Issue 138 – January 2018

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 138 – January 2018

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 2018 – All rights reserved. No reproduction of any material without written permission from the editor and individual authors.

The Survivorship Ritual Abuse and Mind Control 2018 Conference
https://survivorship.org/ritual-abuse-and-mind-control-2018-conference/

When:
Regular Conference – Saturday and Sunday May 19 – 20, 2018
Clinician’s Conference – Friday May 18, 2018

Where:
Courtyard Marriot Long Beach Airport
Long Beach, CA

Please write conference2018@survivorship.org for more information
Conference Speakers Include:
Ellen Lacter, Ph.D., Randy Noblitt, PhD, Neil Brick and Cynthia Henrie, MFT

This issue has information on: Survivorship Ritual Abuse and Mind Control 2018 Conference, Roy Moore, Leigh Corfman, Beverly Young Nelson, Senator Al Franken, Inappropriate Touching, Leeann Tweeden, Jake Tapper, President Trump, sexual misconduct, harassment, assault,Charlie Rose, crude sexual advances, Corey Feldman, child abuse claims,Kevin Spacey, Harvey Weinstein, Salma Hayek,21st Century Fox, sexual harassment scandal, Roger Ailes, Bill O‘Reilly, Gretchen Carlson, Representative John Conyers Jr., Smyllum House, Smyllum Park orphanage, Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul,satanic sex ritual, Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse, Roman Catholic Church, Prof Alexis Jay, Scientology, Mind Control, Charles Manson, Wormwood, LSD, CIA, Frank Olson, Larry Nassar former USA Gymnastics team doctor,Rachael Denhollander, Maude Julien, ritual sex abuse, Rui Pedro, Celestial Truth sect, Jehovah’s Witness rape victims,abuse cover up, Louise Palmer, sex slave, Shandra Woworunti, World of Faith Fellowship in North Carolina,physical abuse, Australia’s senior Roman Catholic prelate Cardinal George Pell, CIA brainwashing case, U.S. Central Intelligence Agency brainwashing experiments,McKayla Maroney, USA Gymnastics, Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints President Warren Jeffs, religious ritual, YouTube’s Child-Abuse Problem

News items

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/

The Survivorship Ritual Abuse and Mind Control 2018 Conference
https://survivorship.org/ritual-abuse-and-mind-control-2018-conference/
When:
Regular Conference – Saturday and Sunday May 19 – 20, 2018
Clinician’s Conference – Friday May 18, 2018
Where:
Courtyard Marriot Long Beach Airport
3841 N. Lakewood Blvd
Long Beach, CA 90808
Please write conference2018@survivorship.org for more information
Conference Speakers Include:
Ellen Lacter, Ph.D., Randy Noblitt, PhD, Neil Brick and Cynthia Henrie, MFT

Woman says Roy Moore initiated sexual encounter when she was 14, he was 32 – The Washington Post
Leigh Corfman says she was 14 years old when an older man approached her outside a courtroom in Etowah County, Ala. She was sitting on a wooden bench with her mother, they both recall, when the man introduced himself as Roy Moore.
It was early 1979 and Moore — now the Republican nominee in Alabama for a U.S. Senate seat — was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney. He struck up a conversation, Corfman and her mother say, and offered to watch the girl while her mother went inside for a child custody hearing.
“He said, ‘Oh, you don’t want her to go in there and hear all that. I’ll stay out here with her,’ ” says Corfman’s mother, Nancy Wells, 71. “I thought, how nice for him to want to take care of my little girl.”
Alone with Corfman, Moore chatted with her and asked for her phone number, she says. Days later, she says, he picked her up around the corner from her house in Gadsden, drove her about 30 minutes to his home in the woods, told her how pretty she was and kissed her. On a second visit, she says, he took off her shirt and pants and removed his clothes. He touched her over her bra and underpants, she says, and guided her hand to touch him over his underwear.
“I wanted it over with — I wanted out,” she remembers thinking. “Please just get this over with. Whatever this is, just get it over.” Corfman says she asked Moore to take her home, and he did.
Two of Corfman’s childhood friends say she told them at the time that she was seeing an older man, and one says Corfman identified the man as Moore. Wells says her daughter told her about the encounter more than a decade later, as Moore was becoming more prominent as a local judge.
Aside from Corfman, three other women interviewed by The Washington Post in recent weeks say Moore pursued them when they were between the ages of 16 and 18 and he was in his early 30s, episodes they say they found flattering at the time, but troubling as they got older. None of the three women say that Moore forced them into any sort of relationship or sexual contact….

In a written statement, Moore denied the allegations….
Neither Corfman nor any of the other women sought out The Post. While reporting a story in Alabama about supporters of Moore’s Senate campaign, a Post reporter heard that Moore allegedly had sought relationships with teenage girls. Over the ensuing three weeks, two Post reporters contacted and interviewed the four women. All were initially reluctant to speak publicly but chose to do so after multiple interviews, saying they thought it was important for people to know about their interactions with Moore. The women say they don’t know one another….
By his account, chronicled in his book “So Help Me God,” Moore spent his time as a prosecutor convicting “murderers, rapists, thieves and drug pushers.” He writes that it was “around this time that I fashioned a plaque of The Ten Commandments on two redwood tablets.”….

The legal age of consent in Alabama, then and now, is 16. Under Alabama law in 1979, and today, a person who is at least 19 years old who has sexual contact with someone older than 12 and younger than 15 has committed sexual abuse in the second degree. Sexual contact is defined as touching of sexual or intimate parts. The crime is a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in jail.
The law then and now also includes a section on enticing a child younger than 16 to enter a home with the purpose of proposing sexual intercourse or fondling of sexual and genital parts. That is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
In Alabama, the statute of limitations for bringing felony charges involving sexual abuse of a minor in 1979 would have run out three years later, and the time frame for filing a civil complaint would have ended when the alleged victim turned 21, according to Child USA, a nonprofit research and advocacy group at the University of Pennsylvania….
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/woman-says-roy-moore-initiated-sexual-encounter-when-she-was-14-he-was-32/2017/11/09/1f495878-c293-11e7-afe9-4f60b5a6c4a0_story.html

Former Roy Moore colleague: ‘Common knowledge’ he dated teenagers
New York Daily News MEGAN CERULLO Nov 12th 2017
A former colleague of U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore said Saturday that it was “common knowledge” that the Alabama Republican dated high school girls while he was the assistant district attorney for Etowah County.
Moore worked in the district attorney’s office from 1977 until 1982, and his coworkers found it strange that he regularly dated high school girls, Teresa Jones, former deputy district attorney for Etowah County from 1982 until 1985 told CNN.
No one confronted him about the behavior, which included preying on young girls at high school gatherings, at the time, she said.

“It was common knowledge that Roy Moore dated high school girls, everyone we knew thought it was weird,” Jones told CNN. “We wondered why someone his age would hang out at high school football games and the mall…but you really wouldn’t say anything to someone like that,” Jones told CNN….
Jones’ comments come two days after the Washington Post’s bombshell report that Moore, now 70, allegedly pursued sexual relationships with minors when he was in his early 30s.
Four women told the Post that he sought them out for sexual and romantic relationships when they were girls.
One of his accusers, Leigh Corfman, told the post that she was just 14 when the former Alabama Supreme Court justice pursued her…..
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/11/12/former-roy-moore-colleague-common-knowledge-he-dated-teenagers/23274658/

Roy Moore’s former colleague says it was “common knowledge” he dated teens
By Kathryn Watson CBS News November 11, 2017
A former prosecutor who once worked alongside embattled Alabama GOP Senate candidate Roy Moore in the early 1980s told CNN it was “common knowledge” at the time that Moore dated high school girls.
“It was common knowledge that Roy dated high school girls, everyone we knew thought it was weird,” former deputy district attorney Teresa Jones told CNN in comments aired Saturday. “We wondered why someone his age would hang out at high school football games and the mall … but you really wouldn’t say anything to someone like that.”
CBS News has reached out to Jones for comment.

Jones, now a partner at the Syprett, Meshad, Resnick, Lieb, Dumbaugh, Jones, Krotec & Westheimer, P.A. law firm based in Sarasota, Florida, served as deputy district attorney for Etowah County, Alabama from 1982 to 1985, according to her firm’s website. Moore worked as a deputy district attorney in that office from 1977 to 1982. Before joining the DA’s office, Jones was the assistant city attorney for the city of Gadsden, Alabama, the county seat of Etowah County.
Jones’ comments come after an explosive Washington Post report in which four women say Moore pursued them sexually or romantically when they were in their teens. The youngest accuser, Leigh Corfman, said she was 14 and Moore was 32 when he sexually touched her.
Mike Ortiz, an ex-boyfriend of Corfman told CNN she relayed the story to him when they dated for about two years around 2009. Corfman’s description to the Post fits what she told him to a tee, he said.
“But I believed her when she told me and I still believe her,” he said on CNN. “She wouldn’t lie about something like that.”….
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/teresa-jones-says-roy-moore-common-knowledge-dated-teens/

‘You’re Just a Child … No One Will Ever Believe You’
An Alabama woman says U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore sexually assaulted her in 1977. She is now the fifth woman to speak out against the Republican. David A. Graham Nov 13, 2017
An Alabama woman says that Roy Moore, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Alabama, sexually assaulted her in 1977 outside the restaurant where she worked in Gadsden, Alabama.
Beverly Young Nelson, who will turn 56 on Tuesday, said that when she was 16, Moore, a regular patron, offered her a ride home from work, then pulled his car around the back of the restaurant where he groped her, tried to force her head into his crotch, and tried to remove her shirt.
“I was alarmed and I immediately asked him what he was doing,” she said. “Instead of answering my questions, Mr. Moore reached over and began groping me and putting his hands on my breast. I tried to open my car door to leave but he reached over and he locked it.”
She added, “I thought he was going to rape me. I was twisting and I was struggling and I was begging him to stop.”Eventually, she said, Moore gave up.
“He told me, he said, ‘You’re just a child,’ and he said, ‘I am the district attorney of Etowah County and if you tell anyone about this no one will ever believe you.’”….
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/roy-moore-beverly-nelson-sexual-assault-allegation/545768/

Roy Moore Is Accused of Sexual Misconduct by a Fifth Woman By JONATHAN MARTIN and SHERYL GAY STOLBERGNOV. 13, 2017 WASHINGTON – An Alabama woman accused Roy S. Moore on Monday of sexually assaulting her when she was 16, the fifth and most brutal charge leveled against the Republican Senate candidate. Senate Republicans are now openly discussing not seating him or expelling him if he wins the Dec. 12 special election.
The new accuser, Beverly Young Nelson, told a packed news conference in New York that Mr. Moore attacked her when she was a teenager and he was a prosecutor in Etowah County, Ala. Ms. Nelson was represented at the news conference by Gloria Allred, a lawyer who has championed victims of sexual harassment.
“I tried fighting him off, while yelling at him to stop, but instead of stopping, he began squeezing my neck, attempting to force my head onto his crotch,” Ms. Nelson said, growing emotional as she described the assault, which she said happened one night after her shift ended at a local restaurant, where she was a waitress.
She said that Mr. Moore warned her that “no one will believe you” if she told anyone about the encounter in his car.
Ms. Allred displayed a yearbook that Ms. Nelson said had been signed by Mr. Moore, and the writing mirrored other examples of Mr. Moore’s signature.
https://www.nytimes.com/ 2017/11/13/us/politics/roy-moore-alabama-senate.html

Locals Were Troubled by Roy Moore’s Interactions with Teen Girls at the Gadsden Mall
By Charles Bethea November 13, 2017
oy Moore, the Republican Senate candidate and former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, was born in Gadsden, a small city flanked by Interstate 59 and the Coosa River, an hour northeast of Birmingham. Gadsden is hilly, woodsy, blue-collar, and religious. “LEGAL OR NOT, SIN IS SIN,” a sign in front of a church announced yesterday. I saw it as I drove around, crisscrossing George Wallace Drive. I also saw Trump posters, Confederate flags, and dozens of signs for Doug Jones, the Democrat tied with Moore in recent Senate-race polls. Gadsden is the seat of Etowah County, which is a conservative place; Donald Trump received three times as many votes in the county as Hillary Clinton did. (Statewide, he received twice as many.) But I didn’t, in all my driving, see a single yard sign for Moore, the home-town son. Even the parking lot of the one mall in town had more bumper stickers for Luther Strange (four), Moore’s opponent in the Republican primary, than for Moore himself (one)….

He meant back to the early eighties, when Roy Moore was, many people say, a regular visitor to the mall. On Thursday, the Washington Post reported that, when Moore was a thirty-two-year-old assistant district attorney in Etowah County, he brought Leigh Corfman, who was fourteen years old at the time, to his home and sexually molested her. Three additional women told the Post that Moore had pursued them when they were in their teens and he was in his early thirties. (On Monday, another woman, Beverly Young Nelson, said that Moore assaulted her when she was sixteen years old. At a press conference, she held up a high-school yearbook that she said Moore signed before the alleged assault.) Two of the women say that they first met Moore at the Gadsden Mall, and the Post reports that several other women who used to work there remembered Moore’s frequent presence-“usually alone” and “well-dressed in slacks and a button-down shirt.”
This past weekend, I spoke or messaged with more than a dozen people-including a major political figure in the state-who told me that they had heard, over the years, that Moore had been banned from the mall because he repeatedly badgered teen-age girls. Some say that they heard this at the time, others in the years since. These people include five members of the local legal community, two cops who worked in the town, several people who hung out at the mall in the early eighties, and a number of former mall employees. (A request for comment from the Moore campaign was not answered.) Several of them asked that I leave their names out of this piece. The stories that they say they’ve heard for years have been swirling online in the days since the Post published its report. “Sources tell me Moore was actually banned from the Gadsden Mall and the YMCA for his inappropriate behavior of soliciting sex from young girls,” the independent Alabama journalist Glynn Wilson wrote on his Web site on Sunday. (Wilson declined to divulge his sources.) Teresa Jones, a deputy district attorney for Etowah County in the early eighties, told CNN last week that “it was common knowledge that Roy dated high-school girls.” Jones told me that she couldn’t confirm the alleged mall banning, but said, “It’s a rumor I’ve heard for years.”….

But these officers, along with the other people I spoke to, said that Moore’s presence at the mall was regarded as a problem. “I was told by a girl who worked at the mall that he’d been run off from there, from a number of stores. Maybe not legally banned, but run off,” one officer told me. He also said, “I heard from one girl who had to tell the manager of a store at the mall to get Moore to leave her alone.”….
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/locals-were-troubled-by-roy-moores-interactions-with-teen-girls-at-the-gadsden-mall

4 More Women Accuse Roy Moore of Misconduct By ALAN BLINDER NOV. 15, 2017
GADSDEN, Ala. — Alabama’s increasingly bizarre Senate race was convulsed again as four more women came forward on Wednesday to describe encounters with the Republican candidate, Roy S. Moore, and Mr. Moore’s campaign sharply questioned the credibility of another accuser.
The newest accusations came from women who ranged in age from about 18 to 28 at the time. They complained of being groped, forcibly kissed or subjected to unwanted advances.
One of them, Becky Gray, now 62, a retired teacher living in Gadsden, Ala., said in an interview that she was puzzled by Mr. Moore’s repeated overtures when she worked in the Gadsden Mall.
“I just couldn’t figure out why a man of his age spent every Friday and Saturday at the mall,” said Ms. Gray, who was then in her late teens or early 20s.
She said she frequently saw Mr. Moore, then in his 30s, talking with young women and did her best to avoid him. Ms. Gray said she eventually complained to her manager that he would not leave her alone and was later told that Mr. Moore had been banned from the mall.
Nine women have now come forward with accusations, and state Republican leaders were pondering increasingly baroque mechanisms that have the potential to deny their own candidate a Senate seat…..
Another woman, Gena Richardson, told The Post that Mr. Moore had left her frightened after he gave her a “forceful” kiss when she was about 18 and Mr. Moore was in his 30s.
Separately, Kelly Harrison Thorp said that Mr. Moore had sought a date with her when she was 17 and he was in his 30s, and Ms. Gray told The Post about Mr. Moore’s advances.
Karen Lancaster, 63, a retired schoolteacher, confirmed Wednesday that Ms. Gray had told her, in the late 1980s, that Mr. Moore repeatedly tried to ask her out during those years at the mall.
“I’ve known for over 20 years that he was a predator, that he preyed upon girls in the mall,” she said. “It’s common knowledge.”
Ms. Thorp, in a subsequent interview with The New York Times, recalled asking Mr. Moore if he knew how old she was.
“‘Oh yeah, I go out with girls your age all the time,’” she remembered him replying…..
https://www.nytimes.com/ 2017/11/15/us/roy-moore-alabama-republicans.html

New Roy Moore accuser: ‘He didn’t pinch it; he grabbed it’
November 15, 2017 By Anna Claire Vollers
A Gadsden woman says Roy Moore groped her while she was in his law office on legal business with her mother in 1991. Moore was married at that time.
In the past week, Moore has been accused by five other women of a range of behaviors that include sexual misconduct with a woman when she was 14, and sexual assault of another when she was 16. This is the first public accusation of physical contact that happened after Moore was married.
In recent days, Moore has publicly denied any wrongdoing, and has denied knowing some of the women.
….Almost from the moment she walked in to Moore’s office, Johnson said, Moore began flirting with her.
“He kept commenting on my looks, telling me how pretty I was, how nice I looked,” recalled Johnson. “He was saying that my eyes were beautiful.”
It made her uncomfortable. “I was thinking, can we hurry up and get out of here?”
Johnson was 28 years old, in a difficult marriage headed toward divorce, and unemployed. She was at the office to sign over custody of her 12-year-old son to her mother, with whom he’d been living. Her mother had hired Moore to handle the custody petition.
Johnson had two young daughters at the time with her then-husband, and her son said he wanted to live with his grandmother.
At one point during the meeting, she said, Moore came around the desk and sat on the front of it, just inches from her. He was so close, she said, she could smell his breath.

According to Johnson, he asked questions about her young daughters, including what color eyes they had and if they were as pretty as she was. She said that made her feel uncomfortable, too.
Once the papers were signed, she and her mother got up to leave. After her mother walked through the door first, she said, Moore came up behind her.
It was at that point, she recalled, he grabbed her buttocks.
“He didn’t pinch it; he grabbed it,” said Johnson. She was so surprised she didn’t say anything. She didn’t tell her mother.
She said she told her sister years later how Moore had made her feel uncomfortable during that meeting. Her sister told AL.com she remembers the conversation
…..”This is not a politics thing with me,” she said. “It’s more of a moral and religious thing.” It has bothered her over the years to see Moore on TV, talking about his Christian faith.
She wanted to come forward publicly now, she said, because it’s hard for victims of harassment to talk openly about their experiences.
“I want people to know that it’s OK to finally say something,” she said. “I guess I’m ashamed I didn’t say nothing, didn’t turn around and slap him.”
….Thorp said local women have not spoken publicly against Moore before now because he had power in town and in the state, and they didn’t think they would be believed.
“Everybody knew it wouldn’t matter,” she said, “that he would get elected anyway because his supporters are never going to believe anything bad about him.”
Johnson said the answer was even more simple.
“It’s because somebody asked,” she said. “If anybody had asked, we would have told it. No one asked.” https://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2017/11/new_roy_moore_accuser_he_didnt.html

Alabama G.O.P. Says It Stands Behind Roy Moore By ALAN BLINDER NOV. 16, 2017
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — The Alabama Republican Party on Thursday offered unqualified support to the embattled candidacy of Roy S. Moore, ignoring the condemnation of national Republican leaders and brushing aside worries that he could lose a Senate race in a solidly conservative state — or be expelled from Congress if he wins.
….On Thursday, a parade of Christian activists, many of them from outside Alabama, gathered at a hotel here to declare their sustained backing for Mr. Moore and to beseech voters to look past the allegations.
But the event was often as much about criticizing the news media and Mr. Moore’s detractors as it was about shoring up the campaign.
“I believe he’s a man of God for the hour that we’re in, and he’ll represent us well,” said the Rev. David Floyd, a pastor at a Baptist church in Opelika. “By the way, we down here in Alabama, we don’t need Mitch McConnell or John McCain telling us who can be our representative in Congress. I believe that’s our choice to make.”….
https://www.nytimes.com/ 2017/11/16/us/roy-moore-alabama-republicans.html

Police Were Told To Keep Roy Moore Away From High School Cheerleaders, Retired Officer Says
“I didn’t realize it until some time later that when they said he liked young girls — I just thought he liked young ladies, you know, younger than him, maybe in their 20s.”
By Marina Fang 11/22/2017
A retired Alabama police officer said she and her colleagues were told decades ago to “make sure” Roy Moore “didn’t hang around” high school cheerleaders, and confirmed previous reports that the Republican Senate candidate was banned at the time from a local mall for predatory behavior toward teenage girls.
“The rumor mill was that he liked young girls, and … we were advised that he was being suspended from the mall because he would hang around the young girls that worked in the stores and … really got into a place of where they say he was harassing,” former Gadsden police officer Faye Gary told MSNBC on Tuesday.
“We were also told to watch him at the ball games, and make sure that … he didn’t hang around the cheerleaders,” she said.
Gary did not clarify who issued the warnings, saying they “were just rumors” that circulated both at the local police department and courthouse. She also said that while working on juvenile cases as an officer, she never received a formal complaint about Moore….
The 70-year-old former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court has been accused of sexual misconduct by nearly 10 women, with several incidents allegedly occurring when the women were teenagers and he was in his early 30s.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/roy-moore-high-school-cheerleaders_us_5a1586e8e4b025f8e932c45f

Two More Women Accuse Sen. Al Franken Of Inappropriate Touching
One woman told HuffPost that Franken had grabbed her backside at an event honoring women.
By Jenavieve Hatch and Zachary Roth 11/22/2017
That makes it four women who have accused Sen. Al Franken of groping them.
Two more women have told HuffPost that Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) touched their butts in separate incidents. These are the third and fourth such allegations against Franken in the past week. Leeann Tweeden, a radio host, wrote last week that Franken had kissed and groped her without her consent during a 2006 USO tour. On Monday, Lindsay Menz accused Franken of groping her at the Minnesota State Fair in 2010.
The two additional women, who said they were not familiar with each others’ stories, both spoke on condition of anonymity. But their stories, which describe events during Franken’s first campaign for the Senate, are remarkably similar — and both women have been telling them privately for years.
In a statement to HuffPost, Franken said, “It’s difficult to respond to anonymous accusers, and I don’t remember those campaign events.”
The first woman, who spoke to HuffPost on condition of anonymity because she’s worried she’ll be harassed online for making the allegation, said Franken groped her when they posed for a photo after a June 25, 2007, event hosted by the Minnesota Women’s Political Caucus in Minneapolis.
“My story is eerily similar to Lindsay Menz’s story,” the first woman said. “He grabbed my buttocks during a photo op.”
The second woman told HuffPost that Franken cupped her butt with his hand at a 2008 Democratic fundraiser in Minneapolis, then suggested the two visit the bathroom together. She spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear that the allegation could affect her position at work.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/al-franken-two-more-women-groping_us_5a15a455e4b09650540ec295

Al Franken Issues Apology After Accusation of Forcible Kissing and Groping
By NICHOLAS FANDOS NOV. 16, 2017
WASHINGTON — A growing national outcry over sexual harassment reached the Senate on Thursday, when a radio newscaster accused Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, of kissing and groping her without consent during a 2006 U.S.O. tour of the Middle East before he took public office.
Mr. Franken, who has been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate, almost immediately released an apology to the newscaster, Leeann Tweeden, who said that Mr. Franken forcibly kissed her during a rehearsal and groped her for a photo as she slept…..
She also presented evidence, including a photograph of Mr. Franken, his head turned toward the camera, with his hands placed over Ms. Tweeden’s breasts as she slept.
According to Ms. Tweeden’s account, Mr. Franken wrote a bawdy script that included a kiss for the two to perform onstage. When it came time to rehearse the skit, she wrote, Mr. Franken insisted on kissing despite her protestations.

“I immediately pushed him away with both of my hands against his chest and told him if he ever did that to me again I wouldn’t be so nice about it the next time,” Ms. Tweeden wrote. “I walked away. All I could think about was getting to a bathroom as fast as possible to rinse the taste of him out of my mouth.”
“I felt disgusted and violated,” she added.
Ms. Tweeden said that no one else witnessed the kiss, and she did not tell the tour’s organizers. She said Mr. Franken retaliated against her with insults and, she learned after the trip ended, the compromising photograph.
Ms. Tweeden said the photograph was taken while she was asleep on a flight back to the United States from Afghanistan and that she saw it only later, after the trip ended.
“I felt violated all over again. Embarrassed. Belittled. Humiliated,” she wrote. “How dare anyone grab my breasts like this and think it’s funny?”….
https://www.nytimes.com/ 2017/11/16/us/politics/al-franken-sexual-harassment-groping-forcible-kissing.html

Sen. Al Franken Hit With Second Groping Allegation November 20, 2017 Susan Davis Minnesota Democratic Sen. Al Franken is facing a second allegation that he groped a woman without consent while her husband took a photo of her with the senator at the Minnesota State Fair in 2010.
Franken “pulled me in really close, like awkward close, and as my husband took the picture, he put his hand full-fledged on my rear,” said Lindsay Menz, who told her story to CNN. “It wasn’t around my waist. It wasn’t around my hip or side. It was definitely on my butt,” she said.
CNN confirmed the account with Menz’s husband, mother and father, whom she told of the interaction at the time….
https://www.npr.org/2017/11/20/565350546/sen-al-franken-hit-with-second-groping-allegation

Sen. Al Franken groped Arianna Huffington in 2000 photo shoot, NY Post reports William Cummings, USA TODAY Nov. 20, 2017 Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., touched Huffington Post co-founder Arianna Huffington on the breast and buttocks during a 2000 photo shoot, The New York Post reported Friday. Huffington said there was nothing “remotely inappropriate” about the photos.
The Post published two photos: one showing Franken touching Huffington as the pair stood back to back, and the other showing Franken grabbing her breast as he hugged her from behind…..
Huffington said the photos were intended to reference a comedy sketch the two had performed together.
“The notion that there was anything inappropriate in this photo shoot is truly absurd,” Huffington said in a statement, according to the Post.
“Al and I did a comedic sketch for Bill Maher’s Politically Incorrect called Strange Bedfellows, in which the whole point, as the name makes clear, was that we were doing political commentary from bed,” Huffington told the Post. “This shoot was looking back at the sketch, and we were obviously hamming it up for comedic effect.”
“I’ve been great friends with Al and his wife Franni for over 20 years and there has never been anything remotely inappropriate in our interactions,” she said.
Two women have accused the Minnesota senator of sexual misconduct. Lindsay Menz, 33, told CNN that Franken grabbed her buttocks when she posed for a picture with him at the Minnesota State Fair in 2010. Leeann Tweeden said Franken “forcibly kissed” then later pretended to grope her while she was sleeping during a USO tour in the Middle East to entertain U.S. troops in 2006.
Here is how the Post’s unnamed source described the encounter:
“Franken was clowning around, but it really isn’t funny,” said a source from the shoot. “That’s his tactic, pretend like it’s all a big joke. Arianna was pushing his hands away. He was groping her. There was some fun attached to it, but she wasn’t enjoying it. She definitely told him to stop and pushed him away …
” … Franken stood there with his hand on her bottom for a long time, because there are numerous frames, each taken seconds apart, and his hand was there the whole time — his hand wasn’t just there for a quick moment,” the source said.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/11/20/al-franken-arianna-huffington-harassment/883718001/

Tapper runs through Trump sexual harassment accusers: ‘People in glass White Houses shouldn’t throw stones’ On “The Lead,” Tapper shared the photos and stories of 12 women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct, harassment and assault between the 1980s and 2000s. By Avery Anapol – 11/17/17
CNN host Jake Tapper torched President Trump Friday over his “double standard” treatment of sexual misconduct scandals.
On “The Lead,” Tapper shared the photos and stories of 12 women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct, harassment and assault between the 1980s and 2000s.
Tapper called out the president for attacking Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) over his own sexual misconduct allegations but maintaining that the women who have accused Trump are lying.
“In Trump’s world, we’re supposed to believe the very compelling claims of Leeann Tweeden,” Tapper said, referring to Franken’s accuser. “But we are not supposed to believe these women — at least 12 women who have brought forward claims, on the record, about President Trump’s past behavior.”
Trump repeatedly denied the claims during his campaign. The White House has said that its official stance is that the women who have accused him of kissing and groping them without consent, as he bragged of doing on a leaked “Access Hollywood” tape, are lying.
“Total fabrication, the events never happened,” Trump said during the campaign. “All of these liars will be sued after the election is over.”
Tapper noted that the only suit filed so far has been one of the accusers suing Trump for defamation…..
http://thehill.com/homenews/media/360956-tapper-runs-through-trump -sexual-harassment-accusers-people-in-glass-white

56 female lawmakers call for Oversight probe into sexual allegations against Trump By Olivia Beavers – 12/11/17 Nearly 60 Democratic female lawmakers are calling on the House Oversight Committee to open an investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct against President Trump.
In a letter, 56 members of the Democratic Women’s Working Group (DWWG) ask Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) and ranking member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) to open an investigation into the matter after more than a dozen women have “publicly accused the President of sexual misconduct.”
The DWWG plans to hold a press conference at the Capitol on Tuesday to emphasize their calls, one day after three of Trump’s accusers united to tell their stories at a joint news conference….
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/364387-nearly-60-female-lawmakers-call-for-probe-into-sexual-allegations-against

Eight women say Charlie Rose sexually harassed them — with nudity, groping and lewd calls
By Irin Carmon and Amy Brittain November 20
Eight women have told The Washington Post that longtime television host Charlie Rose made unwanted sexual advances toward them, including lewd phone calls, walking around naked in their presence, or groping their breasts, buttocks or genital areas.
The women were employees or aspired to work for Rose at the “Charlie Rose” show from the late 1990s to as recently as 2011. They ranged in age from 21 to 37 at the time of the alleged encounters. Rose, 75, whose show airs on PBS and Bloomberg TV, also co-hosts “CBS This Morning” and is a contributing correspondent for “60 Minutes.”
There are striking commonalities in the accounts of the women, each of whom described their interactions with Rose in multiple interviews with The Post. For all of the women, reporters interviewed friends, colleagues or family members who said the women had confided in them about aspects of the incidents. Three of the eight spoke on the record….
Most of the women said Rose alternated between fury and flattery in his interactions with them. Five described Rose putting his hand on their legs, sometimes their upper thigh, in what they perceived as a test to gauge their reactions. Two said that while they were working for Rose at his residences or were traveling with him on business, he emerged from the shower and walked naked in front of them. One said he groped her buttocks at a staff party….
She said she told Yvette Vega, Rose’s longtime executive producer, about the calls.
“I explained how he inappropriately spoke to me during those times,” Godfrey-Ryan said. “She would just shrug and just say, ‘That’s just Charlie being Charlie.’ ”
In a statement to The Post, Vega said she should have done more to protect the young women on the show.

“I should have stood up for them,” said Vega, 52, who has worked with Rose since the show was created in 1991. “I failed. It is crushing. I deeply regret not helping them.”
Godfrey-Ryan said that when Rose learned she had confided to a mutual friend about his conduct, he fired her….
The environment brimmed with the young and potentially vulnerable, hungry for scarce television jobs. “There are so few jobs,” said one of the women who said Rose groped her. “You know if you don’t behave a certain way, there’s someone else behind you.”
Rose traveled frequently, jetting off to interview world leaders across the globe and splitting time between two New York City residences and homes in Bellport — on Long Island — and North Carolina. Often at his side was a rotating cast of young assistants and producers.
The young women who were hired by the show were sometimes known as “Charlie’s Angels,” two former employees said. Rose frequently gave unsolicited shoulder rubs to several of them, behavior referred to among employees as “the crusty paw,” a former employee said….
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/eight-women-say-charlie-rose-sexually-harassed-them–with-nudity-groping-and-lewd-calls/2017/11/20/9b168de8-caec-11e7-8321-481fd63f174d_story.html

Charlie Rose Accused of Crude Sexual Advances by Multiple Women
By KIM BARKER and ELLEN GABLER NOV. 20, 2017
After allegations surfaced Monday that the longtime television host Charlie Rose made crude sexual advances toward multiple women who worked on his show over a dozen years, CBS suspended him from its morning program and PBS announced that it would no longer distribute his long-running nightly interview show.
Eight women, including three who talked on the record, told The Washington Post that he made lewd phone calls to them, walked around naked in front of them or groped them. In addition, two women told The New York Times that he made unwanted advances toward them, trying to kiss them without their permission. The women spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared Mr. Rose’s power over their careers and what some described as his volatile temper.
In a statement, Mr. Rose said he did not believe all the allegations were accurate but also apologized.
“It is essential that these women know I hear them and that I deeply apologize for my inappropriate behavior. I am greatly embarrassed. I have behaved insensitively at times, and I accept responsibility for that,” he said. “I always felt that I was pursuing shared feelings, even though I now realize I was mistaken.”….
Current and former employees of the “Charlie Rose” show described an occasionally hostile work environment, with no human-resources department and Mr. Rose essentially running his own fief. Although the show operated out of the Bloomberg building, employees of “Charlie Rose” had little recourse if they had problems.
After Mr. Rose moved his broadcast from the PBS station to the Bloomberg offices, he got rid of many of the senior staff members, former employees said, instead hiring interns as staff members and then recruiting new interns. Eventually, he settled a class-action wage lawsuit filed by former interns.
Even as Mr. Rose hired a lean young staff, he also fostered a work environment in which a personal assistant and some employees worked out of his home instead of the office. The women were often young, just out of college….
https://www.nytimes.com/ 2017/11/20/us/charlie-rose-women.html

Historical child abuse reports to Welsh police ‘increase‘ 16 November 2017
Allegations of non-recent sexual offences recorded against children have risen sharply in the last four years, according to the NSPCC. Welsh police forces recorded 947 offences in 2016-17, up from 520 in 2013-14, the children’s charity said. The increase may be due to coverage of high-profile cases, it said. North Wales Police recorded the most over that time with 1,317 cases, while South Wales Police saw 690, Dyfed-Powys had 569 and Gwent Police recorded 58….
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-wales-42010080

Corey Feldman reports child abuse claims to police
8 November 2017 From the section US & Canada
Eighties child star Corey Feldman has filed a report with police after vowing to expose an alleged paedophile ring in Hollywood.
Los Angeles Police Department confirmed they are launching an investigation after receiving the actor’s report.
LAPD did not confirm the nature of the allegations. Feldman’s spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.
Feldman, now 46, has long alleged Hollywood figures molested young actors including himself and Corey Haim.
He appeared last week on The Dr Oz Show, announcing a $10m (£7.6m) fundraising campaign for a film he wants to produce about the alleged abuse scandal.
“Right off the bat, I can name six names, one of them who is still very powerful today,” Feldman said….http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41923271

Kevin Spacey timeline: How the story unfolded 9 November 2017
Arriving in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal, allegations made against Kevin Spacey have seen the US actor’s life, career and conduct come under intense scrutiny.
The claims have had ramifications for subscription service Netflix, London’s Old Vic theatre and the organisation behind the Emmys, with fresh accusations emerging daily…..
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-41884878

Kevin Spacey: New allegations emerge 8 November 2017
The claims, spanning from the mid-1980s to 2016, raise further questions about the US actor’s conduct in the decades he worked in Hollywood and as artistic director at London’s Old Vic theatre….
Former television news anchor Heather Unruh told a press conference in Boston that her son had been sexually assaulted by Mr Spacey, at the age of 18 in a bar in Nantucket, Massachusetts, in July 2016.
She said Mr Spacey had bought her son alcohol – the drinking age in Massachusetts is 21. After getting him drunk, Mr Spacey had “stuck his hand inside my son’s pants and grabbed his genitals”, she said.
She said Mr Spacey had invited her son to a party, but he had run away from the bar when Mr Spacey had gone to the lavatory.
A criminal investigation was now under way, Mrs Unruh said….
Since the first allegation of sexual advances were made by actor Anthony Rapp on 30 October, US network Netflix axed further production of Mr Spacey’s House of Cards drama, the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences announced it will no longer give the actor a special Emmy award, and his agent and publicist dropped him as a client.
In response to Mr Rapp’s claims, Mr Spacey said he has no memory of the incident and offered an apology….
Since then more men have come forward.
Barman Kris Nixon, from Belfast, Northern Ireland, said he had been working near the Old Vic in 2007 when Mr Spacey groped him at a party.
“Kevin Spacey sat down next to me on a sofa, then reached over and grabbed my penis,” he said.
The actor had then suggested he perform a sexual act on Mr Nixon, according to the barman, who then left the party….
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-41918966

Weinstein’s Complicity Machine
The producer Harvey Weinstein relied on powerful
relationships across industries to provide him with cover
as accusations of sexual misconduct piled up for decades.
By MEGAN TWOHEY, JODI KANTOR, SUSAN DOMINUS, JIM RUTENBERG and STEVE EDER DEC. 5, 2017
Harvey Weinstein built his complicity machine out of the witting, the unwitting and those in between. He commanded enablers, silencers and spies, warning others who discovered his secrets to say nothing. He courted those who could provide the money or prestige to enhance his reputation as well as his power to intimidate.
In the weeks and months before allegations of his methodical abuse of women were exposed in October, Mr. Weinstein, the Hollywood producer, pulled on all the levers of his carefully constructed apparatus.
He gathered ammunition, sometimes helped by the editor of The National Enquirer, who had dispatched reporters to find information that could undermine accusers. He turned to old allies, asking a partner in Creative Artists Agency, one of Hollywood’s premier talent shops, to broker a meeting with a C.A.A. client, Ronan Farrow, who was reporting on Mr. Weinstein. He tried to dispense favors: While seeking to stop the actress Rose McGowan from writing in a memoir that he had sexually assaulted her, he tried to arrange a $50,000 payment to her former manager and throw new business to a literary agent advising Ms. McGowan. The agent, Lacy Lynch, replied to him in an email: “No one understands smart, intellectual and commercial like HW.”
Mr. Weinstein’s final, failed round of manipulations shows how he operated for more than three decades: by trying to turn others into instruments or shields for his behavior, according to nearly 200 interviews, internal company records and previously undisclosed emails. Some aided his actions without realizing what he was doing. Many knew something or detected hints, though few understood the scale of his sexual misconduct. Almost everyone had incentives to look the other way or reasons to stay silent. Now, even as the tally of Mr. Weinstein’s alleged misdeeds is still emerging, so is a debate about collective failure and the apportioning of blame.
Executives at Mr. Weinstein’s film companies who learned of allegations rarely took a stand, cowed by their volatile boss or worried about their careers. His brother and partner, Bob, participated in payoffs to women as far back as 1990….
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/05/us/harvey-weinstein-complicity.html

Salma Hayek reveals Harvey Weinstein endlessly stalked and propositioned her before forcing her to do a nude lesbian sex scene after she refused his advances – and once threatened to have her KILLED
Salma Hayek is revealing that she was sexually harassed by Harvey Weinstein for years, claiming she repeatedly turned down his advances
After close to a decade of refusing his demands for showers, naked massages, oral sex and threesomes, Hayek claims Weinstein refused to let her star in Frida
Weinstein even once appeared at the door of Hayek’s hotel while she was working on a film for a rival studio
When she managed to pull the film together on her own Weinstein demanded she do a nude sex scene to get the film released
Hayek said she was nauseous and suffered a nervous breakdown realizing she would finally be getting naked for Weinstein after years of his demands
In the end, Hayek was nominated for an Oscar and the film scored six nods total, winning two Academy Awards
By Chris Spargo For Dailymail.com 13 December 2017
Salma Hayek has claimed she was harassed and propositioned by Harvey Weinstein for close to a decade.
In a powerful op-ed published on Wednesday in The New York Times, Hayek reveals that after years of saying no to ‘taking a shower with him,’ ‘letting him watch [her] take a shower,’ ‘letting him give [her] a massage,’ ‘letting a naked friend of his give her a massage,’ ‘letting him give [her] oral sex,’ and ‘getting naked with another woman,’ Weinstein finally found a way to corner the actress.
Weinstein even once appeared at the door of Hayek’s hotel while she was working on a film for a rival studio claims the actress.
After jumping through countless hoops to complete work on her dream project, the Frida Kahlo biopic Frida, Weinstein told her he would not release the picture unless there was a naked lesbian sex scene.
Hayek also details her experiences with Weinstein’s notorious temper, claiming he once told her: ‘I will kill you, don’t think I can’t.’ ….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5176071/Salma-Hayek-says-Harvey-Weinstein-harassed-years.html

Harvey Weinstein Is My Monster Too
By SALMA HAYEK Dec. 12, 2017
….Little did I know it would become my turn to say no.
No to opening the door to him at all hours of the night, hotel after hotel, location after location, where he would show up unexpectedly, including one location where I was doing a movie he wasn’t even involved with.
No to me taking a shower with him.
No to letting him watch me take a shower.
No to letting him give me a massage.
No to letting a naked friend of his give me a massage.
No to letting him give me oral sex.
No to my getting naked with another woman.
No, no, no, no, no …
And with every refusal came Harvey’s Machiavellian rage.

Salma Hayek on the set of the film “Frida.” Susana Gonzalez/Newsmakers
I don’t think he hated anything more than the word “no.” The absurdity of his demands went from getting a furious call in the middle of the night asking me to fire my agent for a fight he was having with him about a different movie with a different client to physically dragging me out of the opening gala of the Venice Film Festival, which was in honor of “Frida,” so I could hang out at his private party with him and some women I thought were models but I was told later were high-priced prostitutes.
The range of his persuasion tactics went from sweet-talking me to that one time when, in an attack of fury, he said the terrifying words, “I will kill you, don’t think I can’t.”
When he was finally convinced that I was not going to earn the movie the way he had expected, he told me he had offered my role and my script with my years of research to another actress.
In his eyes, I was not an artist. I wasn’t even a person. I was a thing: not a nobody, but a body.
At that point, I had to resort to using lawyers, not by pursuing a sexual harassment case, but by claiming “bad faith,” as I had worked so hard on a movie that he was not intending to make or sell back to me. I tried to get it out of his company…..
But why do so many of us, as female artists, have to go to war to tell our stories when we have so much to offer? Why do we have to fight tooth and nail to maintain our dignity?
I think it is because we, as women, have been devalued artistically to an indecent state, to the point where the film industry stopped making an effort to find out what female audiences wanted to see and what stories we wanted to tell.

According to a recent study, between 2007 and 2016, only 4 percent of directors were female and 80 percent of those got the chance to make only one film. In 2016, another study found, only 27 percent of words spoken in the biggest movies were spoken by women. And people wonder why you didn’t hear our voices sooner. I think the statistics are self-explanatory — our voices are not welcome.
Until there is equality in our industry, with men and women having the same value in every aspect of it, our community will continue to be a fertile ground for predators.
I am grateful for everyone who is listening to our experiences. I hope that adding my voice to the chorus of those who are finally speaking out will shed light on why it is so difficult, and why so many of us have waited so long. Men sexually harassed because they could. Women are talking today because, in this new era, we finally can.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/13/opinion/contributors/salma-hayek-harvey-weinstein.html

Weinstein inquiry: police departments likely to join forces, experts say
Authorities in New York, London and Los Angeles are pursuing criminal cases against film producer facing a flood of sexual misconduct accusations Joanna Walters in New York 25 November 2017
Detectives in several cities investigating Harvey Weinstein for sex crimes are likely to be collaborating as they build evidence and assess whether the film producer can be arrested and charged, experts believe.
Investigators in New York, London and Los Angeles have opened criminal cases against Weinstein in the last six weeks, as the disgraced producer faces lawsuits on both sides of the Atlantic following a flood of accusations of sexual misconduct.
‘You’ll never work again’: women tell how sexual harassment broke their careers
Los Angeles police department (LAPD) detectives have interviewed witnesses in preparation for presenting a case to the district attorney’s office. The DA will then decide whether to press criminal charges over accusations that Weinstein raped an unnamed actress in a hotel in Beverly Hills in 2013, according to David Ring, a lawyer for the alleged victim.
Beverly Hills police were also investigating “multiple complaints involving Harvey Weinstein”, the LAPD said.
Ring said: “The LAPD is actively investigating [the alleged victim’s] case. It’s my understanding that they are also coordinating their efforts with other jurisdictions, like New York City.”
The New York police department (NYPD) is investigating rape complaints by two accusers who came forward publicly, Paz de la Huerta and Lucia Evans.
Detectives had previously looked into Weinstein’s conduct but the office of the New York DA, Cyrus Vance, controversially decided there was not enough evidence to charge him at the time.
In that case, in 2015, the Italian model Ambra Battilana Gutierrez wore a police wire that recorded her pleading with Weinstein to stop bullying her as he coaxed and threatened her when she would not go into his hotel room. He also apologized for groping her previously, as revealed in the New Yorker….https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/nov/24/harvey-weinstein-police-investigations

Harvey Weinstein scandal: New claim alleges sex trafficking Erin Jensen, USA TODAY Nov. 27, 2017 The Harvey Weinstein scandal continues to unfold.The Hollywood producer, who stands accused of sexual assault and harassment by dozens of women, also faces a growing number of lawsuits.
The latest updates:
A civil claim of sex trafficking filed in New York
British actress Kadian Noble filed a civil suit on Monday in New York alleging that Harvey Weinstein forced her into sexual acts while abroad in 2014. Even more damning: The suit, obtained by USA TODAY, claims The Weinstein Company violated federal sex trafficking law “by benefiting from, and knowingly facilitating” Weinstein’s foreign business travels in which he would “recruit or entice female actors into forced or coerced sexual encounters on the promise of roles in films or entertainment projects.”
Noble says she was summoned to the producer’s hotel room at Cannes Film Festival in 2014 to talk about a role. He began massaging her shoulders and told her to “relax.” According to the complaint, Weinstein called an unnamed Weinstein Company producer, who told the actress that she needed to be “a good girl and do whatever (Weinstein) wished,” and if she did, “they would work” with her further. Weinstein then began groping her, pulled her into a bathroom, and forced her to fondle him.
The suit says Bob Weinstein and The Weinstein Company “knowingly participated in Weinstein’s” trips to foreign countries for such purposes.
“I filed under the Federal sex trafficking law because I believe the facts as alleged in the complaint fit squarely within the statute,” Jeff Herman, Noble’s lawyer, told USA TODAY in a statement. “The benefit of filing under this Federal law is that it allows us to bring a claim in the United States for an assault that occurred overseas and it has a 10 year statute of limitations.”
Noble and her lawyer will hold a news conference in New York on Tuesday.
Weinstein repeated his denial that anything non-consensual occurred. “Mr. Weinstein denies allegations of non-consensual sex,” his representative Holly K. Baird told USA TODAY in a statement. “Mr. Weinstein has further confirmed that there were never any acts of retaliation against any women for refusing his advances.”
Weinstein resigns from Directors Guild
Facing disciplinary action from the Directors Guild of America, Weinstein has announced that he’s resigning from the entertainment guild….
https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/2017/11/27/harvey-weinstein-civil-claim-uk-lodged-accusers-news/896904001/

21st Century Fox in $90 million settlement tied to sexual harassment scandal
Jonathan Stempel November 20, 2017
(Reuters) – Twenty-First Century Fox Inc has reached a $90 million settlement of shareholder claims arising from the sexual harassment scandal at its Fox News Channel, which cost the jobs of longtime news chief Roger Ailes and anchor Bill O‘Reilly.
The settlement, which requires a judge’s approval, resolves what are known as “derivative” claims against Fox officers and directors, including: Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan, who are Fox’s executive chairmen; James Murdoch, another son and its chief executive, and Ailes’ estate.
The defendants did not admit wrongdoing in agreeing to the settlement filed with the Delaware Chancery Court.
Monday’s settlement calls for insurers of Fox officers, Fox directors and Ailes’ estate to pay the $90 million to the New York-based company for the benefit of shareholders.
Fox will enhance governance and said it created the Fox News Workplace Professionalism and Inclusion Council to ensure a proper workplace environment, bolster training and further the recruitment and advancement of women and minorities….
The scandal at Fox began in July 2016 when former anchor Gretchen Carlson filed a lawsuit accusing Ailes of harassment. O‘Reilly lost his job in April after being accused of harassment, and has denied wrongdoing.
Ailes died the next month. Fox faces other private civil litigation tied to the scandal.
The case is City of Monroe Employees’ Retirement System v Murdoch et al, Delaware Chancery Court, No. 2017-0833.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-fox-settlement/21st-century-fox-in-90-million-settlement-tied-to-sexual-harassment-scandal-idUSKBN1DK2NI

Democrats Move Swiftly Against Conyers Amid Latest Harassment Charges
By YAMICHE ALCINDOR, NICHOLAS FANDOS and JONATHAN MARTIN NOV. 21, 2017
Representative John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan, entered the House in 1965 and has led the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee for decades.
WASHINGTON — Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader, moved swiftly on Tuesday against the House’s longest-serving lawmaker, calling for the House Ethics Committee to investigate sexual harassment charges against Representative John Conyers Jr., the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.
Mr. Conyers, 88, who has represented parts of the Detroit area in the House since 1965, confirmed the settlement of a wrongful termination complaint in 2015 from a staff member who had accused him of sexual harassment. But he denied that the staff member was fired for refusing to have sex with him. The settlement was first reported by BuzzFeed News on Monday….
Mr. Conyers denied any wrongdoing and said the money paid to his accuser amounted to a “reasonable severance payment.”
But legal documents published by BuzzFeed show repeated allegations by female staff members of requests for sex, suggestive touching, caresses and other sexual improprieties. On Tuesday evening, BuzzFeed wrote about a separate lawsuit against Mr. Conyers filed in February in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, later withdrawn after the court denied the accuser’s motion to seal the proceedings.

In the suit, a former scheduler for Mr. Conyers said she suffered through unwanted touching and romantic advances “repeatedly and daily” in 2015 and 2016.
The calls for an investigation came as Democrats privately raised the prospect that Mr. Conyers would at least be asked to step aside from the coveted top Judiciary post. Mr. Conyers, a founding member of the Congressional Black Caucus, also holds the venerated title of Dean of the House. But he has been a target of Democrats who are eager to bring fresh blood into the Judiciary Committee leadership for some time, three congressional officials said….
According to the documents obtained by BuzzFeed, a former staff member said she was fired because she would not succumb to Mr. Conyers’s “sexual advances.” The publication also obtained affidavits from other staff members who said Mr. Conyers repeatedly harassed women working for him through actions that included requests for sexual acts, contacting and transporting other women with whom they believed Mr. Conyers was having affairs, caressing their hands sexually and rubbing their legs and backs in public….
https://www.nytimes.com/ 2017/11/21/us/politics/conyers-sexual-harassment-democrats-pelosi.html

When Sexual Assault Victims Are Charged With Lying By KEN ARMSTRONG and T. CHRISTIAN MILLER NOV. 24, 2017 The women accusing the Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore of sexual misconduct have faced doubt and derision. Other women, who have alleged sexual assault or harassment by powerful men in Hollywood, Silicon Valley and elsewhere, have become targets for online abuse or had their careers threatened. Harvey Weinstein went so far as to hire ex-Mossad operatives to investigate the personal history of the actress Rose McGowan, to discourage her from publicly accusing him of rape.
There are many reasons for women to think twice about reporting sexual assault. But one potential consequence looms especially large: They may also be prosecuted.
This month, a retired police lieutenant in Memphis, Tenn., Cody Wilkerson, testified, as part of a lawsuit against the city, not only that police detectives sometimes neglected to investigate cases of sexual assault but also that he overheard the head of investigative services in the city’s police department say, on his first day in charge: “The first thing we need to do is start locking up more victims for false reporting.” It’s an alarming choice of priorities — and one that can backfire.
In 2015 we wrote an article for ProPublica and the Marshall Project about Marie, an 18-year-old who reported being raped in Lynnwood, Wash., by a man who broke into her apartment. (Marie is her middle name.) Police detectives treated small inconsistencies in her account — common among trauma victims — as major discrepancies. Instead of interviewing her as a victim, they interrogated her as a suspect. Under pressure, Marie eventually recanted — and was charged with false reporting, punishable by up to a year in jail. The court ordered her to pay $500 in court costs, get mental health counseling for her lying and go on supervised probation for one year. More than two years later, the police in Colorado arrested a serial rapist — and discovered a photograph proving he had raped Marie.
What happened to Marie seemed unthinkable. She was victimized twice — first raped, then prosecuted. But cases like hers can be found around the country. In 1997, a legally blind woman reported being raped at knife point in Madison, Wis. That same year, a pregnant 16-year-old reported being raped in New York City. In 2004, a 19-year-old reported being sexually assaulted at gunpoint in Cranberry Township, Pa.
In all three instances, the women were charged with lying. In all three instances, their reports turned out to be true. The men who raped them were later identified and convicted.
In 2001, a 13-year-old in White Bear Lake, Minn., reported being abducted and molested. “You keep lying and lying and lying and lying,” a police detective told her. In 2015, a physical therapist in Vallejo, Calif., reported being kidnapped and sexually assaulted. The police called her story a hoax. One lieutenant said that she “owes this community an apology.” In both instances, video footage later surfaced affirming the victims’ reports….https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/24/opinion/sunday/sexual-assault-victims-lying.html

Chinese Kindergarten Principal Fired, Teacher Detained Amid Child Abuse Scandal 2017-11-27 A kindergarten in the Chinese capital has fired its principal amid a probe into alleged child abuse of children and toddlers that has rocked the nation.
New York-listed RYB Education said it had removed the principal of its New World kindergarten in Beijing’s Chaoyang district, and also fired a 22-year-old teacher surnamed Liu, who is now being detained by district police on suspicion of abuse.
Chaoyang authorities said they have ordered an immediate safety review of all childcare facilities operating in the district.
Police last week confiscated surveillance footage and carried out forensic tests, amid reports from parents that their children had been sexually abused, while others said pupils had been “pierced by needles and given unidentified pills,” it said.
Several teachers at the kindergarten have been suspended, amid reports from parents that children as young as three said a naked adult male had conducted “medical check-ups” on unclothed pupils, Reuters cited media reports as saying.
But Chinese lawyer Zhang Tingyuan said the police had only made very vague statements about the allegations so far.
“There has been no transparency, for example about whether they were raped, or sexually assaulted, or physically abused or deliberately harmed,” Zhang said. “They should let people know exactly what kind of abuse was involved.”
“And yet, we’ve only had one incidence of abuse detailed by the police,” he said. “People should be told, and the more bitty the information, the more people will suspect it.”
In 2015, a court in Jilin province found two teachers guilty of physically abusing children at another RYB kindergarten in Siping city.
Staff were found to have “used needles and intimidation tactics to abuse many of the children under their care on multiple occasions,” it found.
Investigation at second facility
Meanwhile, further abuse allegations are being investigated at a second childcare facility in Beijing, media reports indicate.
Staff at the Huanyu Kindergarten, also in Chaoyang district, confirmed to RFA on Monday that they are “in the process of trying find out” about allegations that children there were also pricked with needles. But the staff member said those teachers accused by parents were currently still working at the kindergarten, which has 300-400 pupils….
http://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/chinese-kindergarten-principal-fired-teacher-detained-amid-child-abuse-scandal-11272017144608.html

Boy, 6, died after nun kicked him in head in care home, inquiry hears
Former resident tells historical sexual and physical abuse inquiry that nuns oversaw regime of terror at Smyllum in Scotland
Smyllum House, formerly Smyllum Park orphanage, a children’s home in Lanark run by the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul
Severin Carrell Scotland editor Tuesday 28 November 2017
A former Catholic care home resident has alleged a six-year-old boy died after a nun kicked him repeatedly in the head during years of sexual and physical abuse at the home.
David, a pseudonym for the former resident, told an official inquiry into historical sexual abuse in Scotland that nuns and staff oversaw a regime of terror at Smyllum House, a children’s home in Lanark run by the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul.
It emerged in September that up to 400 boys and girls who had lived at Smyllum, which closed down 1981, had been buried in unmarked mass graves after dying at the home, often from TB, pneumonia and pleurisy, and mostly between 1870 and 1930.
Physical abuse was routine in the home, including beatings, slaps to the head, and verbal abuse for the slightest mistake, David said, as he gave evidence on the first day of oral testimony about abuses at three care homes run by the Daughters of Charity.
One of 23 former residents due to give evidence in person, David said several nuns and female staff at Smyllum sexually abused him and other young boys, inducing the children to have sex with them and handling their genitalia.

David said his six-year-old friend, Sammy Carr, was hospitalised after a nun flew into a rage at him in the early 1960s. She had repeatedly kicked him in the head and upper body until David shielded him from the attack.
He last saw Carr, still aged about six, being taken into an ambulance after 10 days in the Smyllum House sick bay. Wiping tears from his eyes and halting several times to compose himself, David recalled being taken by the same nun to see his friend’s freshly dug grave.
A police investigation earlier this year into David’s allegations confirmed that Carr had died of a brain haemorrhage but there was no evidence in the postmortem linking that to an assault. Medical evidence suggested instead that Carr may have had a fungal brain infection, perhaps brought on by malnutrition.
After being moved to another care home run by the order, St Vincent’s in Newcastle,he and one of his brothers were taken to a staff member’s house where they were both sexually abused by two men. Violence was endemic at St Vincent’s too, David said. In his written testimony to the inquiry, he said it was “just another place run by psychopaths. Most of them were absolutely mad.”….
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/nov/28/boy-6-died-after-nun-kicked-him-in-head-care-home-inquiry-hears

HOUSE OF HORRORS Smyllum Park survivors urged to come forward after revelations of mass grave and abuse claims at Lanark orphanage
At least 400 children from Smyllum Park Orphanage in Lanark are thought to be buried in an unmarked grave at the town’s St Mary’s Cemetery
By Matt Coyle 11th September 2017
….The orphanage, run by the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul, was home to more than 10,000 children between opening in 1864 and closing in 1981.
Smyllum Park Orphanage is one of the institutions being examined by the Scottish Child Abuse Inquiry into historical allegations of the abuse of children in care.
https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/ news/1545490/smyllum-park-survivors-urged-come-forward-mass-grave-abuse-lanark-orphanage/

CULT NUNS Nuns ‘forced girl into satanic sex ritual where devil attacked her and buried her alive overnight in a drain’ at Smyllum Park orphanage
The traumatised former orphanage resident known only as ‘Janie’ told a child abuse inquiry a man referred to as the ‘devil’ assaulted her while she lay on a slab surrounded by candles
By Paul Thornton, Home Affairs Editor 6th December 2017
She said before the alleged attack, she and other girls were taken from their dorms at night to a nearby field where Catholic sisters from the “cult-like” home danced in a circle around a tree.
The inquiry heard they were later taken to the back of a candlelit chapel and went downstairs.
Janie, of primary school age at the time, said: “There was a square slab and everyone sat round.
“I was given a lollipop and told that the devil was coming out.”
She said she was assaulted then taken back outside and “buried alive” in a drain all night.
After she was let out the next morning, she said she was put in a “blood bath” — believed to be filled with coloured dye — as part of a terrifying ritual. The witness also told the Edinburgh probe a nun forced her to perform a sex act on a woman at a house near the Lanark orphanage. She also said she was tied to her bed and beaten and warned not to speak about her ordeal. And she claimed she was regularly gagged and had her hair cut off. She only told police about what she had endured years later. Janie said: “It was like a cult. We deserve justice. People who abused me should be taken to court and jailed….
The long-running probe before Lady Smith is expected at a later to date to examine claims that the bodies of at least 400 children were buried in an unmarked mass grave near Smyllum Park.
The orphanage, run by the Daughters of Charity of St Vincent de Paul, closed in 1981.
https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/ news/1938839/girl-forced-into-satanic-sex-ritual-where-devil-buried-her-alive-at-smyllum/

Child abuse inquiry: Boy ‘abused’ by head of Catholic school 29 November 2017 UK
A head teacher of a Catholic boarding school invited a young pupil into his study and then sexually abused him, the inquiry into child abuse has heard. The hearing heard the boy was told to pretend to go to bed in his dorm at Ampleforth College, in North Yorkshire, and then to get up and go to his study. Two other ex-pupils also talked about being abused and beaten at the school.
The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse is currently examining abuse in the Roman Catholic Church. The Church is one of 13 public organisations being scrutinised by the public inquiry, which is being headed by Prof Alexis Jay. The third day of hearings into allegations involving the Church examined abuse at Ampleforth College, a private school run by Benedictine monks. In a statement, read out to the inquiry, a man said he was abused by the head teacher of Gilling Castle – Ampleforth’s preparatory, or primary, school – in the mid 1960s. He said he was under the age of 10 when the abuse took place….
The men said they were also sexually abused by a monk and Father Piers Grant-Ferris, who was jailed for abuse in 2006…. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-42170433

He Was No Hippie: Remembering Manson, Prison, Scientology, and Mind Control
As I was diving into my research, I received a letter from Charlie himself.
By Paul Krassner / AlterNet November 26, 2017
When Charles Manson was a prison inmate, he got introduced to Scientology by fellow prisoners, and his ability to psych out people was intensified so that he could zero in on their weaknesses and fears. In 1967, he was released and went to the Scientology Center in San Francisco. A friend who accompanied him there told me, “Charlie said to them, ‘I’m Clear – what do I do now?’”
But they expected him to sweep the floor – shit, he had done that in jail. However, in Los Angeles, he went to the Scientology Celebrity Center. Now this was more like it – there he could mingle with the elite. I was able to obtain a copy of the original log entry: “7/31/68, new name, Charlie Manson, Devt. No address. In for processing = Ethics = Type III.” The receptionist – who, by Type III, meant “psychotic” – sent him to the Ethics office but he never showed up.
At the Spahn Ranch, Manson combined his version of Scientology auditing with post-hypnotic techniques he had learned in prison, with geographical isolation and subliminal motivation, with sing-along sessions and encounter games, with LSD and mescaline, with transactional analysis and brainwashing rituals, with verbal probing and sexual longevity that he had practiced upon himself for all those years in the privacy of his cell. He was also raped by fellow inmates.
Ultimately, in August 1969, he sent his well-programmed “family” off to slay actress Sharon Tate, some friends, and her unborn baby. Tate’s husband, film director Roman Polanski, was in London at the time. A few months later, when the family members were captured and charged with homicides, Manson was portrayed by the media as a hippie cult leader, and the counterculture became a dangerous enemy. Hitchhikers were shunned. Communes were raided. In the public’s mind, flower children had grown poisonous thorns. But Manson was never really a hippie.
He had grown up behind bars. His real family included con artists, pimps, drug dealers, thieves, muggers, rapists, and murderers. He had known only power relationships in an army of control junkies….
https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/he-was-no-hippie-remembering-manson-prison-scientology-and-mind-control

Wormwood Trailer: Netflix’s Groundbreaking Mystery Series Will Suck You in Over the Holidays
by Kyle Munzenrieder December 4, 2017
….It’s the work of legendary documentary filmmaker Errol Morris, and touches on everything from LSD to the CIA, from mind control to corruption. Dramatic reenactments are interspersed with documentary-style testimonials from real life figures.
Sarsgaard stars as Frank Olson, a bacteriologist, who, while working for the CIA in the ’50s, was secretly dosed with LSD. Just days after the dose he wound up falling from the window of a New York City hotel room. The death was officially ruled a suicide, but to this day some maintain that his death was a murder. Complicating the matter is that many of Olsen’s CIA colleagues were working on the agency’s secretive mind control project known as MKUltra at the time. More than two decades after his death, his family was awarded a $750,000 settlement from the CIA. To this day, however, Olson’s son Eric continues to raise questions about the mysterious circumstances of Olson’s death. In Wormwood, Morris tackles both the elder Olson’s death and the younger Olson’s lifelong devotion to unraveling the mystery. https://www.wmagazine.com/story/wormwood-trailer-netflix-errol-morris-peter-sarsgaard

Google to hire slew of moderators amid outcry over YouTube child abuse videos
Sam Levin in San Francisco Monday 4 December 2017
YouTube has faced scrutiny in the wake of reports it allows violent content to slip past filters on YouTube Kids, its app for children.
The company, which owns YouTube, will bring on thousands of moderators following a stream of negative press over violent and offensive content
Google is hiring thousands of new moderators after facing widespread backlash for allowing child abuse videos and other violent and offensive content to flourish on YouTube.
Google, which owns YouTube, announced on Monday that next year it would expand its total workforce to more than 10,000 people responsible for reviewing content that could violate its policies. The news from YouTube’s CEO, Susan Wojcicki, followed a steady stream of negative press surrounding the site’s role in spreading harassing videos, misinformation, hate speech and content that is harmful to children…. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/dec/04/google-youtube-hire-moderators-child-abuse-videos

Ex-USA Gymnastics doctor sentenced to 60 years on child porn charges
By Elizabeth Joseph, Ray Sanchez and Eric Levenson, CNN Thu December 7, 2017
Victims speak out after Larry Nassar sentencing
(CNN) Larry Nassar, the disgraced former USA Gymnastics team doctor who admitted to sexually abusing underage girls, has been sentenced to 60 years in federal prison on child pornography charges, a court official said Thursday.
US District Judge Janet Neff essentially imposed a life prison term on the 54-year-old physician, sentencing Nassar to 20 years for each of three counts, which are to be served consecutively, according to the docket.
But the child porn charges are not the most serious accusations against Nassar.
In November, he pleaded guilty to seven counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and admitted to using his position to sexually abuse underage girls. Three of those charges related to victims who were under age 13. He will be sentenced on those state charges in January.
More than 140 women and girls have accused him of sexual misconduct, including several American gymnasts on the “Fierce Five” team that won gold at the 2012 Olympics….
Rachael Denhollander, a former Michigan gymnast who filed the first criminal complaint against Nassar, said after the sentencing that the case represented failures on many levels, from university athletics programs to sports governing bodies.
“It is victim blaming and victim blaming at its finest,” Denhollander told reporters. “And that should terrify us. Because ladies and gentlemen, this is the culture of abuse. This is what keeps victims silent. This is what keeps predators in power. And this is what’s endangering the next generation of girls.” http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/07/us/larry-nassar-usa-gymnastics-sentence/index.html

McKayla Maroney says USA Gymnastics tried to silence her abuse story
by Sarah Fitzpatrick and Tracy Connor
When Olympic gymnast McKayla Maroney came forward this fall with her story of being repeatedly molested by the team’s doctor, USA Gymnastics publicly praised her for having the “courage” to hold a predator accountable.
But a lawsuit filed Wednesday by Maroney alleges that USA Gymnastics actually tried to silence her nearly a year earlier by making her sign a non-disclosure agreement as part of a financial settlement she needed to pay for psychological treatment.
Maroney’s attorney, John Manly, called the confidentiality agreement “hypocritical, immoral and in this case illegal.”
USA Gymnastics said in a statement that “the concept of confidentiality” was initiated by Maroney’s attorney at the time of the settlement, Gloria Allred, who asked the organization to take part in a “confidential mediation process.” ….
“That agreement was written by USA Gymnastics lawyers, and it was designed to do one thing, which is keep their secret from the public.”
The agreement was inked just a few months after the first public accusations against Dr. Larry Nassar, who has since pleaded guilty to molesting 10 girls and possessing child pornography. At the time, law enforcement was encouraging women who were abused under the guise of treatments to come forward.
Maroney’s suit, filed in Superior Court in California, alleges that USA Gymnastics insisted on a confidentiality agreement so “it could further conceal and shield from public scrutiny, outside investigation, and law enforcement, the true nature of Nassar’s horrific sexual abuse of minors.”
“Plaintiff alleges that Defendant USAG had a plan to keep the sexual abuse of Nassar quiet, and allow Nassar to quietly leave USAG, further silencing his victims,” the suit charges….
Since then, more than 140 girls and women have filed complaints against Nassar. In October, Maroney became the highest-profile athlete to go public, posting on Twitter a harrowing account of abuse that allegedly occurred on three continents as Nassar traveled with the team.
“I had a dream to go to the Olympics, and the things that I had to endure to get there, were unnecessary, and disgusting,” she wrote….
Nassar was sentenced this month to 60 years in federal prison on the pornography charges and is awaiting sentencing on state sex abuse charges…..
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/mckayla-maroney-says-usa-gymnastics-tried-silence-her-abuse-story-n831416

Girl’s father gave her electric shocks and forced her to drink alcohol ‘to make her superhuman’
Maude Julien, now 60, documented her experiences in her memoir ‘The Only Girl in the World’
Lydia Smith December 11, 2017
A woman has spoken out about the torture she endured for years as a child at the hands of her abusive father.
Maude Julien, who is now 60 and a renowned psychotherapist, was forced to hold onto an electric fence for 10 minutes at a time without showing feeling.
The ritual, which she endured twice a week, was considered to be a test of her willpower by her father, who wanted to make Ms Julien “superhuman”….
She says she was subjected to 18 years of controlling and manipulative behaviour by her father Louis Didier, who was an alcoholic and belonged to an esoteric lodge of Freemasonry which believed in the occult.
Didier reportedly believed his daughter had been chosen as his protector, so sought to indoctrinate her and make her withstand torment by making her participate in cruel experiments.
Once a month, Ms Julien writes, she was locked overnight in a rat-infested cellar to “meditate about death”….
The three lived in a remote mansion in northern France, which Ms Julien was forbidden to leave for a decade.
Ms Julien says she was sexually abused between the ages of three and 13 by a labourer working in the estate….
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/girl-father-torture-electrocuted-alcohol-superhuman-maude-julien-book-louis-didier-a8101851.html

Portugal bogus sect members jailed for ritual sex abuse of boys Reuters
LISBON (Reuters) – A Portuguese court has handed long prison sentences to six members of a bogus religious cult that sexually abused boys, including their own children, under the pretence of rituals on a farm just southeast of Lisbon.
Tuesday’s verdict by the Setubal district court sentenced Rui Pedro, the 36-year-old leader of the self-proclaimed Celestial Truth sect, to 23 years after finding him guilty of rape, procuring prostitution, child pornography and other crimes, a court official said on Wednesday.
His wife and four other men were sentenced to prison terms of between 7 and 19 years. Two women were acquitted. The crimes were committed between 2011 and 2015, mostly on a farm rented by the group in 2014.
Prosecutors told the court that the cult was fake, and its rituals set up as a means to lure and scare the children.
The eight victims, including the leader’s son and the son of another of the sentenced men, had been told that the sect’s “Master” had supernatural powers and could perform “acts of purification” on them, which was the term for sexual abuse.
The boys, aged between 5 and 16 at the time of the crimes and mostly from the Setubal area, were kept in fear of his powers so they never disclosed what happened to anyone.
Their families had been led to believe the children played football or studied and received psychological counselling or religious guidance on the farm….
http://www.businessinsider.com/r-portugal-bogus-sect-members-jailed-for-ritual-sex-abuse-of-boys-2017-12

SILENT WITNESSES Jehovah’s Witness rape victims claim abuse was covered up because it would bring shame on the religion
Victims say the secretive organisation instructs members not to report crimes to the police
By Felix Allen 21st November 2017
CHILDREN who were raped and abused by Jehovah’s Witnesses were told by church elders not to report it because it would shame the religion, it is claimed.
Victims from across Britain have told the BBC how they were routinely abused – but it was hushed up by the secretive organisation.
One victim, Louise Palmer, said she was told reporting her rapist brother to police would “bring reproach on Jehovah”.
The 41-year-old, formerly of Halesowen, West Mids, was born into the organisation along with her brother Richard Davenport, who started raping her when she was four. He is now in jail.
She said of the moment she went to elders: “I asked, ‘what should I do? Do you report it to the police, do I report it to the police?’
“And their words were that they strongly advised me not to go to the police because it would bring reproach on Jehovah.”….
The BBC said it also spoke to male and female victims in Birmingham, Cheltenham, Leicester and Glasgow who told gave similar accounts.
They claim the religion’s organising body “self polices” sins but insists on two witnesses before a congregation will act on any alleged transgression.
But that is impossible in most cases of sexual abuse….
Victims also told the BBC church elders teach members to avoid interaction with outside authorities and not to take another member to court.
Breaking this rule could lead to expulsion from the religion, they say.
Child abuse lawyer Kathleen Hallisey believes there could be thousands of victims across the country who have not come forward because of the “two witness” rule….
The organisation described child abuse as a “heinous crime and sin” and said it did not “shield abusers from the authorities of the consequences of their actions”.
It said: “Any suggestion that Jehovah’s Witnesses covered up child abuse was absolutely false”….
https://www.thesun.co.uk/ news/4954162/children-raped-jehovahs-witnesses-report-abuse-shame-religion/

‘Every 45 minutes, I was sold for $120 to $350:’ Former sex slave recalls brutal life in brothels Tribune MARY MURPHY Dec 6th 2017
QUEENS (WPIX) — At 21, Shandra Woworunti was a financial analyst in her native Indonesia but in 1998, she lost her job in the Asian banking crisis. She had a baby daughter and needed to provide a future for her.
In 2001, at age 24, she answered an ad for a six-month seasonal job in the United States thinking she would work as a waitress in the hotel industry. She said a man named Johnny Wong picked her up at Kennedy Airport in Queens and delivered her to another man at the Sheraton Hotel near Main Street in Flushing.
“I saw the man hand a big envelope of money to Johnny Wong,” Woworunti recalled.
Woworunti was entering the world of human trafficking.
She was turned over to other men and ended up at a house in Bayside, Queens, she said, where the owner put Woworunti and two other young women in the attic.
She said he ordered them to undress to make sure they didn’t have a skin disease. Woworunti said that when she refused, the man put a gun to her forehead.
She remembered that pretty soon the man took her in a car to a new location and told a madame in the next house there was a new girl ready to work.
“I saw the security with a baseball bat,” Woworunti told PIX11. “I saw a little girl, 12 or 13 years old, beaten by another bouncer.”
Woworunti said she quickly realized she would have to comply with the wishes of her customers, who were “black, Asian and white.”
“Every 45 minutes, I was sold for $120 to $350,” Woworunti said.
“I was trafficked in Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan. Up and down I-95. I used to get trafficked to Foxwoods Casinos.”
When Woworunti heard she was getting sent to Boston for work, she had a bad feeling and made a plan to escape.
She was at a house in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, and said she climbed up on the window ledge of a second-floor bathroom. She decided to jump.
“And one little girl, who was 15 years old, jumped with me,” she recalled.
This was still 2001. The two managed to get a cab to Manhattan and landed at a hotel, where Woworunti said they checked in with some money they had stashed on the side….
https://www.aol.com/article/news/2017/12/06/every-45-minutes-i-was-sold-for-120-to-350-former-sex-slav/23299201/

Nobody saved us… I just wanted it to end’: Lawyer describes how he was abused, tortured and brainwashed from the age of four at a North Carolina evangelical church ‘cult’
Jamey Anderson, 29, describes his experiences growing up in the World of Faith Fellowship in North Carolina
He claims physical abuse was common for all members and he was frequently beaten and verbally abused
Anderson says he was once locked in isolation for a year watching videos of the church founder preaching
He left the church at age 18 and is speaking out now to help trapped children
By Associated Press 13 December 2017
….As part of an ongoing investigation into Word of Faith Fellowship, dozens of former congregants have told the AP that church members were regularly beaten in an effort to ‘purify’ sinners – even children. But despite allegations of abuse spanning two decades, authorities have done little to intervene.
As a child, Anderson said, he was questioned by social services investigators in church co-founder Jane Whaley’s office, but was too afraid to tell the truth. In 2003, he said, the church forced him to sign an affidavit saying he had not been abused and that ‘church discipline’ was ‘God’s mercy on my life.’
Anderson was about four years old when his mother joined Word of Faith. He describes his childhood as nothing short of hell.

Throughout his adolescence, he was singled out as a rebel and suffered some of the most brutal treatment in the church, nearly two dozen former congregants told the AP. Among his transgressions: making a funny face at a classmate….
Anderson would be pulled from the classroom and brought to another room where he would be ‘brutally paddled,’ she said.
‘You could hear the loud whacks through the wall,’ she said. ‘You just sat there, hoping you weren’t next.’….
To understand what Anderson lived through, it is necessary to understand Word of Faith. Founded in 1979 by Whaley, a former math teacher, and her husband, Sam, the church has grown to a congregation of nearly 750 people in rural Spindale with hundreds more followers extending to Brazil, Ghana and other countries.
Jane Whaley is the unquestioned leader, presenting herself as a prophet. Over the years, she has decreed ever more stringent rules, dictating how followers dress, where they live, who they marry and even when they have sex. Birthday celebrations, television and music are strictly off-limits….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5174189/Nobody-saved-Man-describes-childhood-abusive-cult.html

Australia Gripped by Decades of Sexual Abuse of Children, Panel Finds
By JACQUELINE WILLIAMS DEC. 14, 2017
Australia’s senior Roman Catholic prelate, Cardinal George Pell, in June became the highest-ranking Vatican official in recent years to face criminal charges involving accusations of sexual offenses.
SYDNEY, Australia — A royal commission investigating the sexual abuse of children in Australia found Friday that the nation was gripped by an epidemic dating back decades, with tens of thousands of children sexually abused in schools, religious organizations and other institutions.
The commission, the highest form of investigation in Australia, urged government action on its 189 recommendations, including the establishment of a new National Office for Child Safety and penalties for those who suspect abuse and fail to alert the police, including priests who hear about abuse in confessionals. It also urged Australia’s Roman Catholic leadership to press Rome to end mandatory celibacy for priests.
“Tens of thousands of children have been sexually abused in many Australian institutions,” said the report, which was particularly critical of Catholic organizations. “We will never know the true number. Whatever the number, it is a national tragedy, perpetrated over generations within many of our most trusted institutions.”
The commission’s chairman, Justice Peter McClellan, said that the panel heard from more than 1,000 witnesses over nearly 15 months in assessing the magnitude of the abuse.
“It is not a case of a few rotten apples,” the report said. “Society’s major insitutions have seriously failed. In many cases those failings have been exacerbated by a manifestly inadequate response to the abused person. The problems have been so widespread, and the nature of the abuse so heinous, that it is difficult to comprehend.”
Australia created the commission in 2012 to investigate decades of sexual abuse in religious institutions, schools and other establishments — the only country in the world so far to initiate such a sweeping government-led inquiry. More than 4,000 institutions have been implicated in abuse allegations, the commission found.

Australian government investigators identified 4,444 victims of abuse and at least 1,880 suspected abusers from 1980 to 2015. Most of those suspected of abuse were Catholic priests and religious brothers. The report released Friday said 62 percent of the survivors who told the commission they were abused in religious institutions were abused in a Catholic facility….
The most damaging revelations about child sexual abuse have centered on scandals in towns like Ballarat, the hometown of Cardinal George Pell, who this year became the highest-ranking Roman Catholic prelate to be formally charged with sexual offenses….
The charges brought in June against Cardinal Pell, one of Pope Francis’ top advisers, followed years of criticism that he had at best overlooked, and at worst covered up, the widespread abuse of children by clergymen in Australia.
https://www.nytimes.com/ 2017/12/14/world/australia/australia-sexual-abuse-children.html

FIFTH ESTATE  Trudeau government gag order in CIA brainwashing case silences victims, lawyer says Daughter of survivor of brutal experiments ‘nervous’ to speak out after non-disclosure demand
By Harvey Cashore, Lisa Ellenwood, Bob McKeown, CBC News Dec 15, 2017
Forty years after revelations that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency funded brainwashing experiments on unsuspecting Canadians, the Trudeau government is continuing a pattern of silencing the victims, a lawyer for one of the families says.
A recent Department of Justice gag order in an out-of-court settlement was designed to avoid responsibility and avert compensation to more victims and their families, said Alan Stein, who has represented numerous survivors who were once patients at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal.
Stein told CBC News that successive federal governments have demanded confidentiality agreements in at least five of the cases he has settled in the last few decades.
“If they hadn’t been confidential and the settlements had the publicity that they should have had, a lot of the victims would have come forward and gone to court,” he said.
The Trudeau government’s quiet non-disclosure payment in March 2017 to the daughter of a now-deceased victim is just the latest development in a decades-old scandal that saw both the CIA and the Canadian government fund brutal science experiments on unsuspecting patients.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canadian-government-gag-order-mk-ultra-1.4448933

Record sexual harassment settlement exposes byzantine congressional process by Leigh Ann Caldwell Dec 17 2017
WASHINGTON — Of all the secret deals cut on behalf of accused members of congress, the one that resulted in the largest settlement yet uncovered may be the most surprising. The details provide a window into a process so opaque, convoluted and confusing that even the accused congressman was left in the dark about exactly how and why his accuser ended up being paid $220,000 for her claim.
With new harassment accusations being revealed on a nearly daily basis in Congress, documents obtained by NBC News from this one case shed light on how taxpayer money ends up being used to essentially sweep such incidents under a bureaucratic rug with little accountability….
The Complaint
In 2011, Winsome Packer, a congressional staffer who worked for the United States Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (known as the Helsinki Commission) filed a complaint against the commission, alleging that its chairman at the time, Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., made unwanted sexual advances toward her and that she was threatened with retaliation.
The details of Packer’s specific allegations are recorded in the complaint she also brought in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
Publicly filed court documents in that lawsuit show that Packer alleged that she “was forced to endure” repeated “unwelcome sexual advances, crude sexual comments and unwelcome touching” by Hastings. In describing the incidents, Packer alleged that Hastings had hugged her multiple times, sometimes in front of witnesses at public events, pressing his whole body against her, and his face to her face.
Packer also claimed that after she complained to the commission’s staff director, she was subject to threats of retaliation by both the director and Hastings himself, including “threats of termination.”
Hastings, who has been in Congress since 1993, has denied Packer’s allegations. He called them “malicious” and “absolutely false” in a letter obtained by NBC News….
The Office of Congressional Ethics referred the matter to the House Ethics Committee in 2010. After reviewing more than one thousand pages of documents and interviewing eight witnesses, the committee closed the case after finding that while the congressman admitted to having made some unprofessional comments, it had found “no additional evidence supporting [Packer’s ] allegations.” ….
Packer eventually received a settlement payment of $220,000, an amount confirmed by documents reviewed by NBC News and the largest known about since the Congressional Accountability Act was passed in 1995.

One document obtained by NBC News details early draft terms of Packer’s settlement, and it is one of few such documents that have become public. The others have not been released because confidentiality requirements, established by Congress and signed into federal law as the Congressional Accountability Act, bind accuser, accused and other legal entities from disclosing any terms or details.
Despite these confidentiality requirements, Packer said she had decided to speak out because the environment has changed for accusers and she has little to lose. Packer, 60, who worked for the commission from 2007 until 2014, said she has not worked since the settlement was reached nearly four years ago, and is now living with her sister in Florida. …
Congress has wrestled with these issues in a more urgent way since the recent wave of sexual misconduct allegations began sweeping through virtually every sector of America over the past months, including several high-profile cases that have brought down members of the House and Senate.
Rep. Gregg Harper, R-Miss., chairman of the House Administration Committee, told NBC News that he will introduce bipartisan legislation next week to reform the entire adjudication process for accusers and the accused as a way to provide more transparency to the public….
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/record-sexual-harassment-settlement-exposes-byzantine-congressional-process-n829401

Attorney still waiting on expert report in sex cult abuse case
By FELIX SARVERE Dec. 14, 2017
JOLIET – A five-year-old case involving a woman charged with sexual abuse of an underage boy as part of a sex cult ritual may come closer to concluding next year.
On Thursday, Daniel Locallo, attorney for Margarita Hernandez, 38, a former Troy Township Democratic committeewoman charged with aggravated criminal sexual abuse, told a Will County judge he was still waiting to receive a report from a psychological expert on Hernandez that could be used at trial or for legal mitigation….
Hernandez was arrested in October 2012 after her 81-year-old boyfriend John Gabriel was investigated by the FBI for teen sex videos made at their home. She has been free on bond.
Since her arrest in 2012, the case has yet to go trial. The case was scheduled for jury trial at least twice, according to court records.
Gabriel, a retired journalist for The Times Weekly and Weekly Reporter, recorded sexual activities of Hernandez and others, which he claimed was a religious ritual, according to court files.
Will County prosecutors have said video was seized of Hernandez having sex with two boys who appear younger than 18.
Gabriel was convicted in 2015 of manufacturing child pornography for making videos allegedly showing Hernandez having sex with teenage boys. He was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison.
http://www.theherald-news.com/2017/12/14/attorney-still-waiting-on-expert-report-in-sex-cult-abuse-case/axmhnat/

After polygamist leaders used underage girls for sex, lawsuit says, one teen was forced to be a scribe for the rituals Paighten Harkins December 27, 2017
Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints President Warren Jeffs, along with other officials in the church and its former land trust, is accused of carrying out a “calculated plan” to sexually abuse underage girls as part of a religious ritual, according to a lawsuit filed Wednesday.
The lawsuit also cites for alleged wrongdoing the United Effort Plan Trust, Warren Jeffs’ brothers Lyle and Seth Jeffs, former FLDS President and convicted bigamist Wendell Nielsen, and the church.
The lawsuit filed in 3rd District Court alleges that as part of their FLDS beliefs, men have historically sexually abused and assaulted underage girls. However, under Warren Jeffs’ leadership, the lawsuit’s plaintiff — a 21-year-old woman identified as R.H. — says a new practice involving ritualistic sexual intercourse with young girls began.
Starting when she was 8 years old, the woman says, she would be taken from her home, wearing a bag over her head, to an unknown location — typically an FLDS temple in the Colorado City, Ariz., area or other church- or trust-owned properties — where she would be assigned a number for a religious ritual, according to the lawsuit.
There, she was reportedly sexually assaulted by the Jeffses, Nielsen or other church members and leaders. When the men weren’t assaulting her, she says, they watched.
The 21-year-old said Warren Jeffs warned her that if she told anyone about the abuse, according to the lawsuit, “God would destroy her and her family immediately.” He also reportedly said that if she cried during the ritual, “God would punish her.”
The rituals reportedly occurred five to six times a week until the woman turned 12. When she was 14 years old, the lawsuit alleges, she was forced to watch and document other girls’ ritualistic abuse with church leaders.

The woman’s attorneys cite evidence recovered from the FLDS Church’s temple in Eldorado, Texas — on the compound where Warren Jeffs lived before his arrest and conviction for sexually assaulting two girls — as proof of the abuse.
The woman says the abuse continued when she turned 16 and began taking part in “Ladies Class” to learn to be a good wife. During those classes, she says, Warren Jeffs would escort her out of class and into his sound-proof office, where he would sexually assault her “under the guise of further teachings” in the class.
The lawsuit says the church and its former land trust are liable because they hired the church leaders and, therefore, aided in the abuse.
The woman is requesting physical and emotional damages and has asked for jury trial, according to the lawsuit. Her attorneys — Michael Worel, Alan Mortensen and Lance Milne — also represented Elissa Wall, who filed a lawsuit against Warren Jeffs and many of the same defendants in 2005 over being forced to marry when she was 14 years old.
Wall’s case was resolved in September, when a judged ordered that Warren Jeffs pay Wall $16 million in damages.
The woman came to Worel, Mortensen and Milne because they represented Walls, Worel said. The 21-year-old wanted to file the lawsuit, he said, because she believes the alleged abuse is still happening in the church.
“The whole point of filing the lawsuit is she’s hoping to empower others to come forward and to speak out and to see if we can make this stop,” Worel said….
http://www.sltrib.com/news/2017/12/28/after-polygamist-leaders-used-underage-girls-for-sex-lawsuit-says-one-teen-was-forced-to-be-a-scribe-for-the-rituals/

YouTube’s Child-Abuse Problem Is Getting Worse
By Paris Martineau December 27, 2017
In the wake of a viral Medium post calling attention to some very disturbing YouTube channels apparently aimed at children, YouTube has pledged its commitment to ensuring that its channels are safe, clean, and family-friendly. The problem is, well, it’s hard to clean up a site to which hundreds of hours of video are uploaded every minute — and there are videos that might be even worse than merely “creepy.”
A recent investigation by The Times found that pedophiles have been using the site as some sort of twisted “shop window” to show off abused children and reach out to other members of the “community.”….http://nymag.com/selectall/2017/12/youtubes-child-abuse-problem-is-getting-worse.html

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