Issue 116 – May 2014

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 116 – May 2014

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 2014 – All rights reserved.   No reproduction of any material without written permission from the editor and individual authors.

A conference to help survivors of severe child abuse (ritual abuse) and torture will be held on August 15  – 17, 2014, between 8 – 5 PM Saturday and Sunday at the DoubleTree Hotel near Bradley International Airport, 16 Ella Grasso Turnpike, Windsor Locks, CT 06096 (between Hartford, CT and Springfield, MA).  This conference will help educate survivors of this abuse and their helpers.  Pre-registration is preferred.  For information write  S.M.A.R.T., P. O Box 1295, Easthampton, MA 01027-1295  E-mail: smartnews@aol.com, conference information is at:  http://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/

Ritual Abuse And Extreme Abuse Clinician’s Conference August 15, 2014 – A one day conference preceding our regular conference will be open to licensed practitioners in related fields to discuss issues in working with clients suffering from ritual abuse and extreme abuse symptoms.  Students studying in related fields and retired licensed practitioners may write smartnews@aol.com by e-mail for more information. Internet conference information is available at: http://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/ritual-abuse-and-extreme-abuse-clinicians-conference-2014/

This issue contains information on the Sandusky Appeal, Ireland and Child Abuse, Pope John Paul II, Vatican, clergy sex abuse, Vatican defrocks priests, child sexual exploitation ring, child sex ring in Sheffield, senior aide Patrick Rock, Max Clifford, Private Boys’ Schools in Britain, Cyril Smith, human trafficking, L.A. Unified School District (LAUSD), William Vahey, TV father Robert Hughes, Hey Dad!, Clergy Abuse Documentary ‘BASTA’, Gerald Francis Ridsdale, Victor Barnard, Luke Mitchell, Satanic Bible, Italy serial killer, True Detective, Louis Lamonica Jr. Hosanna Church Hammond,  James Irvin,  magical warlock, Miranda Barbour, Satanic cult, occult rituals, Craigslist killer, ritual killings, Dobsonville satanic murder, abducted schoolgirls in Nigeria, Santa Muerte, Mexico Knights Templar Drug Cartel, Tony Alamo, Civil Rights Action, Campus Rape Victim, sexual violence, Super Bowl Sex Trafficking,  Ross Cheit, witch-hunt narrative, The Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology and the Sexual Abuse of Children,  McMartin Preschool case, Judy Johnson, Campus Sexual Assault, Internet child abuse, Internet Watch Foundation, Robert Pickton,  Coreyography, Corey Feldman, Hollywood,  Dana Bradley, Sexual Violence, slavery, Paroline v. United States, limits of restitution victims of child pornography, Turkey, Dissociative Identity Disorder

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.

Pennsylvania High Court Won’t Hear Sandusky Appeal AP / Mark Scolforo  4/2/14
(HARRISBURG, Pa.) — Former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky’s child molestation conviction will not be reviewed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, under an order issued Wednesday. Sandusky asked the court to take up his 45-count conviction, arguing his lawyers were rushed too quickly to trial in 2012 and that prosecutors improperly made reference to his decision not to testify. He also said the trial judge should have issued a jury instruction about how long it took his victims to report the abuse and that jurors should not have been told to weigh evidence of his good character against all other evidence.
The state attorney general’s office had countered that Sandusky did not provide sufficient basis for the Supreme Court to take up the matter, and that decisions made by the trial judge did not violate his rights.
Sandusky, 70, is serving a 30- to 60-year prison sentence for sexual abuse of 10 boys. His lawyer said he is disappointed the court denied his appeal.
Eight of his victims testified at trial, describing a range of abuse from grooming and fondling to oral and anal sex, including attacks in the basement of Sandusky’s home outside State College. Another witness, a graduate assistant for the team who had been a quarterback for the Nittany Lions, testified he saw Sandusky having sexual contact with a boy inside a team shower late on a Friday night….
http://time.com/47366/pennsylvania-high-court-wont-hear-sandusky-appeal/

Ireland and Child Abuse

Derry home `colluded’ with RUC and clergy to hide truth of abuse, inquiry hears  Witness accuses state agencies of failing a generation of children in residential care Dan Keenan Mon, Mar 3, 2014
A former resident of St Joseph’s home at Termonbacca in Derry has accused Catholic clergy, state agencies and the police of failing a generation of children in residential care. The witness, who cannot be named, told the Historical Institutional Abuse inquiry he had received kind and loving treatment from one named nun while he was a resident during the 1970s. However he alleged many others suffered under a system of childcare which left them vulnerable to physical and sexual abuse by others. He alleged he suffered at the hands of other boys but felt unable to raise it when it happened.
“There was more than an element of collusion between the RUC, social services and the clergy,” he said. “And the aftercare service as I see it that was arranged for these boys who left care was either going to [other institutions], prison or just get themselves dead.” He continued: “Many of these boys I know are addicted to alcohol, drugs, on prescribed medication – they are now my age and older. Their whole lives have been tainted. Their whole lives have been destroyed.”….
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/derry-home-colluded-with-ruc-and-clergy-to-hide-truth-of-abuse-inquiry-hears-1.1711031

Manhattan U.S. Attorney Announces Arrest Of Brooklyn Rabbi For Distributing Child Pornography  FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Preet Bharara, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and James T. Hayes, Jr., the Special Agent-in-Charge of the New York Field Office of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (“ICE”) Homeland Security Investigations (“HSI”), announced today the arrest of SAMUEL WALDMAN for distributing child pornography. WALDMAN, 52, a rabbi and a teacher at a girl’s seminary, was arrested by HSI agents this morning at his residence in Brooklyn, New York. He was presented today before U.S. Magistrate Judge James L. Cott in Manhattan federal court.
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said: “Samuel Waldman’s position of trust in the community, as both a rabbi and a teacher, makes his alleged distribution of child pornography all the more disturbing. As we have said repeatedly, we have zero tolerance for the exploitation of children and we will prosecute and punish those who engage in this conduct.”….
According to the allegations in the criminal Complaint filed today in Manhattan federal court, in or about November 2013, WALDMAN distributed child pornography over the Internet by making available for downloading through file-sharing software multiple videos depicting minors engaged in sexual acts.
http://www.justice.gov/usao/nys/pressreleases/March14/SamuelWaldmanArrestPR.php

Pope Francis asks forgiveness for priests who sexually abused children By Daniel Burke and Laura Smith-Spark, CNN Fri April 11, 2014 (CNN) — Pope Francis made his strongest condemnation yet of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy on Friday, asking for forgiveness and pledging to impose penalties on “men of the church” who harm children.
“I feel compelled to personally take on all the evil which some priests — quite a few in number, obviously not compared to the number of all the priests — to personally ask for forgiveness for the damage they have done for having sexually abused children,” the Pope said in remarks quoted by Vatican Radio….
The U.S.-based Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests said it may be the first time a pope has spoken of sanctioning “complicit bishops.” “But that is all it is: talk,” said Barbara Dorris, SNAP’s outreach director.
“We beg the world’s Catholics: Be impressed by deeds, not words. Until the Pope takes decisive action that protects kids, be skeptical and vigilant.” The Pope’s new comments, made Friday to members of a Catholic nongovernmental organization, the International Catholic Child Bureau, represent a shift from his previous statements on sexual abuse…. http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/11/world/europe/vatican-pope-sex-abuse/

John Paul’s legacy stained by sex abuse scandal By NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press Apr 21, 2014
VATICAN CITY (AP) – Pope John Paul II is rightly credited with having helped bring down communism, of inspiring a new generation of Catholics with a globe-trotting papacy and of explaining church teaching on a range of hot-button issues as Christianity entered its third millennium.
But the sexual abuse scandal that festered under his watch remains a stain on his legacy.
John Paul and his top advisers failed to grasp the severity of the abuse problem until very late in his 26-year papacy, even though U.S. bishops had been petitioning the Holy See since the late-1980s for a faster way to defrock pedophile priests….
Yet the Legion’s 2009 admission about the Rev. Marcial Maciel’s double life was by no means news to the Vatican.
Documents from the archives of the Vatican’s then-Sacred Congregation for Religious show how a succession of papacies – including that of John XXIII, also to be canonized Sunday – simply turned a blind eye to credible reports that Maciel was a con artist, drug addict, pedophile and religious fraud.
By 1948, seven years after Maciel founded the order, the Holy See had documents from Vatican-appointed envoys and bishops in Mexico and Spain questioning the legitimacy of Maciel’s ordination (by his uncle, after Maciel was expelled by a series of seminaries), noting the questionable legal foundation of his order and flagging his “totalitarian” behavior and spiritual violations of his young seminarians.
The documents show the Holy See was well aware of Maciel’s drug abuse, sexual abuse and financial improprieties as early as 1956, when it ordered an initial investigation and suspended him for two years to kick a morphine habit.
Yet for decades, Rome looked the other way, thanks to Maciel’s ability to keep his own priests quiet, his foresight to place trusted Legion priests in key Vatican offices and his careful cultivation of Vatican cardinals, Mexican bishops and wealthy, powerful lay Catholics. Vatican officials were impressed instead by the orthodoxy of his priests and Maciel’s ability to attract new vocations and donations.
John Paul, who in 1994 praised Maciel as an “efficacious guide to youth,” wasn’t alone in being duped….
(John) Vaca was the Legion’s superior in the U.S. from 1971-1976, when he left the order and joined the diocese of Rockville Center, New York. In 1979, a year after John Paul was elected, Vaca’s bishop sent the Congregation for Religious a bombshell set of documents in which Vaca and another ex-Legion priest detailed the sexual abuse they and some 19 other priests and seminarians had endured at Maciel’s hands.
He later was one of a half-dozen former Legionaries who brought a canonical case against Maciel at the Vatican in 1998. It took eight years – and the death of John Paul – for Pope Benedict XVI to sanction Maciel….
http://www.kiiitv.com/story/25294982/john-pauls-legacy-stained-by-sex-abuse-scandal

U.N. to question Vatican again on clergy sex abuse Rachel Zoll April 14, 2014 NEW YORK (AP) — A second U.N. committee plans to question Vatican officials on failures to stop clergy sex abuse. The hearing scheduled for May 5-6 in Geneva will look at whether the Vatican’s record on child protection violates the U.N. Convention Against Torture. The Holy See ratified the treaty in 2002….
Last January, Vatican officials testified for eight hours before an obscure human rights committee on the scale of clergy sex abuse globally. The Vatican was compelled to appear as a signatory to the U.N. Convention for the Rights of the Child, which requires governments to take all adequate measures to protect children from harm. The Holy See was one of the first states to ratify the treaty in 1990. The U.N. committee issued a scathing report, accusing Vatican officials of systematically placing their own interests over those of victims. The Vatican condemned the findings as a reflection of “prejudiced” positions of anti-Catholic advocacy groups. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/04/14/un-vatican-clergy-sex-abuse/7706461/

Vatican to craft sex abuse protocols May 3, 2014 VATICAN CITY (AP) – Members of Pope Francis’ sexual abuse advisory board said Saturday they will develop “clear and effective” protocols to hold bishops and other church authorities accountable if they fail to report suspected abuse or protect children from pedophile priests.Victims groups have long blasted the Vatican for refusing to sanction any bishop or superior who covered up for priests who raped and molested children. They have listed accountability as one of the key issues facing Francis and a key test for his new advisory board….
Victims groups have long cited the case of O’Malley’s predecessor in Boston, Cardinal Bernard Law, who resigned in disgrace as archbishop after the sex abuse scandal exploded publicly there in 2002. But Pope John Paul II then appointed Law to the plum assignment as archpriest of one of the Vatican’s four major basilicas in Rome. Even today, another U.S. bishop remains in office despite having been convicted of misdemeanor failure to report suspected child abuse….
The commission met on the eve of a U.N. committee meeting in Geneva in which the Vatican is expected to come under a second round of criticism for its handling of abuse. A U.N. committee monitoring implementation of a key treaty on children’s rights blasted the Holy See earlier this year, accusing it of systematically placing its own interests over those of victims by enabling priests to rape and molest tens of thousands of children through its own policies and code of silence.
It recommended the Vatican immediately remove any priest suspected or known to have abused children, open its archives on abusers and the bishops who covered up for them, and turn the cases over to law enforcement. http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/05/03/vatican-sexual-abuse/2128958/

At UN, Vatican sex abuse compared with torture Monday, May 5, 2014  GENEVA — A U.N. committee compared the Vatican’s handling of the global priest sex abuse scandal with torture Monday, raising the possibility that its failure to investigate clergy and their superiors could have broader legal implications.
But the Vatican’s top envoy in Geneva, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, claimed that the Holy See was getting its house in order after a decade-long effort to deal with a global priest sex abuse scandal.
“There has been, in several documentable areas, stabilization and even a decline of cases in pedophilia,” he told a committee of experts in charge of the U.N. Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which the Vatican ratified in 2002.
At the Holy See’s first appearance before the committee, experts mainly peppered the Vatican with tough questions to be answered Tuesday. For instance, they asked why the report on its implementation of the treaty was almost a decade late, and why the Vatican believes its responsibility for protecting against torture only applies within tiny Vatican City, a nation of less than 1,000 inhabitants….
http://bostonherald.com/news_opinion/international/2014/05/at_un_vatican_sex_abuse_compared_with_torture

Vatican Defrocks 848 Priests in 10 Years of Abuse GENEVA May 6, 2014 By JOHN HEILPRIN and NICOLE WINFIELD Associated Press  The Vatican revealed Tuesday that over the past decade, it has defrocked 848 priests who raped or molested children and sanctioned another 2,572 with lesser penalties, providing the first ever breakdown of how it handled the more than 3,400 cases of abuse reported to the Holy See since 2004.
The Vatican’s U.N. ambassador in Geneva, Archbishop Silvano Tomasi, released the figures during a second day of grilling by a U.N. committee monitoring implementation of the U.N. treaty against torture.
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/vatican-defrocks-848-priests-10-years-abuse-23605974
Disturbing new internet child abuse sees toddlers raped and burned live on webcam as paedophiles use Bitcoin to stop being traced, warns police chief
Rob Wainwright, director of Europol, warned of depraved new trend
Paedophiles pay for sick online ‘shows’ using untraceable Bitcoin
Mr Wainwright warned that police and politicians struggle to keep up
by Kieran Corcoran  21 April 2014
One of Europe’s top police officers has warned of a sickening online trade in child torture porn.
Rob Wainwright, the director of Europol, said offenders are using the untraceable online currency Bitcoin to pay for depraved ‘shows’, performed live on webcams, which see young children raped and burned.
He said: ‘The level of depravity seems to be descending year on year, frankly, including what seems to be in vogue now, which is live webcam ‘shows’ of toddlers not just being raped but being burnt with cigarettes.
Sorry, but it’s happening online and it’s extremely difficult for us to identify.’
Mr Wainwright warned that Bitcoin – a ‘crypto-currency’ based on mathematical formulae and independent of any government or central bank – is propping up a criminal black market.
He also warned that police and politicians were struggling to keep up with the pace of online crime, thanks to widespread anonymity online, and easy access to encryption technology which can make criminals almost impossible to track down….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2609971/Disturbing-new-internet-child-abuse-sees-toddlers-raped-burned-live-webcam-paedophiles-use-Bitcoin-stop-traced-warns-police-chief.html

CHILD SEXUAL EXPLOITATION RING: 22 arrested  By Folkestone Herald   May 07, 2014 POLICE have arrested 22 people in connection with an investigation into child sexual exploitation across the UK.
Officers carried out a series of early morning raids at addresses in Kent, the Midlands and Yorkshire, in an operation focused on an organised criminal network believed to be involved with the sexual exploitation of young girls from the Slovakian Roma community, in Margate, Folkestone, Dover and Gravesend. Chief Superintendent Alison Roden of Kent Police, who has been co-ordinating the operation, said: ‘We have arrested a number of people across the country as part of an ongoing investigation into child exploitation offences. ‘This is part of an in-depth investigation and today’s operation is a response to reports from the community and intelligence gathered about allegations of child exploitation in Margate, Dover, Folkestone and Gravesend. Arrests have also been made in Leeds and Birmingham. ‘The protection of children and vulnerable young victims is a key priority for Kent Police and our partner agencies…. http://www.folkestoneherald.co.uk/Police/story-21067808-detail/story.html

Amanda Spencer found guilty of running child sex ring in Sheffield  Kashmira Gander Author Biography Friday 02 May 2014  A woman from Sheffield has been found guilty of running a child sex ring, after she reportedly coaxed “weak and vulnerable” underage girls into prostitution using drugs and alcohol. 23-year-old Amanda Spencer was found guilty of 16 counts relating to child prostitution at Sheffield Crown Court on 1 May. On Friday, the jury was discharged after failing to reach a verdict on 14 remaining charges, according BBC News. She was cleared of seven charges including arranging or facilitating child prostitution, intentionally causing or inciting a person to become a prostitute, and one count of trafficking within the UK for sexual exploitation. Spencer ran the ring between 2006 and 2011, and made girls have sex with men, both at her own flat, and at other homes across South Yorkshire. During the trial which lasted over two months, Prosecutor Michelle Colborne QC told the court that Spencer supplied the girls with alcohol and drugs and “when [they were] weak, introduced them to a life of prostitution,” according to BBC News. “She hung around the town centre identifying and befriending vulnerable children. “She made them feel loved, she gave them a shoulder to cry on, a friend who purported to understand whatever sadness they were experiencing in their lives and in turn lured them into a life of abuse, which she exploited and profited from.”….
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/amanda-spencer-found-guilty-of-running-child-sex-ring-in-sheffield-9318958.html

Amanda Spencer trial: ‘Grotesque’ abuse of Sheffield child sex ring victims  6 May 2014
A victim of child sex ring leader Amanda Spencer has described the shocking physical and psychological brutality she used to trap vulnerable girls in a life of prostitution.
Spencer, 23, from Sheffield, has been convicted of 16 charges relating to child prostitution after jurors heard her victims were controlled using drugs, alcohol and violence.
She was just 16 when she began befriending her victims – some as young as 13 – and forcing them to have sex for cash.
One girl, who had been sleeping rough in the city’s Abbeyfield Park, told Sheffield Crown Court she thought Spencer would protect her but was left fearing for her life when she was locked in a room where seven men paid to abuse her….
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-27290220

British children caught up in one of world’s worst ever porn rings: More than 250 youngsters worldwide aged as young as three exploited through social networking sites
British police are preparing to arrest dozens of men who accessed the secret obscene image-sharing website
It comes after 14 U.S. men were arrested earlier this week as the authorities uncovered one of the world’s worst ever pornography rings
American Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson announced the major bust in a press conference on Tuesday
The administrator of the website has been identified as Jonathan Johnson of Abita Springs, Louisiana
A total of 251 children were connected to the website, and most of them were boys between the ages of of 13 and 15
Two of the victims were 3 years old or younger
By James Slack, Home Affairs Editor  19 March 2014 More than 27,000 subscribers to the vile secret network had access to 2,000 videos filmed on computer webcams.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the US said they had arrested 14 American men who operated the member-only site from the southern state of Louisiana.
….They have been charged with running a child exploitation enterprise after allegedly distributing the material through the Tor network, or so-called ‘dark web’.
This allows Internet anonymity by hiding online traffic and a user’s location.
The network, which was operated for a year from mid-2012 to last June, was unmasked after an item was sent through the US Postal Service to a child.
….Over a period of just 47 working hours – the IWF logged 12,224 sexual images or videos of young people that had been uploaded to the internet.
Of these, 10,776 were later found on so-called ‘parasite’ websites, often designed solely for the purpose of displaying explicit images of children or teenagers.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2584585/British-children-caught-one-worlds-worst-porn-rings-More-250-youngsters-worldwide-aged-young-two-exploited-social-networking-sites.html

Downing Street accused of cover-up over senior aide Patrick Rock’s arrest on child abuse images allegations  Adam Withnall  Wednesday 05 March 2014  David Cameron has been accused of a cover-up after one of his most senior aides was arrested on suspicion of possessing child abuse images.
Patrick Rock, who had been working on a Downing Street policy committee for internet pornography filters, was reportedly told he was under investigation for possessing the images a number of hours before his arrest on 13 February. He then quietly resigned, and the matter only came to light when officials at Number 10 were questioned about it directly on Monday. According to a Labour MP the delay has the appearance of a “cover-up” – and the fact that Mr Rock was given advance warning of the allegations was a Government “interfer[ence] with the justice system”. A spokesperson for the Prime Minister has confirmed Downing Street was first made aware of the alleged offence regarding child abuse imagery on the evening of 12 February.  But speaking in the West Midlands yesterday, Mr Cameron defended the position his office had taken. “I don’t think it would be right to pre-emptively brief out a criminal investigation and that’s why we did not do that,” he said….
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/downing-street-accused-of-coverup-over-senior-aide-patrick-rocks-arrest-on-child-abuse-images-allegations-9169818.html

Minister in Tony Blair’s government among group of men suspected of abusing children at home run by paedophile  Apr 27, 2014 By Tom Pettifor A probe was halted soon after an ex-social services boss told police of his alleged evening visits in the early 1980s One of Tony Blair’s ministers was among a group of men suspected of sexually abusing children at a home run by a convicted paedophile.
But the probe was halted soon after an ex-social services boss told police of his alleged evening visits in the early 1980s. Official documents seen by the Daily Mirror during a 16-month investigation reveal former residents told detectives that a group of paedophiles attacked children in a private flat in the home. But two former Lambeth social services employees involved in the case suspect a cover-up because experienced detective Clive Driscoll was removed from the investigation and given other duties. One, a former manager who alerted police in 1998, said: “One wonders why Scotland Yard would be so desperate to stop it being investigated. “I believe it was stopped because somebody in power was trying to prevent any further investigation into the politician.”
And Dr Nigel Goldie, a council boss in charge of child protection in 1998, said: “There were some allegations that -children were being abused by one or two prominent persons.She said she told top Lambeth- officials at the time she suspected Carroll was at the centre of a paedophile ring at the home. Bosses learned in 1986 that he was convicted of sexually assaulting a boy of 12 in the Wirral in 1966. But the pervert was allowed to continue running the home until 1991. Carroll was finally arrested in the summer of 1998 and convicted of a string of child sex attacks dating back three decades including assaults on youngsters in Angell Road. http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/tony-blair-minister-former-pms-3468050

Max Clifford Found Guilty Of Sex Charges  The celebrity publicist walks in silence from court and refuses to comment as he is found guilty of eight indecent assaults. Monday 28 April 2014
PR guru Max Clifford has been found guilty of a string of sex attacks on teenage girls.
The 71-year-old became the first person to be convicted under the high profile Operation Yewtree sex crime investigation at Southwark Crown Court. He was found guilty of eight indecent assaults, cleared of two and the jury was unable to reach a verdict on one other. The guilty verdicts relate to four women, aged between 15 and 19 at the time of the offences, between 1978 and 1984….
Clifford was released on bail until his sentencing on Friday, but Judge Anthony Leonard QC warned him this was no reflection on the sentence that will be passed. He said: “You must realise that the fact I have given you bail is no indication of what the final sentence will be.” Clifford repeatedly denied the claims, calling his arrest and prosecution “a nightmare” and protesting his innocence…. http://news.sky.com/story/1250859/max-clifford-found-guilty-of-sex-charges

High Court judge and the child sex ring: Adviser to Queen was founder of paedophile support group to keep offenders out of jail
Lord Justice Fulford was named last year as an adviser to the Queen
He was a key backer of the notorious Paedophile Information Exchange
Police suspect the group of abusing children on an ‘industrial scale’
He is revealed as a founder member of campaign to defend PIE
At the time it was calling for the age of consent to be lowered to just four
By Martin Beckford  8 March 2014
One of Britain’s most senior judges actively campaigned to support a vile paedophile group that tried to legalise sex with children, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Lord Justice Fulford, named last year as an adviser to the Queen, was a key backer of the notorious Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) which police suspect of abusing children on an ‘industrial scale’….
Last night Fulford said: ‘On reflection the NCCL gay rights committee should never have allowed members of PIE to attend any of its meetings.
‘I am very sorry for what happened. I have never espoused or in any way supported the objectives of PIE – the abuse of children – which I consider wholly wrong’….
In October 1979 Fulford wrote a full-page article in gay rights magazine Broadsheet, in which he was described as ‘the founder’ of the PIE support group.
He claimed that classified adverts placed by PIE members, which led to the trial,  were ‘simply to enable paedophiles to make friends and offer each other mutual support’ rather than to contact children or exchange banned images….
In 2002 he became the first openly gay High Court judge, being nominated for a knighthood by Tony Blair, and in 2003 took up a prestigious role at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.
Last year he was nominated as an Appeal Court judge by David Cameron and appointed to the Privy Council, the elite group of senior politicians, judges and clergy who advise the Queen on constitutional matters….
Back in the late 1970s he was a newly qualified Left-wing barrister when he joined the NCCL, now known as Liberty, which had links to known paedophile groups and attempted to lower the age of consent to 14 and water down child pornography laws
Fulford’s involvement with the radical movement to legalise child sex goes even further than that of the Labour Ministers, documents uncovered by The Mail on Sunday show.
He personally set up a group to support the ‘executive committee’ of PIE in the summer of 1979, after they had their homes raided by police….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2576451/High-court-judge-child-sex-ring-Adviser-Queen-founder-paedophile-support-group-offenders-jail.html

Wave of Sexual Abuse Allegations for Private Boys’ Schools in Britain  By STEPHEN CASTLE MARCH 16, 2014 LONDON — Prompted by publicity surrounding recent child abuse scandals involving well-known figures, dozens of British men are breaking decades of silence about molestation they say they suffered as boys at expensive private schools, forcing the schools to confront allegations that in the past might have been hushed up, ignored or treated derisively.
In one instance involving Aldwickbury School, which educates boys ages 4 to 13, a former student, who requested anonymity because of the intimate details of the case, said he suffered profound feelings of confusion and guilt after being abused by a teacher in the 1970s. He said the teacher molested him regularly during English lessons over a period of two years.
With the teacher dead, and in the absence of an apology from the school, the former student brought a civil case against Aldwickbury, which was settled with a payment.
Getting the school to face up to what happened more than three decades ago was, the former student said, like “knocking my head against a brick wall.”
Vernon Hales, the current headmaster at Aldwickbury — in Harpenden, about 30 miles north of London — said in a statement that the school had reported the allegations, which do not relate to any current staff members or pupils, to the relevant authorities and been told that no further action would be taken….
Britain’s fee-paying schools have a track record of brutality. These days, most have shed the strictness and austerity of previous eras, but many upper-class Britons remember childhoods of cold showers, inedible food and relentless corporal punishment.
The very nature of boarding schools — closed environments in which teachers can wield enormous power — can make them attractive to child abusers. But in previous decades, parents were often reluctant to challenge teachers’ authority, said Alan Collins, principal lawyer at Slater & Gordon, which represented the former Aldwickbury student. He has 30 to 40 more cases pending against schools across the country.
“You had deference and the attitude that ‘this sort of thing happens,’ ” Mr. Collins said, adding that when teachers were discovered abusing pupils, they tended to be moved on quietly to avoid public embarrassment and damage to the school’s reputation.
“Sexual abuse is a taboo subject,” Mr. Collins said. “People do not want to talk about it for the obvious reason that it’s really gruesome, and in this country there has been a tendency or a temptation to sweep it under the carpet.”….
Mr. Collins added that the victims had suffered significantly. “Child abuse has the potential to affect a person’s functioning, the ability to form and sustain relationships; it can affect the ability to hold down a job,” he said, noting that some of his clients in their 40s had held 30 positions because “they just can’t settle in a job.”…. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/17/world/europe/wave-of-sexual-abuse-allegations-for-private-boys-schools-in-britain.html

James Lyons  Labour’s Simon Danzcuk – who exposed Smith – claimed the Liberal grandee was part of an “informal” network of perverts who stalked the corridors of power
Child abuser Cyril Smith was protected by a high-level Westminster paedophile ring, the MP who exposed him claimed.
Labour’s Simon Danzcuk said the Liberal grandee was part of an “informal” network of perverts who stalked the corridors of power.
He said: “Had he been prosecuted, then the house of cards would have fallen, in terms of that paedophile network, and it could have brought the government down.
“Once he became a member of Parliament in 1972, I think he joined an, obviously informal, network of paedophiles that existed in and around Westminster.”
The claims came as fresh doubt was cast in Nick Clegg’s instance that no Liberal Democrats knew about Smith’s activities.
Police have said Smith attended Elm Guest House in South West London, where underage rent boys and youngsters from a children’s home were reportedly brought to have sex with adult men.
Other high profile figures are said to have been visitors including senior MPs, a high-ranking policeman and an MI5 officer….
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/cyril-smith-child-abuse-mp-3421467

Children as young as EIGHT were abused at school linked to paedophile MP Cyril Smith  Apr 14, 2014  By Paul Byrne, Luke Traynor  Martin Digan, ex-head of care at the residential school at the centre of the revelations, said it became ‘a sweet shop for abusers’
Children as young as eight were abused at a school linked to paedophile Lib Dem MP Cyril Smith, the Mirror can reveal today. Whistleblower Martin Digan, ex-head of care at the residential school at the centre of the revelations, told the Mirror it was a “sweet shop” for abusers.
Secret files have been found that detail appalling depravity at the Knowl View unit for disturbed youngsters in Rochdale, where Smith was a governor. Police have identified 11 other suspects.
Mr Digan said: “It is about time his sordid past was fully exposed, together with the shocking events that happened at Knowl View. I’m glad it is out but I’m sickened it has taken so long.”
The shocking details have come to light as the Liberal Democrats are threatened with legal action by Smith’s victims.
They will seek damages if it can be proved senior party officials knew of his crimes – but failed to stop him….
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/children-young-eight-were-abused-3414779

Cyril Smith sex abuse scandal: Police told of ‘at least’ 11 more suspects Apr 12, 2014     By Neal Keeling  Police investigating the sexual abuse of children by former MP Cyril Smith have been told of ‘at least’ 11 other suspects, the Manchester Evening News has revealed.
Seven alleged victims have given officers the names of men they say were behind the abuse linked to Knowl View School in  Rochdale  where Smith was chairman of the governors in its final year.
Next month a report is due to be published by barrister, Andrew Warnock QC, who was instructed by Rochdale council in January to ‘independently review all council decision-making’ related to the former special school in Bamford from the late 80s to mid 90s.
At least a dozen boys are said to have been victims of sexual abuse during that time and police are now sifting through 33 boxes of previously undiscovered archive material relating to the school.
Some of the suspects named by the victims may have died, but all had links to Knowl View.
Det Insp Caroline Ward said: “Following the publicity surrounding Sir Cyril Smith last year, seven people came forward to report physical and sexual abuse which occurred at Knowl View from the 1970s onwards….
Knowl View was shut in 1994 after a dossier detailing abuse was handed to police. Whistleblower, and former head of care at the school, Martin Digan, said he feared Smith was among those abusing boys and he verbally reported his suspicions to police and the council.
Smith was investigated twice in the 70s and 90s but never prosecuted and it wasn’t until 2012 that police admitted he had abused children….
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/cyril-smith-sex-abuse-scandal-3403214

Sir Cyril Smith abuse ‘cover-up’ claims probed by police  27 April 2014 Police are examining whether there is evidence of a criminal cover-up over claims of sexual abuse at a Rochdale school linked to the late Liberal MP Sir Cyril Smith. Officers are already investigating claims of abuse at Knowl View school but are reviewing whether any evidence points to a cover-up by the council. Rochdale Council is also set to widen its own inquiry into the allegations. Sir Cyril’s family has said he always denied such accusations. The development comes after police launched an investigation into allegations Sir Cyril, who died in 2010 aged 82, sexually abused boys at Knowl View residential school, in Rochdale. The school closed in 1992. Officers are also looking into claims he abused boys at the privately run Cambridge House children’s care home, which closed in 1965….
Allegations about Sir Cyril’s conduct were first published in 1979 and also been made in a new book by the current Labour MP for Rochdale, Mr Danczuk. He claimed Sir Cyril used his position of power to sexually abuse young boys and then escape prosecution. Mr Danczuk previously said he asked police to re-examine the case after “a number of victims came to see me and raised concerns”. An independent review into the way Knowl View was run is due to report to Rochdale Council next month…. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-27183369

Child abuse at George Osborne’s old school and a scandal that grows ever darker
  Allegations of historic sex abuse made against St John’s School, London
Former pupils include Chancellor George Osborne and Dominic Grieve
Teacher Anthony Fuggle arrested in September after indecent images found
Arrest emerged last week, bringing abuse allegations into present day
Fellow teacher Tim Harbord was also arrested but later cleared by police
By Paul Bracchi and Tim Stewart  9 May 2014   Back in March, when the revelations first came to light, six teachers were implicated in the suspected sexual abuse of boys as young as ten between the Sixties and Eighties.
Former pupils who came forward claimed the authorities at St Paul’s hushed up the wrongdoing.
Among the perpetrators, the former pupils alleged, was a housemaster who fondled boys in the dormitory, a choirmaster who paid boys half a crown after molesting them, a teacher who beat ‘naughty’ boys, and a maths tutor who kept a register of pupils he punished in private spanking sessions.
Now the number of suspects has risen from six to 18 — ten of whom taught at Colet Court and eight at St Paul’s. Some of the former schoolmasters are no longer alive.
A Scotland Yard detective, who headed the Jimmy Savile inquiry, is leading the St Paul’s investigation, which has been given its own codename: Operation Winthorpe….
It has been reported that visitors to the Elm, as it was known, included members of the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), the pressure group that campaigned in the Seventies to lower the age of consent to four. A former teacher at Colet Court was also a member of PIE during this period: choir- master Alan Doggett.  There was gossip among his pupils that ‘half a crown’ was the ‘going rate for a session with Doggett’. They even coined a new verb — to ‘be Doggoed’, ie, groped and fondled.
Doggett took his own life in 1978, shortly after leaving Colet Court. Just hours before his death, he appeared before West London magistrates, charged with two indecent assaults on a ten-year-old boy from another school….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2624730/Child-abuse-George-Osbornes-old-school-scandal-grows-darker.html

Downloading child abuse ‘manuals’ to be made illegal  27 April 2014  Downloading manuals containing guidance about how to groom children for sexual abuse is to become a criminal offence, the government has said. It is unclear how many documents meant to assist paedophiles exist online or how often they are downloaded. But the National Crime Agency has found examples during its investigations, which have included advice on grooming victims and evading capture….
Prime Minister David Cameron told the Sunday Times: “It’s completely unacceptable that there is a loophole in the law which allows paedophiles to write and distribute these disgusting documents.
“I want to ensure we do everything we can to protect children – and that’s why I am making them illegal.” The move came as it emerged that a paedophile teacher drugged and abused up to 60 boys as young as 10 at a private school in London. US national William Vahey, 64, who taught history and geography at Southbank International School between 2009 and 2013, committed suicide last month as FBI agents closed in…. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-27177040

Victim breaks 20-year silence over sex abuse only to be told he’d imagined it Mar 23, 2014 By Gemma Aldridge  Simon Whitter reported his years of trauma but was told his children’s home had never existed   A brave victim broke his 20-year silence over sex abuse he suffered as a child – only to be told by authorities that he’d imagined it.
Simon Whitter, 40, was removed from his violent home by social services at the age of 12.
He was sent to Burton House children’s home in Manchester in 1986. There he was subjected to ritual sex abuse at the government-run home for boys. Yet when in 2012 he finally reported his years of trauma, Manchester City Council claimed Burton House had never even existed. In a shocking attempt to whitewash Simon’s history, they claimed documents had gone missing and there was no record of where he had lived. Only later did they admit their mistake and allow him to file for compensation. Simon’s story is just one example of the hurdles that have had to be overcome by more than 400 victims of abuse in Manchester’s children’s homes. The latest blow has been a High Court ruling that remaining victims must come forward in the next seven weeks or lose any chance of compensation. This week Simon and another victim Paul Tyler, 49, returned to their children’s homes in a bid to encourage others to find justice. Dad-of-three Simon said: “It took me over 20 years before I was ready to speak out and then they tried to silence me….
Claims of child abuse centre on three main homes run by the City Council – Rose Hill in Northenden, Broome House in Didsbury and Mobberley Boys in Knutsford. A total of 275 cases have so far been settled by Abney Garsden Solicitors for over £2million since the action started in 1997.
Several members of social services have been jailed for their involvement.
Among them was Ronald Hall, who rose to assistant director of social services. He was jailed in 2001 for 11 years for the sexual and physical abuse of children at Broome House. Simon says he was forced to perform sex acts from the age of 12. He says the effects of the abuse led him on a trail of destruction which culminated in a six-month prison sentence for alcohol-related offences.
“I had been forced to do things no child should endure and I know so many other people have been through the same thing,” he said. “The City Council just want to stop them coming forward to save money. It’s disgusting.”….
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/simon-whitter-victim-breaks-20-year-3275050

Zim border posts conduits for human trafficking  May 9, 2014 in Feature Story THERE are a handful of passengers on a bus destined for Beitbridge at Mbare Musika Terminus in Harare. Andrew Kunambura   Stories about human trafficking often appear to be fictitious Western-style movie material set in far-away places like cities in Mexico, Argentina, Pakistan, small towns in countries across the seas like Vietnam or rural parts of Cuba, but it in reality happens in cities, towns and villages all over the world.
Zimbabwe is apparently deeply involved in the criminal activity.
The United Nations Convention against Transnational Organised Crime, commonly known as the Palermo Protocol, defines human trafficking as “the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of threat or use of force or other means of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability for purposes of exploitation”.
Adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 2000, the protocol states prostitution, sexual abuse, forced labour or services, slavery, servitude or the ritual removal of organs as the major forms of exploitation victims are subjected to.
Zimbabwe’s young women, men and children are being trafficked at an alarming rate to other countries where they are forced to work as sex slaves in brothels or give slave labour in factories, mines, farms and other businesses.
Tempted by needs, hopes and dreams, victims encounter their traders who in turn are driven by profit, the need to possess and a will to deceive, exploit and violate laws.
Minors are also being trafficked for ritual purposes and domestic servitude….
Representing an estimated $32 billion of the illegal international trade estimated at $650 billion per annum, human trafficking is the third largest income earning transnational organised crime, coming after drugs and arms trafficking….
https://www.newsday.co.zw/2014/05/09/zim-border-posts-conduits-human-trafficking/
    
LAUSD Admits To Destroying Over Two Decades Of Child Abuse Records May 2, 2014The L.A. Unified School District (LAUSD) has admitted that it destroyed decades of alleged child abuse records.
This is linked to the investigation into former Miramonte Elementary School teacher Mark Berndt’s sexual abuse of children. John Manly, one of the victims’ eight lawyers, accused the District of destroying documents earlier this month in court.
L.A. Unified spokesman Sean Rossall told KPCC that the District did indeed destroy the records of sexual abuse cases at L.A. public schools in 2008, with files going back to 1988. There may be no way of knowing whether other reports of allegations against Berndt exist.
The question that Manly, and frankly, everyone, is asking is why LAUSD would destroy these records. Rossall said it was because the District felt like they should not have the reports. In 2008, the school district lawyers determined, based on a section of the penal code, that they shouldn’t have the documents, resulting in the destruction of all reports. However, the section they referenced is saying that they merely shouldn’t disclose the reports, not that they shouldn’t keep the reports. ….Berndt pleaded no contest to his charges and was sentenced to 25 years in prison in November 2013….  http://laist.com/2014/05/01/lausd_admits_to_destroying_over_two.php

Court dismisses case against former Miramonte teacher Rina Palta with KPCC staff February 5th, 2014 The criminal case against a former teacher at Miramonte Elementary School in Los Angeles who was charged with inappropriately touching a female student has been dismissed by the court after the prosecution’s key witness said she would not testify.
The case against Martin Springer involved only one alleged victim, who was 9 or 10 at the time the abuse occurred. Prosecutors considered testimony from the girl, now 12, to be essential to the case, and without it they decided they could not proceed, said Alison Meyers, an L.A. County deputy district attorney in the sex crimes division.
“She felt very traumatized by the process and as the days approached to the trial she had expressed to us that she felt coming to court would cause her further trauma,” Meyers said….
http://www.scpr.org/news/2014/02/05/42014/court-dismisses-case-against-former-miramonte-teac/

Case Dropped Against Second Miramonte Teacher Accused Of Sexual Abuse
….The trial for former third-grad teacher Martin Springer, 51, began this week, but was dismissed today when prosecutors were told by the victim’s family that the 12-year-old girl was too traumatized to testify in court, according to the Los Angeles Times and KTTV.
….The L.A. Unified District fired Springer (who had taught at the school for 26 years) from his job and took away his state teaching credential, the Times reported. They had paid a $470,000 settlement to six other children who claimed they were molested by Springer.
http://laist.com/2014/02/05/case_against_miramonte_teacher_sexu.php

Houston FBI: One of worst child sex abuse cases ever Jace Larson, Investigative Reporter Apr 22 2014  HOUSTON – Local FBI agents tell Local 2 Investigates they are working on a recent case of child sexual assaults that is one of the worst they’ve ever seen, involving more than 90 victims. The FBI says it’s likely there are more victims that law enforcement doesn’t know about and they want to reach out to offer victims’ assistance to those who could now be adults.
“This is one of the most prolific alleged predators we’ve ever seen,” Houston FBI Special Agent Shauna Dunlap told Local 2 Investigates.
The suspect, William James Vahey, 64, of South Carolina, killed himself after the FBI began an investigation….
The case unfolded after Vahey reported his maid was fired after she allegedly stole personal items from his house last November. In March of this year, the former maid brought a USB thumb drive to the American Nicaraguan School and admitted she stole it, but said she was coming forward because of the child sexual assault images she saw on the drive. A school employee viewed some of the images and described them to local authorities who contacted the FBI, the federal search warrant says. “These images depict minor males in various states of undress,” court records allege. “The minor males appear to be asleep, unconscious or possibly drugged.”….
Vahey was required to register as a sex offender in California after pleading guilty to child molestation in January of 1970. He was a swim instructor at the time in Santa Ana, California, federal court records show. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail. Court records show he registered only once in 1970 and never renewed his registration….
http://www.click2houston.com/news/houston-fbi-one-of-worst-child-sex-abuse-cases-ever/25598182

FBI investigates London links of teacher who abused 90 boys William Vahey, who taught at Southbank International School, admitted molesting children while teaching in Caracas Robert Booth  The Guardian, Wednesday 23 April 2014 An elite London school has become embroiled in an FBI-led international child abuse investigation into a highly regarded teacher who is believed to have molested more than 90 boys.
William Vahey, a 64-year old American who taught at the Southbank International School in Westminster between 2009 and 2013, killed himself in Minnesota in March after confessing to drugging and molesting children while on field trips.
He had been found with a memory stick that contained sexually graphic images of at least 90 boys who appeared to have been drugged. They were catalogued with dates and locations that corresponded to his overnight field trips with students beginning in 2008 when he was teaching in the Escuela Campo Alegre in Caracas, Venezuela….
Vahey was working in Nicaragua when he was exposed in March by his employer who discovered the digitised images, the FBI said. When confronted about the images by a school administrator, he confessed he was molested as a child and had preyed on boys his entire life, giving them sleeping pills prior to the molestation. Within days he killed himself….
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/apr/23/london-private-school-child-abuse-investigation-teacher-confession

Evil triumphs when society looks away  sarrah le marquand  The Daily Telegraph  April 08, 2014
IT took less than four days for a jury to return from deliberating to find Hey Dad! star Robert Hughes guilty of seven counts of indecent assault on a person under the age of 16. Four days — just imagine how much sooner a guilty verdict might have been delivered if it hadn’t taken two decades for the wheels of justice to turn.
What a shame his victims had to wait over 20 years to finally get their day in court. It need not have been that way….
In response into a parliamentary inquiry into the handling of child sex abuse complaints, the Victorian government will pass legislation making it illegal to fail to report information about suspected child sexual abuse….
If we have learned anything from the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, it is surely that abuse is only allowed to flourish when people who should know better opt to look the other way.
Speaking out isn’t always easy — and as Batty rightfully points out, in some instances can be life-threatening — but the purpose of mandatory reporting is to bring about cultural change.
Most people have come to accept that zero tolerance should be extended to perpetrators of child abuse. But if we are serious in coming as close as possible to eradicating sexual abuse from our community then we also need to extend zero tolerance to those are aware of suspected abuse, but fail to report it.
How many people chose to turn the other way when Hughes sexually assaulted numerous girls between 1983 and 1990? Is it really possible that no one during that time suspected something was not right?
Had there been laws in place making it clear any innocent third parties were legally obliged to come forward with their fears, it might not have taken two decades for the law to slowly catch up with Robert Hughes.
As philosopher Edmund Burke famously noted, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing….
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/evil-triumphs-when-society-looks-away/story-fnj45f3d-1226877110472

Prey Dad: the fiendish sins of TV father Robert Hughes, guilty of sexually assaulting three girls janet fife-yeomans     The Daily Telegraph      April 08, 2014
HE may have once been Australia’s best-loved TV father on the top-rating sitcom Hey Dad! but off-screen Robert Hughes was a serial sex fiend preying on underage girls.
Those devastating revelations finally hit home yesterday when the 65-year-old actor was convicted of sexually assaulting three girls. Yesterday a jury, which had listened to six weeks of chilling evidence, convicted Hughes of nine of 11 counts of sexual assault involving the girls, aged about seven, 11 and 15. The jurors will return today to continue deliberating over charges involving two other girls after being told by Judge Peter Zahra that he would accept majority verdicts….
THE shocked jury looked on yesterday as a furious Robert Hughes walked to the edge of the dock and screamed: “I am innocent!” The outburst came seconds after the jury found him guilty of nine out of 11 historic child offences…. http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/national/prey-dad-the-fiendish-sins-of-tv-father-robert-hughes-guilty-of-sexually-assaulting-three-girls/story-fni0xqrc-1226877270382

Hey Dad! former star Sarah Monahan on her hell at hands of convicted sexual predator Robert Hughes Maria Bervanakis, Holly Byrnes  News Corp Australia April 10, 2014
Monahan, the brave whistleblower who consented to being identified as a victim of sexual abuse, spoke about the convicted sex fiend this morning on Sydney’s 2Day FM Breakfast program. In a moving interview she acknowledged that what Hughes did was “horrific” — and she urged other victims of abusers to stay strong and speak up. Asked whether she hated Hughes, the 36-year-old said: “Hate is a strong word. I definitely dislike the man.”….
She ended the interview with a powerful message for other victims of abuse that suffer in silence: “Don’t let them continue it. It’s not just you. It takes 60 people before anyone speaks up.”
ACTOR TOLD TO SHUT UP ON HUGHES
Meanwhile, fellow Hey Dad! actor Ben Oxenbould claims he was passed over for TV work after supporting Monahan against Hughes. Oxenbould told Network Nine’s A Current Affair last night that he had “copped a lot of criticism from people, particularly in the industry’’ after standing by Monahan and endorsing her shocking abuse claims against Hughes when she went public four years ago.
The 45-year-old actor said he’d been called an “idiot” and told “you’ll never work again” in the wake of giving a TV tell-all over his knowledge of Hughes’ inappropriate behaviour on the set of the now defunct Channel 7 sitcom. In a sit-down hosted by ACA’s Tracy Grimshaw — alongside Monahan and co-stars Simone Buchanan, Julie McGregor and Christopher Truswell — Oxenbould argued going public against Hughes had cost him work…. http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/hey-dad-former-star-sarah-monahan-on-her-hell-at-hands-of-convicted-sexual-predator-robert-hughes/story-e6frg6n6-1226879255082

US Clergy Abuse

Clergy Abuse Victims Criticize Cardinal Dolan’s Lobbying Efforts In Albany  BY Glenn Blain  March 19, 2014 Victims of clergy sex abuse are criticizing  Timothy Cardinal Dolan’s efforts to boost charitable donations to schools. Mary Caplan, co-director of the New York City chapter of SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, issued a statement Wednesday blasting Dolan for lobbying Albany lawmakers this week to approve tax credits for those who donate to schools or other education-related groups.
“When they want money for their institutions, Catholic officials lobby hard and say they care deeply about kids,” Caplan said. “But when kids who were abused want a chance for justice, Catholic officials lobby hard to deny those kids their day in court. All across the US, Dolan and his brother bishops use all their political will and power and resources to block moves to reform archaic, predator-friendly statute of limitations laws that endanger kids and protect those who commit and conceal heinous child sex crimes.”
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2014/03/clergy-abuse-victims-criticize-cardinal-dolans-lobbying-efforts-in-albany

Archdiocese must make priest abuse files public, judge rules JEAN HOPFENSPERGER , Star Tribune March 19, 2014  Judge tells the Twin Cities archdiocese to release all info about those credibly accused of sex abuse from 1970 to 1985. The Archdiocese of St. Paul-Minneapolis must reveal hundreds of pages of information on priests accused of sexually abusing children, a judge ruled Tuesday. Ramsey County District Judge John Van de North rejected church efforts to keep most of the documents under court seal, ordering that all information on priests who were “credibly accused” of abuse between 1970 and 1985 be filed with the court by March 31. Information on priests whom the church determined were not “credibly” accused will remain sealed, Van de North ruled…. http://www.startribune.com/local/east/250859931.html

Church diocese sues another over priest accused of sex abuse AP March 27, 2014
NEW ULM, Minn. — In a rare legal move, a Roman Catholic diocese in Minnesota is suing a diocese in Ireland, alleging it transferred a priest to Minnesota without warning that the man had been accused of sexual abuse. A report by Minnesota Public Radio News and KARE-TV said the Diocese of New Ulm filed the lawsuit in February against the Diocese of Clogher in Ireland and the Servants of the Paraclete religious order. In it, the New Ulm Diocese claims it never would have accepted the Rev. Francis Xavier Markey in 1981 if it had been told about the allegations against him.
Markey was ordained in Ireland in 1952, and documents in several court cases show he was accused of sexually abusing boys as early as the 1960s. The documents also show he had gone to treatment before coming to the U.S., and also received treatment at a Paraclete facility in New Mexico.
The New Ulm Diocese said Markey arrived in Willmar in December 1981 and did some temporary parish work. He left the diocese seven months later.
The New Ulm Diocese’s lawsuit stems from a claim filed last year by a man who says Markey groped him and his two brothers at their family home in 1982, when Markey was filling in at rural churches in Henderson and Jessenland. Markey died in 2012 while awaiting trial on child rape charges in Ireland….
But in court documents filed in another Markey case, the Diocese of Clogher said it did not assign Markey to work in Minnesota on its behalf, and it has no record of approving Markey to transfer to any program in Minnesota.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-ulm-minnesota-church-diocese-sues-one-in-ireland-over-priest/

Clergy Abuse Documentary ‘BASTA’ to Premier at Boston International Film Festival on Easter Sunday Merrimack Valley Production has announced that BASTA – No pity – No shame – No silence- has been selected to premiere at the Boston International Film Festival on Easter Sunday April 20th at Loews Theatre/AMC Boston Common on Tremont Street.
“This is a global epidemic which needs, and deserves, global awareness. There are 60 million adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse living in the United States alone. Survivors need to know that they are not alone and above all, there is always hope.”
Boston Massachusetts (PRWEB) March 18, 2014
BASTA, a film documenting the emotional journey taken by simple men detailing their attempts to reach into the Vatican walls in search of help, hope and aid in healing a nation reeling from the effects of the clergy abuse crisis, will premiere at the Boston International Film Festival on Sunday, April 20th.
Attempting to battle the cover-up, shame and silence of clergy sexual abuse, three survivors from Boston Massachusetts, travel to Rome reaching behind the secret walls of The Vatican. Their weeklong effort becomes a decade long mission that exposes mind blowing statistics and unexpected worldwide results. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/03/prweb11674500.htm

Basta is a film documenting the story of the emotional journey taken by simple men detailing their attempts to reach behind and beyond the Vatican walls in search of help, hope and aid in healing a nation reeling from the effects of the clergy abuse scandal.
A decade after starting on a personal journey for justice, one man finds that success isn’t always defined by achieving his goal, sometimes, it’s defined by the attempt itself. And sometimes, in that attempt, you also find out who you are. http://www.bastathemovie.com/About_The_Film.html

Italy’s bishops pass Vatican-backed rule that child molestation does not have to be reported  Kashmira Gander Friday 28 March 2014 Italy’s bishops have adopted a policy, with backing from the Vatican, that states they are not obliged to inform police officers if they suspect a child has been molested. The Italian Bishops’ Conference said the guidelines published on Friday reflected suggestions from the Vatican’s office that handles sex abuse investigations. Victims have denounced how bishops systematically covered up abuse by moving priests while keeping prosecutors in the dark. Only in 2010 did the Vatican instruct bishops to report abuse to police — but only where required by law. Italian guidelines cite a 1985 treaty between the Vatican and Italy stipulating that clergy aren’t obliged to tell magistrates about information obtained through their religious ministry. The guidelines remind bishops, however, they have a ”moral duty“ to contribute to the common good….
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/italys-bishops-pass-vaticanbacked-rule-stating-they-do-not-have-to-report-if-a-priest-has-molested-a-child-9222501.html

Notorious pedophile priest convicted again  8 Apr 2014  More than half a century after he started sexually abusing the sons and daughters of his parishioners, Australia’s worst pedophile priest has learnt he is likely to die in jail. Gerald Francis Ridsdale, 79, was given an eight-year sentence after pleading guilty to 30 new charges against 14 boys and girls between 1961 and 1980, conduct described by the judge as “evil hypocrisy.” But the notorious pedophile, already serving time for a campaign of abuse dating back to 1961 when he was ordained, will not be eligible for parole until April 2019. The protection of the Catholic church, which moved him from parish to parish throughout his career, meant his offending spanned three decades.  He abused 53 children in that time. They included children of parishioners, wards of the state, altar servers, twin brothers and a girl as young as four-years-old. It wasn’t until 1993 that he was de-frocked.
Two years later, he was jailed for 18 years….
Ridsdale portrayed himself as the “friendly priest”, luring his victims with inducements such as lollies and money to gain their trust. He befriended victims and set up an after-school boys gathering, which was the setting for crimes against five children. Many of Ridsdale’s victims were extremely vulnerable – some being wards of the state or from broken homes….
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/04/08/notorious-pedophile-priest-convicted-again

The Shame of the Church by Retro Report March 30th, 2014 Sexual abuse in the Catholic Church has been making headlines for years. Some priests have been punished, but what about the bishops who shielded them? http://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000002794204/the-shame-of-the-church.html

Ritual Abuse and Mind Control

Minnesota cult leader charged with 59 counts of sexual abuse
Fugitive Victor Barnard, head of ‘Maidens of River Road,’ accused of sex acts with minors. Girls as young as 12 were sent to live with the ‘messiah,’ who is acused of sexually abusing them.
BY Deborah Hastings NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, April 16, 2014
A minister who dressed like Jesus and presided over virgins he called the “maidens” faces 59 counts of criminal sexual conduct involving underage girls he allegedly abused for years at a Minnesota religious camp. Fugitive Victor Arden Barnard, 52, is believed to be somewhere near Seattle or Tacoma, authorities said. A nationwide warrant has been issued for his arrest.
The self-proclaimed “messiah” ran a compound in Minnesota’s northern Pine County, where ministered to a group of women and girls he referred to as “maidens.” For several years, he routinely abused two girls sent to live with him at the ages of 12 and 13, according to a criminal complaint filed against him….
They lived in a place called “Shepherd’s Camp,” where Barnard also resided, apart from this wife and children. “Barnard repeatedly preached to (B) that he represented Christ in the flesh, that Jesus Christ had Mary Magdalene and other women who followed him, that King Solomon slept with many concubines, that the firstborn child was to be sacrificed to God, and that it was normal for Barnard to have sex with her because it was in God’s Word,” the complaint states….
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/minnesota-cult-leader-charged-59-sexual-abuse-counts-maidens-article-1.1758703

Report: Accused child molester said sex was ‘God’s word’ KREM.com Spokane/Coeur dAlene Videos
SPOKANE, Wash. — KREM 2 News has been tracking local associates who may be connected to a man wanted for sexually abusing children in Minnesota. Authorities believe Victor Barnard, 52, is hiding out somewhere in Spokane. MORE: Man wanted for sex abuse in Minnesota may be in Spokane Victor Barnard, 52, is charged with 59 counts of sexual misconduct with children. Court documents say he abused two members of his cult-like church where his was a pastor in Pine County, Minnesota. The abuse dates back to the year 2000, according to the investigation. According the Pioneer Press in Minnesota, Barnard likened himself to Jesus and told one of his victims it was in “God’s word” for him to have sex with her. Barnard would reportedly call girls to a lodge when he wanted to have sex with them, and would order them to not tell anyone about it….
http://news.yahoo.com/video/report-accused-child-molester-said-134909009.html

Killer Luke Mitchell demands Satanic books in jail
18/04/14 JODI Jones’ killer, Luke Mitchell, has demanded the right to be given Satanic textbooks in prison because of his “religious beliefs”. Mitchell has reportedly asked for six books, including The Devil’s Notebook and Satan Speaks, after claiming access to occult materials was his human right. Among the texts is The Satanic Bible, which exhorts the creation of a lawless society where human sacrifice and murder is not just tolerated but encouraged.
The 25-year-old is understood to have made the request to the chaplain of Shotts prison, where he is serving life for murdering Jodi in June 2003. Mitchell’s Satanic links as a teenager were highlighted during his trial….
In The Satanic Bible, LaVey discusses how someone could be considered “fit and proper” as a human sacrifice. The book concludes: “The answer is brutally simple. Anyone who has unjustly wronged you.”….
Mitchell was just 15 when he stabbed his 14-year-old girlfriend to death in Easthouses, Midlothian. Jodi’s mutilated body was found in woods near her home. It emerged Mitchell had scratched 666 into his arm with a compass and drew Satanic symbols and quotes on his schoolbooks….
http://www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com/news/crime/killer-luke-mitchell-demands-satanic-books-in-jail-1-3375463

Jodi Jones killer Luke Mitchell demands right to study Satanic textbooks in prison due to his ‘religious beliefs’ Apr 13, 2014     By Dailyrecord.co.uk
MITCHELL, who is serving life in Shotts prison, has requested a copy of The Satanic Bible, which calls for followers to create a lawless world where human sacrifice and murder are not only tolerated but encouraged.
JODI Jones’s killer Luke Mitchell has demanded the right to be given Satanic textbooks in jail because of his “religious beliefs”. Mitchell wants six books including The Devil’s Notebook and Satan Speaks, claiming it’s his human right to have access to the occult materials.
Mitchell, 25, also wants a copy of The Satanic Bible, which calls for followers to create a lawless world where there is no right or wrong and where human sacrifice and murder is not only tolerated but encouraged….
Mitchell’s Satanic links were highlighted during his trial, where he was described as “truly wicked” by judge Lord Nimmo Smith. However, he still protests his innocence. One source said: “Mitchell’s supporters have always downplayed his links to Satanism but it’s clear he has a serious interest in the subject….
Elizabeth Rudman, a criminologist with over 20 years’ experience, said: “This is extreme material and it is very interesting that he has asked for these items halfway through his sentence. I am taken aback that he is asking for these Satanic materials at this point. “My problem is that the rituals involved in these materials are really anti-social and they elicit deeds that are against the law, such as human sacrifice. “This person was convicted for murder. My first question would be: what is he going to plan now? “It is possible Mitchell has given up completely. On the other hand, it can also be an indication of guilt. “He has been in prison for so long, his hope of getting an appeal has been completely quashed, so now he may be showing his true convictions.”…. http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/jodi-jones-killer-luke-mitchell-3407242

Prostitute raped, tortured, crucified in Italy; case mirrors 2013 attack  Romanian immigrant Andrea Cristina Zamfir was found dead Monday morning, her wrists taped to an overpass in Florence. Authorities say the 26-year-old’s murder is similar to the near murder of 46-year-old Alle Bartoline, who was found naked and screaming, her wrists taped to the same barrier. BY Meg Wagner  NEW YORK DAILY NEWS  Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Italian police are hunting for a monstrous serial attacker who raped and tortured a prostitute in Florence before “crucifying” her naked body on a bridge. The brutal killing mirrors another attack on the same overpass last March. Police found the body of Romanian immigrant Andrea Cristina Zamfir on Monday morning. The 26-year-old had been forced to kneel with her outstretched arms taped to a horizontal barrier under the bridge, Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper reported. Police said she had been sexually tortured before she was left to die, and bruising showed she struggled throughout the horrific assault, police say. Her clothes and purse were found about a half-mile away….
During the past 10 years, six or seven more prostitutes have been killed in the area, Florence investigator Lorenzo Bucossi told the Daily Beast…. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/prostitute-raped-tortured-crucified-italy-article-1.1783067

Italy: Florence gripped by fear as police hunt serial killer gbtimes Italy, Milan
Wednesday, May 7, 2014 A mysterious homicide is reviving painful memories in Florence after the body of a prostitute was found under a bridge on Monday. Andrea Cristina Zamfir, 26, a Romanian national, was strapped to a bar, tortured and left to die slowly, her wrists tied in a crucifixion-like pose. There is “a real possibility that a new serial killer is on a rampage,” ANSA news agency writes, quoting sources close to the investigation. According to the Italian press, six other attacks on women over the past 8 years bear resemblance to this latest incident, but only this one ended in the victim’s death. There are similarities between the killings in the choice of the victims, who are all drug-addicted prostitutes, and in the area where the crimes took place as well as the use of torture. The proximity of a cemetery is also fueling speculation that the murder could have been a ritual killing…. http://gbtimes.com/world/italy-florence-gripped-fear-police-hunt-serial-killer
                    
EXCLUSIVE: Babies in black dresses abused while laying in a Pentagram, drinking cat’s blood and Satanic writings on church walls: The twisted confessions of the pedophile pastor from Louisiana who inspired ‘True Detective’
Writer of hit HBO series this week hinted at a sick pedophile ring in Louisiana as inspiration
Just like the series it involved a church pastor, a corrupt deputy, Satanic rituals and even shares names
Pastor Louis Lamonica Jr. of Hosanna Church, Hammond, Louisiana, confessed to being the head of a Satanic ring in 2005. At the time police feared up to 25 children could have fallen victim
MailOnline has seen his spine-tingling confession to the crime in which he claimed he was one of six who took part in the abuse
But at his trial his defense said he confessed falsely because he was under the spell of a charismatic woman denounced as a ‘false prophet’ who wanted to take over the church
By Laura Collins In Amite, Louisiana
17 March 2014
At 1.15pm on 16 May, 2005, Pastor Louis Lamonica Jr strolled into Detective Stan Carpenter’s office in Livingston, Louisiana and made his confession. What he had to say ‘floored’ the detective.
The pastor of Hosanna Church in nearby Hammond claimed he had performed satanic rituals, child abuse and animal sacrifice in the church and that he was not alone.
He named his fellow perpetrators and he named their child victims. It marked the beginning of the Hosanna Church Scandal and exposed a vicious pedophile ring in a case whose shockwaves reverberate in Lamonica’s former parish of Tangipahoe to this day.
In his confession, seen by MailOnline, Lamonica sat down and announced: ‘I want to talk about the dedication (to Satan) of a baby. It was held at the church, upstairs, in what was called the Youth Room.’
He went onto describe a room where all the windows were covered in black, ‘like black paper, keep it dark.’
There was a pentagram in the middle of the floor, he said and a book of ‘Spells and Temptations.’ On this occasion, he claimed, there were five others present: Austin ‘Trey’ Bernard III, then 36, Lamonica’s wife Robin, 45, church member Paul Fontenot, 21, sheriff’s deputy Chris Labat, 24 and Patricia ‘Trish’ Pierson, 56. All but LeBat later pleaded guilty to charges ranging from aggravated rape to sexual battery to obstruction of justice.Labat was charged with child pornography but subsequently the charges were dismissed.
Lamonica stated: ‘They would start off like a church service but it was Satanic music. There were candles burning, dark, red candleholders. And the dedication of baby A into Satan with this Pentagram, she was put in the middle, in a black dress.’
He described chanting around the child – Trey Bernard’s daughter, barely one year old at the time – before killing a cat, draining its blood and each drinking it.
He claimed they did not make the child drink because she was too young and instead took off her dress and sprinkled the blood over her.
These meetings, according to Lamonica, took place once every two to three months.
On other occasions ‘certain girls would be picked and have sexual relationships with. The guys would line up, one by one, they would come and they would have sex with that girl. And the same if there was a woman…they would have [a] homosex (sic) relationship and oral sex, acting like one was a man and one was a woman.’
He claimed that there was ‘feces laid around. There was urine.’
And he claimed that during these satanic rituals he would become ‘distorted’ by the Devil and that demons would change him into an animal – ‘a snake, a fox, wolf, spiders.’
His words are reminiscent of the notion of Courir de Mardi Gras, central to True Detective’s version of Satanism and the occult and explained by Cohle as ‘a very rural sense of Mardi Gras,  you know, the men on horses, animal masks and such.’
In the show, that Cajun culture is twisted into the killer’s satanic ritual of posing his victims with antlers….
To the prosecutor, District Attorney Don Wall, the case had nothing to do with the occult – any reference to that was simply subterfuge and an attempt by Lamonica to wriggle out of his own guilt by somehow claiming to have been ‘compelled’ by Satan….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2580388/EXCLUSIVE-Babies-abused-laying-Pentagram-Satanic-writings-church-walls-devouring-cats-blood-The-twisted-confessions-pedophile-church-pastor-Louisiana-inspired-True-Detective.html

YOUTH FOUND HANGED IN L.I. CELL AFTER HIS ARREST IN RITUAL KILLING By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
Published: July 8, 1984  A teen-ager charged with slaying and mutilating a 17-year-old Long Island boy in what authorities said was a ritual carried out before followers of a satanic cult was found hanged early yesterday in his cell at the Suffolk County Jail.
The Suffolk County Sheriff, John Finnerty, listed the death of the suspect, Richard Kasso, 17 years old, of Northport, L.I., as an apparent suicide. A guard had found him hanging from a bedsheet.
The Sheriff ordered that a second youth charged in the case, James Troiano, 18, of East Northport, be placed under a 24-hour suicide watch.
Confessions Are Cited
The suspect’s death was the latest development in the murder of Gary Lauwers of East Northport, who vanished June 15. According to what the authorities said were confessions by the two suspects, Mr. Lauwers was stabbed repeatedly and had his eyes gouged out in a four-hour ritual in the light of a campfire in a wooded area near Northport on the night of June 16….
The motive for the killing, investigators said, apparently was revenge over the theft of drugs. Authorities said Mr. Kasso had told them that the victim had stolen from him 10 bags of a powerful illegal hallucinogen, phencyclidine, known popularly as PCP or ”angel dust.” A white powder, it is often rolled with marijuana and smoked; it is known to produce violent and unpredictable behavior….
Village officials, local clergymen and concerned residents yesterday planned meetings to talk about the murder, and about their children and the strange events and the drug-influenced cult. In recent years, the police recalled, many residents have complained of pets and domestic animals stolen, possibly for use in cult rituals.
The cult, according to Assistant District Attorney Bill Keahon of Suffolk County, is known as the ”Knights of the Black Circle.” It has about 20 teen-age members and has held gatherings for several years in the Northport area involving ”the sacrifice of animals, the burning and torturing of animals” in satanic rituals, he said….
Citing the confessions, which the police said were given by the suspects voluntarily without lawyers, the police said that during the ritual some of the victim’s clothing was burned as the cult members chanted, and that the dying victim was forced to say, ”I love Satan.” ….
Mr. Kasso was awaiting trial on a charge of opening a 19th-century grave in April and stealing a skull and a hand, purportedly for use in a ritual. He once underwent treatment at a drug rehabilitation center at South Oaks Hospital in Amityville, the police said….
Simultaneously, Mr. Kasso reportedly told the police, he heard a crow screech ”and this was indication to him, as a Satan worshiper, that the devil had ordered him to kill Lauwers.”….
http://www.nytimes.com/1984/07/08/nyregion/youth-found-hanged-in-li-cell-after-his-arrest-in-ritual-killing.html

San Jose Teen: Satanism Allowed Me to Kill Classmate By Associated Press Monday, Mar 3, 2014
A Northern California teenager charged in the alleged thrill-killing of a high school classmate told police his religion, Satanism, allowed him to kill and he had already killed a rabbit and a cat, according to a recently released transcript of his interview with investigators.
“I guess I just finally wanted to kill somebody,” Jae Williams told San Jose police detectives two days after the November 2009 slaying of Michael Russell, 15, according to the transcript. “I had my chance and I took it.”
The transcript was reported by the San Jose Mercury News over the weekend. Williams and a second teen, Randy Thompson, were charged with murder in the fatal stabbing of Russell, a sophomore at San Jose’s Santa Teresa High School. They have pleaded not guilty….
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/San-Jose-Teen-Satanism-Allowed-Him-to-Kill-Classmate-248252881.html

Confession reveals chilling details of San Jose boy’s slaying By Tracey Kaplan 03/02/2014
SAN JOSE — As police probed for answers to why he would fatally stab a high school classmate he’d befriended, 15-year-old Jae Williams struggled to explain. The boys weren’t close friends. His religion — Satanism — allows killing. And he’d already slain a rabbit and beaten a cat to death.
“I guess I just finally wanted to kill somebody,” Williams told detectives two days after the November 2009 slaying of Michael Russell, 15, according to a transcript of the interview. “I had my chance and I took it.”
While prosecutors have long claimed that Williams confessed to killing Russell with the help of alleged accomplice Randy Thompson just for thrills, documents recently made public as the case heads for trial reveal chilling new details about the teen’s slaying.
The accused young men, now 20, implicated each other in separate statements they gave to police. But Williams also made a full confession, prosecutors allege, revealing the victim’s last words and their coldblooded motive….
http://www.insidebayarea.com/news/ci_25260331/confession-reveals-chilling-details-boys-slaying

B.C. to hand over 4,900 youth death records to TRC  27. Mar, 2014 by APTN National News
EDMONTON–The British Columbia government is expected Friday to give the Truth and Reconciliation Commission 4,900 death certificates of First Nations youth aged from four to 19 who died between 1870 and 1984. The data, held in a portable digital storage device, will be handed over during a ceremony in Edmonton where the TRC is holding its final national event. Peter Cunningham, B.C.’s assistant deputy minister of partnership and community renewal, will be giving the data to the TRC The TRC is currently trying to tally the exact number of First Nation children who died in residential schools. So far the TRC has identified 4,100 children as part of its Missing Children Project.
The TRC will sift through B.C.’s data to determine which of the deaths happened in a residential school….  http://aptn.ca/news/2014/03/27/b-c-hand-4900-death-records-trc/

‘Magical warlock’ sexually abused girls as young as 3 years old: police  James Irvin, 57, of Bluefield, W.Va., told three different girls that performing sex acts would allow him to conduct magical spells. The alleged perv was accused of abuse two decades ago in Texas.
BY Sasha Goldstein NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Monday, April 21, 2014
A sicko calling himself a “magical warlock” allegedly sexually abused several children, authorities in West Virginia said, using his Wiccan religion to trick the youngsters into sexual acts.
James Irvin, 57, of Bluefield, abused children as young as 3, 9 and 13, according to court documents, the Bluefield Daily Telegraph reported. He was arraigned on five counts of sexual assault and 10 counts of sexual abuse….
The deviant “warlock” allegedly has struck in the past. Authorities in Texas said Irvin was accused of sexually assaulting his stepdaughter in 1994. He fled to West Virginia before facing charges, according to WVVA….
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/magical-warlock-sexually-abused-girls-young-3-police-article-1.1764248

Bluefield man claiming to be magical warlock arrested for sex crimes against children
Bluefield Daily Telegraph   April 21, 2014 BLUEFIELD — A Bluefield man claiming to be a “magical warlock” has been arrested and charged with multiple counts of sexual assault and sexual abuse of juveniles.
James “Jim” Irvin, 57, of Bluefield, was arraigned Monday before Mercer County Magistrate Susan Honaker on five counts of sexual assault and 10 counts of sexual abuse. The victims in the case were 9, 3 and 13 years of age at the time of the alleged abuse, according to Detective K.L. Adams of the Bluefield Police Department.
Adams said the investigation has revealed that Irwin was a practicing pagan and wiccan, and used his religion to allegedly get close to the children and ultimately sexually abuse them.     http://www.bdtonline.com/local/x1535574442/Bluefield-man-claiming-to-be-magical-warlock-arrested-for-sex-crimes-against-children

Collapsed economy linked to abuse of women and children By Nomalanga Moyo  SW Radio Africa  27 March 2014  The deteriorating economic situation in Zimbabwe is exacerbating violence against women and children, leading historian Pathisa Nyathi has said. In recent months there have been several reported cases across the country, highlighting the brutalisation of women and children through rape or ritualistic killings. Last week three men from Gwanda appeared in court charged with murdering four women and cutting off some of their body parts for ritual purposes. ZANU PF activist Lillian Kandemiri was recently jailed for offering her 15-year-old grand-daughter as payment for a $40,000 debt. This week Tuesday, the Supreme Court ordered the State to compensate Mildred Mapingure who was denied an abortion after she was gang-raped in her home eight years ago. On Wednesday President Robert Mugabe said he receives “disturbing child sexual abuse statistics” and went on to call for a campaign against the rape “epidemic” saying stiffer penalties alone will not help….
Nyathi said…that ritual murderers carry out their crimes in the misinformed hope that body parts that are associated with fertility will help improve their financial status….
http://www.swradioafrica.com/2014/03/27/zimbabwe-collapsed-economy-linked-to-abuse-of-women-and-children/

‘My life with the thrill-kill cult’ By Francis Scarcella March 1, 2014  Two months after her arrest for murder, Sunbury, Pennsylvania’s most notorious resident wrote me a letter.
“I put you on my visitor’s list,” she wrote in neat handwriting. “The rest is up to you.”
Sideways was her signature: Miranda Barbour….
Now Miranda, all of 19 years old, wanted to tell her side of the story. It was Valentine’s Day. She sat behind the glass, impassive in an orange prison suit, and gestured for me to pick up the phone. A voice came on the line, warning us that the conversation was being recorded.
“Wish you could have had your pad and pen,” Miranda said.
They didn’t let reporters record conversations, I explained. Memory would have to do. “I have a lot of things I want to say,” she said. “Some of which will be difficult to hear.”
Her voice was very soft and high, like that of a little girl.
“This isn’t the first time I’ve done this.”
Lured a man on Craigslist? “This was the first time on Craigslist, but I’ve killed before.” It took me a moment to absorb that. How many times? “Less than 100.” Miranda, I said, no one in the world is going to believe you killed 100 people. Give me a number. “Well,” she said, “I stopped counting at 22.”….
As a teenager, Miranda began to hang out with older men and would run away from home.
“She would be gone for days at a time,” Dean said. “I would be out on the streets looking for her.”
Miranda always returned home, but sometimes with stories that were hard to believe, her mother said. She also was in and out of treatment for cutting herself; “One time she cut herself so deep it was into the tissue,” Dean said.
The family moved to Florida for a year after Miranda’s father took a job. “She told me about things that would happen to her there,” Dean says, crying, “She said she would walk on the docks and piers and smoke weed and sleep with other guys.”….
Miranda fills in the missing days of her childhood with stories of horrors. She was part of a Satanic cult, she says, a gang that would perform occult rituals in the Alaskan woods.
She first killed at age 13.  “I lured a man into an alley that owed the gang leader money,” Miranda said.  “He shot the man and then gave me the gun and told me it was my turn. I hate guns and I couldn’t do it, so he put his hands on my hands and we pulled the trigger,” she said.
Auhorities are still trying to find out if there is any truth to what Miranda is claiming.
Miranda explained at that point she knew she had something bad inside her and that Satanism let her embrace it.
After that, she said she only targeted “bad people” and those who had hurt children. She says she’s willing to “pinpoint on a map” where she murdered.
An ex-boyfriend, meanwhile, has given Dean an old journal he claims is Miranda’s — a diary the mother will not release but wants to talk to her about.
“There are things in here that just can’t be true,” Dean said. “Some of this I just don’t believe.
“I don’t believe she has done any of what she is saying, and I don’t know why she is saying all of these things.”
“Who’s to say how many,” Elytte said about his wife’s claims during a phone call placed to reporters.
“I know what she told me was 50-50.”
http://nypost.com/2014/03/01/my-life-with-the-thrill-kill-cult-teen-serial-killer-tells-all/

‘If I get out of here I’d do it again’: Mother admits Craigslist killer kept a horror journal detailing murders as she claims she would have spared her married victim if he’d told her 16 was too young for sex
Miranda Barbour, 19, says that she is confessing to the killings to keep her behind bars so she won’t kill again
Her mother Elizabeth Dean says she has a diary with stories that ‘can’t be true,’ but would not confirm or deny they were records of murders
Miranda Barbour said the original plan was to let victim Troy LaFerrara go if he backed when she said she was underage – but he didn’t
The self-confessed serial killer was molested at age 4 and may have decided to kill other child molesters
By Ryan Gorman  1 March 2014
The self-confessed Satanic serial killer who claims to have murdered more than 22 people may have kept a record of the slayings.
Elizabeth Dean confirmed an ex-boyfriend of daughter Miranda Barbour, 19, gave her a diary he claimed was her’s just as the teen appears to have revealed a motive for the supposed killings – revenge.
Miranda Barbour told the New York Post from jail that she would have let Troy LaFerrara, 42, of Sudbury, Pennsylvania go had he stopped groping her when she said she told him she was barely 16-years-old – she was molested at age 4.
Dean did not deny the horror journal was filled with details on the murders, but stopped short of confirming exactly what was scrawled on its pages….
‘There are things in here that just can’t be true,’ she told the paper. ‘Some of this I just don’t believe.
‘I don’t believe she has done any of what she is saying, and I don’t know why she is saying all of these things,’ Dean continued.
The mother also confirmed a claim made by her daughter that she was molested at age 4, saying she immediately went to police and the man was arrested.
Revelations of the murder memoir come as Miranda Barbour claims she is confessing to the killings so she remains behind bars….
‘I still love her,’ Barbour said over a secure telephone line from the jail where he’s awaiting trial for allegedly luring a man through Craigslist, strangling and stabbing him 20 times with his love, three weeks after they were married.
Speaking to CNN Wednesday, heacknowledged, ‘Everyone wants to know about her credibility,’ but wouldn’t comment on whether her confessions were valid.
However, he said she was upfront with him in ‘about 50/50’ of the alleged slayings, with respect to specific names of victims and the locations of the murders….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2571246/If-I-Id-Mother-admits-Craigslist-killer-kept-horror-journal-detailing-murders-claims-spared-married-victim-hed-told-16-young-sex.html

Hearing in Barbour case to compel discovery evidence  By Mark Gilger March 4, 2014  SUNBURY – A hearing will be held 9:15 a.m. April 1 on a motion filed by Miranda Barbour’s attorney to compel discovery evidence from the district attorney’s office in a murder case that has drawn international attention.  In a related order issued Friday, Northumerland County Judge Charles Saylor granted permission to the commonwealth to preserve hard drives from Troy LaFerrara’s computer and his mother’s computer seized by police upon the execution of a search warrant. LaFerrara was found stabbed to death in a yard in Sunbury in November. Miranda Barbour, 19, and her 22-year-old husband, Elytte Barbour, are charged with homicide in the Port Trevorton man’s death. Saylor said preserving the hard drives will allow the defense attorneys or an expert of their choosing to examine them in the future….
During last week’s prison board meeting, Johnson said the international attention about Barbour’s claim to The Daily Item that she killed more than 22 people has disrupted security and efficiency at the prison, which among other issues, prompted her transfer. http://newsitem.com/news/hearing-in-barbour-case-to-compel-discovery-evidence-1.1644398

Accused Craigslist killer Miranda Barbour had traumatic start in life  Jill Burke March 16, 2014
The sensational headlines surrounding accused Craigslist killer Miranda Barbour portray a deeply troubled young woman. Her claims to be a practicing Satanist and that she killed not just once, but upwards of 22 times, gained immediate attention as people in four states where the supposed victims resided — including Alaska — began to question whether the newlywed teen mom’s story could be true.
Is Barbour seeking attention? Aiming for an insanity defense? Or is she earnestly using her confession and incarceration to protect the public from her self-declared murderous proclivities? Only time will tell.
Yet for all of Barbour’s grandiose claims, there is one aspect of her life story that is not in dispute — the sexual abuse she suffered as a toddler by an uncle….
Miranda often spent weekends at her aunt and uncle’s house. “Uncle Rick” encouraged the sleepovers. Only later would young Miranda’s frequent complaints that her anus hurt, and once that her “pee pee” hurt, come to be understood for what they were — the aftermath and evidence of multiple attacks in which she had been subject to anal and vaginal sexual penetration and fellatio. She had, in the words of the prosecutor, been “sodomized in every way imaginable.” It was one of the most physically extreme abuse cases the trial judge had ever seen, and it happened to a girl whom the judge described as “hardly more than” a baby….
In Richard Fernandez’s personal belongings, investigators found pornography and a sexual abuse “how-to” manual titled “Fun With My Sister’s Kids.” The book “encouraged uncles, fathers and grandfathers to engage in unclassified felony sex acts with their young nieces, daughters and granddaughters,” according to a prosecutor’s description of it contained in court records.
This book described and recommended the very abuse of which Fernandez was accused of and for which he later accepted punishment. He pleaded no contest, a plea that allowed him to avoid trial and do time but without admitting he’d actually done anything wrong….
Fernandez seemed destined for a revolving door experience between incarceration and free society. According to court records, he wasn’t adequately participating in a sex offender treatment program, had visited a “porn store,” viewed pornography on the internet and failed to find full-time employment. More than once, he’d found ways to get online. He’d used computers at his church and in his room at his halfway house to seek out prohibited material….
By May 2011 he was back in again with more time to serve, and two months later he faced a new case altogether, this time for possession of child pornography. Investigators had found hundreds of images of child pornography on his computer, after probation and parole officers seized and turned Fernandez’s computers over to Alaska State Troopers.
Fernandez is now serving out a 40 year prison term in the pornography case — 20 years to serve with 20 suspended.  He’s scheduled for release in 2035. He must also remain registered as a sex offender for the rest of his life….
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20140316/accused-craigslist-killer-miranda-barbour-had-traumatic-start-life

Childhood sexual abuse may have contributed to Miranda Barbour’s issues later in life Jill Burke March 17, 2014 Much about the life and recent arrest of former Alaskan Miranda Barbour is discomforting. The troubled young woman, a teen runaway who turned to Satanism, heroin, and has since given birth to a child, stands accused of murder for the stabbing death of a man police say she lured through an ad on the online  bulletin board Craigslist. But one unnerving detail of her bizarre and traumatic story may resonate more profoundly with Alaskans than others: the childhood sexual abuse she suffered as a toddler….
Barbour was preyed upon by a man her family should have been able to trust: her uncle.
That man, Richard Fernandez, has served time in jail, where he remains after unsuccessful releases on parole and getting slapped with a new criminal charge for possession of pornography.
How often child sexual abuse happens in Alaska is difficult to assess. The best estimates are flawed because not all agencies that respond to abuse share uniform data, and it’s widely held that many victims never report the abuse. Those that do come forward sometimes wait years before doing so.
Alaska’s rate of child sexual abuse is six times the national average, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence….
In 2013, a trio of university researchers from Canada published a summary of decades of study on the topic of child sexual abuse and its prevalence, outcomes and prevention strategies. They found that child sexual assault “… alters a child’s cognitive and emotional orientation to the world and causes trauma by distorting their self-concept and affective capacities.” Traumatic sexualization, betrayal, powerlessness, and stigmatization that occur during the abuse may have lasting impacts. Post traumatic stress, dissociation symptoms, mood disorders, depression, behavior problems, inappropriate sexualized behaviors, substance abuse, self harm and suicide are all possible effects on these young victims of abuse, researchers found.
Additionally, when very young children experience sexual abuse, it can be difficult for them to process the trauma. While turning into a killer isn’t a foretold consequence, aspects of Barbour’s personality and life story appear to parallel the known, lasting impacts on sexually abused children…. http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20140317/childhood-sexual-abuse-may-have-contributed-miranda-barbours-issues-later-life

Exclusive: Craigslist Killer Miranda Barbour Tells How and Why She Killed By Matthew Lysiak April 28, 2014  But she has no regrets about Troy LaFerrara, whom she confessed to murdering, or about the 22 other people in at least four other states she claims to have killed. “I felt no regret. None,” she says. “I didn’t hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it.”
Barbour is charged with criminal homicide for the murder of LaFerrara. Last week her attorney filed a motion asking a judge to rule that she did not torture LaFerrara before killing him, in an effort to take the death penalty off the table. She is due back in court on May 30.
She became an international headline after she told a local reporter on Valentine’s Day that she was a serial killer. Since then, the teen mom from North Pole, Alaska, has been a constant source of media speculation. Police don’t seem to take her seriously as a mass murderer, but she has been fielding requests from CNN and other news outlets….
Miranda believes her “darkness” was created by her Uncle Rick, who abused her as a child. “I think he created a monster inside of me. It’s always there.” She doesn’t want to go into details, but the brutalities inflicted on her by her uncle are a matter of public record, crimes described by the trial judge as the most physically extreme case of abuse he had ever seen….
A few months later, Miranda began to complain that her anus and “pee-pee” hurt, but her parents did nothing.
The abuse continued for almost a year, until Ashley told her mother about the “secrets” of Uncle Rick. In 1998, Fernandez was sentenced to 19 years in jail, but was let out after serving nine years and four months. In July 2011, he was charged with possession of child pornography after investigators found hundreds of images on his computer, and sentenced to a 40-year prison term. He is scheduled for release in 2035….
She says she joined a satanic cult at the age of 12: “I kind of slid into it. But they weren’t just into Satan, there were into hating minorities too.” She insists Satanism has been a positive influence in her life and helped her harness that darkness inside of her—most of the time. “I worship a dark entity,” she explains, “but just because it is dark doesn’t mean that it is bad.”
She claims to have committed her first murder when she was 13. It was a man who owed money to her cult’s leader, whom she identifies only as Forest. She says she lured the man into a dark alley with the promise of sex, and Forest jumped out of the shadows and shot him. “Forest shot him in the chest, but he was still alive,” she says. “He put the gun in my hand. He put his finger over my finger and pulled the trigger.”
Miranda claims she became pregnant by a member of the cult that same year. The other cult members did not want her to have the baby, she says, so they tied her to a bed, gave her drugs and performed a gruesome in-house abortion. Before moving from Alaska, she says, she had to endure a brutal gang rape as the “exit fee” for leaving the cult. “There were only two ways out—by death or gang rape. I was pretty beat up.”
She says her killing spree began in Alaska, and it continued in California, Texas and North Carolina. “There is something inside me. It goes off like a switch. I call it Super Miranda. It’s dark. It’s violent. It’s like another person.” Almost all of her victims were men, but there was a woman in Alaska who Miranda heard was prostituting her children. “We drugged her and took her out into the forest,” she says. “We tortured her. We cut her. We burned her a little bit. She denied it all at first—you know, people will say anything when you torture them—but she finally admitted it and promised she wouldn’t do it again. I knew she was lying. These people always lie. We cut her and threw her in a hole in the ice.” ….
http://www.newsweek.com/2014/05/09/exclusive-craigslist-killer-miranda-barbour-tells-how-and-why-she-killed-248670.html

Miranda Barbour’s Sister: My Mom Is to Blame for Her Troubles By Nicole Weisensee  04/28/2014
There is only one person to blame for accused Craigslist killer – and wannabe serial killer – Miranda Barbour’s lies and violent behavior, her sister told Dr. Phil McGraw in an episode of his show that aired Monday. “My mom made Miranda the way she is,” Ashley Dean said as their mother, Elizabeth Dean, dissolved into tears. “My mom has been a bad mom.” Ashley went on to say that their mother was inattentive, had numerous men over that she just met after divorcing their father and even left her to babysit Miranda when she was 6 and Miranda was 3 years old.  “I just want to make it clear that it’s not my sister’s fault,” she said. “She’s not this monster on her own. It’s come from someone else.”
Elizabeth said she took Miranda to many therapists over the years to get her the help she needed. “I love Miranda,” she said. “I will never turn my back on her. She’s my daughter.”
Barbour, 19, and her husband, Elytte, have been charged with the Nov. 11 murder of Troy LeFerrara, 42, whom they allegedly met via a Craigslist ad and lured to his death. They have both pleaded not guilty. In February, Miranda told a Pennsylvania newspaper reporter she killed at least 21 other people. While Ashley and their mother believe Miranda killed LeFerrara, they do not believe she killed anyone else…. http://www.people.com/article/miranda-barbour-sister-mother-appear-dr-phil-show

describes graphic crimes
Rotting Corpses and Chained Kidnap Victims Found in Nigeria’s ‘House of Horrors’ By Tom Porter March 23, 2014
Nigerian police have found rotting bodies, skeletons and people bound in chains in a house in Ibadan that has been dubbed the House of Horrors.
They said that emaciated people had also been found wandering in the grounds of the property, reports AFP….
In Nigeria, kidnapping victims are often killed in black magic ritual sacrifices or for their organs or body parts, which are sold on in the southern region of the country.
Corpses are often found abandoned on roadsides near the country’s cities with parts of their bodies missing, including their eyes and genitals.
Nigeria’s Vanguard newspaper last year reported that three dealers in body parts and kidnapped people had revealed a “price list”, where a live person could be bought for about £150, a human head for £30 and genitalia for £36.
The Nigerian Tribune newspaper reported that about 15 people were found chained up in the property in Ibadan, and six guns and several cutlasses recovered from a neighbouring house….
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/rotting-corpses-chained-kidnap-victims-found-nigerias-house-horrors-1441494
Nebraska Supreme Court rejects Rulo cult leader’s appeal, but execution still in limbo By Paul Hammel and Joe Duggan / World-Herald Bureau Saturday, April 19, 2014 LINCOLN — For the fifth time, convicted cult murderer Michael Ryan has lost an appeal to overturn his death sentence….
Ryan, 65, was the leader of a survivalist religious cult that lived on a farm near Rulo, Neb. He would be among the first in line for an execution once the state resolves its death penalty drug issue.
Ryan was sentenced to death for first-degree murder for ordering the 1985 torture and killing of James Thimm, 25, one of his followers. Ryan also pleaded no contest to second-degree murder in the killing of 5-year-old Luke Stice, the son of another cult member….
http://www.omaha.com/article/20140419/NEWS/140418218

describes graphic crimes
Nigerian police discover ritual killings
Nigerian police have discovered a site where ritual killings were performed and the body parts sold for use in medical potions
23 Mar 2014  Source AAP  Nigerian police rescued 16 people from an underground dungeon believed to be a ritual killing site, the local newspaper Leadership has reported.
The officers also discovered several decomposing bodies and body parts, hundreds of human skulls, old clothes, photographs and voter cards in the chamber located in a forest near Soka in the western state of Oyo….
Every year, hundreds of Nigerians lose their lives to ritual killings. Their body parts are sold for large sums of money to people who believe they will become more powerful through magical potions containing human flesh and blood.
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/03/23/nigerian-police-discover-ritual-killings

Dobsonville satanic murder case postponed Masego Rahlaga 3/27/14
JOHANNESBURG – The case against two boys accused of killing two teenage girls in an apparent satanic ritual in Soweto has been postponed in the Protea Magistrates Court. The delay has been granted to allow the state time to make copies of the dockets and hand them over to the defence. The boys, aged 15 and 16, are accused of killing 15-year-old Thandeka Moganetsi and 16-year-old Cwayita Rathazwayo whose bodies were discovered in a veld in the Dobsonville area last month. Burnt black candles and razor blades were found at the murder scene. The police’s Kay Makhubela said, “The case was postponed to 7 April after the legal representatives requested copies and the investigation continues.” http://ewn.co.za/2014/03/27/Dobsonville-satanic-murders-case-postponed

Soweto teens appear for Satanic killings 2014-04-07 Johannesburg – Two 16-year-old boys arrested in connection with the murder of two Soweto schoolgirls appeared in the Protea Magistrate’s Court on Monday…. The boys were implicated in the murders of Thandeka Moganetsi, 15, and Chwayita Rathazayo, 16. The girls were found dead in a field in Dobsonville in February…. The murder was believed to have been linked to a satanic ritual. – SAPA http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Soweto-teens-appear-for-Satanic-killings-20140407

Women Arise condemns spate of ritual killings, kidnaps and jungle justice By Wale Odunsi on April 7, 2014 A non-governmental organiation, Women Arise says it is seriously disturbed at the new direction that inhumanity is taking in the country.
A statement by its President, Dr. Joe Odumakin said “While we are fighting hard, tooth and nail to stop visible financial corruption in official Government quarters, it has become yet another bone cringing development, the unwholesome rise in the rate of kidnaps, ritual killings and accompanying jungle justice particularly in the South-West.”….
“At Soka in Ibadan, the kidnappers’ den of horror was discovered where several people had been held hostage. The victims, who include women, are so emaciated and malnourished. The women victims also have had several children for their captors who raped them in the cells where they were falsely imprisoned. Women Arise recalls that one of the women upon her rescue said that she had been in the den since 2008-six years of captivity and rape!….
“I have visited the scene in Abeokuta and inspected the house. Even though some horrifying exhibits such human parts and other ritual items discovered were said to have been removed by when I visited, I still saw some terrifying things like charms that suggested more than had been removed.”
Odumakin said her group is perturbed over the barbaric ritual premiums which some wicked souls have equated with values of women.
She added that in all three cases of rape, kidnap and ritual hostages mentioned above including the Ejigbo sodomy, it is clear enough that women have become the targets of horror….

Women Arise condemns spate of ritual killings, kidnaps and jungle justice

Alleged cult leader faces multiple raps By Edgar Escalante, ABS-CBN News Central Visayas 04/02/2014 CEBU CITY – An alleged cult leader is facing multiple charges filed against him by the National Bureau of Investigation on Tuesday. Casiano Apduhan, alias “Tatay Loloy” and known to his followers as “Dios Amahan”, is facing murder, expanded trafficking in persons thru child labor and child abuse cases, and a complaint for serious illegal detention. Apduhan is facing a murder case for the death of 14-year-old Angelo Repuela whose decomposing body was found in a tunnel underneath his house in Balamban town. Another complaint for human trafficking was filed against Apduhan for detaining a 33-year-old woman whom the cult leader allegedly used as his sex slave for five years….
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/nation/regions/04/02/14/alleged-cult-leader-faces-multiple-raps

Cult head charged with illegal detention, faces more raps  By Ador Vincent Mayol   Inquirer Visayas  Saturday, March 29th, 2014 CEBU CITY—A cult leader is facing a criminal complaint after he was accused of detaining a 33-year-old woman who was allegedly used as his sex slave for five years. Casiano Apduhan, alias “Tatay Loloy” and known to his followers as “Dios Amahan,” also faces a murder case for the death of a 14-year-old boy whose decomposing body was found in a tunnel underneath his house in Balamban town, about 48 kilometers west of here. The complaint for serious illegal detention was filed by the National Bureau of Investigation in Central Visayas on Thursday in the provincial prosecutor’s office….
Another complaint for murder and human trafficking, particularly on the provision against forced labor, will also be filed against him, said NBI supervising agent Rey Villordon. Apduhan is accused of using Angelo Repuela as a human sacrifice, supposedly for the gods to help him find gold. NBI agents found Repuela’s body wrapped in a blanket in the tunnel. Apduhan, who is detained at the NBI regional stockade, denied the allegations, saying his followers will swear that he is a good man….
“We want to know the extent of the damage [on the woman] after she has been detained for more than five years,” said Largo, also a consultant of the Provincial Women’s Commission. NBI agents also noticed that Apduhan’s house was designed like a prison, since its lone entrance was barricaded with padlocked steel grills. “Other doors and windows were heavily barricaded and the grills were locked. There is no way for a member of the household to escape,” Villordon said in an affidavit. He said the dead boy’s father, Eleuterio, was a member of Apduhan’s cult.
In 2012, Apduhan offered the boy as a sacrifice for a treasure-hunting activity and promised the parents that the boy would be brought back to life in 2013, said Villordon….

Cult head charged with illegal detention, faces more raps

    
Demand for return of hundreds of abducted schoolgirls in Nigeria mounts By Azadeh Ansari and Tia Brueggeman, CNN May 4, 2014 Washington (CNN) — International pressure on Nigeria is mounting with protesters taking to the streets around the world to demand the rescue of hundreds of schoolgirls abducted by the terror group Boko Haram….
In Nigeria, angry citizens contend authorities are not doing enough. They took to social media using hashtags #BringBackOurGirls and #BringBackOurDaughters to demand more from the government, a move that appears to have ignited a global call for action. Despite the recent public outcries, the Nigeria’s Defense Ministry said it is committed to the search. Even so, protesters have said not enough is being done….
“Can you imagine if 234 girls were abducted from their school in Paris or in Chicago? This would be a nightmare, this would be an uproar,” Nicole Lee, president of TransAfrica, an African-American foreign policy organization, said at the Washington demonstration.
“… People would care, people would take action and we would want the same for the girls in Nigeria.”…. http://edition.cnn.com/2014/05/03/world/africa/nigeria-abducted-girls/

Heartbroken father claims his married daughter, 32, was ‘driven to suicide’ by a ‘death dance cult leader’ who made her his ‘sex slave and plied her with mind-bending drugs’
Sharon Stern, 32, from Hollywood, Florida, committed suicide after being driven insane by her ‘butoh’ master, Katsura Kan, her family claims
Butoh is a form of Japanese dance that explores themes of pedophilia, homosexuality and death
Stern fell in thrall of Kan after she moved with her software engineer husband to Boulder, Colorado
She began to travel the world with him to put on dances and then he also allegedly began to ask her for money – totaling $30,000
In 2011 her distraught family found her in a psych ward in Denmark – her father claims Kan had given her mind-altering drugs
She divorced her husband to prove her love for Kan, and after one last disturbing email, committed suicide in 2012
Family is suing Kan for wrongful death claiming he ‘stripped her of her free will’ and ‘used her as a sex slave’. She called him ‘god’
By Donna Andersen 5 May 2014
….’Katsura Kan brainwashed her against her family and her life,’ her heartbroken father told MailOnline, echoing the claims he made in the lawsuit.
He alleged: ‘He made her forget everything that was happy about life, and told her she needed to experience pain and suffering, until he had full control over her. She called him god.’
The lawsuit, which Kan has not responded to, alleges that Kan ‘systematically stripped away Stern’s human dignity, free will and self-respect by subjugating Stern to Kan’s total control.’
It reads: ‘Kan seduced Stern to engage in a sexual relationship with him, abused, publicly humiliated, criticized, insulted and derogated Stern, induced Stern to ingest narcotic drugs.’
Kan has not responded to a request for comment by MailOnline.
Before meeting Katsura Kan, Sharon Stern never had a mental health issue in her life.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2618266/EXCLUSIVE-Heartbroken-father-claims-married-daughter-32-driven-suicide-death-dance-cult-leader-sex-slave-plied-mind-bending-drugs.html

The battle for a nation’s soul: How the cult of Santa Muerte has infested Mexico’s drug cartels with gruesome consequences   March 28, 2014 Saint Death … the cult of Santa Muerte has millions of followers
….GRUESOME GANG WORSHIP
IN a country racked by a deadly and protracted drugs war, the adoration of Santa Muerte has taken sinister and gruesome forms.
Father Ernesto Caro simply cannot forget the drug gang hitman who came to be exorcised at his Monterrey church. The cartel member confessed to cutting up the bodies of his victims into pieces and burning others alive. He also told how he enjoyed hearing their screams as he did so. The man, believing himself to be possessed by demons, explained he was devoted to the service of Santa Muerte.
And he is not the only disciple among the murderous and brutal gangs and cartels of Mexico.
“Santa Muerte is being used by all our drug dealers and those linked to these brutal murders. We’ve found that most of them, if not all, follow Santa Muerte,” Father Caro told the BBC.
For men and women dealing daily with death and the threat of death, the attraction of an amoral deity is not surprisingly potent.
“For most of the cartels’ foot soldiers and their gang associates, brutal deaths prove almost certain,” Robert J. Bunker, author and visiting professor at the Strategic Studies Institute in the US, writes in an article published on the FBI website. “Such a form of imminent mortality facing adherents makes the worship of Santa Muerte spiritually dark. The death of someone’s enemies, protection from harm (or, at least, hope for a quick and glorious death), cultivation of a dangerous reputation, and ability to enjoy the benefits of fabulous riches, including the company of beautiful women become paramount.”
The implications of such “dark” worship are terrifyingly clear.
“With the stakes so high, the sacrifices and offerings to Santa Muerte have become primeval and barbaric. Rather than plates of food, beer, and tobacco, in some instances, the heads of victims (and presumably their souls) have served as offerings to invoke powerful petitions for divine intervention,” Bunker says….
For example:
* A powerful criminal figure in Tepito is said to have killed virgins and babies once a year and offered them as sacrifices to gain magical protection;
* Gang members have taken rival cartel members to Santa Muerte shrines and executed them as offerings;
* Police discovered a skeleton dressed as a bride at a Santa Muerte altar in a house used to hold kidnap victims; and
* Authorities found 50 victims of a mass murder in the northern state of Sinaloa, all with tattoos and jewellery depicting Santa Muerte…..
http://www.news.com.au/world/the-battle-for-a-nations-soul-how-the-cult-of-santa-muerte-has-infested-mexicos-drug-cartels-with-gruesome-consequences/story-fndir2ev-1226867231755

describes graphic crimes
Mexico: Knights Templar Drug Cartel Made Recruits Eat Children’s Hearts in Initiation Rite     By Umberto Bacchi March 21, 2014
New members of an infamous Mexican drug cartel were forced to eat children’s hearts as part of a gruesome initiation rite, informers told authorities in the western state of Michoacan.
Officials investigating an organ trafficking ring allegedly run by the Knights Templar cartel said there is evidence the late gang boss Nazario Moreno demanded that recruits proved their loyalty through an act of cannibalism.
“At [an] initiation ceremony they used the organs, in this case the heart, and forced people going through this initiatory process to eat it,” Alfredo Castillo, the federal government’s envoy to Michoacan, told a local radio….
Moreno, who founded La Familia cartel before starting up the Knights Templar, was first declared dead by the Mexican government in December 2010 after a shootout with federal police, even though no corpse was found.
Earlier this month, police arrested Manuel Plancarte Gaspar, another member of the Knights Templar, on organ trafficking charges….
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/mexico-knights-templar-drug-cartel-made-recruits-eat-children-organ-trafficking-initiation-rite-1441266

Two brothers, alleged Ontario polygamist cult ring leaders, face 31 sex and assault charges Rob Gowan, QMI Agency Monday, April 07, 2014
OWEN SOUND, Ont. — Two brothers whose cloistered Ontario church has been accused of being a polygamist cult by former members, have been charged with 31 sex and assault charges.
The charges come as a result of a 16-month police investigation.
The charges come from the claims of seven alleged victims — all members of the Church of Jesus Christ Restored at the time — and some allegations date back to 1978.
Judson William King has been arrested in Oakville, Ont. He faces charges of assault with a weapon, uttering death threats and four counts of assault, and is to appear in court in Owen Sound, Ont., on May 15….
Fred King has been charged with sexual exploitation, sexual interference, three counts of sexual assault, three counts of assault causing bodily harm, five counts of uttering death threats, two counts of assault with a weapon and 10 counts of assault….
In late 2012, the church was thrust into the spotlight when Carol Christie alleged in media interviews she spent close to 40 years brainwashed, under the control of her husband Stan King, then his son Fred.
She wrote a book about her experience called Property: The True Story of a Polygamous Church Wife.
Christie claims she was one of the many wives of self-proclaimed “prophet” Stan King, living on the church grounds — a sprawling former ski resort just south of Owen Sound.
Fred, Stan’s youngest son by his only legal wife, took over the Church of Jesus Christ Restored after his father died in 1986.
She wrote about beatings and rampant sexual abuse. Other former members have recalled similar stories and accused the brothers of using them as slave labour.
Christie said Fred repeatedly told his followers that he would kill anyone who left.
None of the allegations have been proven in court….
http://www.torontosun.com/2014/04/07/two-brothers-alleged-ontario-polygamist-cult-ring-leaders-face-31-sex-and-assault-charges

describes crime
Harris pleads not guilty to 2011 murder charge  Harris trial in late June could take a week and  a half March 31, 2014 by Steve Fry  LYNDON — A defendant charged with using a garrote to kill an older man in 2011 pleaded not guilty to the murder charge Monday in Osage County District Court. The trial of James Paul Harris, 29, will start June 23, and is expected to require 11/2 weeks….
A part of the victim’s skull was discovered March 24, 2012, at a house in rural Carbondale in Osage County. Shirley Johnson, who lives with Jeff Harris, the defendant’s father, testified she was searching for mushrooms when she found a “ball” — the top of Gerety’s skull — and took it inside to show Jeff Harris. He called police. Another witness, Topeka police Detective Brian Hill, testified Bobbie Williams, Harris’ girlfriend, told him during questioning that Harris kept the victim’s head nearby so he could talk to it. Harris was into voodoo and practiced it, Hill said Williams told him.
http://cjonline.com/news/2014-03-31/harris-pleads-not-guilty-2011-murder-charge

Tony Alamo victims awarded $525 million; L.A. properties may be sold By Paresh Dave March 1, 2014  Seven women who alleged they were sexually abused as children by former Christian ministry tycoon Tony Alamo were awarded $525 million by an Arkansas judge this week after an Alamo church failed to respond to a lawsuit. Collecting the largest judgment in Arkansas history, according to one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, will likely require some help from a Los Angeles court, though. Texas attorney David Carter said he would “soon” file paperwork asking that a court here sell at least two Santa Clarita Valley properties connected to Alamo’s operation….
Alamo, 79, has been serving a 175-year prison sentence in Tucson after being convicted in 2009 on 10 counts of sex trafficking minors. Attorney Rogers is appealing the conviction on the grounds that a previous lawyer botched the case.
During the 1960s, Alamo and his wife, Susan, founded a Christian organization in Los Angeles. They bused school dropouts and drug users into their shelters and provided food and anti-Catholic, anti-government religious lectures. The street preaching became a multimillion-dollar empire through a television show, events and merchandise cheaply manufactured by their adherents.
After years of evading arrest, Alamo served four years in prison during the 1990s for not paying about $10 million in federal taxes. His ultimate downfall came in 2008.
Authorities raided his Arkansas headquarters after allegations of child abuse, child pornography and polygamy. Alamo has said puberty signified an age of consent and that a godly man could take multiple wives.
The Arkansas lawsuit names Alamo, Twenty First Century Holiness Tabernacle Church and Jeanne Estate Apartments as defendants. The $525-million default judgment in actual and punitive damages was ordered against the church….
The Alamos…used the threat of hell to keep a tight rein on their Christian community, holding power over matters large and small, from approving clothes to selecting jobs and marriage partners. They built dorms, classrooms and play areas to keep children hooked, lawsuits have alleged….
http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-tony-alamo-arkansas-victims-20140228,0,2016670.story
Loretta Saunders remembered at vigil on Parliament Hill  Murder brings more calls for national inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women  The Canadian Press   Published: March 5, 2014
OTTAWA — It took the disappearance of a cousin to bring Holly Jarrett and her estranged mother together after a year of silence….  Saunders was an honours student at Saint Mary’s University when she disappeared. Two people have been charged with first-degree murder in her death.  One of them, 25-year-old Blake Leggette, appeared recently in a provincial court. The other, Leggette’s 28-year-old girlfriend, Victoria Henneberry, did not appear in court and was instead represented by her lawyer.
In a cruel irony, Saunders was writing a thesis on murdered and missing aboriginal women before she died.  Cheryl Maloney of the Nova Scotia Native Women’s Association, who spoke at the vigil, said she grappled with the question of who, if anyone, should finish Saunders’ work before coming to a realization.  “Maybe it wasn’t up to one person to finish Loretta’s thesis,” she said. “Maybe it was up to all of us as Canadians.”  Maloney and others at the vigil called on the Conservative government to hold a national inquiry into missing and murdered aboriginal women. But while the Conservatives renewed funding to combat violence against aboriginal women and girls in their recent budget, they have so far resisted calls for a formal inquiry. It is estimated there are hundreds of cases of missing and murdered aboriginal women dating back to the 1960s. A United Nations human rights investigator called that statistic disturbing last year during a fact-finding visit to Canada in which he also urged the Conservative government to hold an inquiry…. http://o.canada.com/news/loretta-saunders-remembered-at-vigil-on-parliament-hill/

Loretta Saunders’ roommates charged with 1st-degree murder  Blake Leggette and Victoria Henneberry accused in Halifax student’s death CBC News Posted: Feb 27, 2014 Police have laid first-degree murder charges against the roommates of Loretta Saunders, a Halifax student whose body was found nearly two weeks after she was reported missing. Victoria Henneberry, 28, and Blake Leggette, 25, who had been facing charges of being in possession of a stolen vehicle, were charged Thursday in the slaying of the 26-year-old Saint Mary’s University student….
Yalcin Surkultay, who dated Saunders for 2½ years, told CBC News that when he last saw his girlfriend, she told him she was going to try to collect rent money from her roommates….
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/loretta-saunders-roommates-charged-with-1st-degree-murder-1.2554052

Child Abuse and Trauma Issues

Landmark Civil Rights Action Filed by Campus Rape Victim to Halt New Federal Law  University of Virginia rape victim files suit to stop Campus SaVE Act from undermining federal investigations of UVA’s alleged mishandling of her sexual assault case
A University of Virginia rape victim represented by the Marsh Law Firm has filed a landmark civil rights action to stop a new federal law from undermining pending federal investigations of UVA’s mishandling of a sexual assault case on campus. Two separate cases—each filed as a Petition for a Writ of Mandamus and Equitable Relief—were lodged with the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on Friday, February 21, 2014 and docketed today. The cases are:
Jane Doe v. United States Department of Health and Human Services and Kathleen Sebelius, Civil Action No. 14-0366
Jane Doe v. United States Department of Education and Arne Duncan, Civil Action No. 14-0367
The cases were filed in an effort to halt the Campus SaVE Act—a new federal law that will substantially weaken the rights of sexual assault victims on college campuses guaranteed under Title IX—which is scheduled to take effect on March 7….
One in four to one in five women is sexually assaulted during college in the United States, according to recent studies. Under federal civil rights laws, students are guaranteed the right to an education free from violence and harassment….
http://www.childlaw.us/landmark-civil-rights-action-filed-by-campus-rape-victim-to-halt-new-federal-law/

World E.U. Study: One Third Of E.U. Women Suffer Abuse Kharunya Paramaguru March 5, 2014
One in ten claims to have experienced sexual violence by age of 15
A comprehensive and damning report published Wednesday revealed the “extensive” levels of abuse faced by women across the 28-member states in the European Union. Published by the E.U. Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), the survey of 42,000 women aged 18-74 across the E.U. found a third of women in Europe (62 million) had suffered a physical or sexual assault. 1 in 10 women also said they had experienced some kind of sexual violence from an adult by the time they reached 15. Another 1 in 10 had experienced sexual violence since the age of 15….
http://time.com/12705/study-one-third-of-e-u-women-suffer-abuse/

Researchers Say Super Bowl Sex Trafficking Included Minors – Here & Now
ROBIN YOUNG, HOST:
It’s HERE AND NOW, and our next story may not be appropriate for children. It’s about the first comprehensive research on sex trafficking at the Super Bowl. It’s being released today by researchers in Arizona, site of next year’s Super Bowl, researchers who combed through online sex ads, placed decoy ads and say they identified nearly 2,000 potential sex trafficking victims, including 84 children.
The information was gathered sometimes by former Army intelligence officers using the same type of Internet-sniffing technology used to track militants in Afghanistan. The defense contractor that helped with the research says sex trafficking is a lot like terrorism. It’s a problem that’s hard to see….
ROE-SEPOWITZ: So we find some similarities between what terrorism may look like in our country and what sex trafficking looks like. More than half of the ads that we identified as potential minors were linked to other ads, other girls, other phone numbers. So we actually think that this sex trafficking world is a network, multiple networks, whether they’re gangs, whether they’re organized crime. http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2014/03/06/superbowl-sex-trafficking

Oxford University Press to Publish Book by Professor Ross Cheit February 5, 2014
Longtime Taubman professor Ross Cheit will discuss his new book and the contributions of his many undergraduate research assistants….
What is your book about? The witch-hunt narrative claims that there was a series of child sexual abuse cases in the 1980s and 1990s that were hoaxes and that children are highly suggestible when questioned about possible sexual abuse. The idea that children are highly suggestible is still with us, and the people who believe that use these cases as the evidence….
….After spending weeks reviewing the original transcript of the case, I concluded that there were plenty of reasons for jurors to conclude that the original defendant, Ray Buckey, was guilty. The rest of the case was deeply flawed, and I lay that out in my book. The book is documented to the max. I don’t make any claims that aren’t documented….
What are the policy implications of the book? What’s most worrisome to me is that the witch-hunt narrative unfairly impugns children. The ongoing challenge in this field is, if you ask children a series of open-ended questions about the alleged abuse and don’t get anywhere, then what do you do? I think there are people who are too worried about being criticized for asking leading questions or interviewing a child a second time.
What that leads to are abused kids who don’t disclose. I’ve seen almost no concern or acknowledgement of that issue in the psychology literature, but a lot of people are worried about false convictions. There is also a claim that there are economic motives to find abuse and that federal programs create the incentive to find abuse. I think this is completely wrong-headed. I worry that there are political forces that want to weaken the Child Abuse Prevention and Training Act, get rid of mandatory reporting, and undermine the credibility of front-line professionals, from pediatricians to forensic interviewers, who serve and protect children….
http://www.brown.edu/academics/taubman-center/news/2014/02/oxford-university-press-publish-book-professor-ross-cheit

Panel Discussion: The Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology and the Sexual Abuse of Children Tuesday, April 1, 2014 – 4:00pm – 5:30pm Discussion: The Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology and the Sexual Abuse of Children
A discussion with Brown professor Ross Cheit, author of The Witch Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology, and the Sexual Abuse of Children. Cheit’s book, released this month by Oxford University Press, examines a series of high-profile child sex abuse cases in the 1980s empirically challenges the view that these cases were hoaxes. The book shows how a narrative based on empirically thin evidence became a theory with real social force, and how that theory stood at odds with the reality of child sexual abuse
http://www.brown.edu/academics/taubman-center/events/panel-discussion-witch-hunt-narrative-politics-psychology-and-sexual-abuse-children

The Witch-Hunt Narrative  Politics, Psychology, and the Sexual Abuse of Children  Ross E. Cheit  Oxford University Press   Empirically challenges the view that a series of high-profile cases in the 1980s and early 1990s were hoaxes    Shows how a narrative based on empirically thin evidence became a theory with real social force, and how that theory stood at odds with the reality of child sexual abuse ….But did the new witch hunt narrative accurately represent reality? As Ross Cheit demonstrates in his exhaustive account of child sex abuse cases in the past two and a half decades, purveyors of the witch hunt narrative never did the hard work of examining court records in the many cases that reached the courts throughout the nation. Instead, they treated a couple of cases as representative and concluded that the issue was blown far out of proportion. Drawing on years of research into cases in a number of states, Cheit shows that the issue had not been blown out of proportion at all. In fact, child sex abuse convictions were regular occurrences, and the crime occurred far more frequently than conventional wisdom would have us believe. Cheit’s aim is not to simply prove the narrative wrong, however. He also shows how a narrative based on empirically thin evidence became a theory with real social force, and how that theory stood at odds with a far more grim reality. The belief that the charge of child sex abuse was typically a hoax also left us unprepared to deal with the far greater scandal of child sex abuse in the Catholic Church, which, incidentally, has served to substantiate Cheit’s thesis about the pervasiveness of the problem. In sum, The Witch-Hunt Narrative is a magisterial and empirically powerful account of the social dynamics that led to the denial of widespread human tragedy. http://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-witch-hunt-narrative-9780199931224

Book review: A scholarly, engaging look at ‘witch-hunt’ narratives April 27, 2014 By Anne Grant Special to the Journal “THE WITCH-HUNT NARRATIVE: Politics, Psychology, and the Sexual Abuse of Children,” by Ross E. Cheit. Oxford University Press. 508 pages. $49.95.
Ross E. Cheit’s book begins with the 1983 charges against staff at the McMartin Preschool. The case stretched over seven years, but produced no convictions — only a widespread consensus that it had been a “witch-hunt” and had unfairly targeted the accused. That narrative prevailed until now.
In 1992, Cheit recovered his own memory of sexual abuse in adolescence, more than two decades earlier, at a summer camp. By then, he held a law degree and a professor’s chair at Brown University. He eventually won civil suits against the individual and the institution that had betrayed him.
Cheit found that a single storyline clung tenaciously even when medical evidence showed children had been harmed. In academia, courts and the media, those who should have looked further failed to challenge the popular myth that considers children suggestible, unreliable witnesses to their own abuse. Recognizing that his personal experience could bias him, Cheit closely examined the original evidence and court records in three large childcare sex-abuse cases and dozens of smaller ones — identifying some instances of people falsely accused and many where guilt went unpunished. He recounts evidence with scholarly precision that is emotionally engaging and eminently readable….
http://www.providencejournal.com/features/entertainment/books/20140427-book-review-a-scholarly-engaging-look-at-witch-hunt-narratives.ece

Describing Abusive Behavior as “Young Love” Proponents of the witch-hunt narrative have a particular kind of blindness to real abuse.  Proponents of the witch-hunt narrative have a particular kind of blindness to real abuse. That is, they don’t see sexual abuse in places where it is obvious to others. The book (The Witch-Hunt Narrative) is full of examples where real abuse is described as a false accusation or false conviction by proponents of the narrative. https://blogs.brown.edu/rcheit/2014/04/09/describing-abusive-behavior-as-young-love/#more

In new book, Brown University professor aims to discredit ‘witch-hunt narrative’ of child sexual-abuse cases  March 23, 2014 By Kate Bramson Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE — For decades, a view has persisted that a series of child sexual-abuse cases connected with child-care centers during the 1980s were witch hunts, fueled by social hysteria, that ended in wrongful convictions of many innocent people.
A new book by Brown University professor Ross E. Cheit, “The Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology, and the Sexual Abuse of Children,” explores the cases at the heart of that belief.
After 15 years of research into the history of child sexual-abuse cases, the political science and public policy professor seeks to discredit the “witch-hunt narrative.”
In an interview with The Providence Journal, Cheit said that those who believe this theory ignore even credible charges of child abuse and dismiss medical evidence that children were abused.
“I want to provoke discussion,” he said.
Much of the reason the witch-hunt narrative has prevailed, according to Cheit, is that it’s easier for people to believe that child sexual abuse doesn’t happen because the topic itself is taboo. Cheit cites the work of Dr. Suzanne M. Sgroi, who wrote in 1978 that “the sexual abuse of children is a crime that our society abhors in the abstract but tolerates in reality.”
Communities have been known to rally around people convicted of this crime, Cheit writes.
“We often minimize and deny so as to allow us to avoid seeing things we would rather not see. Turning a blind eye to the sexual abuse of children has a long history in this country.”
According to Cheit, the witch-hunt narrative often includes a “hero,” a journalist perhaps, who helps an innocent person escape a false conviction.
“We love this story,” he said. “My concern is we love it so much even when it isn’t true.”….
http://www.providencejournal.com/breaking-news/content/20140323-in-new-book-brown-university-professor-aims-to-discredit-witch-hunt-narrative-of-child-sexual-abuse-cases.ece

Unlearned Lessons of the McMartin Preschool case
It was the longest criminal trial in American history and it ended without a single conviction. Five people were charged with child sexual abuse based on extremely flimsy evidence. Some parents came to believe outlandish stories about ritual abuse and tunnels underneath the preschool. It is no wonder that the McMartin case, once labeled the largest “mass molestation” case in history, has come to be called a witch-hunt. In a commentary to a Retro Report earlier this month, Clyde Haberman, former Times reporter, repeated the view that the  case was a witch-hunt that spawned a wave of other cases of “dubious provenance.”
But does that description do justice to the facts?
A careful examination of court records reveals that the witch-hunt narrative about the McMartin case is a powerful but not entirely accurate story. For starters, critics have obscured the facts surrounding the origins of the case. Richard Beck, quoted as an expert in the Retro Report story, recently asserted that the McMartin case began when Judy Johnson “went to the police” to allege that her child had been molested.
….But the Manhattan Beach Police did not begin this case on the word of Judy Johnson. Instead, they were moved by the medical evidence of anal trauma on her son. Johnson did not come to the police station on August 12; she went to her family doctor who, after examining her son, referred him to an Emergency Room. That doctor recommended that the boy be examined by a specialist. The pediatric specialist is the one who reported to the Manhattan Beach Police Department that “the victim’s anus was forcibly entered several days ago.”
Although Judy Johnson died of alcohol poisoning in 1986, making her an easy target for those promoting the witch-hunt narrative, there is no evidence that she was “psychotic” three years earlier. A profile in the now-defunct Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, published after Johnson died, made it clear that she was “strong and healthy” in 1983 and that she “jogged constantly and ate health food.” ….
The witch-hunt narrative has replaced any complicated truths about the McMartin case….It wasn’t all a witch-hunt….
http://blogs.brown.edu/rcheit/2014/03/31/unlearned-lessons-of-the-mcmartin-preschool-case/
https://blogs.brown.edu/rcheit/

The Problem of Campus Sexual Assault March 14, 2014 by Alison Kahler
Recently, a friend and fellow University of Chicago alumna showed me an open letter to university president Robert Zimmer demanding that the university reevaluate its policy regarding campus sexual assaults. After reporting an assault by her then-partner and being illegally offered a mediation session by Dean of Students Susan Art, current fourth-year student Olivia Ortiz filed a complaint with the United States Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR), prompting a larger investigation of the university for possible violations of Title IX. In response, a coalition of alumni wrote and circulated the letter in question. I gladly added my name.
Though I am heartbroken to read about my beloved alma mater’s betrayal of sexual assault victims, I am not surprised. Campus sexual assaults are chillingly common, according to the Department of Education’s 2011 Dear Colleague Letter: Sexual Violence Background, Summary, and Fast Facts (found on Marsh Law Firm’s roundup of Title IX resources):
When young women get to college, nearly 20% of them will be victims of attempted or actual sexual assault, as will about 6% of undergraduate men.
And yet despite this reminder of the prevalence of this problem and their responsibilities—when confronted with an incident, colleges all over the country exhibit a pattern of dismissing and covering up sexual assaults….
perpetrators know they can get away with their largely under-reported crimes, and they do so often; according to a report by psychologist David Lisak:
[College rapists] tend to be serial offenders, and most of them commit a variety of different interpersonal offenses. They are accurately and appropriately labeled as predators.
This picture conflicts sharply with the widely-held view that rapes committed on university campuses are typically the result of a basically “decent” young man who, were it not for too much alcohol and too little communication, would never do such a thing. While some campus rapes do fit this more benign view, the evidence points to a far less benign reality, in which the vast majority of rapes are committed by serial, violent predators….  http://www.childlaw.us/the-problem-of-campus-sexual-assault/

Resources to end internet child abuse ‘may be woefully insufficient’ Internet Watch Foundation recruit seven extra staff, but MPs warn that more may be required to improve online safety
Press Association  theguardian.com, Tuesday 18 March 2014 Efforts by the internet industry to eradicate images of child sex abuse may prove “woefully insufficient”, MPs have warned as they called for action to improve online safety. Members of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) – including Google, which contributed £1m – have funded the recruitment of seven extra full-time staff to track down illegal images.
The move last year to more than double the existing staff came amid severe criticism of internet firms for inaction following a number of child murder cases with porn connections. David Cameron has led demands that they develop better protections to prevent such abuse and to prevent children accessing legal adult material…. http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/mar/19/child-sex-abuse-online-insufficient-efforts

Child Abuse: The Deadly Cost of Inattention and Inaction Bruce Lesley  03/26/2014 The Miami Herald series entitled “Innocents Lost” deserves a Pulitzer Prize for its investigation into 477 deaths of children that were a part of the child welfare system in the State of Florida over the past six years. More than 70 percent of the children who died were two years old or younger and completely defenseless. The series reinforces two critical but basic responsibilities that we, as a society, owe children facing abuse and neglect:
First, we must strengthen families by preventing abuse and neglect whenever possible.
Second, we must take swift but thoughtful action that gives children the best possible chance to grow up in a safe, stable, loving and supportive permanent home.
The series also highlights another critical fact: money matters and the lives of our nation’s most vulnerable children cannot be protected on the cheap….
However, as the Miami Herald documents, Florida embraced “family preservation” on the cheap. While the number of children in foster care dropped from 30,200 to 18,185 during a period that featured the Great Recession and increased family stress and difficulties, the state simultaneously and tragically slashed family monitoring and support services, resulting in more children left with substance abusing, neglectful, and violent parents. Tough times are the most important times to protect children, but Florida (and as noted later, the federal government) took the opposite approach during the last few years.
According to Audra D.S. Burch and Carol Marbin Miller of the Miami Herald, while Florida’s overall state spending increased by $10 billion from 2005 to 2013, child welfare funding was cut by the Legislature by $80 million and grew to $100 million after Governor Rick Scott’s vetoes last year. And, while “either drugs or alcohol came up in 323 of the child deaths,” the state also “reduced funding for drug treatment.”
For children, the consequences were tragic. As the Daytona Beach News-Journal concluded, “…the state tried to do it on the cheap… Hundreds of children paid with their lives.”….
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-lesley/child-abuse-the-deadly-cost_b_5029768.html

Mexico finds 370 abandoned immigrant children MEXICO CITY Sat Mar 29, 2014  (Reuters) – In one week, 370 immigrant children, most of them from Central America, were found abandoned in Mexico, after traffickers promised to take them to the United States but left them to their own devices after being paid thousands of dollars, authorities said.
Almost half of them, 163 children under the age of 18, were found traveling alone, Mexico’s National Migration Institute (INM) said in a statement.
Each month, thousands of immigrants, mostly from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, attempt to emigrate to the United States, crossing several borders in the process, despite the threat from drug gangs that kidnap, murder and rape women.
The children told federal migration agents that their ‘guides’ abandoned them after accepting $3,000 to $5,000 in payments, INM said….
In the week the children were found, a total of 1,895 immigrants from various countries were detected in Mexico from countries as far away as Somalia, Japan and Syria, among others.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/29/us-mexico-immigration-idUSBREA2S0KE20140329

Children of serial killer Robert Pickton’s victims will split $4.9M in compensation fund
THE CANADIAN PRESS March 18, 2014  VANCOUVER — A man whose mother was the last to be reported missing in connection with serial killer Robert Pickton says $4.9 million in government compensation for the 98 children of women who disappeared provides some recognition for decades of pain.
“It’s been a long battle to get this far,” Troy Boen, 28, said Tuesday after the federal, B.C. and Vancouver governments announced the fund that will provide $50,000 for each of the children of 67 missing and murdered women, mostly Pickton’s victims.
Boen’s mother, Yvonne Marie Boen, went missing on March 16, 2001, soon after they’d planned to spend spring break together. He called her back repeatedly, but there was no answer.
A 2012 report from a public inquiry that outlined years of police failures made 63 recommendations, including compensating the offspring of the women who’d disappeared up to 2002, when Pickton was arrested.
Boen’s DNA was later found on Pickton’s pig farm in Port Coquitlam, where the killer lured vulnerable women from Vancouver’s impoverished Downtown Eastside….
http://www.theprovince.com/news/Children+serial+killer+Robert+Pickton+victims+will+split/9631594/story.html

3 Cognitive Strategies That Deny, Discount, & Dismiss Torture: How Individuals, Groups, Governments, & Cultures Enable Torturers  Kenneth S. Pope, Ph.D., ABPP
1. Reflexively Dismissing All Evidence As Questionable, Incomplete, Misleading, False, Or In Some Other Way Inadequate
Denying and enabling torture require nothing more than refusing to acknowledge evidence that torture occurred or that specific individuals were involved.
Governments, groups, cultures, or individuals need only reflexively dismiss all evidence as questionable, incomplete, misleading, false, or in some other way inadequate….
2. Using Euphemism, Abstraction, and other Linguistic Transformations….
3. Turning Away: “I’m not involved,” “There is nothing I can do about it,” “I have no authority, jurisdiction, power, or influence,” “This is no concern of mine,” etc….  http://kspope.com/torvic/torture-abst.php

Bills would change child abuse reporting requirements in Pa., defining who reports and how
By Charles Thompson April 04, 2014  ….But lawyers and non-lawyers appear to have reached a compromise on what may be the biggest upgrade yet to Pennsylvania’s child protection laws coming out of the Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal. Final votes are expected at the Capitol next week on bills that redesign mandatory reporting requirements in cases of suspected child abuse. Lawmakers have already modernized the definition of abuse, and approved measures that strengthen law enforcement and child welfare response. But, as some child protection advocates note, the best system in the world doesn’t get activated without a report. “Without a report (of suspected child abuse)… the cavalry doesn’t come running to ask that child if they’re OK,” explained Rep. Todd Stephens, a Montgomery County Republican who played a key role in late-stage negotiations on the bills. The new requirements delineate 14 categories of mandated reporters, including all school employees, all staff at child care and medical facilities, librarians and even – in a Pennsylvania first – volunteers who work regularly in youth sports or other activities like church groups, Boy Scouts or dance companies…. http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2014/04/bills_beefing_up_child_abuse_r.html

Pa. bill expands list of those required to report child abuse  By Oscar Gamble 04/11/14
NORRISTOWN — A bill sponsored by Rep. Todd Stephens to expand the list of professionals required to report suspected child abuse and increase penalties for those who shirk the obligation has unanimously passed the Pennsylvania Legislature and is headed to Gov. Tom Corbett’s desk.
House Bill 436, the Child Protection Act, is a companion to Senate Bill 21, sponsored by Sen. Kim Ward, R-39th Dist., which includes Stephens’ language expanding and clarifying the list of professionals required to report abuse….
The bill requires child care providers and school personnel at every educational level, religious leaders, doctors and health care professionals, social and emergency service workers, librarians, law enforcement and the lawyers and independent contractors representing all of these entities to report suspected cases of child abuse or neglect. It also imposes stiffer penalties for noncompliance.“I think the penalties will get people’s attention,” said Stephens. “In some cases, not reporting (child abuse) will be a felony … In every case, it’s in the best interest of organizations that care for children to report instances of child abuse”….
http://www.pottsmerc.com/government-and-politics/20140411/pa-bill-expands-list-of-those-required-to-report-child-abuse

New Pa. laws redefine who must report child abuse By MOLLIE DURKIN 04/16/2014  Pennsylvania has clarified its definition of who is required to report suspected child abuse.
Gov. Tom Corbett Tuesday signed into law four pieces of legislation that, in short, expand the definition of mandatory reporters, streamline the reporting process, increase penalties for mandatory reporters who fail to do so and provide protections from employment discrimination for filing a report in good faith. The legislation happened to be signed in April, which is Child Abuse Prevention  Month.
The new law: Effective Dec. 31, the new definition of a mandatory reporter includes anyone who comes in contact, or interacts, with a child or is directly responsible for the care, supervision, guidance or training of a child.
http://www.yorkdispatch.com/breaking/ci_25581205/new-pa-laws-redefine-who-must-report-child

Bill changes requirements for reporting child abuse  By Kristen Doerschner  Sunday, May 11, 2014
It took nine years and a national scandal for a bill that strengthens child abuse reporting requirements for school employees to make its way through the Legislature. The bill — which cleared the House on March 18 and the Senate Wednesday — was first introduced in 2005 by Sen. Wayne D. Fontana, D-42, Pittsburgh. Fontana, determined to see the bill become law, said he has re-introduced the bill every session since then. The bill was presented to Gov. Tom Corbett Thursday, and, after it is signed, it will take effect Dec. 31. Two of the major changes regard who is required to report suspected abuse to the authorities and what types of injuries can be investigated. School employees and anyone who provides a school-sponsored program, activity or service will be required to report suspect child abuse directly to the Department of Public Welfare’s ChildLine and to their school administrator.
http://www.timesonline.com/news/local_news/bill-changes-requirements-for-reporting-child-abuse/article_b250587e-3076-57bf-a883-c3d2744d9b58.html

Former child star discusses sex abuse in Hollywood BY JASON NARK, Daily News Staff Writer April 10, 2014 ….Adults in the Hollywood system and his own family abused him mentally and sexually, he says, at a time when he was one of the world’s biggest child stars. He’s only recently figured out how to defeat these real-life terrors. “It’s all about communication,” Feldman said in an interview with the Daily News this week. “Victims need to feel they can open up and express themselves in these situations.” Feldman opened up about his own abuse in Coreyography, a memoir published in October that details the California native’s quick rise from television commercials to feature films, along with his often-rocky friendship with fellow troubled child actor Corey Haim, who died in 2010, and Michael Jackson, whom he first met on the set of “Goonies.” One reviewer described the book as “unflinchingly bleak.” “I had a very rough childhood,” Feldman said. “But when I was on the set and working with my peers, in films like ‘Goonies,’ I made deep bonds I still carry today. I try to look back on most of it in a good and positive light.”….
In Coreyography, Feldman claims he was sexually abused by men in his circles, including his own employees. They would often give him drugs before, during and after, and he developed addictions before he turned 18.  “I was just trying to depress those feelings,” he said. “It’s fairly common for victims to become addicts.”  Feldman didn’t identify his alleged abusers because the statute of limitations ran out years ago, but he said at least one is a well-known Hollywood figure. Victims often recall the abuse decades after it happened, when memories are jarred loose by sobriety or therapy, and Feldman said abusers shouldn’t get a pass just because of the calendar…. http://articles.philly.com/2014-04-10/news/49035172_1_corey-feldman-goonies-crime-victims

Bryan Singer sex abuse accuser names three more Hollywood bigwigs in lawsuits Michael Egan III, 31, claims ex-NBC Entertainment head Garth Ancier forced him to have oral sex and both former Disney exec David Neuman and Broadway producer Gary Goddard also engaged in inappropriate behavior with him as a minor in the ’90s.  BY Nancy Dillon NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Monday, April 21, 2014  The Nevada actor who publicly accused “X-Men” director Bryan Singer of sexually abusing him when he was 15 named three other Hollywood figures on Monday and said they too preyed on him during his teenage years. Michael Egan III, 31, filed new federal lawsuits on Monday that accuse Garth R. Ancier, Gary Wayne Goddard and David Alexander Neuman of sexually assaulting him when he was as a minor in the late ’90s.
Egan and his lawyer, Jeff Herman, who previously represented victims in the molestation lawsuits against “Sesame Street” puppeteer Kevin Clash, said the three men were allegedly part, along with Singer, of a “sordid sex ring” that preyed on teenage boys seeking stardom in Tinseltown. They allegedly attended “notorious parties” in Los Angeles and Hawaii, where underage boys were “groomed” to be sexually victimized and plied with drugs, alcohol and gifts — and sometimes subjected to violence, according to Egan and his lawyer. Efforts to reach the three men for comment were not immediately successful….
Egan filed a separate federal lawsuit last week against the “X-Men” director, claiming that Singer repeatedly sexually abused him when he was a vulnerable teen in the late ’90s. The accusations include forced sodomy. Singer has denied the allegations, and his lawyer raising the possibility of a counter suit….
http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/bryan-singer-sex-abuse-accuser-names-hollywood-bigwigs-lawsuits-article-1.1764009

Bryan Singer Accuser — Alleged Sex Abuse Victim Accuses 3 More Hollywood Honchos 4/21/2014  BY TMZ STAFF  The man who has sued “X-Men” director Bryan Singer — claiming he was sexually assaulted when he was 15 — has just filed lawsuits against 3 other Hollywood big wigs, also claiming sexual assault.
The 3 men named in the new lawsuit are Garth Ancier, David Neuman and Gary Goddard.
Ancier has a slew of hits under his belt, including The Ricki Lake Show, which he created.  He headed up the Fox entertainment group and produced 21 Jump Street, Married … with Children, The Simpsons and In Living Color.  He also developed Home Improvement at Disney.  And at NBC he put The West Wing on the air.
Neuman is the former president of Disney TV.  Goddard produced off-Broadway shows.
According to the new lawsuits, Ancier sexually abused Egan numerous times by sodomizing him, forcing oral sex and fondling him — when he was 15 at an Encino estate.   The suit goes on to allege Ancier sexually abused Egan in Hawaii 2 years later.
The suit against Goddard and Neuman are similar — alleging they were part of a Hollywood sex ring, giving Egan alcohol and drugs and sexually assaulted him at the Encino estate and in Hawaii….
The state of Hawaii has allowed alleged victims of sexual assault to sue, even if the statute of limitations has long since expired — but the deadline for filing is Thursday.
http://www.tmz.com/2014/04/21/michael-egan-press-conference-hollywood-sex-ring-lawsuit-bryan-singer
Man claims he witnessed Dana Bradley murder  Tara Bradbury and Glen Whiffen Published on March 15, 2014 RCMP investigate, inform him no new evidence found  Dana Bradley’s body was arranged in burial fashion by her killer in an area of alder bushes and trees off an old dirt road, away from the eyes of the city on a cold and quiet December evening many years ago. One of the killer’s last acts at the scene was to tuck her school books carefully under her arm, as in some bizarre act of kindness when, sometime earlier, the monster in him had raged and he had brutally beat her about the head and robbed her of her life….
He said he saw the savageness in the killer that evening, claims he witnessed the horrific murder and the events following it that night. As a child, he had known the man well. Suffering from his own type of hell with him, Robert says his memories from that day and night were long repressed, along with many other terrible memories from those years. More than two-and-a-half years ago, after he decided to part ways with booze and take his chances without it, he says his mind healed and the memories surfaced — first of being sexually abused at the hands of the man, then of the murder….
Robert says the RCMP first met with him on Dec. 14, 2011 — the 30th anniversary of Dana’s murder.  According to an RCMP document, the investigation into Robert’s tip continued for 16 months.
The RCMP subsequently informed Robert that none of the avenues related to his tip provided any new evidence to support criminal charges. In March 2013, the RCMP asked Robert to meet with Dr. Peter Collins, an expert in the field of forensic psychiatry. “Subsequent to that meeting, you were advised by Dr. Collins that you were not suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and recovered memories, but rather that you were experiencing false memory syndrome,” the document notes.
Robert complained to the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP about the way investigators handled his information. He alleged the RCMP relied on false memory syndrome to make the decision to dismiss his complaint. He also pointed out that false memory syndrome is not recognized in the medical community….
At the same time, the RCMP informed Robert the investigation into his complaint about being sexually abused by the man in the early 1980s had concluded without corroborating evidence to support charges….

Looking back, Robert said the man probably wanted him to go along as a cover, in case he was seen, so that he could say he was taking him to his mother and father. This time, Robert noted, the man didn’t attempt to drive up the dirt road but stopped on the side of Maddox Cove Road and walked up to where the body was. “He was looking for his jacket — he didn’t have his jacket on — and he had gotten the booster cables,” Robert said. “So while I was left in the car, there was a car that drove by. He told me that if anyone stops, (to say) he left his new chainsaw up in the woods.” As outlined in previous media reports, a Shea Heights couple driving north on Maddox Cove Road that night — between midnight and 1 a.m. — noticed a car matching the suspect vehicle parked on the side of the road. They said a passenger side door of the car was open and the dome light was illuminated. They also saw a man standing near the woods. They reported he had no jacket, despite the cold….
They then drove back to the man’s house, where Robert held a work light while the man washed the trunk of the car using cleaning supplies. “He cleaned out the trunk and then he got me in the backseat of the car and had another go (sexual assault) at me,” Robert said. “And then he brought me home.”….
The man Robert describes had been a close friend of his parents in the early 1980s. In the 1990s, he was convicted of sexually abusing children and served time in prison. The time period of those offences is the same time frame Robert alleges he was abused by the man and Dana’s murder occurred….
http://www.thetelegram.com/News/Local/2014-03-15/article-3650234/Man-claims-he-witnessed-Dana-Bradley-murder/1
http://www.thetelegram.com/News/Local/2014-03-15/article-3650234/Man-claims-he-witnessed-Dana-Bradley-murder/2

‘The guy is the real thing’  Tara Bradbury and Glen Whiffen Published on March 17, 2014
Doctor says man’s story of Dana Bradley murder shouldn’t be written off as false memory syndrome
Part 2 in a three-part series
Good memories from childhood are often recalled fondly. Bad memories, not so much. But what if the memories are so terrible, so horrible, it’s unbearable to live with them?….
He says he saw her murderer sexually assault and kill her by hitting her in the head with a tire iron and that he was there, crying, when the killer laid her out in burial fashion among the trees off an old dirt road just outside the city.
Robert’s relates these memories in spine-tingling detail — how he screamed and begged the man, a close friend of his family, not to leave the body in the winter cold overnight, and of being forced to hold a lamp in the dark as the killer later cleaned out the car trunk.
His throat closes and his chest hurts at times when he recalls his own abuse at the hands of the same man — a man who was convicted in the 1990s of sexually abusing other children, and served time in prison.
Robert would have gone to the police long ago if he had remembered any of what he had seen and experienced.
Now a successful businessman, husband and father, Robert describes always looking back on his childhood fondly, though he admits he had always had a hole, a big blank spot, in his memory.
He drank from the time he was 13 until he was 35, when, he says, the booze caught up with him.
After quitting drinking, he was driving home one day in 2011 when he suddenly began drowning in a wave of memories, which rushed in, bubbling and swirling, to fill the hole.
“I was all alone, and the first memory of the sexual abuse came back, and it came back like a punch in the stomach,” Robert said….
The RCMP investigated Robert’s information for 16 months, then informed him none of the avenues related to his tip had turned up any new evidence. As part of their investigation, police had asked Robert to meet with Dr. Peter Collins, an expert in forensic psychiatry.
According to a police document, Collins advised Robert he was not suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but was experiencing false memory syndrome.
Not a recognized psychiatric disorder, false memory syndrome is used to describe a condition in which a person is affected by memories which aren’t true, but which they strongly believe. The term was developed in the United States by Peter and Pamela Freyd, who also founded the False Memory Syndrome Foundation in 1992….
Dr. Hugh Mirolo is the province’s only neuropsychiatrist and has been declared an expert witness in the courts in the area of neuropsychiatry. The Telegram asked him to meet with Robert, and the doctor believes he is telling the truth, especially since Robert experienced a panic attack and flashback while telling him his story.
“It would be pretty damn difficult for a guy to make that up, and for me to buy it,” said Mirolo, who had Robert’s permission to share his opinions with The Telegram.
“If he is an actor, he is a very, very good actor. He deserves an Oscar.”
Robert’s reaction was consistent with experiences Mirolo has witnessed in the past as a doctor in the United States, working with war veterans. Post-traumatic stress disorder can cause flashbacks that bring them right back to the time and place of a memory so they are reliving it instead of simply recalling it, Mirolo said….
There is a tendency for the brain to repress things that are traumatic, the doctor explained, and it’s as basic as the pleasure principle: we go towards things that are pleasurable and avoid things that aren’t.
“When you have PTSD or (have witnessed) gory events, things like that, those things can be blocked,” Mirolo explained.
“The blockage is not foolproof; things can trigger it. The same goes for regular childhood memories. When I go to my office in the summer and they’re mowing the lawn outside, I remember the house in the country where my dad used to mow the lawn. That smell brings me back in time. This is the same sort of thing.”….
Mirolo doesn’t mince words when asked if he feels Robert was dismissed unfairly by the police, when it comes to false memory syndrome.
“Yes. Unfairly and too fast,” he said. “This guy is the real thing. He has been a victim more than once….
http://www.northernpen.ca/News/Local/2014-03-17/article-3651754/%26lsquo%3BThe-guy-is-the-real-thing%26rsquo%3B/1

‘There’s nothing left I can do,’ says man convinced he witnessed murder Tara Bradbury and Glen Whiffen  Published on March 18, 2014 ….Commission interim chair Ian McPhail wrote in the final report that the forensic psychiatrist’s diagnosis of false memory syndrome didn’t play a role in the attention given to the investigation, and wasn’t the basis for the investigators’ dismissal of the tip.
“I emphasize that, given its place in the investigation, the psychiatric assessment was not conducted to determine whether (Robert) was lying about his memories, which would have impacted the investigation, but rather to determine what the appropriate degree of reliance on those memories would and could be. There is no suggestion in the available material that (Robert) was deceitful.”
Robert told The Telegram Monday he is surprised by what he said is a “sudden and unexpected de-emphasizing” by the police of forensic psychiatrist Peter Collins’ diagnosis.
“Dr. Collins applied for a temporary licence to practice in Newfoundland so he could deliver his false memory syndrome message, and the RCMP could close my tip that very same day,” Robert said. “He appeared to be very important to investigators at the time.
“Things could be much further along if only they had given me the benefit of the doubt.”
When asked how he feels about the lack of evidence turned up by the police in their investigation into his memories, Robert is quick to respond.
“I don’t think they looked hard enough,” he said. “I think there were a lot of investigational techniques not used. I think they focused on trying to discredit me, rather than try to find evidence. It was a shallow investigation.”….
According to a police document Collins, an expert in forensic psychiatry, advised Robert he was not suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but was experiencing false memory syndrome, a term used to describe a condition in which a person is affected by memories that aren’t true, but which they strongly believe.
The Telegram asked local neuropsychiatrist Dr. Hugh Mirolo, an accredited expert in the courts in the area of neuropsychiatry, to meet with Robert and share his opinions. Mirolo believes Robert is genuine, and told The Telegram he believes the RCMP dismissed him too quickly and unfairly….
http://www.northernpen.ca/News/Regional/2014-03-18/article-3653169/%26lsquoThere%26rsquos-nothing-left-I-can-do%2C%26rsquo-says-man-convinced-he-witnessed-murder/1

Disturbing Study Finds Women Actually Think Sexual Violence is Normal By Viola Knowles ,  RYOT News April 15, 2014 Apparently women thinking sexual abuse is normal is the new normal. A study to be published in Gender & Society finds that young women assume being harassed, assaulted and abused is simply something everyone experiences.
Sadly, statistics show us that they’re not exactly wrong. Love Is Respect reports that one in three teens in the U.S. will experience some form of abuse from a dating partner, and one quarter of high school girls will be victims of sexual abuse. One in four college girls will be the victims of rape or attempted rape. This doesn’t include the one in three grown women who will be raped or beaten in her lifetime. The fact that these are no longer just stats, but a way of thinking for women, shows that the time to take action is now. Women in leadership are working hard to bring attention to these atrocities, like Angelina Jolie speaking out about sexual violence against women and children in conflict. http://www.ryot.org/women-think-sexual-violence-normal/642849

Normalizing Sexual Violence   Young Women Account for Harassment and Abuse  Heather R. Hlavka
Marquette University, USA Despite high rates of gendered violence among youth, very few young women report these incidents to authority figures. This study moves the discussion from the question of why young women do not report them toward how violence is produced, maintained, and normalized among youth…. http://gas.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/02/28/0891243214526468.full

Over 100 ‘Human Trafficking’ Victims Rescued
Sky News – Thu, Mar 20, 2014 More than 100 people, suspected of being victims of a human trafficking gang, have been rescued from a house in Houston, Texas. When officers opened the door to the property they found “a large, large group of people, some sitting on top of one another, in very confined spaces”. A spokesman for the Houston Police Department said dozens of the victims were dressed only in underwear and were sitting in filthy conditions surrounded by bin bags full of old clothes. They had been kept in a number of small rooms with access to just one toilet and no hot water. Police made the discovery during a search for a 24-year-old woman and her two children who had been reported missing by relatives…. Five men have been arrested in connection with the discovery. https://uk.news.yahoo.com/over-100-human-trafficking-victims-rescued-011448372.html

National Statistics on Child Abuse   In 2012, an estimated 1,640 children died from abuse and neglect in the United States. In the same year, Children’s Advocacy Centers around the country served over 286,000 child victims of abuse, providing victim advocacy and support to these children and their families. In 2013, this number was over 294,000.
2012 NATIONAL ABUSE STATISTICS
An estimated 686,000 children were victims of abuse and neglect (unique instances).
51 states reported approximately 3.8 million children received preventative services from Child Protective Services agencies in the United States.
Children younger than one year had the highest rate of victimization of 21.9 per 1,000 children in the national population of the same age.
Of the children who experienced maltreatment or abuse, over 75% suffered neglect; more than 15% suffered physical abuse; and just under 10% suffered sexual abuse.
Approximately 80% of reported child fatalities as a result of abuse and neglect were caused by one or more of the child victim’s parents….
http://www.nationalchildrensalliance.org/NCANationalStatistics

India’s child maids face slavery, abuse and sometimes rape By Simon Denyer, Published: January 19, 2013 ….Every year, hundreds of thousands of girls are trafficked from rural India to work as domestic servants in middle-class homes in India’s fast-growing urban areas. They are expected to work at least 15 hours a day for food, lodging and salaries well below the legal minimum monthly wage of about $125. Many end up cut off from their families, abused and treated like slaves. Some are sexually assaulted.
….“The trafficking of young children, especially girls, under the garb of placement agencies is the biggest organized crime in India today. And the worst part is, it is right there in the open, in our homes, and yet invisible,” said Bhuwan Ribhu of the child rights group Bachpan Bachao Andolan.
….But the law is widely flouted, said Ribhu, who added that on rare occasions police carry out “rescue operations” of underage servants after complaints from parents or activists.
“Almost all of the domestic maids are either minors, or started work as maids before they were 18,” Ribhu said.
There has never been a systematic attempt to determine the scale of the problem. The government says 5 million children are employed in India, but activists say the real number could be 10 times that. A senior official at India’s Home Affairs Ministry, which oversees the police, estimated that as many as 4 million children work in domestic service nationwide and that up to 4,000 placement agencies operate in New Delhi and its suburbs alone.
But the official, who insisted on anonymity to speak candidly, said it was often hard to get his fellow bureaucrats to take the issue seriously because so many of them employ children at home….
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/india-turns-blind-eye-to-trafficking-rape-of-child-maids/2013/01/19/3f7ec544-5e73-11e2-9940-6fc488f3fecd_story.html

Almost one-third of Canadian adults have experienced child abuse Psychology & Psychiatry  April 22, 2014  Almost one-third of adults in Canada have experienced child abuse—physical abuse, sexual abuse or exposure to intimate partner (parents, step-parents or guardians) violence in their home. As well, child abuse is linked to mental disorders and suicidal ideation (thoughts) or suicide attempts, found an article published in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).
Researchers looked at data from 23 395 people from across Canada who participated in the 2012 Canadian Community Health Survey: Mental Health. The participants were 18 years or older and were representative of people living in the 10 provinces….
According to the study, 32% of adult Canadians experienced child abuse, with physical abuse the most common (26%), followed by sexual abuse (10%) and exposure to intimate partner violence (8%). Men were more likely to have been physically abused (31% v. 21% in women) and had a higher rate of any abuse (34% v. 30%). Sexual abuse was more common in women (14% v. 6% in men) as was exposure to intimate partner violence (9% v. 7%) as children. People between 35 and 64 years of age were more likely than those aged 18 to 34 years to report having been abused as a child.
“All 3 types of child abuse were associated with all types of interview-diagnosed mental disorders, self-reported mental conditions, suicide ideation [thoughts of suicide] and suicide attempts in models adjusting for sociodemographic variables,” write the authors.
Drug abuse or dependence, suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts remained associated with all types of child abuse even in the most adjusted models. The least severe type of physical abuse (being slapped on the face, head or ears or hit or spanked with something hard) showed a strong association with all mental conditions in models adjusting for sociodemographic variables. Exposure to more than one type of abuse increased the odds of having a mental condition.
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-04-one-third-canadian-adults-experienced-child.html

Child abuse and mental disorders in Canada CMAJ April 22, 2014 doi: 10.1503/cmaj.131792
Tracie O. Afifi, Harriet L. MacMillan, Michael Boyle, Tamara Taillieu, Kristene Cheung, Jitender Sareen ….Results: The prevalence of any child abuse was 32% (individual types ranged from 8% to 26%). All types of child abuse were associated with all mental conditions, including suicidal ideation and suicide attempts, after adjustment for sociodemographic variables (adjusted odds ratios ranged from 1.4 to 7.9). We found a dose-response relation, with increasing number of abuse types experienced corresponding with greater odds of mental conditions. Associations between child abuse and attention deficit disorder, suicidal ideation and suicide attempts showed stronger effects for women than men.
http://www.cmaj.ca/content/early/2014/04/22/cmaj.131792

Another 5-4 decision, but not another left-right split By Jonathan H. Adler   April 23, 2014
Today the U.S. Supreme Court decided Paroline v. United States, concerning the limits of restitution victims of child pornography may seek under 18 U.S.C. section 2259.  Splitting 5-4, the Court held that restitution is proper (indeed, mandatory) to the extent that the defendant’s own conduct was responsible for harms to the victim….
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/04/23/another-5-4-decision-but-not-another-left-right-split/
The decision is available here: http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/13pdf/12-8561_7758.pdf

The crime victim’s reaction to today’s Supreme Court decision By Paul Cassell April 23, 2014
The Supreme Court has just released its decision in the Paroline case earlier this morning…..the Supreme Court’s split-the-difference ruling promises her that she will receive full restitution “someday.”  I just wonder how far in the future that someday will be.  The battle for full restitution will now shift to Congress, which will have the last word on how restitution in these cases should be awarded. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/04/23/the-crime-victims-reaction-to-todays-supreme-court-decision/

The staggering cost of silence: child abuse victims and stolen innocence By Jerome Elam, Michael Reagan April 29, 2014 ….The CDC estimates that 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys are sexually abused before the age of 18. Worldwide 550 million children are survivors of child abuse according to the Center for Advanced Studies in Child Welfare. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reports that there are currently 617,000 registered sex offenders in the United States, and typically 100,000 of those are unaccounted for. Other pedophiles are not on records or in databases. Pedophiles like Jerry Sandusky walk silently among us, and Sandusky showed us just how well they disguise themselves. April is National Child Abuse Awareness month and it is an important time for everyone to reacquaint himself or herself with the information that is necessary to recognize the signs of child abuse and stop predators before another child suffers.
Research has shown that an average victim of child sex abuse has to tell at least seven adults before being believed.
According to the Journal for the American Medical Association only 1 in 20 cases of child abuse are reported.
It is critically important that every parent and adult responsible for the care of a child educate and empower themselves with the knowledge to stop predators.
If we work together we can stop the stolen innocence of our children and that of others by spending a few hours educating ourselves….
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/04/29/staggering-cost-silence-child-abuse-victims-and-stolen-innocence/

Child sex abuse is a taboo topic for some parents By Kelly Wallace, CNN Wed April 30, 2014 ….Jill Starishevsky, a New York City assistant district attorney in the child abuse and sex crimes bureau and author of the book “My Body Belongs to Me,” shared a story about an upper-middle-class New York family, a story that still gives me chills two years after I first heard it.
A mom goes shopping, leaving her 11-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son home. The daughter is miserable and moping around the house so much that her brother asks her, “What’s your problem? Why are you so sad all the time?” said Starishevsky. He then says something like, “It’s not like Grandpa … is boinking you.” At that moment, the 11-year-old realizes that her grandfather, her mother’s father, is doing to her brother what he has been doing to her for the past three years. The children decide they need to tell their mother when she gets home.
….Many of us aren’t talking to our children about sexual abuse, even when the statistics make it crystal clear why we should be: As many as one in four girls and one in six boys is sexually abused before their 18th birthday, according to research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
….So, in between prosecuting sex crimes and mothering her three children, Starishevsky wrote a straightforward book targeting 3- to 8-year-olds with rhymes and simple illustrations. Getting a publisher turned out to be easier than expected, but there was one problem.
In the book, Starishevsky doesn’t just allude to the abuse. She includes it.
“My uncle’s friend came over and sat down next to me, and touched me in that place that no one else can see,” she writes, with illustrations of a fully clothed child sitting near the uncle’s friend, who is also fully clothed. You don’t see the abuse but it’s clear it just happened.
The publisher wanted that line to come out, according to Starishevsky. “They said, ‘Well we don’t think parents would like the book with the line in. You have to take it out. Allude to it but you can’t actually say it.’ ”
Starishevsky refused and the publisher backed out, so she self-published the book in 2009, and eventually got the attention of Oprah Winfrey’s television producers. She appeared in a segment on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in 2011….
http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/29/living/sexual-abuse-talking-to-kids-parents/

NEW LAWS IN TURKEY AGAINST CHILD ABUSE by AA 30.04.2014 ANKARA — A series of draft laws covering child and sexual abuse are set to be made public, Turkey’s family and social policies minister has said….  The bill will increase the punishment for sexual crimes committed against adults as well as children. Forced marriages penalized Under the proposed laws, those who commit abuse would undergo psychiatric or chemical treatment to “set the perpetrator to normal mode,” Minister Islam said.
The bills will also ensure that any perpetrator who has committed a sexual crime against children is forced to stay away from them for the rest of their lives. Another draft law will also penalize forced marriages. Islam said that children under the compulsory 4+4+4 education system (four years of primary education at a first level, four at second and four at secondary education) would not be allowed to enter a forced marriage. A 12-year-old child will be obliged to go to school until she is 18 and the education system will help prevent forced marriages, she added.
http://www.dailysabah.com/nation/2014/04/30/new-laws-in-turkey-against-child-abuse

Dissociative Identity Disorder and Fantasy Proneness: A Positron Emission Tomography Study of Authentic and Enacted Dissociative Identity States A. A. T. Simone Reinders PhD, Antoon T. M. Willemsen PhD  PET and SPECT in Psychiatry 2014, pp 411-431
Abstract
Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is a disputed psychiatric disorder. Research findings and clinical observations suggest that DID involves an authentic mental disorder related to factors such as traumatisation and disrupted attachment. A competing view indicates that DID is due to fantasy proneness, suggestibility, suggestion and role-playing. Here, we investigate whether dissociative identity state-dependent psychobiological features in DID can be induced in high- or low-fantasy-prone individuals by instructed and motivated role-playing and suggestion. Differences in neural activation patterns were found between the DID patients and both high- and low-fantasy-prone controls. That is, the identity states in DID were not convincingly enacted by DID simulating controls. The findings indicate that DID does not have a sociocultural (e.g. iatrogenic) origin.
http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-40384-2_16

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