Issue 144 – January 2019

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 144 – January 2019

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 2019 – All rights reserved. No reproduction of any material without written permission from the editor and individual authors.

The Survivorship Ritual Abuse and Mind Control 2019 Conference
When: Regular Conference – Saturday and Sunday May 4 – 5, 2019 Clinician’s Conference – Friday May 3, 2019 Where: Courtyard Marriot Long Beach Airport Long Beach, CA
https://survivorship.org/ritual-abuse-and-mind-control-2019-conference/

The 2019 Annual Ritual Abuse, Secretive Organizations and Mind Control Conference
August 17 – 18, 2019 DoubleTree near Bradley International Airport Windsor Locks, CT
Internet conference information: https://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/

 

Survivorship Conference Speakers
Clinician’s Conference – Friday May 3, 2019
Deception by Organized Abuser Groups: Helping Yourself and Your Clients Think Through the Issues by Alison Miller
Sophisticated organized abuser groups use torture to deliberately split a child’s mind into different parts, train all parts to obey, and indoctrinate and train each part to do a specific job assigned by the abusers. Drugs, acted-out scenarios, stage magic, stories and films are used to deceive and control the children and prevent them from remembering or speaking out about their abuse, even in adulthood, so that the abusers can continue perpetrating this abuse without being caught. Abusers’ power over victims depends on their victims believing their lies, and that power can be diminished when victims see through the lies told to their young parts. It is important for therapists to use critical thinking to discern the deceptions, and to help their mind-controlled clients do the same.

The Use of Music and other Auditory Stimuli in Psychological Therapy with Extreme Abuse Survivors by Randy Noblitt
Extreme abuse (EA) survivors often listen to music for enjoyment, relaxation, and emotion regulation. Some music and other auditory stimuli also have the capacity to trigger a variety of responses including states of adaptive containment, being shut down, identity switching, abreactive responses, trance, automatisms, and flashbacks. Although clinicians who work with survivors often hear about, or observe these phenomena, there is little discussion of them in the clinical literature. This presentation will discuss some of the uses for music and other sounds in therapy with survivors in the context of the ISSTD’s three stage treatment model for dissociative identity disorder.

Regular Conference – Saturday and Sunday May 4 – 5, 2019
Deception by Organized Abuser Groups: Helping Your Front People and Your Insiders Recognize the Lies and Tricks Which Keep You Enslaved by Dr. Alison Miller
If you are a survivor of abuse by a mind-controlling abuser group, you have parts who have been trained to obey abusers because they believe lies your abusers told you. The abusers deceived you in childhood, using drugs, acted-out scenarios, stage magic, stories and films to control your child parts and prevent you from speaking out about the abuse. Their power over you depends on your young parts believing the abusers’ lies. If you learn to recognize when your emotions and behavior are influenced by these deceptions, and to discover the ways in which you were deceived, you can increase your freedom from the abuser group.

Talking About Triggers Without Being Triggering by Dr. Randall Noblitt
This presentation is an interactive discussion about triggering phenomena, with the intent of avoiding causing triggered responses in one another. Such a conversation is possible when we do not use triggers explicitly, when we use synonyms, euphemisms, or other roughly equivalent stimuli that communicate without provoking a response. Triggers can include gestures, words, music, sounds, pictures, colors, etc. Many triggers are not provocative unless they are repeated or paired with other triggers. Being able to discuss triggers without being triggering (or triggered) is one way that survivors can develop their own sense of empowerment.

Barriers encountered by RA Survivors when accessing Support in Offline Spaces (Services) By Joseph Lumbasi
As a support organisation for RA survivors in the UK, Izzy’s Promise (SC033706) has been continuously carrying out research with its service users to identify barriers encountered and how best to overcome such barriers. Since 2002 when Izzy’s Promise was set up, they have commissioned a variety of research projects with abuse support organisations and ritual abuse (RA) survivors to identify how best to improve support services. The research projects have been conducted online using smart survey where more than 150 abuse support organisations in the UK responded to questions around barriers encountered while delivering support services to RA survivors. Similarly, the online research using smart survey where 300 RA survivors in the UK responded to questions around barriers encountered while accessing support services and suggestions on how to overcome such barriers. My intention is to analyse results from these research endeavours to produce a conference paper that I will present to delegates at the Survivors conference in May 2019 as well as publish the findings into a journal article. The findings will also be used to improve service delivery at Izzy’s Promise.

A Survivor’s View of Recovery from Ritual Abuse by Neil Brick
Recovery from ritual abuse can take many years. Recovery may include working through memories, building functionality and developing more effective ways of interacting and integrating emotions. Every individual has different experiences that lead them through the recovery path. Neil Brick will discuss his long journey healing from severe abuse. This will include ways he has learned more about himself, ways he has learned to develop healthier interactions with others and ways he has helped others along the recovery path.

Articles include information on: CIA’s torture program, Project Medication, MK-Ultra, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Jonestown massacre, Jeffrey Epstein, Crime Victims’ Rights Act, fundamental Baptist churches, Mind Control in China, extrajudicial internment camps, Woody Allen, Babi Christina Engelhardt, Chicago-area Jesuit priests, Donald McGuire, Catholic Church, female genital mutilation, mass initiation secret society Sierra Leone, CIA’s illegal MKUltra mind-control experiments, Kevin Spacey, Harvey Weinstein, paedophile ring plotting to rape baby, Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, Rev. Bernard Preynat, Cyntoia Brown, Family Separation, R. Kelly

Secret CIA Document Shows Plan to Test Drugs on Prisoners
By Dror Ladin, Staff Attorney, ACLU National Security Project
November 13, 2018
Thanks to an ACLU victory in federal court, we know much more about how CIA doctors violated the medical oath to “do no harm.”
One of the most important lessons of the CIA’s torture program is the way it corrupted virtually every individual and institution associated with it. Over the years, we have learned how lawyers twisted the law and psychologists betrayed their ethical obligations in order to enable the brutal and unlawful torture of prisoners.
Now we’ve won the release of a 90-page account of the CIA’s Office of Medical Services role in the CIA torture program — a secret history written by the top CIA medical official, whose identity remains classified.
The history reveals that CIA doctors were hunting for a “truth serum” to use on prisoners as part of a previously secret effort called Project Medication. The CIA studied records of old Soviet drug experiments as well as the CIA’s notorious and discredited MK-Ultra program, which involved human experimentation with LSD and other drugs on unwitting subjects. The CIA doctors involved in Project Medication wanted to use Versed, a psychoactive drug similar to some of those used in MK-Ultra, on prisoners.
The CIA ignored lessons from its own history. After MK-Ultra was shut down, the CIA director testified in 1977, “It is totally abhorrent to me to think of using humans as guinea pigs.” But decades later, the agency decided to experiment on humans again, testing pseudoscientific theories of “learned helplessness” on its prisoners.
While Project Medication never got off the ground, CIA medical professionals remained critical participants in experimenting with torture. Just like the government lawyers who tried to give unlawful torture a veneer of legality, the secret history reveals that CIA doctors were “indispensable” to the effort of “legitimizing the program.”….
https://www.aclu.org/blog/national-security/torture/secret-cia-document-shows-plan-test-drugs-prisoners

CIA considered potential truth serum for terror suspects
By DEB RIECHMANN November 13, 2018
WASHINGTON (AP) — Shortly after 9/11, the CIA considered using a drug it thought might work like a truth serum and force terror suspects to give up information about potential attacks.
After months of research, the agency decided that a drug called Versed, a sedative often prescribed to reduce anxiety, was “possibly worth a try.” But in the end, the CIA decided not to ask government lawyers to approve its use.
The existence of the drug research program — dubbed “Project Medication” — is disclosed in a once-classified report that was provided to the American Civil Liberties Union under a judge’s order and was released by the organization Tuesday.
The 90-page CIA report, which was provided in advance to The Associated Press, is a window into the internal struggle that medical personnel working in the agency’s detention and harsh interrogation program faced in reconciling their professional ethics with the chance to save lives by preventing future attacks.
“This document tells an essential part of the story of how it was that the CIA came to torture prisoners against the law and helps prevent it from happening again,” said ACLU attorney Dror Ladin….
https://www.apnews.com/e4bc055b4fee4e0d9f47ab14adc2c173

Truth about CIA’s illegal MKUltra mind-control experiments – using drugs, hypnosis and electronic devices- revealed in sensational new documents officials hid for decades
The records “rewrite the history” of the CIA’s covert and illegal MKUltra project, according to researcher John Greenewald Jr who spent almost 20 years trying to obtain the documents
By Emma Parry, Digital US Correspondent 7th December 2018
DISTURBING details of secret mind-control experiments carried out by the CIA have been revealed in newly released documents – that officials have been trying to hide for decades.
The new documents, released under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal how the CIA experimented on both humans and animals using drugs, hypnosis and electronic devices as part of the top secret – and illegal – mind control project MKUltra.
Shockingly the swathes of information still missing or redacted in the records could mean the CIA is STILL carrying out the experiments to this day, according to experts.
One document details how the CIA planned to drug “criminals awaiting trial held in a prison hospital ward” in a bid to develop “improved techniques in drug interrogation”.
Another document details the CIA’s interest in developing ways to cause amnesia in humans using experiments “no matter how weird, inconclusive or unusual”.
It goes on to detail how they were looking to find ways of developing hypnotic speaking techniques which would control the minds of “large audiences” and “heighten group susceptibility”.
Experiments which were “too dangerous, too shocking, too unusual for routine testing would be of interest to us,” the memo from 1956 reads.
The records also detail mind control experiments on dogs, cats and mice with a cocktail of drugs and by implanting electronic devices – most likely as a precursor to human experiments….
The records were obtained by researcher John Greenewald Jr, who published them last week on his website The Black Vault….
John said: “Are the CIA still trying to cover up projects that took place in the 50s and 60s? In my opinion yes.
“They are trying to cover it up and that is evidenced not just by what I went through to get the documents but the documents themselves.
“So you’ll see through these records they were doing a lot of different types of research with drugs on cats and dogs and other animals.
“They were implanting electronic devices into animals to see whether electronic impulses can essentially control the brain….
MKUltra was the code name for a top secret and illegal programme of human experiments which the CIA carried out in the early 50s until it was official halted in 1973.
The aim of the project was to identify and develop mind-control drugs and procedures to be used in interrogations and torture in a bid to force confessions and control behaviour.
Although the CIA admitted to running the covert operation during congressional hearings in the 70s, they claimed that all records relating to it had been destroyed.
John’s battle for information started in 1999, when he requested the only documents relating to MKUltra that the CIA said had not been destroyed – 30,000 pages of financial records….
https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7920010/cia-mkultra-mind-control-drugs-hypnosis-electric-documents

Childhood abuse never ended for thousands of Australian adults
By Tracey Shelton 3 Nov 2018
Sarah is living proof that “life after hell” is possible.
For more than 20 years she says she endured beatings, rape and degradation at the hands of her family….
Her abusers spanned three generations and included her grandfather, father and some of her brothers. She has scars across her body….
While most people assume child abuse ends at adulthood, it can bring control, fear and manipulation that can last a lifetime.
Incestuous abuse into adulthood affects roughly 1 in 700 Australians, according to research by psychiatrist Warwick Middleton — one of the world’s leading experts in trauma and dissociation. If that estimate is accurate, tens of thousands of Australian adults like Sarah are being abused by family members into their 20s or even up to their 50s….
Hidden in ‘happy’ families, successful careers
Sydney criminologist Michael Salter has found similar patterns in his own research. He said cases of incest are “fairly likely” to continue into adulthood, but this extreme form of domestic abuse is unrecognised within our health and legal systems.
“It’s unlikely that these men are going to respect the age of consent,” says Mr Salter, who is an associate professor of criminology at Western Sydney University. “It doesn’t make sense that they would be saying, ‘Oh you’re 18 now so I’m not going to abuse you anymore’. We’re just not having a sensible conversation about it.”
The ABC spoke with 16 men and women who described being abused from childhood into adulthood….
A mental ‘escape’
Professor Middleton describes abuse by a parent as “soul destroying”. In order to survive psychologically, a child will often dissociate from the abuse.
Compartmentalising memories and feelings can be an effective coping strategy for a child dependent on their abuser, says Pam Stavropoulos, head of research at the Blue Knot Foundation, a national organisation that works with the adult survivors of childhood trauma.
‘I learnt to disappear’
Like a “shattered glass”, three women discuss the myths and challenges of living with Dissociative Identity Disorder.
The extreme and long-lasting nature of ongoing abuse can result in dissociative identity disorder, which on the one hand can shield a victim from being fully aware of the extent of the abuse but can also leave them powerless to break away, Ms Stavropoulos says….
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-03/child-abuse-can-continue-into-adulthood/10418556

40 years later, Rep. Speier looks back on surviving Jonestown Nov 19, 2018 This weekend marked the 40th anniversary of the Jonestown massacre, in which more than 900 followers of Jim Jones were victims of a cult mass murder-suicide in Guyana. Among the survivors was Jackie Speier, now a Democratic congresswoman from California. She joins Judy Woodruff to discuss her new book, “Undaunted: Surviving Jonestown, Summoning Courage, and Fighting Back” and current politics.
Judy Woodruff:
Yesterday marked the 40th anniversary of the Jonestown massacre, the mass murder-suicide that left more than 900 followers of cult leader Jim Jones dead in the South American country of Guyana.
Congressman Leo Ryan was in Jonestown with a small team investigating the cult’s activities, and was shot and killed by Jones’ followers.
But one of his aides on that trip, Jackie Speier, now herself a Democratic congresswoman from California, survived, and I spoke with her recently about her harrowing experience.
Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif.:
Congresswoman Ryan was the congressman that I worked for at the time. He made that trip to Jonestown because many of his constituents had young adults who had gotten involved in this church in San Francisco called The Peoples Temple, and was led by a man by the name of Jim Jones.
As more and more criticism started to come out about sexual abuse and physical abuse and money laundering, he then took about 900 of his members to Jonestown, where he had been building a commune for about two years.
And concerned relatives came to Congressman Ryan. There were defectors who also came and told him of really untoward things happening at that compound. And the congressman wanted to find out what was really going on.
The State Department was basically telling us there really wasn’t a story there, there really wasn’t anything to talk about. And, unfortunately, we found out something very different.
Judy Woodruff:
You went there. You sensed in a very short period of time that something was terribly wrong.
And then, as you were leaving with some people who were ready to defect, some of the followers of Jim Jones came and shot to death five people. And you were badly wounded, shot five times.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/40-years-later-rep-speier-looks-back-on-surviving-jonestown

‘Rot in hell’: Cult victim tortured, forced to commit bestiality, brutally murdered 21 Nov, 2018 WARNING – DISTURBING CONTENT
The ex-partner of a father-of-two who was tortured to death by a sadistic cult ….
Vulnerable Jimmy Prout suffered months of abuse at the hands of a group led by wheelchair bound Zahid Zaman, before his body was discovered in wasteland just yards from his home in North Shields, North Tyneside….
Chilling CCTV footage shows Mr Prout in the days before he was murdered, looking gaunt and frail as he is dragged along a street by his killers.
Now his ex partner of 14 years has spoken of the horrors that Mr Prout was subjected to during his final few months alive, and how she hopes his killers will die in jail.
Ms Carter is interviewed for Cults, Taboos and Twisted Faith UK on Crime and Investigation tonight, telling of her disbelief at why Mr Prout was never able to escape the clutches of the group before he was killed.
Ms Carter, who split with Mr Prout before he was brainwashed, said she regrets ever leaving him….
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12163725

How a future Trump Cabinet member gave a serial sex abuser the deal of a lifetime BY Julie K. Brown Nov. 28, 2018
On a muggy October morning in 2007, Miami’s top federal prosecutor, Alexander Acosta, had a breakfast appointment with a former colleague, Washington, D.C., attorney Jay Lefkowitz.
It was an unusual meeting for the then-38-year-old prosecutor, a rising Republican star who had served in several White House posts before being named U.S. attorney in Miami by President George W. Bush.
Instead of meeting at the prosecutor’s Miami headquarters, the two men — both with professional roots in the prestigious Washington law firm of Kirkland & Ellis — convened at the Marriott in West Palm Beach, about 70 miles away. For Lefkowitz, 44, a U.S. special envoy to North Korea and corporate lawyer, the meeting was critical.
His client, Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein, 54, was accused of assembling a large, cult-like network of underage girls — with the help of young female recruiters — to coerce into having sex acts behind the walls of his opulent waterfront mansion as often as three times a day, the Town of Palm Beach police found.
The eccentric hedge fund manager, whose friends included former President Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Prince Andrew, was also suspected of trafficking minor girls, often from overseas, for sex parties at his other homes in Manhattan, New Mexico and the Caribbean, FBI and court records show.
Facing a 53-page federal indictment, Epstein could have ended up in federal prison for the rest of his life.
But on the morning of the breakfast meeting, a deal was struck — an extraordinary plea agreement that would conceal the full extent of Epstein’s crimes and the number of people involved.
Not only would Epstein serve just 13 months in the county jail, but the deal — called a non-prosecution agreement — essentially shut down an ongoing FBI probe into whether there were more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein’s sex crimes, according to a Miami Herald examination of thousands of emails, court documents and FBI records.
The pact required Epstein to plead guilty to two prostitution charges in state court. Epstein and four of his accomplices named in the agreement received immunity from all federal criminal charges. But even more unusual, the deal included wording that granted immunity to “any potential co-conspirators’’ who were also involved in Epstein’s crimes. These accomplices or participants were not identified in the agreement, leaving it open to interpretation whether it possibly referred to other influential people who were having sex with underage girls at Epstein’s various homes or on his plane.
As part of the arrangement, Acosta agreed, despite a federal law to the contrary, that the deal would be kept from the victims. As a result, the non-prosecution agreement was sealed until after it was approved by the judge, thereby averting any chance that the girls — or anyone else — might show up in court and try to derail it….
Now President Trump’s secretary of labor, Acosta, 49, oversees a massive federal agency that provides oversight of the country’s labor laws, including human trafficking. He also has been on a list of possible replacements for former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who resigned under pressure earlier this month….
But court records reveal details of the negotiations and the role that Acosta would play in arranging the deal, which scuttled the federal probe into a possible international sex trafficking operation. Among other things, Acosta allowed Epstein’s lawyers unusual freedoms in dictating the terms of the non-prosecution agreement.
“The damage that happened in this case is unconscionable,” said Bradley Edwards, a former state prosecutor who represents some of Epstein’s victims. “How in the world, do you, the U.S. attorney, engage in a negotiation with a criminal defendant, basically allowing that criminal defendant to write up the agreement?”….
The Herald also identified about 80 women who say they were molested or otherwise sexually abused by Epstein from 2001 to 2006….
Now, more than a decade later, two unrelated civil lawsuits — one set for trial on Dec. 4 — could reveal more about Epstein’s crimes. The Dec. 4 case, in Palm Beach County state court, involves Epstein and Edwards, whom Epstein had accused of legal misdeeds in representing several victims. The case is noteworthy because it will mark the first time that Epstein’s victims will have their day in court, and several of them are scheduled to testify.
A second lawsuit, known as the federal Crime Victims’ Rights suit, is still pending in South Florida after a decade of legal jousting. It seeks to invalidate the non-prosecution agreement in hopes of sending Epstein to federal prison. Wild, who has never spoken publicly until now, is Jane Doe No. 1 in “Jane Doe No. 1 and Jane Doe No. 2 vs. the United States of America,” a federal lawsuit that alleges Epstein’s federal non-prosecution agreement was illegal.
Federal prosecutors, including Acosta, not only broke the law, the women contend in court documents, but they conspired with Epstein and his lawyers to circumvent public scrutiny and deceive his victims in violation of the Crime Victims’ Rights Act. The law assigns victims a series of rights, including the right of notice of any court proceedings and the opportunity to appear at sentencing….
Acosta has never fully explained why he felt it was in the best interests of the underage girls — and their parents — for him to keep the agreement sealed. Or why the FBI investigation was closed even as, recently released documents show, the case was yielding more victims and evidence of a possible sex-trafficking conspiracy beyond Palm Beach.
Upon his nomination by Trump as labor secretary in 2017, Acosta was questioned about the Epstein case during a Senate confirmation hearing.
“At the end of the day, based on the evidence, professionals within a prosecutor’s office decided that a plea that guarantees someone goes to jail, that guarantees he register [as a sex offender] generally and guarantees other outcomes, is a good thing,’’ Acosta said of his decision to not prosecute Epstein federally…. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/article220097825.html

Sex Offender Jeffrey Epstein Settles Defamation Suit, Silencing Women’s Testimony December 4, 2018 Vanessa Romo
Jeffrey Epstein, a multimillionaire hedge fund manager accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls, reached a last-minute settlement on Tuesday in a case that had been expected to allow a handful of his alleged victims to tell their stories in court for the first time.
Epstein settled a suit filed by lawyer Bradley Edwards, who said Epstein had damaged his reputation. In court on Tuesday, Epstein apologized to Edwards for alleging that Edwards had made up false charges against him, WPTV reported.
In a separate lawsuit, Edwards represents a number of women who allege that Epstein abused them when they were minors, some as young as 13.
Jack Scarola, Edwards’ lawyer, announced that a financial settlement for unspecified damages had been reached just as jury selection was set to begin.
“This was a case that focused on [Edwards’] personal vindication,” Scarola told reporters outside the Palm Beach courthouse. “The case that focuses on the vindication of victims is the Crime Victims Rights Act case and you can be absolutely sure that we’re not abandoning that effort.”…
In 2005 Epstein was under investigation by the Palm Beach Police Department — and then in 2006 by the FBI — for “assembling a large, cult-like network of underage girls — with the help of young female recruiters — to coerce into having sex acts behind the walls of his opulent waterfront mansion as often as three times a day,” the Miami Herald reported last week in a sweeping investigative story about the accusations against the 65-year-old.
But in 2008, with the help of then-U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, Epstein struck a deal to plead guilty to two counts of solicitation of prostitution — one with a minor under the age of 18. Epstein was sentenced to 18 months in jail, though he was allowed to leave for work five days a week and was released five months early. He was also required to register as a sex offender.
Epstein’s high-profile legal representation included Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, who was accused by one of the alleged victims of having sex with another girl at Epstein’s home, an accusation that is denied by Dershowitz.
To avoid prosecution, Epstein’s legal team negotiated a deal with Acosta, who is now the U.S. secretary of labor. (The post oversees the country’s labor laws, including human trafficking.) In exchange for Epstein’s admission of guilt, Acosta’s office agreed to shut down the FBI’s ongoing investigation into Epstein, granting him and four unnamed accomplices immunity from all criminal charges, the Herald reported….
Over the years, several women have entered into undisclosed financial settlements with Epstein, but they have never had a day in court.
The decision to keep the women — who are now in their 20s and 30s — in the dark is at the center of a pending lawsuit filed by Edwards in federal court on behalf of some of Epstein’s alleged victims. They argue Acosta and Epstein violated their rights under the Crime Victims Rights Act.
That law entitles crime victims to “the right to reasonable, accurate, and timely notice of any public court proceeding, or any parole proceeding, involving the crime or of any release or escape of the accused.”…
https://www.npr.org/2018/12/04/673320224/sex-offender-jeffrey-epstein-settles-defamation-suit-silencing-womens-testimony

Hundreds of sex abuse allegations found in fundamental Baptist churches across U.S. BY SARAH SMITH Dec. 9, 2018
Joy Evans Ryder was 15 years old when she says her church youth director pinned her to his office floor and raped her….
The youth director, Dave Hyles, was the son of the charismatic pastor of First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana, considered at the time the flagship for thousands of loosely affiliated independent fundamental Baptist churches and universities.
At least three other teen girls would accuse Hyles of sexual misconduct, but he never faced charges or even sat for a police interview related to the accusations. When he got in trouble, Hyles was able to simply move on, from one church assignment to the next.
Hyles’ flight to safety has become a well-worn path for ministers in the independent fundamental Baptist movement.
For decades, women and children have faced rampant sexual abuse while worshiping at independent fundamental Baptist churches around the country. The network of churches and schools has often covered up the crimes and helped relocate the offenders, an eight-month Star-Telegram investigation has found.
More than 200 people — current or former church members, across generations — shared their stories of rape, assault, humiliation and fear in churches where male leadership cannot be questioned….
The Star-Telegram discovered at least 412 allegations of sexual misconduct in 187 independent fundamental Baptist churches and their affiliated institutions, spanning 40 states and Canada….
Other ex-members said they believed that if they disobeyed the pastor or left the church, God would kill them or their loved ones.
The authority of the men of God extends far beyond the church. Pastors often have a heavy hand in who church members can date. Pastors are asked by members for their advice on where to vacation or whether to take a new job. When one congregant wanted to buy a new house, he had the pastor drive by first and approve it.
Independent fundamental Baptist churches preach separation: Stay separate from the world, separate from non-believers and separate from Christians who do not believe as they do. That includes Southern Baptists, who are deemed by the strict sect as too liberal.
Members instinctively go to the pastor first with problems, including those of a criminal nature.
“Any issues, even legal issues, go to the pastor first, not the police. Especially about another member of the church,” said Josh Elliott, a former member of Vineyard’s Oklahoma City church. “The person should go to the pastor, and the pastor will talk to the offender. You don’t report to police because the pastor is the ultimate authority, not the government.”….
https://www.star-telegram.com/living/religion/article222576310.html

Mind Control in China Has a Very Long History By James Leibold Mr. Leibold is an expert on ethnic issues in modern China. Nov. 28, 2018
MELBOURNE, Australia — China has built a vast network of extrajudicial internment camps in the western region of Xinjiang, where Uighurs and other Muslim minorities are made to renounce their culture and religion, and are forcibly subjected to political indoctrination. After long denying the camps’ existence, the government now calls them benign training centers that teach law, Mandarin and vocational skills — a claim that has been exposed as a disingenuous euphemism and an attempt to deflect criticism for gross human rights abuses.
But the camps, especially their ambition to rewire people, reveal a familiar logic that has long defined the Chinese state’s relationship with its public: a paternalistic approach that pathologizes deviant thought and behavior, and then tries to forcefully transform them. The scale and pace of the government’s campaign in Xinjiang today may be extraordinary, but the practice and its methods are not.
As far back as the third century BCE, the philosopher Xunzi argued that humanity was like “crooked timber” and that an individual’s character flaws needed to be scraped away or straightened out in the pursuit of social harmony. Mencius, a rival thinker, believed for his part in the innate goodness of human beings, but he too stressed the importance of self-improvement.
In stark contrast to Western liberalism, Confucianism — and Chinese political culture more broadly — hinges not on individual rights, but on the acceptance of social hierarchy and the belief that humans are perfectible. In Chinese thought, humans are not equally endowed; they vary in suzhi, or quality. A poor Uighur farmer in southern Xinjiang, for example, sits at the bottom of the evolutionary ladder; an official from the ethnic Han majority is toward the top….
When applied in Xinjiang, Tibet or other borderlands, ganhua seems to amount to a “civilizing project,” as the anthropologist Stevan Harrell has said, which aims to create a uniform populace under the banner of a single “Chinese nation.” But it is more than that. In the 1960s, the psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton called Chinese-style thought control — with its dogmatic belief in absolute truth and compulsion to mend the incorrigible — “ideological totalism.”
As Lifton noted, ideological totalism in China is not a continuous process, but a cyclical phenomenon. It elicits a mix of emotions. Some subjects comply, others withdraw; a few may even be enthusiastic at first. But over time the suffocating nature of repression also tends to breed resentment and resistance, and those in turn can bring about even more repressive methods of control….
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/28/opinion/china-reeducation-mind-control-xinjiang.html

Woody Allen’s Secret Teen Lover Speaks: Sex, Power and a Conflicted Muse Who Inspired ‘Manhattan’ by Gary Baum December 17, 2018
In 1976, 16-year-old model Babi Christina Engelhardt embarked on a hidden eight-year affair with the 41–year-old filmmaker that mirrors one of his most famous movies. Now, amid the #MeToo reckoning and Allen’s personal scandals, she looks back with mixed emotions on their relationship and its unequal dynamic.
Sixteen, emerald-eyed, blond, an aspiring model with a confident streak and a painful past: Babi Christina Engelhardt had just caught Woody Allen’s gaze at legendary New York City power restaurant Elaine’s. It was October 1976, and when Engelhardt returned from the ladies’ room, she dropped a note on his table with her phone number. It brazenly read: “Since you’ve signed enough autographs, here’s mine!”
Soon, Allen rang, inviting her to his Fifth Avenue penthouse. The already-famous 41-year-old director, still hot off Sleeper and who’d release Annie Hall the following spring, never asked her age. But she told him she was still in high school, living with her family in rural New Jersey as she pursued her modeling ambitions in Manhattan. Within weeks, they’d become physically intimate at his place. She wouldn’t turn 17, legal in New York, until that December….
Englehardt now works for legendary producer Bob Evans; previously she was an assistant to (later disgraced) financier Jeffrey Epstein and, before that, a member of Federico Fellini’s creative circle….
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/woody-allens-secret-teen-lover-manhattan-muse-speaks-1169782

18 Chicago-area Jesuit priests named in new list alleging sexual abuse
Morgan Greene Chicago Tribune December 18, 2018
Eighteen Jesuit priests with ties to Chicago-area institutions were named on a list released Monday alleging instances of sexual abuse dating back more than six decades, including one defrocked priest who was convicted of sex crimes in federal court.
The Midwest Province Jesuits, part of a Catholic religious order known for its focus on education, released a list of dozens of priests with credible allegations of sexual abuse to their names since 1955.
In a Monday evening phone interview, the Rev. Brian Paulson, provincial of the Midwest Province, said the list was a response to the scandals that have rocked the Catholic Church for the past two decades — from the 2002 abuse crisis exposed by the Boston Globe to the more than 300 Pennsylvania priests who were found to have sexually abused children, according to an August grand jury report.
“I think in the past, church leaders tried to avoid scandal,” Paulson said. “But I think now we realize the greater scandal is keeping this information in our drawer.”….
More than 50 priests were named as perpetrators in cases where there was “reasonable certainty that the sexual abuse of a minor occurred.” Several worked at Loyola Academy in Wilmette, Holy Family Parish and St. Ignatius College Prep on the Near West Side, and Loyola University Chicago, among other institutions….
Donald McGuire, a prominent priest and retreat director who traveled frequently, was among those on the list. The Tribune reported that the convicted sex offender abused dozens of children around the globe, according to internal church records released in 2013, and was associated with what was, at the time, the largest settlement amount per individual paid in the history of the U.S. Catholic sexual abuse crisis.
The Midwest Province list accused McGuire of multiple instances of abuse across five Chicago-area institutions: at Loyola Academy from 1954-57 and again from 1965-70, Loyola University Chicago in 1976, Bellarmine Jesuit Retreat House in Barrington from 1981-84 and from 1985-88, Canisius House in Evanston from 1988-2002 and the Chicago Jesuit Community from 2002-05….
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-jesuits-sex-abuse-list-20181217-story.html

Illinois AG says Catholic Church failed to disclose abuse accusations against 500 priests and clergy By Daniel Burke, CNN Religion Editor Thu December 20, 2018
(CNN) In yet another blow to the Catholic Church in the United States, Illinois’ attorney general says the state’s six dioceses have failed to disclose accusations of sexual abuse against at least 500 priests and clergy members.
Illinois’ dioceses have released lists publicly identifying 185 clergy members who had been credibly accused of child sex abuse. But state Attorney General Lisa Madigan said preliminary findings in her investigation reveal that the church failed to disclose sexual abuse allegations against at least 500 additional priests and clergy members.
In many cases, the accusations have “not been adequately investigated by the dioceses or not investigated at all,” Madigan’s office said in a statement Wednesday. What’s more, the statement added, the church often failed to notify law enforcement authorities or the state’s Department of Children and Family Services about the allegations.
“By choosing not to thoroughly investigate allegations, the Catholic Church has failed in its moral obligation to provide survivors, parishioners and the public a complete and accurate accounting of all sexually inappropriate behavior involving priests in Illinois,” Madigan said in the statement.
“The failure to investigate also means that the Catholic Church has never made an effort to determine whether the conduct of the accused priests was ignored or covered up by superiors.”
Madigan began her investigation in August, after a Pennsylvania grand jury released a damning report detailing horrific abuses by 300 Catholic clergy against more than 1,000 victims since the 1950s. In the aftermath, 36 dioceses have publicized self-reported lists of clergy “credibly accused” of abusing minors. (There are 197 dioceses in the United States.)….
Based on her review of the Illinois dioceses’ internal files, the attorney general says the dioceses have received sex-abuse-related allegations against approximately 690 clergy. But they publicly reported just 185 of the allegations.
Nearly 75% of the allegations were either not investigated or were investigated but not substantiated, according to the report….
“The dioceses also often found reasons to discredit survivors’ stories of abuse by focusing on the survivors’ personal lives,” the report says….
In December, the Society of Jesus, popularly known as the Jesuits, released lists from four American provinces of more than 230 priests who had been credibly accused of abusing minors….
https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/19/us/illinois-catholic-church-abuse-allegations/index.html

Girl, 10, dies after female genital mutilation in Sierra Leone
Renewed calls for country to end practice after girl bleeds to death following mass initiation into secret society
Kate Hodal Thu 20 Dec 2018
A 10-year-old girl has died after undergoing female genital mutilation during a mass initiation into a secret society in Sierra Leone.
The girl, one of 68 involved in the rite, bled to death on Tuesday following complications from the FGM procedure.
Activists said the ceremony took place in the “bondo bush” – secluded forest – in the northern province of Tonkolili district, roughly 150 miles east of the capital, Freetown.
A number of women, as well as cutters, known as soweis, are now on the run, among them the deceased girl’s mother, said Rugiatu Turay, a former government minister who founded the Amazonian Initiative Movement, a grassroots group dedicated to ending FGM.
The girl, who has been named as Marie Kamera, had just sat her year-five exams when she was rushed off to the initiation, said Turay.
“As soon as she dropped the pen, she was taken away,” she said. “This is the second time that a girl has died in that family: one of the sisters died of excessive bleeding after being initiated two years ago, and the father was against it this time, but the mother is the breadwinner in the family and she wanted it….
FGM is a common practice in Sierra Leone, where nine in 10 girls are cut, often with crude instruments such as penknives, broken glass and razor blades, according to the World Health Organization. The ritual involves the partial or full removal of the female genitalia and can cause serious health injuries.
Although it has been technically banned since emergency health measures were introduced after the 2014 Ebola outbreak, FGM has a strong government lobby. As a result, the government is one of only a few globally that has failed to outlaw the practice, said Turay….
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/dec/20/girl-10-dies-after-female-genital-mutilation-in-sierra-leone

Kevin Spacey Faces Felony Charge in Misconduct Case By Sopan Deb Dec. 24, 2018 Kevin Spacey will be charged with a felony following an accusation of sexual assault made public last year, the authorities in Nantucket said on Monday.
The charge, first reported by The Boston Globe, is in connection with an accusation of misconduct that was made by a former television anchor, Heather Unruh, who said that Mr. Spacey sexually assaulted her 18-year-old son in July 2016 at a bar in Nantucket.
Michael O’Keefe, the Cape and Islands district attorney in Massachusetts, said in a statement that Mr. Spacey would be arraigned on Jan. 7 for one charge of indecent assault and battery, the first criminal charge levied against him as a result of sexual misconduct allegations. The statement also said there was a public show cause hearing in Nantucket District Court last Thursday, after which Clerk Magistrate Brian Kearney issued the criminal complaint.
A representative for Mr. Spacey did not respond to a request for comment. But the actor has apologized for one incident and denied at least one other accusation of wrongdoing….
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/24/movies/kevin-spacey-criminal-charges.html
Kevin Spacey scandal: A complete list of the 15 accusers
Maria Puente, USA TODAY Nov. 7, 2017
The first accusation of sexual misconduct against Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey landed on Oct. 29, and a little more than a week later more than a dozen men — including five who said they were teens at the time — have come forward to allege he sexually harassed, assaulted or attempted to rape them. Here is a list of accusers, some of them named, some of them anonymous….
https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/2017/11/07/kevin-spacey-scandal-complete-list-13-accusers/835739001/

Harvey Weinstein judge declines to dismiss charges in rape case, sets pretrial hearing for March
By Eric Levenson and Elizabeth Joseph, CNN Thu December 20, 2018
New York (CNN)Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced movie mogul whose downfall helped launch the #MeToo movement, is due back in New York court on March 7 after a judge Thursday morning ordered a pretrial hearing in the rape case.
The proceedings lasted just 10 minutes, a remarkably quick resolution to a highly anticipated and pivotal appearance that the defense had hoped would end with the charges against Weinstein getting dropped.
“We are obviously disappointed that the court did not dismiss the indictment, but Judge (James) Burke has ruled, and we intend to continue to vigorously defend this case to the best of our ability,” Weinstein’s attorney, Ben Brafman, said outside the Manhattan courthouse.
Weinstein, 66, has pleaded not guilty to five felony charges, including predatory sexual assault and rape, in connection with two women in separate incidents. Thursday’s hearing came in response to a motion filed by Brafman to dismiss the remaining counts or to hold evidentiary hearings on whether certain witnesses can testify.
The judge denied both requests, saying the defendant can explore witness credibility issues at trial, court documents show….
https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/20/us/harvey-weinstein-court-charges/index.html

Eighth member of paedophile ring – including Hull man David Harsley – jailed for plotting to rape baby
David Harsley and six other members of the gang were jailed in 2015
By Sophie Corcoran 29 NOV 2018
The eighth member of a sickening paedophile ring who plotted to rape a seven-month old baby has been jailed today.
Matthew Law, 50, worked alongside seven others, including Hull man David Harsley, to conspire to abuse babies, toddlers and young children.
The gang used encrypted communication and the dark web to evade detection, and were branded ‘monsters in disguise’ after grooming mothers to gain their trust so they could have access to their children unspervised.
Harsley, 55, a hospital worker, befriended a “vulnerable” pregnant and single woman at a social club. He was looking after the boy and committed a sex act in front of the child while fellow gang members John Denham and Matthew Lisk watched over Skype….
Hollyson admitted filming himself raping a three-month-old baby in what the judge at the time called one of the most horrific abuse cases on record.
The seven men were jailed for a total of 78 years after Adam Tom’s confession sparked an investigation into the gang, who have now been revealed to have drugged babies and toddlers.
The gang would groom mothers – some while they were still pregnant – to gain unsupervised access to their children….
One baby was raped and sexually abused by three of the gang members over a period of months. The others watched on live internet feeds….
https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/hull-east-yorkshire-news/eighth-member-paedophile-ring-including-2275623

Cardinal on trial in France’s biggest church sex abuse trial
NICOLAS VAUX-MONTAGNY Associated Press 7 January 2019
LYON, France (AP) — A Catholic cardinal and five other people went on trial Monday accused of covering up for a pedophile priest who abused Boy Scouts — France’s most important church sex abuse case to date.
The case poses a new challenge to the Vatican, amid growing demands in overwhelmingly Catholic France for a reckoning with decades of sexual abuse by the clergy.
Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, 68, appeared in a Lyon court Monday along with other senior church officials accused of failing to protect children from alleged abuse by the Rev. Bernard Preynat. The top Vatican official in charge of sex abuse cases, Cardinal Luis Ladaria, is among the accused — but won’t appear in court because the Vatican invoked his diplomatic immunity.
Nine people who said the priest abused them in the 1970s and 1980s brought the case to court, and hope it marks a turning point in efforts to hold the French church hierarchy accountable for hushing up abuse. The victims say top clergy were aware of Preynat’s actions for years, but allowed him to be in contact with children until his 2015 retirement.
Despite nationwide attention on the case, it may fall apart for legal reasons. Prosecutors initially threw out it out for insufficient evidence. Barbarin’s lawyer says his client never obstructed justice because the statute of limitations had passed on the acts in question by the time Barbarin was informed….
https://in.news.yahoo.com/cardinal-trial-frances-biggest-church-sex-abuse-trial-082122434.html

Woman sentenced to life as teen in killing wins clemency
A woman who says she was a victim of sex trafficking when she killed a man in 2004 was granted clemency Monday by Tennessee’s governor and will be released from prison By KIMBERLEE KRUESI Associated Press
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — A woman who says she was a 16-year-old sex trafficking victim when she killed a man in 2004 was granted clemency Monday by Tennessee’s governor and will be released from prison later this year.
Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam granted clemency to Cyntoia Brown, who had been serving a life sentence but who will be released on parole on Aug. 7 — 15 years from the date she was first arrested.
“Cyntoia Brown committed, by her own admission, a horrific crime at the age of 16. Yet, imposing a life sentence on a juvenile that would require her to serve at least 51 years before even being eligible for parole consideration is too harsh, especially in light of the extraordinary steps Ms. Brown has taken to rebuild her life,” Haslam said in his statement.
Brown, 30, will remain on parole supervision for 10 years on the condition she does not violate any state or federal laws, holds a job, and participates in regular counseling sessions….
Brown was convicted in 2006 of murdering Allen, a Nashville real estate agent. Police said she shot Allen in the back of the head at close range with a gun she brought to rob him after he picked her up at a Sonic Drive-in fast-food restaurant in Nashville to have sex with her.
Brown’s lawyers contended she was a sex trafficking victim who not only feared for her life but also lacked the mental capability to be culpable in the slaying because she was impaired by her mother’s alcohol use while she was in the womb.
According to court documents, Brown ran away from her adoptive family in Nashville in 2004 and began living with a man known as “Cut Throat” in a hotel, who then forced her to become a prostitute. Court documents say the man verbally, physically and sexually assaulted her.
One night, Allen picked up Brown at a Sonic Drive-In and she agreed to engage in sexual activity for $150. Once at his place, Brown eventually got into Allen’s bed. Brown told law enforcement officials she thought he was reaching for a gun, so she shot him with a handgun from her purse.
She took two of his guns and his money from his wallet before fleeing the scene…. https://apnews.com/199ec93abff34bf2a6c79b0ec385419b

The Battle to Stop Family Separation
By Lee Gelernt, Deputy Director, ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project
December 26, 2018
This piece originally appeared at The New York Review of Books.
In March 2017, John Kelly, then Secretary of Homeland Security, said in an interview with CNN that the Trump administration was considering a national policy to separate parents from their children to deter immigrants from crossing the border into the United States. The proposal triggered a backlash because it was so unpalatable, and the administration didn’t move forward with it. But six months later, in December 2017, The Washington Post and The New York Times reported that the administration was again considering the idea. At the same time, advocates who provide services to children in government custody told ACLU lawyers they were seeing children much younger than the teenagers they usually saw entering their facilities. As the stories began to multiply, the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project quickly realized that the administration wasn’t considering the separation of children from their parents—it was already doing it.
For at least six months before then Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the zero-tolerance policy of prosecuting every adult who crossed into the United States without permission, which would result in more than 2,000 children being taken from their parents, the Department of Homeland Security had quietly began taking hundreds of children away from their parents to deter would-be asylum seekers from coming to the United States.
We had no idea how many children had been taken from their parents, but we knew we needed to file a class action lawsuit to stop the practice.
https://www.aclu.org/blog/immigrants-rights/immigrants-rights-and-detention/battle-stop-family-separation

R. Kelly under criminal investigation following Lifetime documentary series; possible victims urged to come forward
By Peter Sblendorio NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Jan 08, 2019
An explosive Lifetime documentary series covering distressing allegations against R. Kelly has reportedly prompted a criminal investigation in Georgia, while prosecutors in Chicago are urging any victims to come forward.
Investigators from the Fulton County District Attorney’s office in Atlanta have tried to touch base with some of the women featured in the six-part series, TMZ reported.
Kelly — who’s faced numerous accusations of sexual misconduct, which he’s denied — is accused of manipulating women and controlling their lives….
Kelly, 52, has been accused of inappropriate behavior with multiple underage girls in the past, which he has denied. He allegedly married the late singer Aaliyah in 1994, when she was 15.
Kelly was acquitted in a highly publicized child pornography case in 2008 after being accused of appearing in a sex tape with an underage girl years earlier.
Savage’s father Timothy, meanwhile, accused Kelly’s manager Don Russell of threatening him earlier this month, a police report released by Henry County, Ga. cops reveals. The report claims Russell told Savage it “would be best for him and his family” if the Lifetime series did not air, and that Russell threatened to release information damaging to his “reputation, business, and family” if it did.
An arrest warrant for another Kelly manager, James Mason, was issued last year after he allegedly threatened Timothy….
https://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music/ny-ent-r-kelly-investigation-20190108-story.html

 

January 24, 2019 · Filed Under Newsletter 2019 - Issues 144 - 149