Shuafat refugee camp six years ago. The four were captured, convicted and imprisoned, but the Defense Ministry ruled that the rape was not a “hostile act” — that is, an act of political aggression. This meant the victim was not be entitled to government compensation and other benefits which terror victims receive. The Defense Ministry oversees criminal cases involving West Bank Palestinians…. http://www.timesofisrael.com/some-women-enjoy-rape-tel-aviv-judge-says/

Childhood neglect affects adult close-relationship capacity  By: SHERRY BOSCHERT, Clinical Psychiatry News Digital Network  SAN FRANCISCO – Childhood neglect correlated with impaired capacity for close social relationships as an adult in a study of 114 nonpsychotic psychiatric inpatients.

The difficulty for patients with a history of childhood neglect centered more in maintaining than in starting close social relationships as adults, Thachell Tanis and Lisa J. Cohen, Ph.D., reported in a press briefing and a poster presentation at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association….
The deficits were most striking in patients’ capacity for enduring relationships, said Dr. Cohen, professor of clinical psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York. Childhood neglect as a whole, for example, correlated with an 81% greater negative effect on adult capacity for enduring relationships, compared with the negative effect on capacity for intimacy.
http://www.clinicalpsychiatrynews.com/specialty-focus/depression/single-article-page/childhood-neglect-affects-adult-close-relationship-capacity/76ac6b947bdf5bc2936e3fde38039d96.html

Sexual Abuse of Children with Disabilities By James R. Marsh on June 4, 2013  According to the 2010 Administration on Children Youth and Families (ACYF) report, more than 3 million reports of child maltreatment were made in 2009. Of those cases, 10 percent involved sexual abuse, and 11 percent of sexual abuse victims reported having a disability. The Vera Institute of Justice’s Center on Victimization and Safety recently partnered with the Ms. Foundation for Women to research factors contributing to the sexual abuse of children with disabilities and determine possible action steps for prevention. http://www.childlaw.us/2013/06/sexual-abuse-of-children-with-.html

Sexual Abuse of Children with Disabilities: A National Snapshot Nancy Smith • Sandra Harrell  Issue Brief • March 2013 Highlights   Children with disabilities are at higher risk for child sexual abuse than children without disabilities. The risk of sexual abuse is excaberated and heightened because of unique dynamics related to disability and the supports these children receive. There is an alarming lack of primary prevention efforts geared to preventing sexual abuse of children with disabilities.  Children with disabilities who experience sexual abuse are less likely to receive the services and supports they need to heal and seek justice….
http://www.vera.org/sites/default/files/resources/downloads/sexual-abuse-of-children-with-disabilities-national-snapshot-v2.pdf

The Ticking Clock on Child Abuse  May 31, 2013 Law and Justice  Marci Hamilton battles the deadline that cheats victims. By Rebecca Webber  The Cleveland kidnapping case, the Sandusky scandal at Penn State and the revelations from prestigious private schools like New York’s Horace Mann remind us that child sex abuse can happen anywhere.

“Twenty to 25 percent of children are sexually abused,” says Marci Hamilton, a professor at Cardozo School of Law. But it often takes victims years to come to terms with what was done to them. “A survivor needs decades to come forward. They’re trying to deal with so much and they can’t put it all together,” she explains. In the meantime, their abusers are typically targeting other children. “Many perpetrators continue abusing into their elderly years,” she says.
That’s why Hamilton has been on a decade-long crusade to eliminate statute-of-limitation rules on sex abuse crimes. The rules vary by state but typically require the victim to file charges or a lawsuit within a specific time frame, sometimes within as little as one year after the abuse took place or after the victim reaches a certain age  (usually between 18 and 21). These limitations, says Hamilton, keep many victims from outing their abusers. She’s working on expanding or eliminating statutes of limitations for these crimes and changing the way they are applied….
http://womenintheworld.org/stories/entry/the-ticking-clock-on-child-abuse

Food Addiction and Child Abuse

Food Addiction In Women Tied To Sexual, Physical Abuse During Childhood David Freeman 06/07/2013
But a shocking new study suggests that some cases of obesity grow out of sexual or physical abuse during childhood. The study, conducted by scientists at Harvard Medical School, showed that women with a personal history of abuse are much more likely than other women to develop a food addiction.
For the study, a team led by Dr. Susan M. Mason, a postdoctoral fellow at the Connors Center for Women’s Health and Gender Biology, studied the link between childhood abuse and adult food addiction in 57,321 women enrolled in the Nurses’ Health Study II.
(Food addiction involves behaviors such as repeated episodes of eating despite the absence of hunger and experiencing withdrawal symptoms when cutting back on certain foods, Dr. Mason told The Huffington Post in an email.)

Dr. Mason’s team found that food addiction was almost twice as common among women who indicated that they had experienced sexual or physical abuse before age 18 than among women with no history of childhood abuse, according to a written statement released in conjunction with the research. Women who had experienced both sexual and physical abuse were even more likely to have food addiction.

Overall, the prevalence of food addiction ran from 6 percent in women with no history of childhood abuse all the way to 16 percent among women who had experienced both sexual and physical abuse….
But studies have turned up links between childhood abuse and obesity in men, Dr. Mason told The Huffington Post. One 2009 study of more than 15,000 adolescents found that men with a history of childhood sexual abuse were 66 percent more likely to be obese than other men, Time.com reported in 2010….

As Dr. Vincent Felitti, co-principal investigator of the California-based Adverse Childhood Experiences Study and an expert on the connection between childhood trauma and adult health problems, told Syracuse.com in 2010, “the relationship between childhood sexual abuse and obesity later in life is major, but, since childhood sexual abuse is a topic protected by shame and social taboo, it is concealed by time and by secrecy.” Dr. Mason’s study was published in the journal Obesity. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/07/food-addiction-women-sexual-physical-abuse-childhood_n_3398173.html

Abuse victimization in childhood or adolescence and risk of food addiction in adult women     Susan M. Mason PhD,     Alan J. Flint MD,     Alison E. Field ScD, S. Bryn Austin ScD, Janet W. Rich-Edwards ScD DOI: 10.1002/oby.20500  Abstract
Objective: Child abuse appears to increase obesity risk in adulthood, but the mechanisms are unclear. This study examined the association between child abuse victimization and food addiction, a measure of stress-related overeating, in 57,321 adult participants in the Nurses’ Health Study II (NHSII). Design and Methods: The NHSII ascertained physical and sexual child abuse histories in 2001 and current food addiction in 2009. Food addiction was defined as =3 clinically significant symptoms on a modified version of the Yale Food Addiction Scale. Confounder-adjusted risk ratios (RRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were estimated using modified Poisson regression. Results: Over eight percent of the sample reported severe physical abuse in childhood, while 5.3% reported severe sexual abuse. Eight percent met the criteria for food addiction. Women with food addiction were 6 units of BMI heavier than women without food addiction. Severe physical and severe sexual abuse were associated with roughly 90% increases in food addiction risk (physical abuse RR=1.92; 95% CI: 1.76, 2.09; sexual abuse RR=1.87; 95% CI: 1.69, 2.05). The RR for combined severe physical abuse and sexual abuse was 2.40 (95% CI: 2.16, 2.67). Conclusions: A history of child abuse is strongly associated with food addiction in this population. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.20500/abstract

How Childhood Trauma Can Cause Adult Obesity By Maia Szalavitz Tuesday, Jan. 05, 2010
….In recent years, studies by both Felitti and others have largely confirmed the association between sexual abuse — as well as other types of traumatic childhood experience — and eating disorders or obesity. A 2007 study of more than 11,000 California women found that those who had been abused as children were 27% more likely to be obese as adults, compared with those who had not, after adjusting for other factors. A 2009 study of more than 15,000 adolescents found that sexual abuse in childhood raised the risk of obesity 66% in males in adulthood. That study found no such effect in women, but did find a higher risk of eating disorders in sexually abused girls….
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1951240,00.html

Experts see strong link between sexual abuse and obesity  By Amber Smith July 25, 2010
Manlius, NY — More than half of the women Dr. Wendy Scinta takes care of at her Medical Weight Loss practice in Manlius have sexual abuse in their past. Typically they lose weight, hit a plateau and put the pounds back on. Over and over again. Until they deal with their demons.
Scinta saw this happen so often, with up to 75 percent of her female patients, that the medical history she takes of new patients now includes questions about abuse. Her treatment involves helping patients be comfortable with the attention that comes with thinner bodies. Mandatory group therapy sessions take place weekly in her office’s conference room.

“If there’s obesity, there’s a good chance, especially if there’s morbid obesity, that something tragic happened in that person’s history, at one point or another,” she said. Those affected are mostly women, mostly 100 or more pounds overweight, and mostly binge eaters. All races, and all social classes are equally represented, she said…. http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2010/07/linking_sexual_abuse_to_obesit.html

Specific Changes in Brain Structure After Different Forms of Child Abuse
June 1, 2013 — Different forms of childhood abuse increase the risk for mental illness as well as sexual dysfunction in adulthood, but little has been known about how that happens. An international team of researchers, including the Miller School’s Charles B. Nemeroff, M.D., Ph.D., Leonard M. Miller Professor and Chair of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, has discovered a neural basis for this association. The study, published in the June 1 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, shows that sexually abused and emotionally mistreated children exhibit specific and differential changes in the architecture of their brain that reflect the nature of the mistreatment.
Researchers have known that victims of childhood abuse often suffer from psychiatric disorders later in life, including sexual dysfunction following sexual abuse. The underlying mechanisms mediating this association have been poorly understood. Nemeroff and a group of scientists led by Christine Heim, Ph.D., Director of the Institute of Medical Psychology at Charité University of Medicine Berlin, and Jens Pruessner, Ph.D., Director of the McGill Center for Studies in Aging at McGill University in Montreal, hypothesized that cortical changes during segments of mistreatment played a role. To study these potential changes, the researchers used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to examine the brains of 51 adult women who were exposed to various forms of childhood abuse.
The results showed a correlation between specific forms of maltreatment and thinning of the cortex in precisely the regions of the brain that are involved in the perception or processing of the type of abuse…. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130601133735.htm

What Do We Know about the High School Class of 2013?  By James R. Marsh on June 13, 2013 This just out from Child Trends; some fascinating and sobering statistics about the high school class of 2013. BETHESDA, MD — June 11, 2013 — Imagine a senior class of 100. They’re the product of their genetic predispositions, their families, their communities, and all of the opportunities (or lack of opportunities) they’ve encountered since birth. They’ve made both good choices and not-so-good ones. They’re on the threshold of adulthood. But what do we really know about them and what does their future hold? Child Trends, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research center on children and youth issues, examined a range of available statistics to provide this portrait of the high school class of 2013:    ….71 have experienced physical assault; 28 have been victimized sexually; 32 have experienced some form of child maltreatment. …. 39 have ever been bullied, physically or emotionally; 16 have been bullied in the past year.  ….22 are living in poverty; 10 are living in deep poverty,  …. 10 report they were victims of dating violence in the past year. 10 report they have been raped …..3 were victims of violent crime in the past year…. http://www.childlaw.us/2013/06/what-do-we-know-about-the-high.html

Rehtaeh Parsons cyberbullying report calls for hospital review    Cyberbullying expert says more action needed to help young people after Halifax teen’s death  CBC News  June 14, 2013 A review of how the Halifax Regional School Board handled events leading up to the death of Rehtaeh Parsons, the teenager who took her life in April after she was cyberbullied, is recommending an external review of the Halifax hospital where she was a patient for five weeks after she had a breakdown and became suicidal.  “Rehtaeh was a young woman of great promise whose needs were not met,” read the documents.

Ontario-based education experts Debra Pepler and Penny Milton took less than a month to explore 10 questions about anti-bullying programs in Nova Scotia following the death of the 17-year-old.
Rehtaeh’s parents say she was raped by four boys at a party a year-and-a-half ago where she was drunk. A picture of the alleged assault was circulated at her school and in social media….
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/story/2013/06/14/ns-rehtaeh-parsons-school-board.html

Theater Review  Sexual Trafficking, Up Close and Personal  ‘Roadkill’ Bears Witness to Human Trafficking By BEN BRANTLEY Published: June 16, 2013
The girl on the bus had been promised summer and sunshine, she says, and it is cool and clammy on this wet evening in June. But Mary, 14 years old and fresh from Nigeria, is willing to forgive this new, exciting city its disappointing weather. If she has any suspicion that what awaits at the end of her journey will be beyond forgiveness, she does not betray it.
Thus began the performance I attended of “Roadkill,” the unsettling site-specific theater piece about sex trafficking created by Cora Bissett, first seen three years ago at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and brought to New York by St. Ann’s Warehouse in Brooklyn. The audience members, who numbered about 20, had boarded the same bus as Mary outside the Warehouse’s theater….
http://theater.nytimes.com/2013/06/17/theater/reviews/roadkill-bears-witness-to-human-trafficking.html

When Fathers Say ‘No More’ to Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault 6/14/2013  ….Too often, we see the horrific results of the mistreatment of women and children on the evening news and in crime statistics. Every 15 seconds, a woman is abused by her partner. Nearly three out of every four Americans knows someone personally who is or has been a victim of domestic violence. Sex trafficking — especially of young children — is increasing at alarming rates across our country. And while we stand tall and proud with those men and women who have served and continue to serve in our military, we have seen even those institutions shaken by the scourge of sexual assault — 26,000 members of the Armed Forces were sexually assaulted in just one year.

….It has been estimated that as many as 10 million children witness assaults by one parent against another each year. We recognize that domestic violence places children, as well as women, in harm’s way. Our determined efforts continue across the country, most notably in Connecticut and Nevada, where visionary leaders and everyday citizens are coming together to advance effective strategies, legislation and solutions that work, and that matter.
For all of these reasons, I support a new initiative called NO MORE. It aims to get men talking about these serious issues. New data from a NO MORE survey, sponsored by the Avon Foundation for Women, shows that on this subject, fathers have been virtually silent. Three out of four men nationwide say they have not talked about domestic violence or sexual assault with their children. And so, as fathers, we can wait no more. We must all begin the conversation, close to home, with each of our children. As fathers, we must continue the conversation with leaders in business and our government. And, as fathers, we must fully engage with our educational system so boys can be taught in the developmental stages that you can never be a real man and be violent with a woman….
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-bolton/when-fathers-say-no-more-to-domestic-violence_b_3428547.html

describes violent crimes
Miami Cold Case Murder Solved With Recovered Memories  By Michael E. Miller Thursday, May 9 2013
….Instead, it would be more than a quarter-century before police caught a break.
“Back then we were finding so many dope murders,” says retired Miami-Dade homicide detective John Parmenter. “We all thought [the bodies] had something to do with drugs.” He pauses and adds quietly, “How wrong we were.”….
So when Gloria Hampton walked into McCully’s office in the summer of 2010 with a story stranger than fiction, the sergeant was suspicious. “I just need somebody to listen to me,” Gloria pleaded. The short 29-year-old with wide hips, tan skin, and curly hair had been through years of psychiatric therapy, she said. From the haze of her hurtful childhood, however, she had pulled one particular memory and polished it until clear. “I saw my father kill my mother when I was 4 years old,” she said. “He put her body into an army-green bag.” McCully was still skeptical. Cops don’t put much faith in recovered memories, and these were 25 years old. But after Gloria left, he cracked open musty boxes of cold-case files. He flipped through yellowing photographs and police reports for hours before pulling out a thin binder that hadn’t been touched in years. It was the unsolved murder from April 4, 1985. And inside was a photo of a woman’s body in an army-green bag.
DNA analysis quickly confirmed that Gloria’s mother, Nilsa Padilla, was the murder victim known for decades as “Theresa Torso.” Gloria’s father, Jorge Walter Nuñez, instantly became the only suspect. For Miami-Dade police, it was a breakthrough in one of the department’s oldest and most vexing cases. For Gloria, it was salvation.
“They thought I was crazy,” she says of the cops, foster parents, and caseworkers who ridiculed her claims for years. “Now they know I’m not.”….

I didn’t like him at all,” Soto says of Nuñez. “He was always drunk.” He also brought out the worst in Padilla. She drank heavily, slipping into dark moods. One day, Padilla drunkenly hit 4-year-old Bernisa on the head with a brush, causing a gash. Soto told her: “If you ever do that again, I’m calling the cops on you.” Nuñez and Padilla left town shortly afterward in an old U-Haul truck he’d turned into a makeshift camper by cutting a window in the rear. They drove down the coast to Florida.
When Soto next saw her cousin, it was three years later, in 1984. Padilla was in worse shape than ever. She now had three kids: Bernisa, Gloria, and a baby named Alicia. But the family was on the run from the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services. When Soto asked why, Padilla pointed to Gloria’s shoddily bandaged left hand. Nuñez had dropped a heavy piece of metal on the 3-year-old — by accident, he said — mangling her thumb. The two drunks had never taken the toddler to the hospital….

Nuñez, meanwhile, made no effort to hide his hatred. “I’m fed up with her,” he told Soto in Spanish. “One of these days, I’m going to kill her.”….
Instead of comforting her, Padilla drunkenly smacked her daughter. “She hit me so hard my face was bleeding,” Bernisa says. “Maybe she finally realized that she was with the wrong man.”
If so, it was too late. When Nuñez returned around 2 a.m., Padilla was waiting for him. From their bunk bed near the ceiling, the three children saw their father strike her with the butt of a beer bottle. He hit her again and again in the head, the glass breaking within its brown paper bag. She tried to climb out the back door. For a moment, moonlight flooded into the tiny camper.

“Then he shoved her back in with his foot,” Bernisa remembers. “He closed the door, and then he finished her off.”….
“I saw my mom beaten to death,” Bernisa says. “My only protector in the world, and she couldn’t protect herself.” Neither sister remembers Nuñez cutting up the corpse, but Gloria distinctly recalls seeing her father stuff her mother’s body into an army-green bag. “I remember helping him dispose of her,” she says….

The two sisters had already seen their father kill their mother and sister. But those sickening moments were nothing compared to the rape, violence, and neglect that would follow. Without Padilla around, Nuñez would become a monster. And Bernisa and Gloria would be forced to live like animals alongside him to survive….
Nuñez never worked, likely living on Padilla’s welfare checks. Whatever money he did have, he spent on Budweiser or marijuana. The campground was only a few hundred yards from Lower Matecumbe Key’s strip malls, but Bernisa and Gloria lived like wolves. Their hair — Bernisa’s dark, Gloria’s blond — grew long and matted, and they survived on crabs or shrimp they found in shallow pools. “If we didn’t catch anything, we didn’t eat,” Bernisa says. The sexual abuse that had begun as a secret now spread into a sick obsession. Nuñez would emerge from the U-Haul, growl “Vámanos chicas,” and then molest them. He raped one or both of them nearly every day for years. Sometimes Nuñez would let other men take the girls into the dirty U-Haul at the edge of the world. “Some of it is blacked out, thank God,” Bernisa says of the abuse. “If we remembered the whole thing, we probably would have gone crazy.”….

The girls’ nightmare lasted four years. Even when the police took Nuñez away, the two girls did not say what he had done to them. It would take another child to scream out….
At the police station, officers tried to get Bernisa to talk. But the 11-year-old said Nuñez never abused them. Then the cops tried Gloria. At first she also denied it all. But then the talkative 8-year-old began to tell the horrible truth. “She would have to keep the bedroom door locked at night to keep Daddy from coming in and touching them,” reads a Monroe County Sheriff’s report from March 1989.    They’d kept quiet out of terror, police realized. “If I tell you, will you let my daddy go?” Gloria fearfully asked an officer. Police didn’t let Nuñez go, at least not for four years. He was convicted of two counts of lewd and lascivious acts on children. By the time he was released in 1993, his daughters had changed their names and disappeared. But they could not change the past. And as they became teenagers, Gloria and Bernisa would relive the horrors of their childhood in their own ways….
http://www.miaminewtimes.com/2013-05-09/news/miami-cold-case-murder-nilsa-padilla/

describes abuse
Rape culture punishes boys too
A Colorado case shows boys can be assaulted too — and too often, teachers have ignored or even laughed about it  By Mary Elizabeth Williams    Monday, Jun 24, 2013
The endlessly repeated argument that rape is just one of those things that guys can’t help doing because girls can’t stop provoking them ignores a simple, brutal reality: Males don’t just perpetrate sexual violence – they are the victims of it as well. And when they come forward, male victims often face a raft of suspicion, bullying and blame, as a heartbreaking recent case out of Colorado proves….

After the victim’s father reported the incident to police, the assailants pleaded guilty to sexual contact without consent and third-degree assault — but it was the victim and principal who were tormented at school. The man says students taunted the boy on his Facebook page, verbally berated him, put “Go to hell” stickers on his locker and wore shirts supporting the perpetrators – shirts paid for by the mother of one of the accused. And he says the coach, who was also president of the school board, shrugged off the attack, telling him, “This happens 1,000 times a day around the U.S.” The father subsequently resigned from his position as principal. His family has since moved to a town 200 miles away, where his son continues to wrestle and play football. The school, meanwhile, gave the coach a letter of reprimand for leaving the students alone and then renewed his contract….

The hostile responses a teenage boy has had to endure in the wake of a vicious assault are truly stomach-turning. What makes the story far more depressing, however, is that it’s not unique. As PRI reports Monday, as many as 10 percent of high school boys report they’ve been the victims of “rape, forced oral sex or other sexual assault.” And Bloomberg News reports that “More than 40 high school boys were sodomized with foreign objects by their teammates in over a dozen alleged incidents reported in the past year” — a sharp rise from a decade ago. Recent incidents involved boys being violated with “a broken flagpole outside Los Angeles; a metal concrete-reinforcing bar in Fontana, Calif.; a jump-rope handle in Greenfield, Iowa; and a water bottle in Hardin, Mo.” And, Bloomberg adds, “In at least four cases of sodomy hazing last year, the coach or supervising teacher was alleged to have known about it, ordered it, witnessed it or laughed about it.”….
http://www.salon.com/2013/06/24/rape_culture_punishes_boys_too/

Sixth Circuit – Dissent Criticizes Limited Restitution Options By James R. Marsh on May 24, 2013
In a forceful dissent, a judge in the latest child pornography restitution decision proclaimed that “to accomplish the difficult task of assigning financial responsibility to possessors of child pornography for the harm caused by their conduct, district judges should have all the tools provided by law at their disposal and should be permitted broad discretion to fashion an appropriate remedy.”
The case before the Sixth Circuit, United States v. Hargrove, was decided under controlling Circuit precedent which requires “proximate cause” before a district court can award restitution to a victim of child pornography possession.
http://www.childlaw.us/2013/05/sixth-circuit—dissent-critic.html

Top court agrees to hear child pornography restitution case    By Lawrence Hurley WASHINGTON | Thu Jun 27, 2013  (Reuters) – The Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to consider how much victims of child pornography can claim in restitution under a federal law. The case concerns efforts by a victim, named only as Amy, to seek restitution from Doyle Paroline Of Brownsboro, Texas, who was convicted of possessing child pornography that included two images of Amy.
Amy, now 19, was sexually abused by an uncle when she was 8 and 9 years old. The uncle made images of the abuse that have been widely distributed on the Internet, which is where Paroline acquired them. The legal question is how much Paroline is required to pay in restitution under the 1994 Mandatory Restitution for Sexual Exploitation of Children Act. Amy said Paroline is liable for the full amount of her injury – such as counseling and loss of future income – while Paroline said he should only be liable for his individual role. Amy has claimed $3.4 million.

A federal court initially denied Amy any restitution in Paroline’s case but an appeals court said restitution of the full amount of the loss is required. Paroline asked the Supreme Court to review that finding. Amy’s case is one of several similar cases around the country. Court papers said more than 150 courts have awarded Amy restitution but Paroline’s is the only one before the Supreme Court…. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/27/us-usa-court-restitution-idUSBRE95Q0W520130627

Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Landmark Children’s Rights Case By James R. Marsh on June 27, 2013
Earlier today, the United States Supreme Court agreed to review a case brought by the Marsh Law Firm concerning criminal restitution for victims of child pornography. The Court agreed to decide “what, if any, causal relationship or nexus between the defendant’s conduct and the victim’s harm or damages must the government or the victim establish in order to recover restitution under 18 U.S.C. §2259,” the Mandatory Restitution for Sexual Exploitation of Children Act of 1994. The case, Doyle Randall Paroline v. Amy Unknown, arises out of a long-fought and extensively litigated criminal restitution action which began almost four years ago before Judge Leonard Davis in the Eastern District of Texas Tyler Division. http://www.childlaw.us/2013/06/supreme-court-agrees-to-hear-l.html

Dissociative Mental States Are Canonically Associated with Decreased Temporal Theta Activity on Spectral Analysis of EEG Christa Krüger MBBCh MMed(Psych) MD FCPsych(SA)ad*, Peter Bartel PhDbe & Lizelle Fletcher BCom MSc PhDc Journal of Trauma & Dissociation  Volume 14, Issue 4, 2013  pages 473-491 DOI:  10.1080/15299732.2013.769480 Abstract
Quantitative electroencephalographic (QEEG) changes relating to dissociative experiences have only rarely been demonstrated, and dissociative states were not quantified in those studies. The aim of this study was to explore concurrent associations between quantified dissociative states and QEEG spectral parameters, in particular theta activity, in psychiatric patients. Fifty psychiatric patients completed the State Scale of Dissociation (SSD) immediately after a 15-min EEG recording. The EEG was assessed by conventional clinical visual analysis as well as by quantitative (QEEG) spectral analysis. Canonical analysis was performed between the set of SSD subscale scores and the following QEEG parameters: alpha–theta magnitude ratios, and relative as well as absolute theta magnitude obtained from right and left mid- to posterior-temporal and parieto-occipital derivations. The SSD transferred well to the present data in terms of reliability and internal criterion-related validity. The SSD and Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES) correlated significantly (r = .73, p < .001). Conventional EEG analysis identified 29 EEGs (58%) as abnormal. The main abnormality in 23 EEGs was slowing, maximal temporally in half of these cases. Canonical analyses confirmed a statistically significant relationship between the dissociation variables (especially conversion and depersonalization symptoms) and the QEEG variables (especially relative theta magnitude in the temporal regions; R = .72, p = .03, for SSD–QEEG; and R = .66, p = .04, for DES–QEEG). Quantified dissociative mental states are positively canonically associated with decreased temporal theta activity and increased alpha–theta ratios on QEEG in psychiatric patients with a high tendency to dissociate. The potential implications of the dissociation–theta–alpha relationship for understanding normal attentional processes need to be studied further. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15299732.2013.769480

Live streaming of child sex abuse an ’emerging threat’ 2 July 2013
Live streaming of child sex abuse via webcams is an emerging threat, experts have warned, amid a doubling of reported indecent images. The Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre said children were being “abused to order”. Offenders targeted vulnerable families overseas, paying them to facilitate child abuse, according to its report.

Ceop said those carrying out abuse used a “hidden internet” to disguise their identity and avoid detection. The report found the number of still and moving child abuse images reported to Ceop had doubled in the last year to 70,000 – although this includes a “substantial” number of duplicated images.  The child protection body – part of Home Office’s Serious Organised Crime Agency – said it received 8,000 reports of indecent images of children being shared last year. ‘Appalling crime’
It said live streaming emerged in 2012 as a means of producing and distributing images.
“We’re seeing cases where they’re effectively being abused to order for paying customers,” chief executive Peter Davies told the BBC. He said some of those exploiting children via the internet were in the UK, adding: “At every level an absolutely appalling kind of crime.”

Children were forced to engage in sexual activity on live webcams in exchange for payment to the family or organised crime gangs, according to Ceop’s annual threat assessment of child exploitation and abuse….
“The use of the hidden internet in the UK and beyond is expected to continue increasing throughout 2013, possibly reaching 20,000 daily UK users by the end of the year,” said the report….
An estimated 50,000 UK web users are involved in distributing abuse images. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23137754

Threat Assessment of Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse June 2013
Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre London www.ceop.police.uk
http://ceop.police.uk/Documents/ceopdocs/CEOP_TACSEA2013_240613%20FINAL.pdf

UK child migration: a scandalous history Monday Jul 08, 2013
An abusive British imperial system has been involved in export of unwanted children, mainly from orphanages and other juvenile institutions, to be tortured with crushing labor and sexually abused at a number of former British colonies. The kids were shipped off in large numbers to Australia, Canada, New Zealand and central Africa, without the consent or even knowledge of their potential families and even themselves, for forced labor. They were sent with the intension of stopping the children being a burden on the British state while supplying the receiving countries with potential workers and — as a parliamentary inquiry found in 1998 – to help expand the white population in British colonies.
The Australian episode of the practice in the mid 20th century was especially painful as officials in London did what it took to populate their colony with “good white stock” to compete with locals and other Asiatic nations in a racial and religious competition.

Australia was the destination to some 10,000 children between 1947 and 1967 with Perth being a notorious torture ground. Boys aged younger than 16 were sent to an institution north of the western city run by Catholic Christian Brothers. Children as young as seven had to work in construction projects without adequate food or basic safety measures and many were injured at work at an age when they would have been playing if they lived an ordinary life.
The institutions behind the de facto child trafficking were officially embraced under philanthropic guises by the British and Australian governments and established organizations, many of them religious charities.

It is also estimated that tens of thousands of children were sent to suffer similar fates in New Zealand, Rhodesia (present-day Zimbabwe) and Canada from the late 19th century well into the 1960’s until the practice was exposed and stopped in 1967after exposure by a socialist worker….
There were in all around 150,000 children who were forced out of Britain under the schemes over the 20th century….        http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/07/07/312667/uk-child-migration-a-scandalous-history/

Babies Seeing Violence Show Aggression Later  June 17, 2013 — Aggression in school-age children may have its origins in children 3 years old and younger who witnessed violence between their mothers and partners, according to a new Case Western Reserve University study.
“People may think children that young are passive and unaware, but they pay attention to what’s happening around them,” said Megan Holmes, assistant professor of social work at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland.
Between three and 10 million children witness some form of domestic violence each year, according the National Center for Children Exposed to Violence.

Holmes said researchers know the impact of recent exposure to violence, but little information has been available about the long-term effect from the early years of life. To her knowledge, she said her study is the first to look at the effect of early exposure to domestic violence and its impact on the development of social behavior.
In the study, “The sleeper effect of intimate partner violence (IPV) exposure: long-term consequences on young children’s aggressive behavior,” Holmes analyzed the behavior of 107 children exposed to IPV in their first three years but never again after age 3. The outcomes of those children were compared to 339 children who were never exposed….
Analyzing aggressive behaviors, Holmes saw no behavioral differences between those who did or did not witness violence between the ages of 3 and 5, but children exposed to violence increased their aggression when they reached school age. And the more frequently IPV was witnessed, the more aggressive the behaviors became.

Meanwhile, children never exposed to IPV gradually decreased in aggression….
Megan R. Holmes. The sleeper effect of intimate partner violence exposure: long-term consequences on young children’s aggressive behavior. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 2013; DOI: 10.1111/jcpp.12071    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/06/130617110707.htm

Meta-analysis of the efficacy of treatments for posttraumatic stress disorder. Authors Watts BV, et al   Journal  J Clin Psychiatry. 2013 Jun;74(6):e541-50. doi: 10.4088/JCP.12r08225.
Abstract  OBJECTIVE: Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is an important mental health issue in terms of the number of people affected and the morbidity and functional impairment associated with the disorder. The purpose of this study was to examine the efficacy of all treatments for PTSD….
RESULTS: Effective psychotherapies included cognitive therapy, exposure therapy, and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (g = 1.63, 1.08, and 1.01, respectively). Effective pharmacotherapies included paroxetine, sertraline, fluoxetine, risperidone, topiramate, and venlafaxine (g = 0.74, 0.41, 0.43, 0.41, 1.20, and 0.48, respectively)….

CONCLUSIONS: Our findings suggest that patients and providers have a variety of options for choosing an effective treatment for PTSD. Substantial differences in study design and study participant characteristics make identification of a single best treatment difficult. Not all medications or psychotherapies are effective.  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/23842024/

Transference-focused psychotherapy with former child soldiers: meeting the murderous self.
Nel Draijer, Pauline Van Zon  a Department of Psychiatry , VU University Medical Center/GGZinGeest , Amsterdam , The Netherlands. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation (impact factor: 1.23). 03/2013; 14(2):170-83. DOI:10.1080/15299732.2013.724339 Source: PubMed

ABSTRACT This article describes the application of transference-focused psychotherapy (TFP) to the treatment of former child soldiers suffering from dissociative identity disorder. It focuses on the problems with aggression faced in psychotherapy. TFP provides a psychodynamic, object relations model to understand the aggression arising in psychotherapy, focusing on the transference and countertransference in the here and now of the therapeutic relationship. Aggression is considered an essential and vital inner dynamic aimed at autonomy, distancing, and the prevention of injury and dependency. In extremely traumatized patients there may be aggressive and oppressive inner parts that want total control-identifying with childhood aggressors-thus avoiding vulnerability. According to TFP it is vital that this aggression is addressed as belonging to the patients themselves in order to reach some form of integration, balance, and health. This is illustrated in a case description.
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/235619397_Transference-focused_psychotherapy_with_former_child_soldiers_meeting_the_murderous_self

Structural dissociation and its resolution among Holocaust survivors: a qualitative research study. Carl F Auerbach, Shoshana Mirvis, Susan Stern, and Jonathan Schwartz  Journal of Trauma & Dissociation 10(4):385 (2009) PMID 19821175
This qualitative study investigated how Holocaust survivors managed to lead “normal” lives after experiencing incomprehensible horror. It was based on structural dissociation theory (O. Van der Hart, E. R. S. Nijenhuis, & K. Steele, 2006), which postulates that when people encounter traumatic events that they cannot integrate into their ongoing mental lives, their personalities may divide into 2 distinct action systems: the apparently normal part of the personality (ANP; involving systems that manage functions of daily life) and the emotional part of the personality (EP; involving systems related to the traumatic memory). Failure to integrate also leads to nonrealization of the traumatic experience. Research participants were 20 people randomly selected from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s oral history archives. Their interviews were analyzed in terms of structural dissociation and nonrealization in order to develop a narrative about the stages of their post-war lives. In the 1st stage (Surviving the Camps: Formation of Traumatic Memories), the experience of surviving the camps created traumatic emotional memories. In the 2nd stage (Post-War Adjustment: Creating the ANP by Splitting Off the Traumatic Memories Into an EP), survivors’ desire to create a normal post-war life led them to split off their traumatic memories. In the 3rd stage (Developing the Motivation to Remember), survivors’ changed life context motivated them to confront the previously split-off material. In the 4th stage (Creating a Historical Self: Integration of the ANP and EP), survivors integrated past experience into their lives, although the impact of the trauma never fully disappeared.
DOI: 10.1080/15299730903143691  http://pubget.com/paper/19821175/structural-dissociation-and-its-resolution-among-holocaust-survivors-a-qualitative-research-study

Global Perspectives on Dissociative Disorders   Individual and Societal Oppression
Edited by Vedat Sar, Warwick Middleton, Martin Dorahy  To Be Published January 13th 2014 by Routledge – 192 pages  978-0-415-71807-3
Dissociative disorders are one of the psychiatric consequences of childhood psychological trauma. While oppression is an aspect of traumatic conditions, dissociation undermines resistance to oppression throughout a person’s lifespan. Neither oppression nor dissociation are restricted to particular cultures, and both can affect the individual as well as societies.

This collection engages with the universality of dissociative disorders and their close relationship to oppression. The chapters cover extreme examples such as ongoing incest in adulthood, children and adults forced to kill others, and abusive states in interrogation. Further subjects examined include the utilization of dissociation in postmodern societies to maintain oppression, the oppressive conditions of asylum seekers and the consequences of oppression as they are dealt with in psychotherapy. The final chapter considers how a paedophile pandering network employed multi-layered oppression to prevent the public becoming aware of the widespread and organised abuse of children….
http://www.routledgementalhealth.com/books/details/9780415718073/

Roman Polanski Rape Victim Unveils Startling, Disturbing Photo for Book Cover (Exclusive)
7/24/2013 by Andy Lewis  “The Girl,” Samantha Geimer’s memoir about being raped by Roman Polanski in 1977 at age 13, features a picture the director took of her days before his assault.
After nearly 35 years of silence, the 13-year-old girl Roman Polanski raped in 1977 is finally telling her full story in The Girl: A Life in the Shadow of Roman Polanski. The Hollywood Reporter’s exclusive first look at the cover of the book reveals Samantha Geimer’s determination to reclaim her own story.  The cover is a haunting close-up shot of the teenage Geimer (then known by her maiden name, Samantha Gailey), taken on Feb. 20, 1977, less than three weeks before Polanski drugged and raped her at Jack Nicholson’s Mulholland Drive home during a modeling shoot when he also gave her alcohol and a quaalude. But the photo comes with a surprising twist: It was taken by Polanski himself.  He took the pictures during his first photo session with Geimer, now 50, at her home in Woodland Hills, a session in which the director coaxed the young girl to pose topless for him in some of the shots.  Using the photo was part of Geimer’s strategy to reclaim her story.

Since the incident, the media has always illustrated the story with a picture of Polanski. Geimer finally wanted to put her own face on the story, and this picture reflected the starting point for her.  The pictures surfaced during Geimer’s civil suit against Polanski, which she filed in 1988 and resulted in Polanski agreeing to pay her $500,000 plus interest (a sum Geimer struggled to collect).
As part of the civil suit, her attorney Lawrence Silver, who also contributes to the book, demanded Polanski turn over all the pictures he took. Even though the director turned over some photos (and all rights associated with them), Silver always believed others existed, and years later they were discovered….http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/roman-polanski-rape-victim-unveils-591015

The $115,000 Question July 25th, 2013 A loyal reader of this site pointed our attention to a curious entry in the tax returns filed by the False Memory Syndrome Foundation in 2005 and 2006. In 2005, the organization spent $63,500 on something identified only as “book project.” They spent $52,227 more the next year. Their 2006 tax return lists “the Sturgis Group” as “authors” of the book they are funding. (See p. 10 of this document.) But there was never a book published after this date with the FMSF or the Sturgis Group listed as the author. Indeed, there was never even an announcement in the FMSF Newsletter informing its members that a book they spent more than $100,000 on had been published. One wonders why….
The preface also acknowledges a “yearlong collaboration” whereby McHugh’s daughter Clare “helped [him] put down an accessible draft.” Dr. McHugh mentions her “devotion,” but there is no mention of what happened behind-the-scenes…. http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/2013/07/25/the-115000-question/

How girls fall into clutches of pimps Henry K. Lee Saturday, August 3, 2013
The 15-year-old girl, a chronic runaway from an Oakland group home, could not escape the clutches of her alleged pimp in Hayward. In response to his demands, the young prostitute insisted in text messages that she was getting “dates” from the online ad he had posted but apologized for not making him any money. After he dropped her off at the La Quinta Inn & Suites on Hesperian Boulevard last week, the girl solicited an undercover police officer for sex – and was promptly arrested as part of a nationwide FBI-led crackdown on child prostitution. Authorities in the Bay Area rescued 11 other children who were allegedly being forced to work as prostitutes and arrested 21 suspected pimps.
The 15-year-old’s alleged pimp, Kenneth Kinsey, 25, and a suspected prostitute, 20-year-old Malyssa Gevas-Hadley, both of Sacramento, were charged by Alameda County prosecutors with human trafficking of a minor for commercial sex. Although details of the girl’s case are sealed because of her age, the 15-year-old shared one trait with many other exploited children – she had run away from a foster care or group home.

Of the children reported missing who are likely sex trafficking victims, 60 percent were in foster care or group homes, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
It isn’t surprising that the majority of child victims come out of such settings – they may have been born into a dysfunctional environment and endured instability all their young lives, said Detective Angela Irizarry of the Hayward Police Department….
http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/How-girls-fall-into-clutches-of-pimps-4705407.php

Sister of mystery man with amnesia says family had no idea where he was 16 Jul 2013  By Andrew Rafferty, Staff Writer, NBC News  A mysterious Florida man who awoke in a California hotel room with no recollection of his past has a sister, it was revealed Tuesday— and she says she hasn’t seen her brother in about 10 years and did not know if he was alive or dead.

Michael Boatwright, 61, was found unconscious in a Motel 6 room in Palm Springs, Cali. four months ago. When he regained conciousness, he called himself John Ek and, bizarrely, spoke only Swedish, The Desert Sun reported. The newspaper was able to track down Michelle Brewer, Boatwright’s sister, in Louisiana. She said she and her family had no idea where her brother was and had no way to get in touch with him. “He’s always been just a wanderer. Then he’d come back when he needed some money or something from somebody. Then he’d take off again,” Brewer told the Sun. Authorities have struggled to piece together the story of the mystery man….
Doctors diagnosed Boatwright with Transient Global Amnesia in March. The condition can last for several months and is often triggered by trauma. It was unclear what, if any, trauma Boatwright may have experienced.
Friends told the Desert Sun that Boatwright was raised in Florida and first visited Sweden in 1981.

While there he fell in love with Ewa Espling, who told the newspaper that the two had planned to marry but that Boatwright was haunted by nightmares of what he saw during the Vietnam War….
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/16/19503246-sister-of-mystery-man-with-amnesia-says-family-had-no-idea-where-he-was?lite

Sexual Violence Legal News Online – Commonwealth v. Daniel Vital, Appeals Court of Massachusetts, Plymouth No. 12 P 845. Nature of the case: Indecent assault and battery on a child and violation of an abuse prevention order. Facts and Issues on Appeal: Defendant, a friend of the victim’s grandparents, molested the victim in her home while staying there. The defendant subsequently went to his pastor, who knew the defendant, the victim, and the victim’s family. The defendant asked the pastor to tell the victim’s family that he was sorry and did not intend to hurt anyone. He claimed that he was not taking his medication and blamed the abuse on his confusion with pornographic material on television. The defendant also requested that the pastor try to convince the family to resolve the sexual abuse issue through the church and not take it to court. After multiple requests, the pastor eventually relayed the defendant’s messages to the family, who had already reported the crime to the police and obtained an abuse prevention order for the whole family against the defendant. At trial, the pastor testified about his communications with the defendant, to which the defendant did not object. The defendant was convicted.

On appeal, the defendant argued that the pastor violated his priest-penitent privilege by testifying in court about his confessions and communications requesting that the priest communicate with the family on his behalf. The court disagreed….
Privileges must be strictly construed and the priest-penitent privilege only applies to communications where the penitent seeks religious or spiritual counseling. The privilege does not apply when a penitent requests that his conversations be shared with a third party. Thus, because the defendant on multiple occasions requested that the pastor disclose their communications to the victim and her family, the privilege did not apply….  http://www.nesl.edu/centers/clsr_svln_online.cfm?SVID=763

Track your slavery footprint
Millions of people from more than 200 countries have visited SlaveryFootprint.org to discover their connection to slavery. Find yours by taking the quiz.
Track your Slavery Footprint: slaveryfootprint.org
Slavery Footprint is a joint effort between the U.S. State Department and Made in a Free World. A grantee of Humanity United, Made In A Free World is building a coalition of consumers, businesses, and governments to disrupt the system of slavery. Learn more at madeinafreeworld.com.

Slavery exists deep within the supply chains of the products we love. How many slaves work for you? Take this quiz from Made in a Free World
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/humanity-united-partner-zone/track-your-slavery-footprint

HONORING THE TRUTH: A RESPONSE TO THE BACKLASH  by ELLEN BASS and LAURA DAVIS
from THE COURAGE TO HEAL: A GUIDE FOR WOMEN SURVIVORS OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE  THIRD EDITION, 1994 published by HarperCollins  “Honoring the Truth” is a response to the current backlash against adult survivors of child sexual abuse. If you’ve watched TV, listened to the radio, or read newspapers or
magazines in the past two years, it’s likely that you’ve heard about the “false memory syndrome” and have witnessed attacks on survivor s’ memories and credibility. It is these attacks we are responding to here.  As in the rest of The Courage to Heal, we have included the experiences of survivors as well as practical self-help information. Unlike the rest of the book, however, we also incorporate here the work of therapists, researchers, and other experts—and more than a hundred footnotes—to place this backlash in a historical and political perspective….

A LITTLE HISTORY
Since 1860, child abuse has been discovered and then discredited every 35 years by the most visionary clinicians of the day, each faced with the alternative of denouncing the discovery or succumbing to scorn and disgrace. 6 —Roland Summit
This is not the first time survivors of child sexual abuse have been told they were lying, misguided, vindictive, imagining it, wanting it, or just plain crazy.

Early in his career, Sigmund Freud identified child sexual abuse as the cause of much mental and emotional illness in adulthood. By listening to his patients (a revolutionary idea in itself), he learned that many of the women and men he was treating had been sexually traumatized. 7

Many had initial amnesia for the trauma, but when they were able to recall the events and talk about them, their contemporary symptoms subsided. When he put forth this discovery, Freud was criticized and ridiculed by his colleagues. Ultimately he recanted, and proposed instead that his patients had either fantasized the sex or had desired it. 8 Thus scientific knowledge was put on a fast train backwards, and sexually abused children—and the adults they grew up to be—were left bereft.9….

In 1870 Josephine Butler campaigned against child prostitution, comparing the traffic in young girls to the slave trade. She was harassed by the London police and assaulted by the owners of brothels. Although her cause was supported by other prominent crusaders in Europe and in the Un ited States, it wasn’t until 1910 that the U.S. Congress passed the Mann Act, forbidding the transport of women and children across state lines for sexual exploitation.1….

In 1937 Loretta Bender and Adam Blau wrote, “These children undoubtedly do not deserve completely the cloak of innocence with which they have been endowed by moralists, social reformers and legislators.” Referring to the children’s “unusually charming and attractive . . . personalities,” they went on to conclude that “the child might have been the actual seducer rather than the one innocently seduced.”1….

And in 1953, Alfred Kinsey and his fellow researchers documented the prevalence of child sexual abuse but minimized its impact. In a sample of over one thousand women, one in four reported sexual abuse. Eighty percent of these said they had been frightened by the encounters, but Kinsey and his colleagues discounted their accounts, writing, “It is difficult to understand why a child, except for its cultural conditioning, should be disturbed at having its genitalia touched.” They went on to express their belief that penalties for perpetrators were overly harsh: “In many instances the law, in the course of punishing the offender, does more damage to more persons than was ever done by the individual in his illicit sexual activity.”1….

As late as the 1970s many clinicians were still taught that incest was extremely rare, affecting only one in a million children.20….
The advances of the past twenty years are a direct outgrowth of the women’s liberation movement that gained force in the 1970s. Women courageously spoke out about rape and battering, wrote books analyzing the ways in which our society condoned such violence, and worked to establish battered women’s shelters and rape crisis centers.

Simultaneously, a few pioneering clinicians and researchers, both men and women, were beginning to study child sexual abuse and set up models for treatment. It was from this visionary thinking—and grassroots activism—that the curren t movement to end child sexual abuse was built. 21

We began to insist that children be protected, survivors be supported, and perpetrators be held responsible for their acts. This monumental advance in our willingness to be aware, to care, and to respond has come about only in the past two decades—most visibly in the past decade. This is the first time in history that children and adults who were sexually abused have been listened to, respected, and believed….

The current backlash is in direct response to the activism of survivors. It was not until survivors started challenging and changing the laws regarding the accountability of perpetrators—and suing their abusers—that claims of “false memory syndrome” started to appear….

Why do so many journalists present one-sided, erroneous accounts? The subject is dramatic and controversial. It sells papers, improves ratings, makes great sound bites. It grabs the attention of even the most jaded reader. The appeal of these stories, however, goes far beyond our national obsession with sex, violence, and broken families. Anti-survivor propaganda has found a receptive audience with the public at large. People read about the “false memory syndrome” and are readily convinced. Why? Because denying the reality of child sexual abuse appeals to a basic human need: the need to distance ourselves from human cruelty….
http://www.fsa-cc.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/HONORING-THE-TRUTH.pdf

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