Issue 127 – March 2016

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: https://ritualabuse.us/

Issue 127 – March 2016

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 secretive 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 2016 – All rights reserved.   No reproduction of any material without written permission from the editor and individual authors.

The 2016 Annual Ritual Abuse, Secretive Organizations and Mind Control Conference August 12 – 13, 2016   Windsor Locks, CT  https://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/

Child and Ritual Abuse Conference Presentations 2014 and 2015

The Battle to Stop Ritual Abuse by Neil Brick
https://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/2015-conference/the-battle-to-stop-ritual-abuse/
http://neilbrick.com/articles/the-battle-to-stop-ritual-abuse/

Overcoming Mind Control: Keys to Recovery  Alison Miller’s conference presentation outline from the 2014 Annual Ritual Abuse, Secretive Organizations and Mind Control Conference
https://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/2014-conference/overcoming-mind-control-keys-to-recovery

Cult and Ritual Abuse  Dr. Randall Noblitt conference powerpoint from the 2014 Annual Ritual Abuse, Secretive Organizations and Mind Control Conference
https://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/2014-conference/cult-and-ritual-abuse/

Doing the right thing and getting stronger at the same time, a survivor’s path to recovery and helping others by Neil Brick
https://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/2014-conference/doing-the-right-thing-and-getting-stronger-at-the-same-time-a-survivors-path-to-recovery-and-helping-others/
http://neilbrick.com/articles/doing-the-right-thing-and-getting-stronger-at-the-same-time-a-survivors-path-to-recovery-and-helping-others/

The Survivorship Ritual Abuse and Child Abuse Conference – May 2016
Survivorship will be having their annual conference on May 7 – 8, 2016 at the Executive Inn & Suite – Oakland, CA   Information about the conference is at:  https://survivorship.org/survivorship-ritual-abuse-and-child-abuse-2016-conference/
Speakers will include:  Wendy Hoffman, Dr. Alison Miller, Dr. Steve Frankel, Neil Brick, Dr. Randy Noblitt, Pam Perskin and others.  Questions about the conference can be sent to: conference2016@survivorship.org

This issue includes information on: Deputy Chief Officer of Jersey’s police force, Lenny Harper, Haut de la Garenne, Lord Janner, historic child sex abuse case, Jonathan King child abuse probe, Bill Cosby, Andrea Constand,  Chloe Goins, Judy Huth, Christian leader Bill Gothard, Institute in Basic Life Principles, Catholic Church,   priest sex abuse lawsuits, Roman Catholic Church, Pennsylvania Catholic diocese, Australia child abuse cover-up, Cardinal George Pell,  Gerald Ridsdale, BBC missed opportunities to stop Jimmy Savile, Janet Smith, Stuart Hall, Catholic bishops not obliged to report clerical child abuse, Vatican, Cardinal Bernard Law, who was forced to resign over sexual abuse scandals in his Boston archdiocese,  Boy Scouts of America,  Sovereign Grace Ministries, Former Ballarat Bishop Ronald Mulkearns, Mormon Towns, Hasidic Community,  Rotherham child abuse trial, Former Pitcairn mayor, child abuse images, Michael Warren, sex slavery, UN peacekeepers. child abuse by European troops in CAR, Deepcut Barracks, Private Wilson, Private Cheryl James, military child abuse, Talia’s Law, migrant child abuse, dark web, child abuse network, dark web bulletin board site Playpen, Spotlight, Boston Globe covered church sex scandal, Pope, Ritual Abuse, Mind Control, Books on Ritual Abuse, ritualabuse.us, D. Corydon Hammond, Hypnosis in MPD: Ritual Abuse, Greenbaum Speech,  Abuse, Multiple Personality, White Witch in a Black Robe, Wendy Hoffman, Orkney, ritual child abuse allegations,  Jean Rafferty, Ayrshire children, Colin Batley, satanist cult, Kidwelly, Cleveland, secretive Maoist commune in London, Aravindan Balakrishnan, Comrade Bala, Justice Scalia, International Order of St. Hubertus, Bohemian Club in San Francisco, Bohemian Grove, secret societies,  Nazario Moreno Gonzalez, El Chayo, El Mas Loco, Knights Templar, devil-worshipping ceremonies,  devil worship ritual, animal sacrifice ritual, Santeria, ‘ritual’ killing trial, Kony’s cannibals, child fighters in Uganda, Dominic Ongwen, child soldier, Joseph Kony’s rebel army, International Criminal Court,  war crime charges, Lord’s Resistance Army, female genital cutting,  FGM, Kenya child abuse, US ex-missionary, Matthew Lane Durham, Child Abuse and Research, SMART Child Abuse and Ritual Abuse Research, Recovered Memory Data, recovered memory corroboration, Traumatic memory,  memory disturbances,  dissociative amnesia, Dissociative Identity Disorder, MPD, Paedophiles use secret Facebook groups to swap images, Webcam sex abuse, Internet trolling, online abuse, Paid Family Leave Reduced Number Of Child Abuse Cases

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. If you are a survivor of mind control and/or ritual abuse, S.M.A.R.T. recommends learning about mind control techniques before attending conferences or other survivor events.
This article may be helpful: How to Avoid Being Mind Controlled at a Conference https://survivorship.org/survivorship-articles/how-to-avoid-being-mind-controlled-at-a-conference/

Police officers involved in cover up of paedophile ring, says former Deputy Police Chief
12 January 2016 A former Deputy Chief Officer of Jersey’s police force has today claimed senior police officers were involved in the cover up of a paedophile ring.
Lenny Harper led the investigation into allegations of child abuse at former children’s home Haut de la Garenne in 2008.
Today he told the inquiry into historical child abuse in the island of his growing concern there was a top-level cover up.
I was hugely concerned there was a cover up happening in Jersey and I was concerned that a lot of evidence was going missing and that witnesses were being intimidated. There was a clear story emerging in my mind and whilst I may not have used the term paedophile ring, my view there was certainly a culture emerging in Jersey of systematic child abuse.
– Lenny Harper, former Deputy Chief Officer of Jersey’s police
He went on to give examples of times, he claims, officers were pressured to drop investigations: “A former senior detective where his credibility and integrity were questioned by two paedophiles. Others where a police officer on another case alleged that he was obstructed and intimidated throughout the investigation.”
When asked by counsel for the inquiry who was responsible for the alleged cover up, he replied: “It was a group of individuals who were involved in a number of cases. It was the involvement of police officers that concerned me, with allegations by junior officers that led me to believe that some senior officers were involved in the cover up of abuse of children.”
I was told about exhibits in a case disappearing, that officers were not allowed to look at other exhibits, generally speaking exhibits and files were going missing.
– Lenny Harper, former Deputy Chief Officer of Jersey’s police….
http://www.itv.com/news/channel/2016-01-12/police-officers-involved-in-cover-up-of-paedophile-ring-says-former-deputy-police-chief/

Child abuse investigation could have started four years earlier says former Deputy Police Chief
12 January 2016  A former Deputy Chief Officer of Jersey’s police force says officers could have begun their investigation into claims of child abuse at Haut de la Garenne four years earlier than they did. Lenny Harper is giving evidence to the inquiry into historical child abuse.
Today the inquiry heard Operation Rectangle was originally set up to investigate historical allegations of abuse in Jersey’s Sea Cadets. That happened over a period of years and the team had – at one point – worked with the FBI as part of a global effort to find abusers. Today, Mr Harper explained that line of inquiry hit a stumbling block in 2006….
He went on to say: “Senior officers were ignoring requests for an investigation. There was a decision not to follow up. The request was ignored. There’s no way around it. Even inertia, whether it was too difficult, whether indeed it was malicious, it was still ignored and it was wrong.”
Lenny Harper because the senior investigating officer into allegations about abuse at Haut de la Garenne in early 2008.
When asked if he was the right person to be in charge, he said: “Yes. I think I was able to engender the trust of victims who had mistrust in not only the police but in all of the caring agencies in Jersey….
http://www.itv.com/news/channel/2016-01-12/child-abuse-investigation-could-have-started-four-years-earlier-says-former-deputy-police-chief/

Lord Janner ‘abused 12 at children’s home’ as child sex case is DROPPED  LORD JANNER allegedly abused 12 former residents of a children’s home, as the former Labour MP’s historic child sex abuse case was DROPPED in light of his death.  By Rebecca Perring  Fri, Jan 15, 2016
Legal proceedings were left in limbo last month following the announcement that the elderly peer had died. But it has since emerged that the peer regualrly visited Leicestershire children’s homes between 1970 and the mid to late 1980s. An ex-police officer claims he reported suspicions about Lord Janner, a decade before police began a full inquiry….
The former Labour peer had been accused of 22 counts of sex offences against boys dating back to the 1960s – allegations his family vigorously denied, insisting he was “entirely innocent”.
A jury was to decide – without resolving whether he was guilty or sentencing – if the incidents involving nine alleged victims had taken place. But Greville Janner died in December following a long illness, aged 87. He had already been declared unfit to stand trial due to his “deteriorating and irreversible” dementia. In a statement by the Crown Prosecution Service, seen by Express.co.uk, the investigation into the trial of Frank Beck, a care home manager who was eventually convicted of child abuse, is also explored….

The CPS say they have information about 22 alleged victims.  These include four indecent assaults on a male under 16 between 1969 and 1988, two indecent assaults between 1984 and 1988, four counts of buggery of a male under 16 between 1972 and 1987 and two counts of buggery between 1977 and 1988. Earlier this year, there was outrage when Director of Public Prosecutions Alison Saunders decided it was not in the public interest to put Janner on trial because he was so ill. She later reversed her decision following a review of the case by David Perry, QC, who said there should be a trial of facts….
Cambridge-educated Greville Janner was MP for Leicester North West from 1970 to 1974 and for Leicester West until 1997. The father-of-three then left the Commons to take a seat in the House of Lords as Baron Janner of Braunstone…. http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/634939/Lord-Janner-child-sex-abuse-case-dropped-death

Janner: Three chances missed to put MP on trial for child abuse By Ciaranfagan    January 19, 2016  Three chances to put Greville Janner on trial for child abuse were blown because of mistakes by the police or prosecutors, according to a senior legal figure today. Retired High Court judge Sir Richard Henriques said the former Leicester MP, who died aged 86 last month, should have been charged with offences against boys in 1991, 2002 and 2007.  The cases did not proceed because of the “inadequacy” of police investigations or decisions by senior prosecutors. The peer’s family has always insisted he was innocent of any crime….
Sir Richard’s review of the authorities’ handling of the Janner case was commissioned by the Crown Prosecution Service last year.
He found the decision not to charge Lord Janner in 1991 with a series of offences against a 14-year-old boy was wrong. Sir Richard said police investigation was “inadequate” and the CPS should have pressed for further inquiries instead of closing the case.
In 2002, Leicestershire Police did not tell the CPS about a second alleged victim’s claims, he revealed….
The death of the veteran Labour politician – who was accused of 22 sexual offences against boys between 1963 and 1988 – ended the prospect of his alleged victims’ evidence ever being tested in a criminal court.
All case files have been handed to the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, (IICSA),
It will sit for the first time in March to begin its investigation into the late peer….
http://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/Janner-chances-missed-MP-trial-child-abuse/story-28563333-detail/story.html

Fourth man arrested in Jonathan King child abuse probe By Ben Mitchell  18/02/2016  A fourth man has been arrested as part of an investigation into allegations of historical child sex offences involving former music mogul Jonathan King. The 74-year-old was held by Surrey Police, which is looking into claims linked to the Walton Hop Disco in Walton-on-Thames. King and two other men were arrested in September concerning the allegations of offences committed against boys under the age of 16. The investigation, called Operation Ravine, was launched in late 2014 to look into child sex crimes linked to the Walton Hop Disco, following a review by Merseyside Police into a previous Surrey Police investigation that was entitled Operation Arundel and which was launched in 2000. King, a former chart-topping star and TV producer, worked on BBC shows including No Limits and The Great British Song Contest.  http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/uk/fourth-man-arrested-in-jonathan-king-child-abuse-probe-34463498.html

Leaked email may derail criminal case against Bill Cosby  By Ray Kelly January 18, 2016
A former district attorney says he agreed more than a decade ago that his office would not use a civil deposition given by Bill Cosby in any criminal matters, according to an email obtained by CNN.
The email written by former Montgomery County, Pennsylvania Bruce Castor  details a verbal agreement Castor had with Cosby’s attorneys about his 2005 sexual assault case.
“I can see no possibility that Cosby’s deposition could be used in a state criminal case, because I would have to testify as to what happened, and the deposition would be subject to suppression,” Castor said in the email written three months before criminal charges were brought against Cosby.
In Cosby’s deposition, Cosby detailed his romantic interest in the alleged victim; his pursuit of other young women during his long marriage; and his use of quaaludes in the 1970s as a seduction tool. His lawyers have asked for the aggravated sexual assault charges to be dismissed, contending that they “violate an express agreement” with the district attorney at the time which they say constitutes an immunity deal…. http://www.masslive.com/entertainment/index.ssf/2016/01/bill_cosby_email.html

What’s going to happen at first Bill Cosby criminal hearing?  Maria Puente, USA TODAY   February 1, 2016 Will the criminal sexual-assault charges against Bill Cosby ever go to trial?  A hint may come Tuesday in a courthouse in Montgomery County, Pa., outside Philadelphia. Assuming no delay, Cosby faces his first hearing on criminal charges that he hopes to persuade a judge to dismiss. And some legal analysts say Cosby may succeed. “I feel that, unfortunately, the current prosecutor has overstepped his bounds,” says New York lawyer Jerry Reisman, who’s been following the case. “A former prosecutor made a representation on behalf of his office … that he would not prosecute (Cosby), so unless they can find some new circumstance, such as fraud, I feel that the case should be dismissed.” If that happens, he says, the likelihood of Cosby being tried in this case is probably nil…. http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2016/02/01/whats-going-happen-first-bill-cosby-criminal-hearing/79526974/

Former Prosecutor Who Declined to Charge Bill Cosby in 2005 Says He Believed Accuser Andrea Constand  By Nicole Weisensee Egan  02/02/2016   Even though he declined to charge Bill Cosby when sexual assault allegations were brought to him in 2005, and despite spending much of his testimony Tuesday alleging that accuser Andrea Constand’s story had “inconsistencies,” former Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce L. Castor, Jr. nonetheless testified he thinks Constand was telling the truth.
“I believed Ms. Constand’s account,” Castor said at a hearing in Norristown, Pennsylvania. “What I think and what is provable in a courtroom are two different things. What I think is that Andrea Constand was inappropriately touched by Mr. Cosby.
“I’m analyzing back in 2005 what I can prove,” Castor said. “All of those combined together in my mind created a situation where she had ruined her own credibility and would not be believed by a juror. That does not mean she was not telling the truth.”
Castor testified he never interviewed or even met Constand himself. He testified for more than six hours Tuesday at a pre-trial hearing, and was the only witness to testify.
Constand, 42, is the former director of operations for the Temple University women’s basketball team who went to authorities in January 2005 with allegations that, in January 2004, Cosby gave her pills at his house that knocked her out and then sexually assaulted her.
Castor, the Montgomery County district attorney at the time, did not file criminal charges, but after Constand sued Cosby, she and the comedian agreed to a civil settlement in late 2006.
Cosby has denied Constand’s allegation, saying the sexual contact was consensual. He has also denied similar allegations from more than 50 other women….
http://www.people.com/article/bill-cosby-former-prosecutor-says-he-believes-accuser-andrea-constand

Good news, bad news for Bill Cosby in civil suits in California  Maria Puente, USA TODAY  February 2, 2016
As Bill Cosby faced criminal sexual-assault charges in a Pennsylvania courthouse on Tuesday, there was good news and bad news for him in civil court in Los Angeles.
Chloe Goins, the youngest and most recent of Cosby’s five-dozen accusers, dropped her civil suit against him, according to the Associated Press, which cited federal court records showing the suit was dropped without explanation.
Meanwhile, in another civil case in Los Angeles, Cosby was ordered to sit for another grilling in a deposition for a lawsuit alleging he sexually abused accuser Judy Huth at the Playboy Mansion around 1974 when she was 15.
Depositions have not been good for Cosby: His testimony in a deposition in a civil suit filed by an accuser in 2005 played a role in the filing of the criminal charges against him in Pennsylvania.
Cosby resisted sitting for the first deposition in the Huth case but was ordered by a judge to do so. When he didn’t answer every question, Huth’s attorney, Gloria Allred (who represents nearly half of the five-dozen women who have accused Cosby), sought to compel him to sit for another….
The Los Angeles district attorney declined last month to file charges against Cosby in connection with Goins’ accusations because the California statute of limitations for sexual assault had expired.

She had earlier filed a civil suit in federal court against Cosby alleging sexual battery. It was one of a half-dozen civil suits pending against Cosby stemming from the accusations that he had drugged and/or raped dozens of women in episodes dating to the mid-1960s.
It is not clear why Goins dropped the suit, but when a plaintiff moves to dismiss her own lawsuit it often means the parties have come to a settlement. And often such a settlement is confidential.
One other accuser suit against Cosby, for defamation, was dismissed by a judge in Pittsburgh last month.
Goins’ lawyer, Spencer Kuvins, declined to comment. Cosby’s spokesman did not return emails seeking comment….
http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/people/2016/02/02/civil-suit-against-bill-cosby-dismissed-accuser/79698200/

Judge Won’t Stop Bill Cosby Sex Assault Trial Due to Old ‘Deal’
Feb 3 2016   A Pennsylvania judge ruled Wednesday that a sexual assault case against Bill Cosby can move forward after finding that a 2005 decision not to charge him with a crime doesn’t stop prosecutors from putting him on trial now.
The actor’s lawyers claimed that the Montgomery County District Attorney’s office made a no-prosecution deal a decade ago that is still in force, but the current DA argued it wasn’t a binding agreement.
After a two-day hearing, the judge decided not to toss out a charge of aggravated indecent assault against the 78-year-old comedian, setting the stage for a trial.
The charge stems from allegations by Andrea Constand that Cosby drugged and molested her at his home in the Philadelphia suburbs in 2004.
Cosby’s lead defense attorney, Brian McMonagle, declined to say Wednesday whether he will appeal the judge’s decision, but Cosby’s attorneys have that option.
Cosby’s publicist said the decision will be appealed. “After two days’ presentation of evidence and law in support of Mr. Cosby’s habeas petition, the decision reached by the court was wrong,” publicist Andrew Wyatt said….
Cosby has denied any criminal wrongdoing. In a deposition he gave in a lawsuit filed by Constand, he admitted he gave her Benadryl and wine but said the encounter was consensual….
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/bill-cosby-scandal/judge-won-t-stop-bill-cosby-sex-assault-trial-due-n510746

Bill Cosby’s Wife, Camille, Deposed In Defamation Lawsuit February 22, 2016  Merrit Kennedy
Camille Cosby, the wife of comedian Bill Cosby, has been deposed at a Springfield, Mass., hotel.
Seven women brought a defamation lawsuit against her husband, to whom she’s been married for more than 50 years.  NPR’s Arun Rath reports that Monday’s deposition, which happened under tight security, comes after a legal fight:
“Bill Cosby’s legal team filed a series of motions to prevent his wife, Camille, from being called to testify, but late Sunday the federal court in Springfield, Mass., rejected the last, emergency appeal.     “The plaintiffs in the civil lawsuit claim they were defamed by statements issued by Bill Cosby’s representatives, with his approval.      “Those statements denied Cosby had sexually assaulted the women, and called their reliability into question.      “Cosby is also facing criminal charges in Pennsylvania for an alleged sexual assault there in 2004. Last month, his lawyers filed a motion to dismiss those charges.      “More than 50 women have come forward to accuse Bill Cosby of sexual assault.”  No details have emerged about what Camille Cosby said during her deposition….
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/02/22/467706193/bill-cosbys-wife-camille-deposed-in-defamation-lawsuit

BBC missed opportunities to stop sexual predator Jimmy Savile, inquiry finds
An inquiry clears the BBC of wrongdoing but points out serious failings in its handling of Jimmy Savile, a celebrated TV presenter revealed to have been one of Britain’s most prolific sex offenders.
An investigation into the Jimmy Savile sex abuse scandal cleared the BBC of wrongdoing Thursday, even as it painted a damning portrait of an institution where employees were afraid to raise even serious concerns about sexual misconduct for fear of upsetting celebrity talent or making the corporation look bad.
Savile, a BBC television presenter and popular charity figure who died in October 2011, is believed to be one of Britain’s most prolific sex offenders, often targeting minors.
The review initiated by the BBC blamed the institution’s internal culture for being behind the failure to sound the alarm on Savile’s predatory activity. It was only after Savile’s death that the extent of his crimes became clear — touching off a national shock wave of rage and introspection about how best to deal with sexual abuse charges, particularly involving the famous.
“Celebrities were treated with kid gloves and were virtually untouchable,” said Janet Smith, a former Court of Appeal judge who conducted the inquiry, describing a BBC culture of not wanting to “rock the boat.”…
Smith’s review said the Savile abuse incidents dated all the way back to 1959. She identified 72 victims of Savile, both male and female — and one was only 8 years old.
But girls who raised concerns about Savile were treated as a “nuisance.” In one case in 1969, a girl who was molested on the “Top of the Pops” program while standing next to Savile on the podium was “ejected from the building.”
The inquiry also concluded that another BBC star, sports presenter Stuart Hall, 86, also used his celebrity to shield his activities, often plying his victims with alcohol.
The Hall investigation was carried out by another former Court of Appeal judge, Linda Dobbs, because Smith had a conflict of interest. Dobbs found 21 victims of Hall, who was jailed in 2013 after pleading guilty to multiple charges of indecent assault….
http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-britain-bbc-jimmy-savile-20160225-story.html

BBC faulted for its handling of sexual predator Jimmy Savile  Thursday February 25, 2016
An inquiry clears the BBC of wrongdoing but points out serious failings in its handling of Jimmy Savile, a celebrated TV presenter revealed to have been one of Britain’s most prolific sex offenders.
http://www.latimes.com/world/europe/la-fg-bbc-jimmy-savile-video-20160225-embeddedvideo.html

EXCLUSIVE: Two women share shocking accounts of forced labor and sexual abuse by prominent Christian leader Bill Gothard  BY Laura Bult NEW YORK DAILY NEWS  Friday, February 19, 2016
Two women who are accusing an influential Christian preacher with ties to the Duggar family of sexual assault spoke out for the first time Thursday about their hellish years of forced labor and abuse in the cult-like organization.
Joy Simmons and Jennifer Spurlock are two of the many men and women who have made the horrifying accusations against Bill Gothard, who ran Institute in Basic Life Principles, saying they were deprived of an education, forced to work and were groped by the Christian leader.
“To have your education ripped from you and to have your childhood ripped from you, it’s extremely difficult. It’s just evil,” Spurlock, who spent three years as a minor at one of Gothard’s training centers, told the Daily News.
Gothard retired in 2014 as president from the IBLP after running the organization for 40 years when the sexual assault allegations first came to light….
The women’s shocking allegations describe a disturbing culture within the organization in which Gothard would take troubled young men and women under his wing at the IBLP and then target them as victims of sexual abuse, rape and free labor for the bizarre organization.
IBLP board members are also listed as defendants in the lawsuit because of their role in covering the abuse, the more than 200-page complaint reads….
Another of the new plaintiffs, a man named Daniel Dorsett, said he witnessed Gothard sexually abuse more than 150 girls between 1994 and 1996 when he worked as a personal driver for him….
Gothard has denied all of the allegations against him through his attorney, who called the women’s stories “defamatory.”….
The lawsuit seeks to get compensation of $50,000 for each plaintiff from IBLP and Gothard for unpaid labor, as well as to pay for counseling for the victims.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/women-detail-sex-abuse-allegations-bill-gothard-article-1.2536758

Bill Gothard, Christian counseling ministry leader with ties to TLC’s Duggar family, target of sexual assault lawsuit by 10 women BY Laura Bult NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Thursday, January 7, 2016
Bill Gothard is the founder of the Institute in Basic Life Principles who stepped down last year amid sexual harassment allegations.
Ten women filed a bombshell lawsuit Wednesday alleging decades of sexual assault and rape by the longtime leader of Christian homeschooling ministry, Bill Gothard, who preaches modesty among women and has ties to Republican politicians and the reality TV Duggar family.
The lawsuit is the latest development after numerous women who sought counseling at Gothard’s Institute of Basic Life Principles, a prominent religious homeschooling ministry, came forward accusing the magnetic leader of sexual abuse, some of whom were minors at the time
The 81-year-old unmarried former president of the IBLP resigned from the ministry in 2014 after more than 30 women said they had been molested by him, according to the Washington Post, which first reported the story.
The lawsuit filed in an Illinois circuit court includes allegations that range from sexual harassment,  inappropriate touching and hand-holding, molestation and rape, according to the complaint provided to the Daily News by the lawyers representing the women at the Texas Gibbs Law Firm.
The accounts, some of which were posted on a blog called Recovering Grace, come from the types of vulnerable women who would come to IBLP’s training centers seeking bible study and counseling, many of them victims of incest by their fathers or older family members, or who had been sold into human trafficking….
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/twn-women-filed-sexual-assault-lawsuit-bill-gothard-article-1.2488543

EXCLUSIVE: Catholic Church settles 30 of 40 priest sex abuse lawsuits
Jan 29, 2016   By Keoki Kerr   HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – The Roman Catholic Church has reached settlements in 30 lawsuits filed by people in Hawaii who claim they were sexually abused by priests decades ago when they were children.
They are among 63 people who have made abuse allegations against priests in 40 lawsuits, according to legal documents obtained by Hawaii News Now.  Some of the cases have been reported in the media, such as the 2012 lawsuit filed by Mark Pinkosh claiming two priests at St. Anthony Church in Kailua sexually abused him.
Pinkosh said when he told then-Father Joseph Ferrario that another priest had raped him, Ferrario told him to keep the incidents secret and then Ferrario raped him.  Ferrario, who is now deceased, went on to become the bishop of the Catholic Church in Hawaii.  Other cases have been kept quiet, with the plaintiffs listed as John or Jane Roe.
Hawaii News Now has learned that Pinkosh and 62 other alleged victims of priest sex abuse went to mediation last year with the Catholic Church to try to settle their 40 lawsuits….
http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/31095979/exclusive-catholic-church-settles-30-of-40-priest-sex-abuse-lawsuits

has graphic descriptions of abuse
Pennsylvania Catholic diocese covered up decades worth of child abuse, grand jury says
A new grand jury report claims two Roman Catholic bishops in a central Pennsylvania diocese helped cover up the sexual abuse of hundreds of children by over 50 priests or religious leaders over a 40-year period.  by Steve Esack and Laurie Mason Schroeder   March 1, 2016
From Boston to Philadelphia to the United Nations, the Catholic Church has been accused of covering up and protecting priests and other religious leaders who sexually abused children.
Now add a slice of western Pennsylvania to the list.
A grand jury report released Tuesday accuses two bishops who ran the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown of allowing at least 50 priests and other religious leaders to sexually abuse hundreds of children for decades.
“These predators desecrated a sacred trust and preyed upon their victims … where they should have felt most safe,” state Attorney General Kathleen Kane said.
The report says the late Bishop James Hogan and former Bishop Joseph Adamec kept filing cabinets with 115,042 secret documents detailing victims’ abuse claims. It tells how church officials ordered priests to undergo treatment while transferring them to other parishes, or intervened when local and state police made inquiries starting in the mid-1960s.

The report also outlines a diocesan “payout chart” of $10,000 for victims fondled over their clothes, and up to $175,000 for victims of forced sodomy or intercourse.
The grand jury report uses those documents to explain in extraordinary detail how one priest “hypnotized” children by rubbing his genitals on their feet, another priest choked boys if they refused his advances at his cabin in the woods, and another priest plied a child with alcohol and then raped him until he bled….
After his own 2002 investigation, Northampton County District Attorney John Morganelli was critical of the way the church handled abuse claims before Cullen was installed as bishop in 1998.
Before that, he said, the diocese was focused more on the priest than on the alleged victims.
“Even when priests admitted sexual abuse with minors, they were often sent to treatment centers and continued to function as priests,” Morganelli said in a 2002 report. “A number of the priests had multiple incidents involving more than one victim.”
Like Martin, Morganelli found no basis for criminal charges against church officials who oversaw priests. Also like Martin, he noted the diocese has created a policy requiring the immediate review of allegations against priests and the instant removal of those priests if the allegations are deemed credible….
Every Catholic community — including the Allentown Diocese — has its hidden information.
Such secrets go back centuries to the mid-1600s or early 1700s, when the Vatican created Canon Law 489. It is a legal mechanism that allows Catholic religious orders to keep from public view a trove of documents, including personnel and financial files, that only the local bishop and his trusted few could access, according to testimony from sex-abuse prosecutions and lawsuits that rocked the Los Angeles Archdiocese in 2013.
In 2014, the United Nations accused the Vatican of “systematically” protecting predator priests from being brought to justice for the sexual “torture” of tens of thousands of children around the globe.
In 2012, some of the Philadelphia Archdiocese’s secrets came to light when a 1994 memo was uncovered that showed the archdiocese’s top clergy — including Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua and Bishop Edward Cullen, who later headed the Allentown Diocese — ordered the shredding of a list of 35 priests suspected of sexually abusing children….
http://www.mcall.com/news/breaking/mc-pa-catholic-priest-abuse-johnstown-altoona-20160301-story.html

Oscars 2016 updates: All the backstage madness you didn’t see and inside the Vanity Fair after party At the 88th Academy Awards, “Spotlight,” the film about the Boston Globe’s investigation into priest abuse, won for best picture. http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/tv/la-et-oscars-2016-live-updates-88th-academy-awards-20160228-htmlstory.html

Radiant ‘Spotlight’ illuminates how the Boston Globe covered church sex scandal
This is the saga of how the Boston Globe won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for uncovering not only decades of sexual abuse by Catholic priests but also systematic maneuvers by the church’s Boston archdiocese to shield the more than 70 perpetrators. “Spotlight” is mightily impressive not only because of the importance of the story it tells but also because of how much effort and skill went into bringing it to the screen in the best possible way.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/la-et-mn-spotlight-review-20151106-column.html

UK child abuse victims sue Catholic Church AAP January 26, 2016
The claims – dating back to the 1950s and featuring pupils at a church school in the northwest of England – mirror those in the film Spotlight, tipped for Oscars success for its depiction of similar allegations in the Catholic Church in Boston, US, in the 1980s.
Lawyers acting on behalf of the British victims, who were aged between 11 and 15 at the time of the abuse, said they hope the positivity Spotlight’s release met with will help give other victims the strength to come forward.
Thomas Beale, representing victims with London-based child abuse lawyers AO Advocates, said there were “significant” similarities between Spotlight and the allegations of abuse at St Bede’s Catholic school in Manchester decades ago….
The allegations at St Bede’s relate to Monsignor Thomas Duggan, Father Charles Mulholland and Father Vincent Hamilton – three senior figures at the school who carried out the alleged abuse.
They died before being brought to justice, but the survivors are now taking out a civil case against the Diocese of Salford for what they say is a failure to protect them from abuse.
Allegations range from inappropriate touching to rape….
https://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/30658532/uk-child-abuse-victims-sue-catholic-church/

Pell blames bishop for Australia child abuse cover-up 1 March 2016
Cardinal George Pell says he was deceived by a senior clergyman over the activities of a paedophile priest. Australia’s most senior Catholic is presenting evidence from Rome via video link over several days to an Australian Royal Commission into child sex abuse. On Tuesday Cardinal Pell was questioned about paedophile Gerald Ridsdale, a priest who was repeatedly moved between parishes in the 1970s and 80s. He accepted no responsibility for the failure to report Ridsdale’s abuse….
Cardinal Pell repeatedly criticised Ronald Mulkearns, who was bishop of Ballarat between 1971 and 1997, for withholding information about Ridsdale.
Cardinal Pell was one of the consultors who gave advice to Bishop Mulkearns from 1977 to 1984.
Particular attention was paid to a meeting of the consultors that Cardinal Pell attended in 1982, where a decision was taken to move Ridsdale for a sixth time.
Counsel assisting the commissioner, Gail Furness, said it was “implausible” that Cardinal Pell and other priests at the meeting did not know the reason for Ridsdale’s relocation.
Cardinal Pell responded: “That is complete nonsense.”….
He said that responsibility for Ridsdale’s relocation lay “overwhelmingly with the bishop”, who used “gentle and euphemistic language” to disguise the truth of Risdale’s actions.
“I can’t nominate another bishop whose actions are so grave and inexplicable … His repeated refusal to act is, I think, absolutely extraordinary,” Cardinal Pell said.

The cardinal provoked gasps from survivors earlier in testimony when he said the news of Ridsdale’s abuse was “a sad story and it wasn’t of much interest to me”.
“The suffering, of course, was real and I very much regret that but I had no reason to turn my mind to the extent of the evils that Ridsdale had perpetrated,” he said….
Cardinal Pell, who is not accused of sexual abuse, denied knowing about paedophile priests who were active in the Ballarat diocese during his time there as a priest in the 1970s and 1980s.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse is holding its second round of inquiries into child sex abuse that occurred in the city of Ballarat in Victoria state.
Cardinal Pell was a priest in Ballarat and lived in a seminary with a notorious paedophile priest, Gerald Ridsdale, in the early 1970s.
Ridsdale committed more than 130 offences against young boys while working as a chaplain at Ballarat’s St Alipius school between the 1960s and the 1980s….
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-35692810

Cardinal Pell admits he did not act on abuse claim  March 2, 2016  Australia  Vatican treasurer Cardinal George Pell has admitted he did not act after a boy told him about a paedophile priest. The cardinal told an Australian Royal Commission into child abuse that a student at St Patrick’s College in Ballarat said Brother Edward Dowlan was “misbehaving with boys” in 1974. He said it was “casually mentioned” and the boy did not ask him to act.  Dowlan, who has since changed his name to Ted Bales, was jailed last year for abusing boys in the 1970s and ’80s. Cardinal Pell is giving evidence from Rome to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse….
Pell said it was a “disastrous coincidence” that five paedophiles came to be at the same school and parish in Ballarat in the 1970s….  http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-35713384

Cardinal George Pell denies allegations of abuse after reports of Victoria Police investigation
2/19/2016  Cardinal George Pell has vehemently denied allegations of abuse, in a statement issued in the wake of media reports that he is being investigated by Victoria Police.
In response to a Herald Sun report that a Victoria Police taskforce was investigating abuse allegations against him, Australia’s most high-profile Catholic said the allegations were “undetailed” and had not been raised with him.
A statement from the Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney also said allegations of abuse that were raised 15 years ago were “without foundation and utterly false”….
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-19/cardinal-george-pell-denies-allegations-vic-police-investigation/7185830

Cardinal George Pell won’t be asked about Victoria Police inquiry  The Australian February 24, 2016  Cardinal George Pell is not -expected to be questioned by a royal commission over allegations being investigated by police that he was involved in the sexual abuse of boys over several decades.
The publication of the allegations on Friday night provoked a storm of reaction. The cardinal, who vehemently denies the claims, called for a public inquiry into the “maliciously timed” leak, allegedly by Victoria Police.
Cardinal Pell, Australia’s most senior Catholic and who now manages the Vatican’s finances, is due to give evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse next week. But several legal and church sources said they did not expect him to be questioned -directly by the commission’s lawyers over the alleged abuse.
The commission’s Letters Patent, signed by the Governor-General and which establish the confines of its work, say it “is not required … to inquire … into a particular matter” that is subject to another criminal investigation….
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/in-depth/royal-commission/cardinal-george-pell-wont-be-asked-about-victoria-police-inquiry/news-story/201368aa6690692ec55f026091072948

Child abuse royal commission: Former Ballarat Bishop Ronald Mulkearns apologises for his handling of abuse allegations  By Margaret Paul and staff  2/25/16 Former Catholic bishop Ronald Mulkearns has told a royal commission he is not sure if he knew child abuse was a crime during his time in charge of the Ballarat diocese, but he knew it was wrong.
The former bishop made his much-anticipated appearance at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse via videolink from the nursing home in which he now lives. Until now Bishop Mulkearns had been excused from giving evidence because he was too sick.
Asked if he referred paedophile Gerald Ridsdale for help because he knew he was abusing children, he said yes. Bishop Mulkearns told the hearing he never asked priests directly if they were abusers but instead got reports from psychologists. He conceded the only reason he sent priests off for treatment was because he believed they had been offending. “I didn’t really know what to do or how to do it,” he said. He apologised on Thursday for the way he handled complaints of abuse in his diocese…. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-25/royal-commission-former-ballarat-bishop-ronald-mulkearns-appears/7198260

Catholic church pays compensation over alleged abuse at UK school Leslie Turner was paid £17,000 compensation after claiming two members of Christian Brothers abused him at school in Sunderland in 1960s  Jenny Kleeman and Helen Pidd Leslie Turner: ‘The abuse was so common it became normal’ Wednesday 3 February 2016
The Catholic church continues to quietly pay out compensation to victims of alleged sex abuse at Catholic schools in Britain while refusing to accept liability.
Leslie Turner, a retired primary headteacher, was paid £17,000 in compensation by the Irish Christian Brothers in 2014, after claiming two members of the Catholic order sexually abused him at school in Sunderland in the 1960s.
Turner, now 66, has waived his anonymity in a film for the Guardian to allege he was molested from the age of 12 by two teachers at St Aidan’s Roman Catholic grammar school in Sunderland between 1961 and 1967. Both are long dead, but he sued after being diagnosed with delayed onset post-traumatic stress disorder in 2012 as a result of what he says he suffered as a child.
“After the abuse stopped was actually worse than when the abuse was taking place,” Turner told the Guardian. “I tried to become invisible. It never occurred to me to tell anybody. When the headteacher has been abusing you, who do you tell? I put it into a cupboard in my head and I shut the cupboard door.”
Turner is speaking out as the film Spotlight, is released in UK cinemas, which tells the story of the Boston Globe’s investigation into sexual abuse within the Catholic Church in Boston in 2002. The Globe’s investigation helped unveil a pattern of abuse by Catholic priests on a global scale…..
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/03/catholic-church-pays-compensation-over-alleged-abuse-at-uk-school

Catholic bishops not obliged to report clerical child abuse, Vatican says  Vatican guide says ‘not necessarily’ bishop’s duty to report suspects to police despite Pope Francis’s vows to redress Catholic church’s legacy of child abuse   Cardinal Bernard Law, who was forced to resign over sexual abuse scandals in his Boston archdiocese, where 150 priests were accused of molesting children.  Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Rome Wednesday 10 February 2016
The Catholic church is telling newly appointed bishops that it is “not necessarily” their duty to report accusations of clerical child abuse and that only victims or their families should make the decision to report abuse to police.
A document that spells out how senior clergy members ought to deal with allegations of abuse, which was recently released by the Vatican, emphasised that, though they must be aware of local laws, bishops’ only duty was to address such allegations internally.
According to the state of civil laws of each country where reporting is obligatory, it is not necessarily the duty of the bishop to report suspects to authorities, the police or state prosecutors in the moment when they are made aware of crimes or sinful deeds, the training document states.

The training guidelines were written by a controversial French monsignor and psychotherapist, Tony Anatrella, who serves as a consultant to the Pontifical Council for the Family. The Vatican released the guidelines – which are part of a broader training programme for newly named bishops at a press conference earlier this month and is now seeking feedback.
Details of the Catholic church’s policy were first reported in a column by a veteran Vatican journalist, John Allen, associate editor of the Catholic news site, Cruxnow.com.
Allen noted that a special commission created by Pope Francis, the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, had appeared to play no role in the training programme, even though it is supposed to be developing “best practices” to prevent and deal with clerical abuse.
Indeed, a church official familiar with the commission on abuse said it was the committee’s position that reporting abuse to civil authorities was a “moral obligation, whether the civil law requires it or not”. The official said the committee would be involved in future training efforts….
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/10/catholic-bishops-not-obliged-report-clerical-child-abuse-vatican-says

Beyond clergy: Ex-Boy Scouts tap Minn. law to press sex abuse claims Todd Melby Feb 10, 2016   Jim McDonough is suing the Boy Scouts of America and its North Star Council claiming he was sexually abused by his scoutmaster….
Many stories like McDonough’s have come to light in the nearly three years since the Legislature passed the Minnesota Child Victims Act. Most have been focused on the hundreds of claims made against priests accused of sexually abusing children.
But the law, which extends the statute of limitations for older abuse claims, wasn’t written to respond exclusively to clergy abuse. And the Catholic Church hasn’t been the only target of lawsuits aimed at shedding light on a hidden past. Boy Scout organizations are also grappling with accusations of child molestation.
McDonough decided to use the law to sue the Boy Scouts of America and one of its local affiliates, the Northern Star Council. At least 16 lawsuits are pending in Minnesota against the Boy Scouts, including McDonough’s civil action. Most target the Northern Star Council. Three other lawsuits list another council as a defendant. At least 12 additional suits are expected to be filed before the law’s May 25 deadline….
McDonough’s suit seeks at least $50,000 from the Scouts. The Northern Star Council, which represent troops in 21 Minnesota counties and four counties in western Wisconsin, declined to talk about abuse suits filed by McDonough and others….

One of McDonough’s lawyers, Peter Janci, won a $19.9 million verdict against the Boy Scouts in 2010 in Portland, Ore. Janci says that when it comes to sexual abuse against children, the Boy Scouts have some things in common with the Roman Catholic Church.
“They both involve organizations that really believe in their mission. At times, that has led to them to make decisions where they put reputation of the organization above safety and health of individuals,” he said.
In the case of the Boy Scouts of America, that included the creation of what it called “ineligible volunteer” files, Janci said. When the Scouts learned that a volunteer had sexually molested or raped a child, it often created a file so it could bar that person from volunteering in another city or state.
Between 1955 and 1984, the Boy Scouts of America created 1,300 of these files. A judge ordered those files released, with some information redacted, after the Portland trial.
A small percentage of the “ineligible volunteer” files were atheists or homosexuals. The Scouts barred gay men and lesbians from the organization until just recently. But the vast majority of files focused on sexual molestation. They became known as the “Perversion Files.”
The Boy Scouts has been keeping secret tabs on suspected abusers since the 1920s, but it didn’t routinely report those people to police. The organization began requiring “mandatory reporting of suspected abuse” in 2011….
http://www.mprnews.org/story/2016/02/10/ex-boy-scouts-tap-minnesota-sex-abuse-law

Inside the Investigation into Child Sexual Abuse at Sovereign Grace Ministries
Elizabeth Dias  Feb. 16, 2016 How one reporter investigated child sex abuse at a major evangelical church   The February issue of Washingtonian Magazine featured an exposé of long-buried sexual abuse of children in a prominent evangelical church network, Sovereign Grace Ministries. Freelance journalist Tiffany Stanley, a 2015 National Magazine Award finalist, spent 10 months uncovering reports of child rape and molestation in Sovereign Grace churches over the last three decades, particularly at the then-flagship Covenant Life Church in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
Her investigation, “The Sex Scandal that Devastated a Suburban Megachurch,” chronicles the inside story of crimes against children in D.C.-area Sovereign Grace churches, explores how church leaders including founder C.J. Mahaney did and did not respond, and recounts how victims’ mothers joined forces to seek justice.
Unlike the hierarchical Catholic Church, evangelical churches often function independently. But their influence is widespread—as Stanley points out, Wayne Grudem, an evangelical theologian at Phoenix Seminary, once described Sovereign Grace Ministries “as an example of the way churches ought to work….

In response to the Washingtonian investigation, executive director of Sovereign Grace Churches Mark Prater pointed TIME to a lengthy statement he made in 2014 denying that Sovereign Grace leaders “conspired to cover up” sexual abuse. “Yes, we have been the target of misinformed critique in both the secular and Christian media, and more will likely come,” he stated. “I pray that God gives us all grace to respond wisely and biblically. But regardless of the public discourse, we are strongly committed to ensuring a safe environment for the children in our churches….
(Tiffany Stanley) The Catholic Church has been taken to task over abuse for decades now. Evangelical ministries are now facing their own abuse crises. In the media, we’re hearing more about these stories. Some of these allegations confront abuse that is decades old. From just the past year, I’m thinking of reports about Josh Duggar of 19 Kids and Counting and Bill Gothard, a Christian homeschooling advocate. I’m also thinking about Buzzfeed’s recent story on Jesus People USA and Kiera Feldman’s 2012 investigation of abuse in a Tulsa megachurch. (Of course, other religions are not immune from sexual abuse scandals either.)
The sad reality is that sexual abuse is widespread everywhere, not just in religious communities. The statistics I saw were one-in-four girls and one-in-six boys will be sexually abused before the age of 18. The experts I spoke to didn’t say these statistics are worse in evangelical churches, but they did say that abusers could prey on trusting religious communities, which give them access to children. That’s why churches need policies in place to protect children and handle abuse when it happens. That means reporting suspected abuse to authorities immediately, instead of handling it internally. Abuse is a sin, but it’s also a serious crime…. http://time.com/4226444/child-sex-abuse-evangelical-church/

Expert Details Sloppy Police Work of Mormon Towns  By JAMIE ROSS Friday, February 05, 2016 Courthouse News Service
PHOENIX (CN) – The Marshal’s Office in two towns on the Arizona-Utah border failed to investigate claims of child abuse or timely complete reports, an expert witness for the Justice Department testified Thursday during a religious discrimination trial. Colorado City, Ariz. and Hildale, Utah are largely made up of followers of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Department of Justice sued the towns in 2012, accusing them of denying non-church members access to police protection, water and electricity. The sect’s leader, Warren Jeffs, is serving life in prison for sexually assaulting 12- and 15-year-old girls, whom he called his spiritual wives. Joseph De Lopez, a former deputy superintendent for the Chicago Police Department hired to review policies of the Colorado City Marshal’s Office, told the jury the towns’ Marshal Office did not investigate reports that town members married underage girls.
“Not only should there be an Internal Affairs investigation if it involves an officer, but a criminal investigation,” De Lopez testified. On Wednesday, the towns’ former Chief Marshal Helaman Barlow testified that the Marshal’s Office ignored claims of underage marriages. “If it was a church marriage, I as a church member saw it as a valid marriage,” Barlow testified.
On Thursday, De Lopez said this was just one of the Marshal’s Office’s many “deficiencies” in investigating and documenting alleged crimes and failing to train its officers….
http://www.courthousenews.com/2016/02/05/expert-details-sloppy-police-work-of-mormon-towns.htm

Child Abuse Allegations Plague the Hasidic Community  By Elijah Wolfson On 3/3/16
….It’s widely accepted by child abuse experts and advocates that some kids are particularly vulnerable. Usually, they are disadvantaged in some way—family problems, rejection by their peer group—that perpetrators can exploit, particularly if they are teachers who also happen to be religious authorities.
….It was widely known that if you ratted out someone in the community for abuse, the community would turn its back on you. Gena Diacomanolis is the senior director of Safe Horizon’s Jane Barker Brooklyn Child Advocacy Center, where, over the past decade, she says, they have made tremendous strides in the Haredi communities. But the biggest barrier remains the pressure the community puts on individuals who want to come forward with stories of abuse.
“I can tell you tons of stories where they were so fearful of going forward,” she says. “I had one dad who said his son was sexually abused at school.” He decided not to press charges, Diacomanolis recalls. “He said, ‘I don’t want you to think I don’t love my child, but if I go forward, I won’t find a marriage for my daughter.’”
Diacomanolis also says families are often harassed when they come forward. One client who charged her husband with abusing their child “left her house, and the whole block was papered with things saying terrible things about her.”

One mother who found out her son had been sexually abused by a teacher at United Lubavitcher Yeshiva Ocean Parkway (another Hasidic school in Brooklyn) says when she complained to the yeshiva’s principal, she was shunned. “I got thrown out of the community,” she says. “You can’t imagine what was said to me. The phone calls I got. I was an outcast. I was threatened.”
….Protecting the Predators
Chabad has a global network of synagogues, schools and other facilities that is often used to shelter abusers on the run. When rumors of abuse begin to bubble up, teachers are shuttled from school to school, city to city—like Reizes, shipped from Brooklyn to Miami and then back. In March 2008, eight students accused Malka Leifer, principal of the Adass Israel school for girls in Elsternwick, a suburb of Melbourne, Australia, of sexual abuse. Just days later, she hopped on a plane and fled to Israel. In September 2015, Australia’s Supreme Court awarded over $1 million in compensation to a 28-year-old abused by Leifer from 2003 to 2006.
According to court documents, it was discovered during the course of the trial that there was a concerted effort by the community to protect Leifer: The school’s president at the time, Yitzhok Benedikt, and board member Mark Ernst played key roles in arranging her escape to Israel. The two men are facing criminal charges; Leifer was arrested in Israel last year and is now fighting extradition to Australia.
In recent years, Australia has emerged as the country most willing to confront child abuse in the Hasidic world. In 2013, the government formed the Royal Commission Into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, and in early 2015 it began a large investigation into the Hasidic community. Weeks of hearings led to a report detailing alleged abuses—and how yeshivas and rabbinical leadership cover up that abuse and systematically ostracize survivors and their families.
….In New York, survivors of most cases of child molestation have five years after they turn 18 to get the district attorney to prosecute. (In cases of sexual misconduct, legal proceedings must begin within two years after the offense was committed, regardless of the child’s age at the time of the alleged crime.) Many child abuse experts say that window is not nearly big enough for young men just starting to understand what happened to them. It’s no surprise that most of the abuse Newsweek uncovered happened long ago—no 10-year-old has the wherewithal to talk to the press about his abusive teacher. It takes a 25-year-old who has finally received a proper education to understand what was done to him 15 years ago.

For almost a decade, Assemblywoman Margaret Markey, from Queens, has been trying to pass a bill that would eliminate the statute of limitations on both criminal and civil cases of sex crimes against children. But she has faced fierce opposition from two political powerhouses: the New York State Catholic Conference and Agudath Israel of America.
The Hasidic world is starting to take allegations of abuse more seriously, and many of the individuals who talked on the record with Newsweek for this story say they finally feel comfortable speaking publicly about their personal histories with abuse because of the community support that has emerged in recent years.
http://www.newsweek.com/2016/03/11/child-abuse-allegations-hasidic-ultraorthodox-jewish-community-brooklyn-432688.html

Rotherham child abuse trial: four men and two women found guilty
Gang including three brothers, led by Arshid Hussain, targeted 15 girls, one as young as 11
Lisa O’Carroll and Josh Halliday Wednesday 24 February 2016
Six men and women were found guilty of offences relating to the sexual exploitation of teenage girls in Rotherham, as it emerged that the conduct of more than 50 officers from South Yorkshire who had dealt with the victims is now under investigation.
A gang of three brothers, their uncle and two women were found guilty of 55 serious offences, some of which lay undetected for almost 20 years. They targeted 15 vulnerable girls, one as young as 11, and subjected them to brutal and degrading acts between 1987 and 2003 including rape, forced prostitution, indecent assault and false imprisonment.
Allegations by victims that those found guilty – Arshid, Basharat and Bannaras Hussain, their uncle Qurban Ali and their associates Karen MacGregor and Shelley Davies – were able to commit crimes for so long with apparent impunity are now the focus of two separate investigations into the police.
It can now be reported that the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) has launched 55 separate investigations into how South Yorkshire police dealt with victims, in one of the biggest inquiries into potential neglect of duty and corruption in recent policing history.
The police watchdog said that 46 misconduct notices had already been served on 26 officers, and warned the figure could increase. It is understood that more than 50 officers are being investigated. Complaints cover “a range of allegations from a failure to act on reported child sexual exploitation to corruption by police officers,” it said….
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/feb/24/child-sex-abuse-rotherham-guilty-gang-hussain

Former Pitcairn mayor found guilty over child abuse images Michael Warren, who downloaded more than 1000 images of child abuse while working in child protection, will serve his sentence on the tiny Pacific island  Eleanor Ainge Roy in Dunedin  Monday 7 March 2016    The former mayor of Pitcairn Island has been sentenced to 20-months in prison after he was convicted of possessing more than 1000 images and videos depicting child pornography.
The tiny British territory in the South Pacific, which has a population of around 50 people, gained international notoriety in 2004 when seven of the island’s 12 men were accused of a total of 55 sex crimes, some dating back 40 years.
Pitcairn mayor charged with possessing child abuse material wants to face ‘local law’
According to crown prosecutor Kieran Raferty, former mayor Michael Warren – who served as the island’s mayor from 2008 to 2013 – began downloading images of child abuse in 2004.
During the years Warren downloaded the images he was working in child protection on the island – and travelling to New Zealand and the United Kingdom in an official capacity for further training in child protection.
Raferty said Warren’s initial defence was that he had downloaded the images because he wanted to understand child pornography after the 2004 sex abuse cases.
Warren has also been found guilty of engaging in an internet “sex chat” with a person purporting to be a 15-year-schoolgirl, and of possessing a video that showed a bound and gagged naked woman….
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/07/former-pitcairn-mayor-found-guilty-over-child-pornography

Pitcairn mayor charged with possessing child abuse material wants to face ‘local law’
Lawyer calls for trial to be held on Pitcairn Island, not in Auckland, as ex-mayor Michael Warren denies all 25 charges
Elle Hunt Tuesday 2 February 2016
The lawyer representing a former Pitcairn Island mayor facing charges of possessing child abuse films and photos has said the case should be dealt with under local laws rather than by a court in New Zealand.
Michael Warren, who served as mayor of the tiny British territory in the South Pacific from 2008 to 2013, appeared by video link from Pitcairn to an Auckland courtroom on Monday to deny 25 charges relating to more than 1,000 child abuse films, images and messages.
As mayor in 2010, it was alleged in court, Warren accidentally sent an email to a diplomatic staff member from an address in someone else’s name.
It was further alleged in court that the staff member searched for the address online and found it was linked to an online chat site containing explicit material.
Sergeant Geoff Medland, an officer seconded to Pitcairn Island in 2009 as part of the assistance provided by New Zealand police to the territory, was made aware of the allegations in late April 2010.

The crown alleges Medland found more than 1,000 child abuse images and videos in a search of Warren’s home on 26 May 2010.
Warren was arrested by Medland on behalf of the British high commission and charged with 20 counts of possessing child sexual abuse content under section 160 of the UK’s Criminal Justice Act 1988. He also received five charges under the Pitcairn summary offences ordinance for possession of indecent articles involving adults….
Warren pleaded not guilty in March 2013.
Pitcairn, settled in 1789 by Fletcher Christian and the mutineering crew of the Bounty, is a group of four volcanic islands that form the last British overseas territory in the Pacific. It has a population of about 50 people, originating from four families.
The hearing is set down for a week in Auckland and will reconvene on Pitcairn Island later this month.
In 2004 and 2006, seven of the island’s 12 men faced a total of 55 sex crimes, some dating back 40 years. Six were found guilty, with four sentenced to jail terms of up to five years. The crimes included rape, incest and indecent assault against girls from the age of seven.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/03/pitcairn-mayor-charged-with-possessing-child-abuse-material-wants-to-face-local-law

Woman tells how she was sold into sex slavery aged 14 and raped 110 times in a DAY
A BRITISH woman has told how she was sold as a teen sex slave by her evil Albanian boyfriend and raped hundreds of times for cash.  By Kieran Corcoran  Tue, Jan 19, 2016
The woman was just 14 when her holiday flame turned vicious, beat her and sold her on to be pimped out. She told how at her lowest ebb she was raped by 110 men in a single day, who paid €20 to spend five minutes with her. The woman, who used the false name Megan to speak about her experiences, spent six years captive in Greece before making her escape. Speaking to MailOnline, Megan told how she fell for Jak, a charming Albanian whom she fell for on a dream holiday to Greece. Incredibly, after the break was over she was allowed to stay in the country with him by her permissive mother. But after her parent, whom she said struggled with alcoholism, was off the scene, her new love turned. The man, whom she called Jak, sold her to a Greek pimp, who took her far away and made her have sex for as many as 22 hours per day. She was forced to hand half the money she made over to the pimp and wire the rest back to Jak every week….
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/636269/Woman-tells-how-she-was-sold-into-sex-slavery-aged-14-and-raped-110-times-in-a-DAY

Keighley abuse: Twelve men jailed for sexually exploiting girl 8 February 2016
Twelve men who sexually exploited a vulnerable teenage girl in West Yorkshire have received jail sentences of up to 20 years. Eleven were jailed at Bradford Crown Court after being convicted of raping the girl in Keighley from the age of 13. Another man was sentenced for sexual activity with the same girl. The trial heard how the teenager was repeatedly attacked over a period of 13 months, between 2011 and 2012…. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-leeds-35524340

UN peacekeepers ‘paid 13-year-olds for sex’ Four peacekeepers allegedly paid young girls as little as 50 cents in exchange for sex Kevin Sieff Tuesday 12 January 2016  The United Nations has been grappling with so many sexual abuse allegations involving its peacekeepers that Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon recently called them “a cancer in our system.”
Now, officials have learned about what appears to be a fresh scandal. Investigators discovered this month that at least four UN peacekeepers in the Central African Republic allegedly paid young girls as little as 50 cents in exchange for sex.
The case is the latest to plague the UN mission in the Central African Republic, whose employees have been accused of 22 other incidents of alleged sexual abuse or sexual exploitation in the past 14 months. The most recent accusations come in the wake of Ban’s efforts to implement a “zero tolerance” policy for such offenses….
The most recent allegations involve at least four peacekeepers who are accused of paying girls as young as 13 for sex at a camp for the internally displaced next to the international airport in Bangui, the capital. The site, known as M’Poko camp, is home to 20,000 people, mostly Christians. It is a vast agglomeration of white tents surrounding old, decaying airplanes, just yards from the airport runway.
The United Nations has not publicly released the nationalities of the acccused troops, or provided details of the alleged abuse. But in interviews, UN officials said the peacekeepers were from Gabon, Morocco, Burundi and France. The prostitution ring they allegedly used was run by boys and young men who offered up girls “for anywhere from 50 cents to three dollars,” according to one official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation….
Human Rights Watch documented nine cases of sexual violence between September and December in and around the displacement camp. In several instances, Christian women were raped by members of the mostly Christian “anti-balaka” militia after being accused of interacting with Muslims. Across Bangui, the conflict has fallen largely along religious lines.
“M’Poko is a lawless zone run by anti-balaka thugs a few hundred meters away from the international airport. The camp is not being protected, and women are being raped,” said Lewis Mudge, Human Rights Watch’s Central Africa Republic researcher….
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/un-peacekeepers-paid-13-year-olds-for-sex-a6806961.html

UN finds more cases of child abuse by European troops in CAR Up to six more cases of alleged sexual abuse, including girl of 7 and boy of 9, by EU and French soldiers in Central African Republic, says human rights chief
Associated Press in Geneva  Friday 29 January 2016
The UN human rights office says it has turned up six more cases of alleged sexual abuse against children by European troops in Central African Republic, including a 7-year-old girl who said she had to perform sexual acts on soldiers in exchange for water and cookies.
A UN team recently interviewed five girls and a boy who claimed their abusers were part of French and European Union military operations in the troubled African country, the office of Zeid Raad al-Hussein, the high commissioner for human rights, said.
The sexual abuse allegedly took place in 2014 in or near a camp for displaced people near M’Poko airport in CAR’s capital, Bangui, but only came to light in recent weeks in the latest in a string of similar allegations.
France, CAR’s former colonial ruler, deployed several thousand troops to the country in late 2013 as violence between Christians and Muslims sent thousands fleeing from their homes. An African Union mission that began in April 2014 was taken over by a UN peacekeeping force five months later, while the EU force ended an 11-month mission in March last year.
At a news conference later on Friday in New York, the UN also announced new allegations against UN peacekeepers. Assistant secretary general Anthony Banbury came close to tears as he described four new child sex abuse cases in CAR involving UN troops and police from Bangladesh, Congo, Niger and Senegal.
He also announced an allegation of sexual assault against a minor by a member of Morocco’s military contingent serving with the earlier AU mission.
Banbury said there are likely to be 69 confirmed allegations of sexual abuse or exploitation in the UN’s 16 peacekeeping missions around the world, including 22 in CAR, for all of 2015. That figure is up from 51 in 2014 when there were no reported cases, he said….
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/29/un-finds-more-cases-of-child-abuse-by-european-troops-in-car

REVEALED: A horrifying regime of violence and sexual abuse: This chilling Mail dossier exposes the vital evidence the Deepcut coroner refuses to hear
By RICHARD PENDLEBURY FOR THE DAILY MAIL 9 February 2016
Private Kate Wilson claims she was assaulted and sexually harassed
Said she witnessed horrific abuse after joining Army as a teenage recruit
She spoke out as second inquest into death of Private Cheryl James began
Mail investigation has revealed that a ‘wider culture of sexual abuse’ within the Army may be what the Deepcut coroner should now be considering
By Richard Pendlebury for the Daily Mail
For Private Kate Wilson, the final insult came when an administrative major at Deepcut Barracks — a man — told her: ‘What you don’t seem to realise is that you are just a number to us. We have no further use for you.’
In the 18 months since Private Wilson had joined as a teenage recruit, the British Army had ‘used’ her in a quite horrific fashion.
She had, she says, been viciously assaulted for refusing to sleep with one of her bosses, sexually harassed by other male non-commissioned officers, urinated upon while asleep, and, finally, crippled for life thanks to the carelessness of a misogynistic instructor.
That injury — a broken hip — led to her interview with that callous major, and a medical discharge from the career she had wanted since she was four years old. She still suffers with the injury 20 years later.
Wilson was by no means unique. During her ‘training’, she had witnessed a serious but unpunished sexual assault by an instructor on one of her sleeping female room-mates, and the daily abuse of other vulnerable female recruits — little more than children — by much older NCOs.
‘These were men with no honour and no pride,’ she told me this week. ‘We were kids, and they were monsters; vile and barbaric. A lot of people in the Army who could have helped knew what was happening — and yet they did nothing.’….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3439710/A-horrifying-regime-violence-sexual-abuse-chilling-Mail-dossier-exposes-vital-evidence-Deepcut-coroner-refuses-hear.html

Deepcut soldier ‘ordered to have sex with another squaddie before she died’ inquest hears
A TEENAGED female soldier was ordered to have sex with another squaddie the night before she died, an inquest heard.  By Peter Henn Wed, Feb 24, 2016 Private Cheryl James, 18, was found with a fatal bullet wound in Deepcut barracks, Surrey, in November 1995. She was one of four recruits to die at the army training camp over the space of seven years. Fellow soldier Mark Beards told Woking Coroner’s Court that she had confided in him about the order and he had been “destroyed” by “carrying the guilt” of her death for 20 years. But under cross-examination he was accused of being “a liar and a fantasist”. He was also accused of assuming that Pte James was referring to sex the night before her death when she never used the word. He told the inquest he bumped into Pte James at around 11.10pm and she told him she had been ordered by Sergeant Andrew Gavaghan to go into a room with Pte Ian Atkinson – known as Aki – to have sex. He said: “I asked her what she was doing there and she said she had to meet Aki. I asked her why she had to meet Aki and she explained to me she had to go into the room with him. “I asked her, ‘What do you mean?’. She said ‘I’ve got to do it’…. http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/647229/Deepcut-soldier-Cheryl-James-inquest-ordered-to-have-sex

Was girl soldier’s death covered up because she was raped on orders of Army top brass?
THE death of a teenage soldier at a notorious army barracks where three other youngsters also died may have been covered up by the establishment because she was raped on the orders of her officers, it was claimed today.
By Nick Gutteridge  Mon, Jan 25, 2016
Police and army officials have conspired to keep the truth about the supposed suicide of 18-year-old Cheryl James from ever coming to light according to her family, who have fought a 20-year battle for justice.
But new evidence has now emerged suggesting that the young Private may have been ordered to sleep with a male colleague in the hours before her death by bullying officers who were “pimping out” female recruits at the infamous Deepcut barracks in Surrey.
The latest claims will rock the military and police establishment, both of whom have repeatedly insisted that her death was a suicide, even suggesting she may have killed herself because of complications with her love life….
But serious questions began to be asked several years later when it emerged that four young recruits had all died at the same barracks within a short space of time.
Detectives came under serious pressure to reopen their investigation after 17-year-old James Collinson was also found at the Deepcut base with a fatal gunshot wound in March 2002.
The calls became a clamour when it then emerged that there had been two more deaths at the notorious barracks – home to the Royal Logistics Corps – in the space of just seven years.
Private Sean Benton, 20, died a few months before Pte James, while 17-year-old Geoff Gray died in September 2001.
Surrey Police, which has been savagely criticised over its bungled investigations of the deaths, was then forced to admit that it had received almost 60 allegations of bullying and sexual assaults at the base in 1995 alone.
Her family are hoping that the truth will finally come out after a High Court judge quashed the verdict of her original inquest, with a fresh inquiry set to get under way next week.
And in a bombshell development a pre-inquest hearing held earlier this month was told how the young recruit, from Llangollen on the Welsh borders, had been subjected to “vile treatment”, sexual exploitation by senior ranks and may have been “sexually coerced or raped” the night before she was found dead….
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/637700/Deepcut-deaths-Private-Cheryl-James-inquest-claims-rape-army-officers

Congress moves to confront military child abuse with Talia’s Law By Drew Gerber, Medill News Service The House on Tuesday passed a bill that would require anyone employed by the Defense Department to report cases of suspected child abuse on military installations to state child protective service agencies in addition to reporting such suspected crimes up their chain of command.
The legislation was approved by voice vote and sent to the Senate for consideration.
Called Talia’s Law, the bill is named for five-year-old Talia Williams who was tortured and beaten to death by her father — an active-duty Army specialist at the time — and step-mother in 2005 at Wheeler Army Airfield in Hawaii.
Talia’s mother, Tarshia Williams, sued the U.S. government in 2008 for what she argued were failures by military officials to report suspicions that her daughter was being abused. Williams was awarded $2 million in a settlement last May…..
Citing the 29,000 cases of child abuse and neglect in the military in the past decade, Gabbard said on the House floor Tuesday that her bill creates the same protections for military children that exist for any other child.
Rates of child abuse and neglect in the military, though half the rate typically seen in the civilian population, have been on the rise since 2010, according to a 2014 memorandum from Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Rosemary Williams….
http://www.militarytimes.com/story/military/family/2016/02/09/congress-moves-confront-military-child-abuse-talias-law/80089648/

Senate probe faults gov’t for migrant child abuse  Friday, January 29, 2016  Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Migrant children in the government’s care were placed in U.S. homes and left vulnerable to human trafficking due to sometimes non-existent screening by the Department of Health and Human Services, according to a congressional report released Thursday.
The investigation says HHS failed to run background checks on the adults in the sponsors’ households, failed to visit sponsors’ homes and failed to realize some sponsors were accumulating multiple unrelated children, which can be a sign of human trafficking.
Lawmakers contend the government weakened its child protection policies as it was overwhelmed by tens of thousands of children crossing the border. A Senate subcommittee held a hearing Thursday to release the report and examine weaknesses in the department’s placement of migrant children.

At the hearing, HHS officials declined to fully answer many of the senators’ questions, at times saying they did not have the legal authority from Congress to follow up on the children.
The investigation by the panel echoes the findings of an Associated Press investigation that found more than two dozen unaccompanied children were sent to homes across the country where they were sexually assaulted, starved or forced to work for little or no pay.
Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, the chairman of the panel, says the HHS placement program for migrant children suffers from “serious, systemic defects.”
The congressional investigation and hearing are in response to a case in Portman’s home state of Ohio, where six Guatemalan unaccompanied minors were placed with human traffickers, including sponsors and their associates. Lured to the U.S. with the promise of an education, the teens instead were forced to work up to 12 hours a day on egg farms under threats of death.
The report says the department did not conduct any home visits in the Ohio case and performed visits in less than 5 percent of cases overall from 2013 to 2015….
http://www.tiftongazette.com/news/senate-probe-faults-gov-t-for-migrant-child-abuse/article_c85235c2-c5f4-11e5-a9c0-1303317c1cd2.html

FBI hacked into ‘dark web’ to bust up largest ever child abuse network
The FBI used an unprecedented technique to hack into the protected bulletin board
Andrew Buncombe New York Friday 8 January 2016
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has reportedly interrupted and shut down a massive online child abuse network after hacking into the so-called dark web in an operation that may lead to 1,500 prosecutions.
Vice Motherboard reported that federal investigators used an unprecedented approach to hack into the dark web bulletin board site named Playpen. The bulletin board was launched in August 2014 and within one year had 215,000 accounts with 11,000 unique visitors each week.
The report said that the FBI seized the North Carolina-based server running the board in February 2015 but did not shut it down immediately. Rather, the investigators ran the site via its own servers and deployed a hacking tool known, or network investigative technique (NIT), to identify the IP addresses of those visitors to the site.
The dark web is a section of the internet not discoverable by conventional means, such as through a server search or by directly entering a website URL.
Playpen was apparently the largest child abuse site discovered to date. It enabled users to sign up and then upload any images they liked. According to court documents, the website’s primary purpose was to advertise and distribute child pornography….
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/fbi-hacked-into-dark-web-to-bust-up-largest-ever-child-abuse-network-a6802886.html

Police drop Kids Company ‘sex abuse’ investigation Tom Marshall 28 January 2016
A police investigation into allegations of physical and sexual abuse linked to failed charity Kids Company has been dropped. Detectives found no evidence to justify any charges after studying 32 pieces of information or intelligence, Scotland Yard announced. A spokesman for the Met added: “Nor have we identified any failings by the charity in respect of them carrying out their duty to safeguard children or vulnerable adults.”
The Met launched an inquiry into reports of alleged physical and sexual abuse in July “following the receipt of information from a journalist”….
These reports concerned allegations or information relating to children and staff based at the charity, the force said, adding: “However, the majority were third-party reports which were vague in detail.”
Officers carried out “detailed and extensive inquiries” to establish the veracity of the information, speaking to a number of individuals connected to the charity. No-one was arrested or interviewed under caution in connection with the investigation.
An incident which had previously been investigated by police and resulted in a “male adult service user” of the charity receiving a three-month suspended sentence for assaulting a member of staff was included within the reports.
The Met spokesman added: “Aside from this case, to date the Met has identified no evidence of criminality within the 32 reports which would reach the threshold to justify a referral to the Crown Prosecution Service…. http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/police-drop-kids-company-sex-abuse-probe-a3167501.html

REVEALED: The true scale of Scotland Yard child abuse probe into “cult-like” Kids Company
POLICE and social services are investigating 36 separate cases of child abuse in connection with the failed Government-funded charity Kids Company.
By Jon Austin Fri, Jan 22, 2016
The true scale of the Metropolitan Police investigation into the former charity backed by Prime Minister David Cameron was revealed by a social services chief in a damning letter giving evidence to an ongoing Parliamentary inquiry into the relationship between Kids Company and Whitehall.
David Quirke-Thornton, Strategic Director for Children’s and Adults’ Services at Southwark Council, launched a stinging attack on the charity and former chief executive Camila Batmanghelidjh in evidence to the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee.
He wrote: “The ethics of practice within Kids Company appears to me to have been compromised by a cult of personality; a wilful blindness to the consequences and impact of their model on children, young people and their families; and a lack of acceptance by the leadership of the organisation of their accessorial liability.”
The charity, whose chairman was former BBC creative director Alan Yentob, closed in August just days after it pocketed a £3million final bailout from Whitehall.
It has since emerged the Government provided Kids Company a whopping £46m in funds over less than 10 years despite their being repeated concerns raised with officials over its management.
The closure came just days after it emerged the Scotland Yard was investigating a number of allegations of sexual abuse relating to some of its clients….
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/637208/REVEALED-The-true-scale-of-Scotland-Yard-child-abuse-probe-into-cult-like-Kids-Company

Pope’s efforts to stop church child abuse appear to unravel
Will Carless, GlobalPost  February 15, 2016
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — A member of a commission set up by Pope Francis to advise him on child abuse says the group is a “token body” exercising in “smoke and mirrors” that won’t help children stay safe from abusive priests.
Peter Saunders, the commission member, is now on a leave of absence as he considers whether to continue with an effort he says he has lost faith in.
Meanwhile, new Catholic bishops are still being taught they’re not obliged to report cases of child abuse by priests to the police.
The Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, which Francis set up with much fanfare in 2014, was supposed to issue guidelines for the Vatican on how to deal with child abuse. But the body was never consulted about the training for new bishops on exactly that topic.
These are just some of the signs that Francis’ reform efforts, and his pledge to clean up the Catholic Church’s most damaging crisis, seem to be unraveling before they’ve even really gotten started.
The problems come as Pope Francis pays a visit to Latin America, a region where, as GlobalPost has reported, the church is accused of reassigning and protecting many alleged predator priests. Among the latest scandals in the region, Chileans are outraged that the pope appointed a bishop accused of shielding the country’s most despised pedophile priest from investigation….
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2016/02/15/popes-efforts-stop-church-child-abuse-appear-unravel/80394122/

Vatican riven by internal battle over handling of child abuse claims
Rift comes amid signs that special commission created by Pope Francis to handle issue is being sidelined by senior church officials in Rome
Stephanie Kirchgaessner in Rome Tuesday 16 February 2016
A battle is being waged within the Vatican over how senior clergy ought to handle accusations of sexual abuse amid signs that a special commission created by Pope Francis to handle the issue is being sidelined by senior church officials in Rome.
The rift was exposed after a report in the Guardian about a training course that was offered to new bishops last year in which a controversial French monsignor instructed them that it was “not necessarily” their duty to report accusations of abuse to law enforcement authorities if local laws did not require it.
That stance was rejected this week by Pope Francis’s point man on abuse issues, Boston cardinal Seán O’Malley, who heads a special pontifical commission to protect minors.
“We, the president and the members of the commission, wish to affirm that our obligations under civil law must certainly be followed, but even beyond these civil requirements, we all have a moral and ethical responsibility to report suspected abuse to the civil authorities who are charged with protecting our society,” he said in a statement on Monday.
O’Malley also said that the special commission was committed to “extensive education efforts” within local churches since its founding two years ago, and that its members had reiterated their “willingness to provide this material at courses offered in Rome”, including at the training courses for new bishops and the offices of the Roman Curia, or bureaucracy.
But it is clear that these offers have not been accepted….
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/feb/16/vatican-riven-by-internal-battle-over-handling-of-child-abuse-claims

Report: 5 of 77 western Washington priests suspected of child abuse were likely prosecuted
By The Associated Press January 24, 2016
….Boyle, now deceased, retired from Mount St. Vincent in Seattle in 1984 and spent a total of about 15 years in the Seattle Archdiocese. He pleaded guilty in Nevada in 1987 to one count of lewdness with a child for exposing himself, according to news accounts and interviews.
….Since the late 1980s, the Seattle Archdiocese has paid about $74 million in civil settlements for 392 claims of sexual abuse of minors, including at least $1.1 million paid to three of Boyle’s victims.
http://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/index.ssf/2016/01/report_5_of_77_western_washing.html

Spotlight: the reporters who uncovered Boston’s Catholic child abuse scandal
A Boston Globe investigation into widespread child abuse by Catholic clergy has been turned into a new film starring Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams. The Pulitzer-winning team talk small-town secrets, collective guilt – and whether anything has really changed within the church
Henry Barnes Wednesday 13 January 2016
In 2002, the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team, a group of five investigative journalists, uncovered the widespread sexual abuse of children by scores of the district’s clergy. They also revealed a cover-up: that priests accused of misconduct were being systematically removed and allowed to work in other parishes.
The team’s investigation brought the issue to national prominence in the US, winning them the Pulitzer prize for public service. The journalists’ story, and those who suffered at the hands of the clergy, are the subject of Spotlight, a Hollywood movie starring Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams. It is a love letter to investigative journalism and a reminder that, 13 years and some $3bn in settlement payments later, survivors in Boston and beyond are still waiting for satisfactory long-term action from the Vatican….
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jan/13/spotlight-reporters-uncovered-catholic-child-abuse-boston-globe

Pope accepts resignation of Australian bishop accused of being evasive at abuse inquiry
Brian Finnegan was accused of not being candid about his knowledge of paedophile priests in a bid to protect himself and the Catholic church
Guardian staff and agencies Wednesday 30 December 2015
An Australian bishop accused of protecting himself and the Catholic church at the child abuse royal commission has resigned.
The pope has accepted Brisbane auxiliary bishop Brian Finnegan’s resignation upon his reaching the retirement age, the Vatican’s press office has announced.
Finnegan, 77, was accused of not being candid about his knowledge of paedophile priests in a bid to protect himself and the church during his December evidence to the child abuse royal commission’s inquiry into the Ballarat diocese.
Finnegan was secretary to the bishop of the Ballarat diocese, Ronald Mulkearns, between 1979 and 1985 when the priest Gerald Ridsdale was abusing children in parishes within the diocese.
Finnegan repeatedly told the commission he was unaware of Ridsdale’s abuse at the time and had no concerns about the priest.
But the commission heard evidence Finnegan had been phoned by a mother who was concerned about Ridsdale’s interactions with her eldest son.
In documents revealed by the commission, Finnigan once described the Mortlake parish where Ridsdale worked as priest in 1981 and 1982 as “a real trouble spot” where there was “drama” around “kids in classes”….
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/dec/31/pope-accepts-resignation-of-australian-bishop-accused-of-being-evasive-at-abuse-inquiry

Bishop who didn’t report child abuse gains new post By Associated Press January 15, 2016
LINCOLN, Neb. — A Roman Catholic bishop who was convicted in Missouri of not reporting suspected child abuse has become chaplain at a convent in Nebraska. Bishop Emeritus Robert Finn is spiritual adviser to the nuns at the School Sisters of Christ the King convent in Lincoln. Finn was found guilty in 2012 of one misdemeanor count of failure to report suspected abuse and was given two years’ probation, making him the highest-ranking church official in the US to be convicted of taking no action over abuse allegations.  Lincoln Diocese spokesman J.D. Flynn said Friday the 62-year-old Finn resigned as bishop for the Kansas City-St. Joseph Diocese in Missouri but retains the religious title of bishop emeritus…. http://nypost.com/2016/01/15/bishop-who-didnt-report-child-abuse-gains-new-post/

Ritual Abuse and Mind Control

Books on Ritual Abuse https://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/books/

may be heavy for survivors
Lecture by D. Corydon Hammond, originally entitled “Hypnosis in MPD: Ritual Abuse” but now usually known as the “Greenbaum Speech” delivered at the Fourth Annual Eastern Regional Conference on Abuse and Multiple Personality, Thursday June 25, 1992, at the Radisson Plaza Hotel, Mark Center, Alexandria, Virginia, United States of America. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FUersarZuo

White Witch in a Black Robe by Wendy Hoffman is a memoir about how secret high-level mind control is performed throughout victims’ lives and the ways heads of governments and religious organizations participate in this, as well as the healing process and how the mind becomes whole again.
The memoir begins with the author’s childhood in a multi-generational cult family, her ordinary life in the normal world and her simultaneous secret tortuous world. She describes her world travels as a satanic cult queen and prophet, encountering well-known and influential people. The final section portrays the process of weaving the pieces of her mind back together with the help of a therapist, and adjusting to life with a whole mind.
This is an important book for survivors of mind control and ritual abuse, their therapists, and the general public, revealing one of the world’s best-kept and grimmest secrets. As the author says in her introduction, ‘This book is not for the delicate or for those who are convinced the world is fine just the way it is.’
Wendy Hoffman is a survivor of organized criminal abuse and has been a psychotherapist for over two decades working in general practice and the field of recovering dissociated memories. She has a Master of Social Work and two Masters of Fine Arts. Her first memoir The Enslaved Queen, about electricity and mind control, was published by Karnac Books in 2014, and her book of poetry, Forceps, is forthcoming. Now that she has brought together the separated parts of her mind, taken her life back, and achieved freedom, she wants to help other survivors also become free of mind control.   ISBN 13 : 9781782203667  ISBN 10 : 1782203664
http://us.karnacbooks.com/product/white-witch-in-a-black-robe-a-true-story-about-criminal-mind-control/37567/

When evil visited Orkney: Untold story of ritual child abuse allegations on the island
February 27th, 2016 Jean Rafferty
TWENTY-FIVE years ago today, on February 27, 1991, a fleet of cars set off in convoy from Kirkwall on the Orkney mainland. It was barely light as they drove across the Churchill Barriers to the island of South Ronaldsay – they wanted to be sure that the children they were going to collect were still at home. From the outcry they incurred later, you’d have thought they were kidnappers holding families to ransom, not police and social workers trying to protect children from one of the most vicious forms of child abuse humans have yet devised – satanic ritual abuse (SRA).
Many people reading this will snort in derision – hasn’t SRA long been discredited? It’s just daft social workers without the wit to know when kids are being over-imaginative? Isn’t it?
A cardinal has fallen, the Catholic Church’s schools and institutions have been revealed as riddled with cruelty and perversion, and family entertainers have been exposed as paedophiles and rapists – and yet we doubt that this form of sexual abuse, which has existed for thousands of years, is still with us.

I first got involved in investigating SRA more than 20 years ago. Before Orkney there was a group of travelling families in Ayrshire whose children started talking about family abuse. One said he and his brothers had been filmed touching adults’ “wuggies and bums”. They were taken into care and there were endless court processes examining the evidence.
A few years earlier there was a kind of consensus among social workers that children didn’t lie about stuff like that. And at first no-one doubted the Ayrshire children. Forensic evidence backed up many of the things they said. One described his aunt crawling up his body and extracting two of his back teeth with a pair of big long scissors. A doctor from Glasgow Children’s Dental Hospital confirmed that the outer enamel of his teeth had come out in a neat, clean break that was “highly unusual” and could have been caused by using an instrument.
But five years after the initial charges had been made the parents were granted leave to petition for nobile officium, the ultimate appeal in Scots law. Evidence which had been accepted for five years was suddenly thrown into question. A new sheriff said the child who’d started the whole process off was a devious, manipulative little boy and should be sent back home – despite admitting that “it is possible that this has been a case of child abuse”….
Such strange behaviour proves nothing, of course, though the fact there was so much of it in children from different accused families might surely have given the authorities pause for thought. Instead, Sheriff David Kelbie sent the children home without testing the evidence in court. This decision was criticised by the Law Society of Scotland and by Lord Clyde in his inquiry into the case, but that fact has been ignored for 25 years, to the extent that even as respected a news outlet as the BBC can report that the parents in Orkney were innocent. Innocent till proven guilty? Yes, but innocent beyond the shadow of a doubt? That, the Orkney parents can never claim….

EVEN those who deny the existence of international satanist networks can hardly pretend that satanist abuse never happens – in 2002 Manuela and Daniel Ruda were convicted by a German court of killing Frank Haagen, carving a pentagram into his stomach and drinking his blood. In 2011 Colin Batley was convicted of leading a satanist cult in the west Wales town of Kidwelly. Among other things he committed 11 separate rapes, three indecent assaults, six counts of buggery and four counts of possessing indecent images of a child.
Over and over again satanist abuse has been proved to exist, so why does so much energy go into denying it?….
I say no too. No to pretending that families always provide ideal homes. No to abusing victims twice, the second time by refusing to believe them. I say no to depriving children of support, to making professionals unable to protect children properly. No to covering up the darker aspects of human nature till we’re absolutely forced to acknowledge them. Do we always have to wait till people are dead before we’re brave enough to expose them?….
http://www.thenational.scot/comment/when-evil-visited-orkney-untold-story-of-ritual-child-abuse-allegations-on-the-island.14286

Orkney, Ayrshire, Cleveland … will the authorities ever learn about child sexual abuse cases?
March 1st, 2016   Sarah Nelson
WHY do notorious child sexual abuse cases from decades ago remain important? And why should establishing the truth about them still matter?
Those questions were brought into sharp focus by Jean Rafferty’s powerful, outspoken piece in The National on the Orkney and Ayrshire sexual abuse cases, and on the censorship of open discussion about them (When evil visited Orkney, February 27). It was published on the 25th anniversary of the day nine children, from four middle-class families, were taken into care on South Ronaldsay, Orkney, in 1991. This happened after children from a large, disadvantaged family spoke of an organised sex abuse ring there.
Just like the eight Ayrshire children removed into care in 1990, they were returned home: in Ayrshire, after a judge reversed an earlier judge’s decision, and in Orkney by a sheriff before the evidence was even tested. It never has been tested. In both cases, allegations included sadistic ritual and occult practices against children, allegations much-ridiculed ever since.
The cases remain important, and I believe the evidence now needs to be reassessed, for at least three reasons. First, a stream of shocking failures to protect children from sexual abuse, in the Churches, in care homes, in private home cellars, through sexual exploitation gangs, by media celebrities and the powerful, has recently been exposed and continues to be. This has increased Government and public concern for abused children and commitment to protect them; and has made society less inclined to dismiss forms of abuse they previously found unbelievable.
Secondly, like Rafferty I and others have over 25 years tried to publicise suggestive evidence that children were indeed in danger. Particularly over the Orkney case, we have tried to correct untruths – in print, on the BBC, in documentaries and online – and point up the flaws in the endlessly recycled and invented theories by supporters of accused adults, who allege it was just “satanic panic”. We were repeatedly unsuccessful.

The time is surely overdue to end a silencing and misrepresentation which sees, for example, not a single neutral, factual report of either case anywhere publicly available on the internet. By publishing Rafferty’s article, The National has stood out for its courage and independence.
Thirdly – and I believe most important – the verdicts and the myth-making after these cases have for decades negatively influenced public attitudes, professional child protection behaviour, and child protection law….
Was there suggestive, alarming evidence of organised sexual abuse? Yes, in both Orkney and Ayrshire. And if the assumed outcomes of the Orkney or Ayrshire cases are incorrect, then the future lessons drawn from them – like caution and timidity against sexual abuse, deference and apology to articulate adults – need revising too….
http://www.thenational.scot/comment/orkney-ayrshire-cleveland-will-the-authorities-ever-learn-about-child-sexual-abuse-cases.14438

UK: Cult Leader Sentenced to 23 Years for Abuse, Rape By The Associated Press LONDON Jan 29, 2016   A cult leader was sentenced to 23 years in prison Friday for raping and sexually assaulting his female followers and keeping his daughter imprisoned in a secretive Maoist commune in London for three decades. Prosecutors said 75-year-old Aravindan Balakrishnan, known as “Comrade Bala,” abused and brainwashed his followers into believing he had God-like powers, ensuring they were too scared to leave the tiny radical communist group he ran in south London. His victims included two women and his daughter, 33-year-old Katy Morgan-Davies, who was born into the commune and was almost never allowed to go out in 30 years. Describing Balakrishnan as a “narcissist and a psychopath,” Morgan-Davies told  British media he emulated people including Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin and Saddam Hussein. Sentencing Balakrishnan, Judge Deborah Taylor said his treatment of his daughter from her birth to the age of 26 “was a catalog of mental and physical abuse.” “These are grave and serious crimes conducted over a long period of time and you have shown no remorse whatsoever,” she said. Balakrishnan was convicted in December of rape, indecent assault, false imprisonment and cruelty to a child…. http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/uk-cult-leader-sentenced-23-years-abuse-rape-36596744

Justice Scalia spent his last hours with members of this secretive society of elite hunters By Amy Brittain and Sari Horwitz February 24
When Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died 12 days ago at a West Texas ranch, he was among high-ranking members of an exclusive fraternity for hunters called the International Order of St. Hubertus, an Austrian society that dates back to the 1600s.
After Scalia’s death Feb. 13, the names of the 35 other guests at the remote resort, along with details about Scalia’s connection to the hunters, have remained largely unknown. A review of public records shows that some of the men who were with Scalia at the ranch are connected through the International Order of St. Hubertus, whose members gathered at least once before at the same ranch for a celebratory weekend.
Members of the worldwide, male-only society wear dark-green robes emblazoned with a large cross and the motto “Deum Diligite Animalia Diligentes,” which means “Honoring God by honoring His creatures,” according to the group’s website. Some hold titles, such as Grand Master, Prior and Knight Grand Officer. The Order’s name is in honor of Hubert, the patron saint of hunters and fishermen….
The society’s U.S. chapter launched in 1966 at the famous Bohemian Club in San Francisco, which is associated with the all-male Bohemian Grove — one of the most well-known secret societies in the country.

In 2010, Poindexter hosted a group of 53 members of the Houston chapter of the International Order of St. Hubertus at the Cibolo Creek Ranch, according to a Houston society publication. A number of members from Mexico were also part of the ranch festivities that included “three days of organized shoots and ‘gala’ lunches and dinners….
From Houston, Scalia and Foster chartered a plane without the marshals to the Cibolo Creek Ranch airstrip. In a statement after Scalia died, the U.S. Marshals Service said that Scalia had declined a security detail while at the ranch….
Law enforcement officials told The Post that they had no knowledge of the International Order of St. Hubertus or its connection to Poindexter and ranch guests. The officials said the FBI had declined to investigate Scalia’s death when they were told by the marshals that he died from natural causes.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/justice-scalia-spent-his-last-hours-with-members-of-this-secretive-society-of-elite-hunters/2016/02/24/1d77af38-db20-11e5-891a-4ed04f4213e8_story.html

The Narco Who Died Twice How a Mexican gangster turned a cartel into a cult    Ioan Grillo Feb 4, 2016  Nazario Moreno Gonzalez—also known as El Chayo, or El Mas Loco, the Maddest One—first died in December 2010. Mexican federal police claimed they killed Nazario, one of Mexico’s most brutal criminal warlords, during a ferocious battle involving 2,000 federal officers and about 500 gangsters. But his henchmen carried his corpse away.
A grave appeared with his name on it. (Apparently, police didn’t want to dig it up and check.) The president at the time, Felipe Calderon, trumpeted the crime lord’s demise as a grand victory in his war on the drug cartels. But after Nazario’s supposed death, his followers began venerating him like a saint, and statuettes and shrines appeared. Even more bizarrely, people reported seeing his ghost wandering around his home state of Michoacan dressed all in white. Under the leadership of this phantom saint, Nazario’s criminal organization, which took the name Knights Templar after the legendary warrior monks of the Middle Ages, became more powerful than ever….
The story of Nazario’s rise from impoverished child laborer to gangster saint, and his ultimate downfall, is a story about the shifting dynamics of Mexico’s drug war. Nazario cultivated a narco holy image, a mix of Latin America’s popular Catholicism with the bling of the drug trade. He hailed from a tight-knit community in a valley blighted by poverty, criminality, and beliefs in the supernatural. These features all helped mold the narco saint and his legend; in the end, his rule was so brutal it ultimately unleashed Mexico’s largest vigilante movement to take him down….
The memoir also details the influence the Mexican cult comic El Kaliman had on him. The adventures of the superhero Kaliman, he writes, provided him with a refuge from his violent reality; in the comic, Kaliman is a mysterious crusader who dresses all in white and whose special powers include levitation and telepathy. Nazario also believed that he had psychic powers. Later, he would claim to control people’s minds….

The government lost the ability to be the arbitrator that could control organized crime. Instead, gangsters disputed power themselves under strength of arms. Amid this bloodshed, the mobsters turned from traffickers into warlords. And rather than the police ordering gangsters about, gangsters fought over who could control police forces.
This fighting caused homicides to shoot up at some of the most alarming rates in the Americas. The number of killings by cartels or the security forces assigned to fight them would surge from about 1,500 in 2004 to 6,800 in 2008 to almost 17,000 in 2011. The ensuing conflict became known in Spanish as la narcoguerra, and in English as Mexico’s drug war….
Nazario’s tract Pensamientos, or “Thoughts,” which he distributed to his followers from late 2006 after gaining control of the Hot Land, reflects the quasi-religious character of his rule. Some phrases sound like the evangelical preachers he followed. “I ask God for strength and he gives me challenges that make me strong; I ask him for wisdom and he gives me problems to resolve,” reads one entry. Nazario also spread his message in evangelical temples and drug rehab centers he funded….
The first action the ghostly Nazario took was to rename his mob the Knights Templar after the Jerusalem-based crusaders who fought for Christendom between 1119 and 1312. The gunslingers became Templars, sacred soldiers. The red Templar cross became an identifiable graphic in safe houses and on guns, a brand symbol. The Maddest One even made up a coat of arms and introduced a pocket-sized book of codes, listing 53 commandments the Knights had to obey.
The Templar concept also allowed the Maddest One to expand his religious-warrior fantasy. He introduced ceremonies with the crusader theme, in which gangsters dressed up like knights to initiate new members or promote operatives….
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/02/nazario-moreno-knights-templar/459756/

describes violence
‘Slave’ who ‘stabbed his master to death in self defence’ took part in devil-worshipping ceremonies where his ‘dominating’ partner would slice his forehead as 16th century church choir music played     A slave who stabbed his master to death says he acted in self defence
Henry Rose, 59, pleaded not guilty to murdering his partner Drew Dax, 44
Mr Dax was stabbed multiple times in their Caulfield North home in 2011
He had a knife in his hands but police allege Mr Rose planted it there
Police documents reveal the two had been involved in a violent relationship
Mr Dax was charged with assault after slicing Mr Rose in devil worship ritual
By Belinda Grant Geary For Daily Mail Australia  23 February 2016
A ‘slave’ who claims he killed his ‘master’ in self-defence was stabbed and sliced by his dominating partner during a ritualistic devil worshipping ceremony.
Henry Rose, 59, pleaded not guilty to murdering his controlling partner Drew Dax, formerly known as Andrew Barratt, during an appearance at the Melbourne Supreme Court on Monday.
Mr Dax, 44, was found with a knife in his hand after being stabbed multiple times with two different blades in the couple’s Caulfield North home on January 11, 2015.
The court has heard that the two had been involved in a string of violent confrontations during their 28 year relationship – one so serious that the 44-year-old master had been charged with assault, the Age reported….
Police were called to the couple’s apartment in Elwood, south of Melbourne’s CBD, in 1989 after Mr Dax entered a trance-like state and demanded Mr Rose kneel before him.
According to reports, Mr Dax, who was playing the role of Satan, used a kitchen knife to slice his slave’s forehead and stab him in the hand as dramatic 16th century church music played.
Mr Dax was charged with assault and placed on an 18 month community based order, despite Mr Rose insisting that he wanted to withdraw his complaint….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3460138/Slave-facing-Melbourne-Supreme-court-murder-master-took-devil-worshipping-ceremonies-dominating-partner-slice-forehead-16th-century-church-choir-music-played.html

Man beheads dog, duck as part of animal sacrifice ritual, deputies say By Kate Jacobson Sun Sentinel January 20, 2016 A man beheaded his dog and a duck as part of an animal sacrifice ritual in the front yard of his apartment complex while neighbors watched, deputies said.
Javier Orelly, 28, was arrested on Tuesday by the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office. Deputies said they got a call just after 7 p.m. on Jan. 14 about a man who appeared to be setting up a shrine to kill his dog….
Animal sacrifices are common in Santeria, a religion typically practiced in parts of Africa and the Caribbean. Under U.S. and state law, some animal sacrifices are legal if the animal is killed humanely and for legitimate religious purposes.  Florida law prohibits the slaughter of dogs or cats.
Officers from animal care and control typically come across the discarded bodies of livestock like chickens and goats. Walesky said finding the person behind a slaughter is rare. The fact that the animal killed was a dog, Walesky said, is even more rare….
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/palm-beach/fl-west-palm-animal-sacrifice-20160120-story.html

Testimony begins in Gadsden toddler ‘ritual’ killing trial
William Thornton February 25, 2016
Etowah County prosecutors today told jurors that the body of a 20-month-old girl, hacked to death, was found in 2013 in a duffel bag cast among trash in a field next to a dead dog.
Today saw the beginning of testimony in the trial of Stephon Lindsay, 38, accused of killing his daughter, Maliyah Tashay Lindsay, almost three years ago in what some family members termed a “ritual” killing.
Gadsden police discovered the body of Maliyah Lindsay in a wooded area at the dead end of Plainview Street in Gadsden on March 12, 2013 after Stephon Lindsay was arrested in connection with the child’s disappearance.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Marcus Reid said testimony would show Stephon killed Maliyah in accordance with his religious beliefs, using a long knife while the child’s mother was sick following giving birth a few weeks before….
Stephon would occasionally read and write in a dark green binder that he called his Bible, she said. He had a passion for horror, zombie and martial arts movies, she said, and would occasionally run outside into the rain to “do the stuff they do in the movies.” He collected knives and swords, she said, but also had a sense of humor and helped cook and clean and care for Maliyah….
http://www.al.com/news/anniston-gadsden/index.ssf/2016/02/testimony_begins_in_gadsden_to.html

describes severe violence
Kony’s cannibals: Commander ‘ordered his men to cook and eat captured civilians and use rape to train child fighters in Uganda’
Dominic Ongwen, himself a child soldier, ‘turned children into militants’
He was operating as a commander for Joseph Kony’s rebel army
A court today heard he ordered his soldiers to cook and eat human flesh
He appeared at the International Criminal Court to face war crime charges
By Corey Charlton for MailOnline  21 January 2016
A former Lord’s Resistance Army commander ordered his men to cook and eat the flesh of abducted civilians and used rape to turn children into sex slaves or soldiers, a court has heard.
Dominic Ongwen, himself a former child soldier who rose through the ranks of Joseph Kony’s rebel group, is also accused of slaughtering locals in a campaign of terror across Uganda.
Surrendering last January after years on the run as one of the world’s most wanted criminals, he faces 70 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court….
Prosecutor Ben Gumpert told judges Kony found children easiest to shape by a process of brutalisation into the fighters he needed….
Ongwen, by turns generous and cruel, played a role in this.
Mr Gumpert said: ‘Witnesses tell of how he instructed his personal escorts to administer dreadful beatings and… even, on at least one occasion, to kill, cook and eat civilians who had been abducted in attacks.’….
‘Nursing mothers whose babies slowed up the progress or who simply cried too loudly saw them killed or thrown into the bush and left behind,’ Mr Gumpert said.
A video taken by Ugandan authorities showed thatched huts burned to the ground and abandoned corpses of children in shallow graves in the aftermath of an attack.

More than 130 people – many of them children and babies – died in these attacks and dozens of others were abducted, prosecutors said.
He added that Ongwen played a crucial role in transforming abducted children into soldiers, whom Kony saw as ‘most easily molded into the ruthless killers he needed’.
They were forced to perform ‘individual acts of torture and murder designed to convince recently abducted children that they were so steeped in blood that there could be no acceptance for them back in civilian society,’ Mr Gumpert said….
The LRA is accused of slaughtering more than 100,000 people and abducting 60,000 children in its bloody rebellion against Kampala.
It first emerged in northern Uganda in 1986, where it claimed to fight in the name of the Acholi ethnic group against the government of Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni.
But over the years it has moved freely across porous regional borders, shifting from Uganda to sow terror in southern Sudan before heading into northeastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and finally crossing into southeastern Central African Republic in March 2008.
Combining religious mysticism with a bent for astute guerrilla tactics and bloodthirsty ruthlessness, Kony has turned scores of young girls into his personal sex slaves while claiming to be fighting to impose the Bible’s Ten Commandments….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3409871/ICC-prosecutors-seek-trial-Lords-Resistance-Army-ex-commander.html

I’m a survivor of female genital cutting and I’m speaking out – as others must too Maryum Saifee
My aunt cut my genitals when I was seven years old. The culture of silence surrounding this FGM/C means laws alone won’t stop it Monday 8 February 2016
For a final, only half-listening to a fellow classmate describe her research project. “Female genital mutilation is the partial or total cutting of the external female genitalia for non-medical reasons,” she mechanically described. “The procedure typically take places when the girl is seven years old. The process is usually carried out by an older female relative. And once the ritual takes place, it is almost never discussed.” As she spoke, goosebumps began to form and I sat paralysed in my seat. Memories I had suppressed since childhood came flooding to the foreground….
My aunt was a doctor. So when she led me downstairs to her clinic and instructed me to lie flat on my back on her operating table, I didn’t think to question her authority. With no anaesthetic and very little warning, she performed the ritualised cut. After it was over, we headed back to the party in silence….
When I confronted my parents, they were stunned. My aunt had carried out the ritual without their consent. My father felt a unique betrayal. This was the same little sister he encouraged to pursue medicine in the first place. He had no idea that female genital mutilation or cutting (FGM/C) was even practised within the Dawoodi Bohra community, a Shia subsect from India’s coastal state of Gujarat….
Like other forms of gender-based violence, FGM/C is a manifestation of power and means of controlling the sexuality of women and girls. In recent years, many countries have passed laws to criminalise the practice of FGM/C. Yet, it is an extraordinarily difficult crime to prosecute. Laws alone are not enough. For there to be a sustainable end to this practice, there has to be a radical culture change from the ground up, that promotes zero tolerance to any and all forms of excision….
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/08/victim-fgm-speaking-out-cut-genitals-culture-of-silence

Replace female genital mutilation with new rites of passage, says UN chief By Sebastien Malo  Mon Feb 8, 2016
NEW YORK (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – New, unharmful rites of passage should replace female genital mutilation, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said on Monday after new data showed there were more victims of the custom than previously estimated.
The call by the U.N. Secretary-General was heard by diplomats, campaigners and survivors gathered at the U.N. headquarters in New York to mark the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, which fell on Saturday.
“I am especially inspired by communities that find better ways to mark the rite of passage into womanhood,” said Ban.
He gave the example of young girls in Kenya and Tanzania spending a week away from their families to learn life skills instead of being cut.
The U.N.’s children’s agency UNICEF said on Friday more than 200 million girls and women globally have suffered genital mutilation, far higher than previously estimated….
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-rights-women-fgm-idUSKCN0VH23R

Kenya child abuse: US ex-missionary gets 40yrs’  2016-03-07
Oklahoma City – A former missionary convicted of sexually abusing children at an orphanage in Kenya was sentenced on Monday to 40 years in a US prison.
Matthew Lane Durham, 21, had faced up to 30 years on each of four counts of engaging in illicit sexual conduct in foreign places. He was ordered to pay restitution of $15 863.
Durham asked the court for mercy. “All I wanted was to follow God’s plan for me,” he told the judge.
Defence attorney Stephen Jones has said Durham plans to appeal. He has described Durham, who was 19 when he was charged, as “an emotionally vulnerable teenager” who was struggling with sexual identity while being a devout Christian.
Prosecutors alleged Durham targeted orphans while volunteering at the Upendo Children’s Home in Nairobi between April and June 2014. Durham had served as a volunteer since 2012 at the orphanage, which specialises in caring for neglected children.
Orphanage officials and five of the children travelled from Kenya to testify at the trial.
Prosecutors asked that Durham be placed under supervision for the rest of his life in the event he is ever released from prison.
“He raped or sexually molested by force or threat four children ranging in ages from 5 years to 14 years – some multiple times – in a span of just 33 days,” prosecutors wrote….
http://www.news24.com/World/News/kenya-child-abuse-us-ex-missionary-gets-40yrs-20160307

Child Abuse and Research

SMART Child Abuse and Ritual Abuse Research
https://ritualabuse.us/research/

Recovered Memory Data with information on recovered memory corroboration, theories on recovered memory, legal information, physiological evidence for memory suppression, replies to skeptics and books and articles on memory   https://ritualabuse.us/research/memory-fms/recovered-memory-data/

Recovered memory corroboration rates – There are many studies that show fairly high corroboration rates for recovered  memories.  https://ritualabuse.us/research/memory-fms/recovered-memory-corroboration-rates/

Traumatic memory: memory disturbances and dissociative amnesia
The following articles provide compelling scientific evidence in support of the phenomena of dissociation and recovered memory. Included are cases involving survivors of childhood abuse, survivors of the Holocaust, and war veterans. http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/scholarly-resources/traumatic-memory/

110 Corroborated Cases of Recovered Memory
http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/case-archive/

Corroborated Cases of Recovered Memory
http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/tag/corroborated-cases/

Basic Information on Dissociative Identity Disorder with sections on Basic Information on DID from the DSM-IV-TR, The History of DID/MPD, Diagnosing DID, Responses to those that state that DID is iatrogenic or a social construct,  MPD/DID connection to severe abuse, Recent information and DID resources  – https://ritualabuse.us/research/did/basic-information-on-didmpd/

Mental health care ‘insufficient for abused children’ 27 January 2016 From the section UK
Nearly all health professionals believe there are not enough mental health services for children who have suffered sexual abuse, a survey has suggested. The NSPCC surveyed 1,256 people in the UK, including psychologists, teachers, GPs and social workers, and 96% said there was insufficient help.
Just over half blamed waiting lists, and 78% said accessing help had become more difficult in the last five years. The government says an extra £1.4bn is being spent to improve the situation.
NSPCC chief executive Peter Wanless said the situation “shames the nation” and called for better access to therapy. The charity says abused children often have to develop chronic mental health problems, be suicidal or self-harming before services become available to them.
It found that in many cases children have to wait more than five months to get specialist support…. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-35413456

Former children’s TV show host is linked to child abuse case By Associated Press February 11, 2016
A California judge has determined that a man recently arrested in a San Diego suburb is a fugitive wanted in a 1979 child sexual abuse investigation in Louisiana, where he was a children’s TV show host known as “Mr. Wonder.”
A San Diego County Superior Court judge ruled Thursday after a brief identity hearing.
Authorities say Frank John Selas III assumed a new identity in the San Diego area, where he often invited children to his house to swim and was a Cub Scout leader. He was arrested in January.
The ruling sets the stage for extradition proceedings to begin.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-childrens-tv-show-host-child-abuse-20160211-story.html

Study Links Child Abuse, Neglect to Earlier Onset of Bipolar Disorder
By Robert Preidt, HealthDay Reporter  THURSDAY, Feb. 11, 2016 (HealthDay News) — People with bipolar disorder who have a history of being abused or neglected as children may have more severe symptoms and a higher risk of suicide, new research suggests.
“Our findings have important implications for clinical practice, as they suggest that a history of childhood maltreatment could be used as an early indicator of high risk for poor outcomes among individuals with bipolar disorder,” said study author Jessica Agnew-Blais, a postdoctoral researcher at King’s College London in England.
“This information could be valuable for identifying patients with bipolar disorder who may benefit from greater support and treatment,” she said in a college news release.
The researchers reviewed 30 studies. While they only found an association, rather than a cause-and-effect link, they said bipolar patients who suffered from neglect or physical, sexual or emotional abuse as children were more likely to have more severe manic, depressive and psychotic symptoms compared to those who weren’t abused.
People with bipolar disorder who were abused as children also had a higher risk of anxiety disorders and substance and alcohol abuse disorders, the research showed.
Those abused as children developed bipolar symptoms more than four years earlier, the study found. They also were nearly four times more likely to have post-traumatic stress disorder. And they were nearly twice as likely to attempt suicide as those who weren’t mistreated during childhood, the researchers said…. The study was published Feb. 9 in The Lancet Psychiatry.
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/articles/2016-02-11/study-links-child-abuse-neglect-to-earlier-onset-of-bipolar-disorder

Paedophiles use secret Facebook groups to swap images By Angus Crawford BBC News 12 February 2016 Paedophiles are using secret groups on Facebook to post and swap obscene images of children, the BBC has found. Settings on the social network mean the groups are invisible to most users and only members can see the content. Children’s Commissioner for England Anne Longfield said Facebook was not doing enough to police the groups and protect children. Facebook’s head of public policy told the BBC he was committed to removing “content that shouldn’t be there”. A BBC investigation found a number of secret groups, created by and run for men with a sexual interest in children, including one being administered by a convicted paedophile who was still on the sex offenders’ register. The groups have names that give a clear indication of their content and contain pornographic and highly suggestive images, many purporting to be of children. They also have sexually explicit comments posted by users….
The Internet Watch Foundation creates a list of web pages with child sexual abuse content and any found to be on Facebook groups are taken down automatically, Facebook says. Any other material reported to the social network as inappropriate goes through an internal review procedure to check if it is in breach of its community standards. Facebook says it removes content that includes “solicitation of sexual material, any sexual content involving minors, threats to share intimate images and offers of sexual services”….
She said: “I was horrified. Thinking that these innocent snapshots of my (then) 11-year-old daughter had become the subject of vile comments and disgusting exchanges between members of these groups was really upsetting. “But equally upsetting is the fact that Facebook allows these secret groups to exist, unmonitored and unchecked, making them rife for abuse by paedophiles. “There must be a duty of care to users to make sure that paedophiles can’t hide on these secret groups, stealing and sharing images of children they find online.” Children’s Commissioner for England Anne Longfield said: “I’m shocked those don’t breach community standards, any parent or indeed child looking at those would know that they were not acceptable.” She said she did not believe Facebook was doing enough to protect children….  http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-35521068

Webcam sex abuse ‘established reality’ in the UK By Angus Crawford BBC News  26 January 2016 From the section UK   Paedophile Trevor Monk paid for the live streaming of child abuse from the Philippines and then travelled there to carry out the abuse himself. His case represents a growing problem of British men ordering abuse over the internet.
A webcam and an internet connection was all Monk needed to carry out a catalogue of abuse on children as young as eight years old.
Having arranged “facilitators” to co-ordinate from Manila, the 47-year-old transferred money in exchange for young girls performing sex acts in front of a computer.
Watching the live stream from his home in Erith, south-east London, Monk later went a step further and travelled to the Philippines where he abused at least nine young girls in person. He is also known to have travelled to Thailand.
Police and charities are concerned this type of abuse is a growing trend, made easier by the amount of untraceable messaging services now available.
Typically offenders like Monk use social media or live pornography sites to make contact – either with a family or a pimp.
They then pay as little as £15 via international transfer and are allowed to direct the abuse over the internet.
But this case also reveals just how much money can be involved. Over a four year period between 2010 and 2014 Monk paid out more than £14,000 to pay for what he called “shows”, transferring the money in small amounts via Western Union….
Two years ago, I travelled to the Philippines to observe the effects of this global crime on the local population.
The BBC found in 2014 that the abuse took place in slum areas in the Philippines
I met children as young as five who had been sexually assaulted by their own parents – paid to do so by sex offenders in Europe. During visits to slums in Cebu City in the south of the country, I saw that whole areas had been taken over by the trade. Police took me to a house where children would be brought by their relatives to take part in the live streaming. I was told that it had become “a cottage industry”….  http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-35384504

Internet trolling: quarter of teenagers suffered online abuse last year
Survey of 13- to 18-year-olds reveals teenagers with disabilities and those from minority ethnic backgrounds are more likely to encounter cyberbullying
Four in five adolescents surveyed said they had recently seen or heard online hate.
Aisha Gani Monday 8 February 2016
One in four teenagers suffered hate incidents online last year, a figure described by experts as a “wake-up call” on the impact of internet trolling.
The survey of 13- to 18-year-olds found that 24% had been targeted due to their gender, sexual orientation, race, religion, disability or transgender identity. One in 25 said they were singled out for abuse all or most of the time.
Will Gardner, chief executive of the charity Childnet and director of the UK Safer Internet Centre, which published the study, said: “It is a wake-up call for all of us to play our part in helping create a better internet for all, to ensure that everyone can benefit from the opportunities that technology provides for building mutual respect and dialogue, facilitating rights, and empowering everyone to be able to express themselves and be themselves online – whoever they are.”
The survey also found four in five adolescents had seen or heard online hate during the previous 12 months. Researchers defined such abuse as offensive, mean or threatening, and either targeted directly at a person or group or generally shared online.
Teenagers with disabilities and those from African, Caribbean, Asian, Middle Eastern and other minority ethnic groups were more likely to encounter cyberbullying, the report concluded…..
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/feb/09/internet-trolling-teenagers-online-abuse-hate-cyberbullying

Stopping Child Abuse: Paid Family Leave Reduced The Number Of Child Abuse Cases In California
Feb 25, 2016 By Justin Caba
In 2004, California introduced its Paid Family Leave (PFL) program, which allows for up to six weeks of paid leave for the birth of a newborn or to take care of a sick family member in a 12-month period. Despite there being proven benefits to having paid family leave, a number of other states have not followed suit. A recent study published in the journal Injury Prevention aimed to compare to the impact of the PFL program in California to states that have not enacted any parental leave laws.
Researchers from the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) gathered data on the number of children hospitalized from deliberately inflicted head injuries between 1995 and 2011 in California. They compared this data to that from seven other states without any paid leave policies: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Wisconsin.
Admission rates for abusive head injuries dropped significantly among children under the age of 2 following the PFL enactment. When researchers incorporated influential factors, like unemployment rates and low education levels, the PFL program led to a drop of 5.1 admissions per 100,000 children under the age of 1. The policy also led to a 2.8 per 100,000 drop in admissions among children under 2…. http://www.medicaldaily.com/paid-family-leave-stopping-child-abuse-375161

New Federal Data Shows Nearly 3 Percent Rise in Child Abuse
By david crary, AP national writer Jan 25, 2016
The number of U.S. children victimized by abuse and neglect increased by nearly 3 percent in the latest annual reporting period, according to new federal data.
According to the report released Monday by the Department of Health and Human Services, the estimated number of victimized children in the 2014 fiscal year was 702,208 — up from 682,307 in 2013.
The report estimated fatalities attributable to child abuse and neglect at 1,580 — up from 1,530 in 2013…. http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/federal-data-shows-percent-rise-child-abuse-36507530

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