Issue 132 – January 2017

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 132 – January 2017

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 2017 – All rights reserved. No reproduction of any material without written permission from the editor and individual authors.

The Survivorship Ritual Abuse and Mind Control 2017 Conference
On May 19 – 21, 2017  Survivorship will have two conferences at the Executive Inn & Suite in Oakland, CA.

There will be a clinician’s conference on Friday, May 19, 2017 for licensed clinicians and students in the field.
Alison Miller will be presenting a full day presentation at this conference. Six CEs are available for professionals at this conference. Her presentation is titled: Working with Deliberately Structured Personality Systems

Speaker List for the Saturday and Sunday Conference (This is a partial list of the speakers.)
Alison Miller – Confronting the Spiritual Issues in Ritual Abuse
Wendy Hoffman – Dirty Therapy – We know that satanic cult perpetrator groups infiltrate the very professions and organizations that survivors turn to for help.
Neil Brick – Freedom from Mind Control – Subliminal methods and mind control influence our lives in all areas.
Conference Information is at: https://survivorship.org/the-survivorship-ritual-abuse-and-child-abuse-2017-conference/
Please e-mail conference2017@survivorship.org if you have any questions.

This issue includes information on: Survivorship Ritual Abuse and Mind Control 2017 Conference, Alison Miller, Personality Systems, Wendy Hoffman, satanic cult perpetrator groups, Neil Brick, Freedom from Mind Control, Subliminal methods, Donald Trump, The Cult of Trump, Hate Crimes,  xenophobia and Islamophobia, sex scandal, Jason Miller, ‘racehorse theory’ of genetics, eugenics, Adolf Hitler, Holocaust,  Jehovah’s Witnesses, Bill Cosby, sexual assault, Fox News, Bill O’Reilly, Roger Ailes, Vanity Fair Confidential, Nightmares on Main Street by Leslie Bennetts, Fran’s Day Care – Keller Case, satanic abuse, Doug Perry, occult, devil worshippers, HBO series “True Detective”, Hosanna Church Louis Lamonica Jr., satanic rituals, child sexual abuse, animal sacrifice, Child abuse in Army families, Child Abuse UK Soccer Teams, Australian Jehovah’s Witnesses, Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Brad Pitt, Edward Heath, Norwegian paedophilia ring, La Familia and the Tequileros gangs, cult child sex abuse case   Verdade Celestial, clergy sex abuse,  Guam priests, Turkey child abuse law, Turkey child rape protests, Ritual Abuse, Mind Control, Leah Remini, The Church Of Scientology, Miscavige, L. Ron Hubbard, Sunil Rastogi, Richard Garmat, Lee Kaplan, Burke Ramsey, CBS, JonBenét Ramsey, Sharia courts, South Korean President Shaman Cult Scandal, Eric Aniva, witch doctors, albinism, British sex slave

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/

I Was Raised In A Cult. Here’s My Advice For Trump’s New World.
For the past half-year, I’ve watched some of the scariest parts of my childhood reality play out. 11/28/2016 Heidi Hough  ….I grew up in a dogmatic, narrow-minded world that hated outsiders. My fundamentalist group called itself “The Church.” Everyone outside us was in “The World.” We used the word “tremendous” liberally.
We had a tremendous post-Armageddon future in the clouds as the Bride of Christ! The levels of our hate for outsiders not like us were tremendous! The fact that we insiders ‘deserved it’ and no one else did? You guessed it: tremendous.
My group’s leader was overweight and imposing, bursting with self-satisfaction and mocking insults, a businessman who continues to build billions off the backs of unpaid others. My former leader’s message is that he has the one truth and is the answer to defeating and eliminating the bad guys who have messed up our world. He calls a lawyer the minute anyone has something negative to say about him, and, unless cornered by his own words or actions, he never, ever admits to the slightest wrongdoing….
Our new president’s campaign said anyone who disagrees with him is “bad.” In the, apparent “better world” he was offering, at least pre-election, his opponents should be put in prison and “bad hombres” — based on his determination of who that is — should be shipped out. Guantanamo should be kept open and anyone “not a good guy, trust me,” again, according to him, should be tossed in.
Just like back in my fundamentalist group.
The Church’s main song in my teen years was “A Great Awesome Army.” It was written to the melody of the former Soviet Union’s national anthem and we pumped our stiff right arms in the air in unison to songs about death and destruction to our “enemies.” We all dressed the same. We rode a band-wagon of group-think based on frustration and fantasy.
No matter what America’s new president said or did in his campaign his followers backed him. They laughed at the all right moments, booed at others, pumped their arms in unison, and wore matching t’s like ‘lock ’em up’ about anyone, who might disagree….
I have a message for the Trump supporters. The World understands. Truly. You want change. You haven’t found yourselves in fair situations. You’re tired of empty promises. We’ve heard you, loud and clear.
But as a former member of an extremist mindset, let me tell you: Your leader reminds me of my own former one, and he was a dangerous fraud. He didn’t bring about the change you are rooting for. He did not make our lives better.He was lying. He was using us. Your leader might also endanger you, us, and every freedom our collective constitution, left or right, Christian or Muslim, black or white is built on, while telling you that he is honoring that very same….
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/i-was-raised-in-a-cult-like-trumps-heres-my-advice-for-a-new-world_us_583c7ab9e4b0c2ab94436c31

Election 2016 The Cult of Trump The Trump family has become to America what the Kim family is to North Korea. By David Dillard-Wright   AlterNet  December 12, 2016 As of this writing, Donald Trump is making his cabinet picks, which aside from conspiracy-monger Steve Bannon, look like the usual rightward Wall Street and D.C. insiders. The Trump regime seems so far like it will promote an uglier and more aggressive version of the standard Republican policies: deregulation, privatization and tax cuts for the wealthy. We can expect to see over the coming years the continued decline of the middle class, a shrinking social safety net, an acceleration of environmental catastrophe, unchecked corporate malfeasance, expanding federal deficits, and a deepening of the surveillance state. There will most likely be diversionary tactics in the form of more warfare abroad and the concomitant curtailing of civil liberties at home. Trump will likely fulfill many of his campaign promises, albeit in scaled-down versions. But don’t expect his followers to abandon him even if he reneges on many key commitments from his electric, nationalistic rallies.
The rallies explain Trump far more than his vague policy prescriptions. His followers view him as a sort of prophet of American triumphalism. The stadium becomes the evangelical circus tent of renewal and transformation: a purgation of America through ecstatic trampling of racial, ethnic, and religious minorities. The cult of personality around Trump and his family goes a long way towards explaining his popularity. His followers support him through a maneuver of sympathetic magic: by supporting this bombastic billionaire (a euphemistic phrase, but words fail the sheer scope of his ego), they hope to imbibe some of his Midas touch. Ethics and accountability be damned: his fawning admirers want a slice of the proverbial pie even if it comes at someone else’s expense. They are not bothered by Trump University or the Atlantic City bankruptcies—they just want a piece of the action.
The vast majority of Trump’s supporters will fare worse economically under his administration, but this is nothing new in the Republican electorate. What is different about Trump is that he is really more a cult leader than a traditional politician. The term “cult” carries with it associations with Jim Jones and poisoned Kool-Aid, Aum Shinrikyo and the subway attacks, the Moonies and their mass weddings. But the comparison goes beyond its shock value and usefully explains how Trump went from being a glorified carnival barker to the leader of the most powerful country in the world. Trump harnessed some of the fervor that is more typical of religious devotion than adherence to a political ideology, and that explains why he succeeded where Mitt Romney didn’t….
For that reason, the Trump phenomenon is vanishingly unlikely to be a flash in the pan. Trump will pass his real estate empire and his political empire (and I would argue, his religious empire) down to his children. American oligarchy will become more and more like Russian kleptocracy. Constitutional niceties will be eroded. Dissidents will be jailed or slandered. Vast sums of money will disappear. And yet the pageantry of democracy will remain intact. Trump will still give speeches from the White House rose garden and the oval office. Those who wish to pretend that nothing is amiss will be given adequate materials, photo ops to supply their fantasies.
When toxic religion and toxic politics meet, the results cannot be pretty. A plurality of Americans have now joined a death cult of historic proportions, and the rest of us are being advised to “give Trump a chance” and “wait and see what happens.” The warning signs are more than enough to make this foolhardy advice. Those who are not on board the Trump train should do our best to work against the propaganda efforts of Breitbart, Infowars, RT, and Fox News. We should try to dissuade our friends and loved ones from “drinking the kool-aid” of believing in this fraudulent little man who serves only his own interests. A livable future only becomes possible if we resist his regime at every turn….  http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/cult-trump

Hate Crimes Are Rising But Don’t Expect Them to be Prosecuted  Most aren’t even reported to law enforcement.  Brandon Ellington Patterson Nov. 25, 2016  Last week, the FBI announced there were 5,850 hate crimes in 2015—a 7 percent increase over the year before. But that total, which is based on voluntary reports of hate crimes from local and state police departments, is likely far lower than the real number. The Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated about 260,000 hate crimes annually in a 2013 report looking at hate crimes between 2007 and 2011. The BJS’s estimate was based on anonymous responses to the National Crime Victimization Survey, which the bureau conducts every year.
But most of those crimes are never heard by a jury. Federal prosecutors pressed forward with just 13 percent of hate crime cases referred to them between January 2010 and August 2015, according to an analysis of DOJ data by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, and only 11 percent of those referrals ended in conviction. Data on hate crime prosecutions at the state level are scarce, but, in its 2013 study, the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that only 4 percent of these crimes even result in an arrest.
Given the apparent extent of the problem, why do so few hate crimes end up in court?
One reason is that these crimes never get reported to law enforcement….
Brian Levin is concerned that federal enforcement of the hate crimes act could weaken during a Trump administration, with his nomination of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) for attorney general. “I think it remains a legitimate question as to how vigorous Mr. Sessions will be in prosecuting a statute that he was one of the chief opponents of,” Levin says.
Sessions’ nomination has already been contested by civil rights groups because of a series of racist comments he reportedly made early in his career. He was also a strong opponent of the federal hate crimes act. The law extended hate crime protections to members of the LGBT community and expanded the DOJ’s ability to direct federal resources to assist local and state police departments with hate crime investigations in their jurisdictions. It also mandated that the attorney general—or a designee—approve all criminal prosecutions brought under the act.
In 2015, there was a 7 percent increase in hate crimes nationwide and a sharp, 67 percent increase in crimes against Muslims. The Southern Poverty Law Center tallied more than 700 incidents of intimidation and harassment in the week after the election, many of them in schools, and at least two recent killings of black men—one outside of Richmond, California and another in Charleston, West Virginia—are being investigated as hate crimes. Law enforcement officials in several cities have vowed to crack down on hate crimes in their jurisdictions….

Hate Crimes Are Rising But Don’t Expect Them to be Prosecuted

After the Election, Trump Maintains His Bizarre Relationship with Conspiracy-Pushing Website
His claim of millions of illegal votes is straight from the 9/11 truthers of “Infowars.” AJ Vicens Nov. 28, 2016
On the Sunday after Thanksgiving, as part of a multi-tweet rant against Green Party candidate Jill Stein’s recount effort in Wisconsin (and perhaps Michigan and Pennsylvania), President-elect Donald Trump questioned the integrity of the 2016 election.
In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2016
Trump won 306 Electoral College votes to Clinton’s 232 (Michigan’s 16 were called for him today); so his victory was not exactly a landslide. But the bigger lie was that “millions” of people voted illegally, for which there is no evidence. Clinton’s lead of more than 2 million votes in the popular vote, and her campaign’s recent announcement that it would participate in the recount organized by Stein, seemed to have inspired yesterday’s tweet. But its origins trace back to a right-wing conspiracy theory that began to take hold shortly after the election….
If Trump got his information for this weekend’s tweet from Infowars, it wouldn’t be the first time Team Trump cited this bizarre and unreliable source. Infowars, a conspiracy theory website run by Alex Jones, has been one of the Trump campaign’s go-to sources of information. On September 8, the candidate’s son Donald Trump Jr. tweeted the Infowars story “Was Hillary Wearing an Earpiece During Last Night’s Presidential Forum?” Trump himself has used the site’s work to bolster way-out claims, including his references to Clinton’s alleged poor health and his false assertion that “thousands and thousands” of American Muslims were celebrating the 9/11 attacks in New Jersey. Trump appeared on Jones’ internet-based talk show in December 2015 and told him, “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.” Roger Stone, a longtime Trump adviser and a conspiracy theorist who claims LBJ killed JFK, has often appeared on Infowars, and he held joint events with Jones at the Republican convention in Cleveland in July. At that convention, Jones had “special guest” credentials.
Following the election, Jones claimed that Trump called to thank him and his listeners “for fighting so hard for Americans, and for Americanism.” A spokeswoman for Trump did not respond to a request for comment…. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/11/trump-alex-jones-conspiracy-illegal-votes

‘Make America White Again’: Hate speech and crimes post-election  By Holly Yan, Kristina Sgueglia and Kylie Walker, CNN  Mon November 28, 2016   (CNN)Fears of heightened bigotry and hate crimes have turned into reality for some Americans after Donald Trump’s presidential win. And the list of incidents keeps growing.
The Southern Poverty Law Center counted more than 700 cases of hateful harassment or intimidation in the United States between November 9 and November 16.
The number of reported incidents declined almost every day from November 9, the day after the election, to November 16. But the incidents have been widespread, the SPLC said.
“They’ve been everywhere — in schools, in places of business like Walmart, on the street,” SPLC President Richard Cohen said.
Critics accused Trump of fostering xenophobia and Islamophobia during the divisive presidential campaign. Recent days have witnessed ugly episodes of racist or anti-Semitic, pro-Trump graffiti along with threats or attacks against Muslims.
The President-elect said he was “so saddened” to hear about vitriol hurled by some of his supporters against minorities.
“If it helps, I will say this, and I will say right to the cameras: Stop it,” Trump told CBS’ “60 Minutes.”
Not all incidents are spurred by Trump supporters. A man in Chicago reportedly was beaten as a bystander yelled, “You voted Trump!” And two men in Connecticut were arrested over assault allegations against a Trump supporter.
The election-related incidents follow a year of heightened attacks against Muslim Americans. US Attorney General Loretta Lynch said FBI statistics for 2015 showed a 67% increase in hate crimes against Muslim Americans. Hate crimes against Jewish people, African Americans and LGBT individuals also increased.
Overall, reported hate crimes spiked 6%, but the number could be higher because many incidents go unreported, Lynch said….  http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/10/us/post-election-hate-crimes-and-fears-trnd/
 
Trump staffer resigns after being caught in alleged sex scandal  The Grio Dec 27th 2016
Donald Trump might not be in the White House yet but his staff is already experiencing its first sex scandal. The president-elect’s newly appointed White House communication director Jason Miller resigned on Christmas Eve just two days after getting the position. He claimed it was to “spend more time with his family.” This, after people were already talking about how the married Miller was spending time in strip clubs during the campaign with Trump adviser A.J. Delgado. http://www.aol.com/article/2016/12/27/trump-staffer-resigns-after-being-caught-in-alleged-sex-scandal/21642950/

Donald Trump adviser quits after cryptic tweet hinting at ‘extra-marital affair’  Jason Miller quits after being called ‘baby-daddy’ and likened to exposed cheater John Edwards  Ben Kentish  December 27, 2016
….In a statement he said: “After spending this past week with my family, the most amount of time I have been able to spend with them since March 2015, it is clear they need to be my top priority right now and this is not the right time to start a new job as demanding as White House Communications Director.
“I look forward to continuing to support the President-elect from the outside after my work on the Transition concludes.”
It comes after another Trump adviser, A.J. Delgado, posted a series of cryptic tweets about Mr Miller in which she appeared to suggest his involvement in a sex scandal….
Ms Delgado, a fellow member of the President-elect’s transition team, referred to Mr Miller as “the baby-daddy” and called him “the 2016 version of John Edwards” – a reference to the former U.S. Democratic presidential candidate who had an affair with a filmmaker working on his campaign.  She also twice called on Mr Miller to resign, before deleting her Twitter account. …. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-advsier-jason-miller-resigns-sex-scandal-aj-delgado-a7497216.html

Donald Trump believes he has superior genes, biographer claims
Republican nominee follows ‘racehorse theory’ of genetics  Caroline Mortimer        Friday 30 September 2016   Donald Trump has been accused of believing in the “racehorse theory” of genetics, which claims some people are genetically superior to others.  In an interview for US TV channel PBS, the Republican presidential nominee’s biographer Michael D’Antonio claimed the candidate’s father, Fred Trump, had taught him that the family’s success was genetic.  He said: “The family subscribes to a racehorse theory of human development.  “They believe that there are superior people and that if you put together the genes of a superior woman and a superior man, you get a superior offspring.”
The theory, known as eugenics, first emerged during the 19th century and was used as a pretext for the sterilisation of disabled people until the practice was discredited after the Second World War.
Adolf Hitler’s justification for the Holocaust – in which 11 million people were killed, 6 million of them Jewish – was based on a similar theory of racial hierarchy.
The PBS documentary featured clips of Mr Trump on the campaign trial claiming that he “believes in the gene thing” and saying he had a “very high aptitude”….
He said: “Well I think I was born with the drive for success because I have a certain gene.
“I’m a gene believer… Hey, when you connect two race horses, you usually end up with a fast horse. “I had a good gene pool from the standpoint of that, so I was pretty much driven.”…
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/donald-trump-president-superior-genes-pbs-documentary-eugenics-a7338821.html

This May Be The Most Horrible Thing That Donald Trump Believes  And it just may be the master key to unlocking how he thinks.  09/28/2016   Marina Fang Associate Politics Editor, The Huffington Post JM Rieger Producer, The Huffington Post  Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has offered a litany of racist comments, which it turns out may be rooted in his deeper belief in the inherent superiority of some people and not others.
The Frontline documentary “The Choice,” which premiered this week on PBS, reveals that Trump agrees with the dangerous and abusive theory of eugenics.
Trump’s father instilled in him the idea that their family’s success was genetic, according to Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio.
“The family subscribes to a racehorse theory of human development,” D’Antonio says in the documentary. “They believe that there are superior people and that if you put together the genes of a superior woman and a superior man, you get a superior offspring.”
The Huffington Post dug back through the archives and found numerous examples of Trump suggesting that intellect and success are purely genetic qualities and that having “the right genes” gave him his “very good brain.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-eugenics_us_57ec4cc2e4b024a52d2cc7f9

Halifax children punched in face, locked in bedroom, had no heat and no food
December 27, 2016 by Jana Benscoter and Matt Maisel
HALIFAX TOWNSHIP, Pa. — Details of the abuse and neglect that three Halifax children endured are forthcoming.
Joshua Ross Weyant and Brandi Jene Weyant, of 1005 North River Road, Halifax Township were investigated by Pennsylvania State Police and Dauphin County Children and Youth Services, regarding suspected abuse and neglect. Police, and children and youth services caseworkers, discovered the allegations were true.
“The kids were starving, nothing more than skin and bones,” said Dauphin County District Attorney Ed Marsico.
The children were ages 4, 5, and 6, according to the police report. Marsico says their deterioration took place over a three-month span.
“These were healthy kids, and while they were in their custody, these parents neglected them, starved them to such an extent they ended up the way they did,” Marsico said. “We’re prepared to prove they neglected these kids to such a point that they were near death.”
The Weyant’s were housing 10 individuals, who resided along with the three young children. The children were ages 4, 5 and 6, an affidavit explains.
The children were found to be in extremely poor health, appearing frail and weak, extremely thin, with identified bruising and abrasions upon their bodies. Photographs were taken of the children that depict them to be extremely underweight and malnourished. The children were independently interviewed by investigators….
http://fox43.com/2016/12/27/abused-and-neglected-halifax-children-were-locked-in-bedroom-had-no-heat-and-no-food/

Sunil Rastogi linked to 58 cases of child abuse Somreet Bhattacharya TNN Jan 18, 2017
NEW DELHI: It cannot have been an easy task given that paedophile Sunil Rastogi confessed to 500 criminal acts over a dozen years, but Delhi Police has now pinpointed 58 of them, greatly increasing the chances of the sexual predator being put behind bars for life.
Only 15 cases of children being sexually assaulted by Rastogi were registered with the cops. Probe revealed that since 2004, Rastogi was detained thrice at police stations in Uttarkhand, UP and Delhi, but obtained release easily enough. After 2008, the 38-year-old had reduced his forays into Delhi when the laws regarding sexual assaults were strengthened.
The findings showed that while five cases were registered in east Delhi between 2004 and 2017, two incidents were reported from Udhampur, two from Rampur and three from Ghaziabad. In the same period, three cases were documented in Rudrapur in Uttrakhand.
Police said they had contacted the victims in three other cases that have surfaced in Delhi and requested them register a police complaint. A joint police team comprising cops from Delhi, Uttarakhand and UP is now trying to convince victims of the identified incidents to register complaints to ensure a watertight case against Rastogi. “We will seek Rastogi’s police custody if the charges against him are strong enough,” said Omvir Singh Bishnoi, DCP (East)….
After his arrest last Saturday, Rastogi claimed that he had first committed a sexual crime while living in Delhi with his family, the victim being a neighbour at the slum near Kalyanpuri. A case in this regard was registered in 2004 at the Ghazipur police station under Section 354 of the Indian Penal Code (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty). However, the law had permitted Rastogi to seek a bail from the police station itself. The cops are trying to trace the victim to convince her to record a fresh statement….
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/sunil-rastogi-linked-to-58-cases-of-child-abuse/articleshow/56632611.cms

He was charged with 1,202 counts of child sex abuse. Now he will begin to serve his sentence.
January 17, 2017  By Jeremy Hartley  A Boalsburg man charged with more than 1,000 felony counts of sexual abuse was sentenced on Tuesday to 20 to 40 years in prison.
Richard Garmat, 60, was accused by a family member of sexual abuse last year. The family member claimed the abuse began in fifth grade and continued until the minor was 15.
Garmat was charged in June with 1,202 counts, including 504 felony counts of unlawful contact with a minor, 123 felony counts of aggravated indecent assault without consent and 209 felony counts of indecent assault of a person younger than 13 years of age…..
The victim spoke to Ruest prior to sentencing, saying Garmat was someone “who used me, made me feel worthless and ashamed and useless to the world.”
“I will not stay broken,” the victim said, “and I will know I am healing knowing he will be held accountable for his actions.”…. http://www.centredaily.com/news/local/crime/article127085449.html

Bill Cosby has shown ‘a lifetime of sexual assault,’ 13 women should be allowed to testify at trial, DA says   NY Daily News  THE ASSOCIATED PRESS  Wednesday, December 14, 2016
NORRISTOWN, Pa. — More than a dozen women who accuse Bill Cosby of sexual assault should be allowed to testify at his upcoming trial because their stories are so similar that they show the “handiwork of the same perpetrator,” a prosecutor argued Wednesday.
Returning to court for the second day of a key pretrial hearing, Montgomery County District Attorney Kevin Steele said the 79-year-old Cosby befriended women who saw him as a mentor, knocked them out with pills and drinks and sexually assaulted them.
Steele wants a judge to let 13 of the women take the witness stand at Cosby’s trial next year on charges he sexually assaulted a woman in 2004 at his home outside Philadelphia.
“This is a lifetime of sexual assault on young women,” Steele told Judge Steven O’Neill…..
Cosby was known as America’s Dad for his top-rated family sitcom, “The Cosby Show,” which ran from 1984 to 1992….
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/bill-cosby-showed-lifetime-sexual-assault-da-article-1.2910615

Bill Cosby Faces Another Setback in Sexual-Assault Trial
A prosecutor argued Thursday that Cosby’s request to move the trial’s location is merely “delay and distraction.” by Hilary Weaver January 6, 2017
Last week, Bill Cosby’s legal team filed a motion to move his upcoming trial out of its current suburban Philadelphia location, or bring in a jury from elsewhere. Cosby’s team, in filing this motion, claimed that there has been “widespread negative press coverage” surrounding his case. In legal documents filed Thursday obtained by Vanity Fair, a prosecutor stated that the comedian’s trial should remain where it is, dealing Cosby yet another blow in just the latest of a string of requests from his legal team to try to prevent a guilty verdict.
While Montgomery district attorney Kevin Steele requested in his latest filing the judge to deny the trial’s relocation, he said he wouldn’t oppose Cosby’s team’s request to bring in the jury from elsewhere in Pennsylvania. He asked that once the jury is selected, the judge bring them back to Montgomery County for the trial. Any of Steele’s requests will need to be certified by a judge before going forward.
In the documents, Steele called Cosby’s continued attempts to prolong the pre-trial process a “continued strategy of delay and distraction.” Steele noted: “He has insistently blamed everyone and everything—except himself, of course—for the situation he now finds himself in.”
The filing also stated that Cosby is a “celebrity who is alleged to have committed nearly fifty sexual assaults,” therefore “he cannot expect to find a jury venire—anywhere—that is completely oblivious to the facts surrounding the case.” Steele argued against the type of special treatment for the rich and famous Cosby appears to be requesting, stating celebrities ”would be immune to prosecution” if the court sought jury members with complete ignorance of a widely publicized case.
It was also reported this week that Steele and Cosby’s lawyers are facing off over whether or not to allow 13 of Cosby’s nearly 50 accusers to testify against him in the court case. Steele said that the mounting number of alleged incidents of sexual assault Cosby is accused of committing decreases the likelihood they were unintentional. The comedian’s attorneys argued that Steele is merely bringing the charges against Cosby because he needs a big win during his campaign for D.A.
Cosby is accused of drugging and molesting Andrea Constand, a woman he met through Temple University, in 2004. He has made several attempts to fight the charges against him in addition to the motions filed in the past two weeks….
http://www.vanityfair.com/style/2017/01/bill-cosby-trial-location-change
 
The new Cosby Network? Fox News and Bill O’Reilly slammed with yet another scandal  
The finger pointing has especially heated up after former chief Roger Ailes was booted from Fox last summer and the network paid out a $20 million court settlement to his accuser, former morning show host Gretchen Carlson. Since then, a veritable avalanche of women have leveled similar accusations, most cite Ailes, but Bill O’Reilly and top executive Jack Abernathy have been accused, too.  With the latest news that Fox had reportedly doled out a chunk of change in the high six figures in defense of flagship talent — and alleged prior sexual harasser — O’Reilly….
Bill Cosby, of course, is accused of forcing himself on several dozen women over many decades. Not for nothing, but Ailes is still fighting two sexual harassment lawsuits and denying accusations by more than 20 women.
This most recent O’Reilly affair centers on accusations by former host Juliet Huddy. In a letter by her lawyers to Fox News that was leaked to reporters, she alleged that, among other things, O’Reilly tried to kiss her on the mouth and would call her frequently at all hours. Lawyers wrote that Huddy believed that during several of those calls the powerful star was masturbating.
Huddy also alleged that Abernathy — who now serves as the channel’s co-president — “trashed” her career at Fox after she rejected his own attempts to pursue a personal relationship with her….
For the record, Ailes, O’Reilly and Abernathy have denied all the accusations….
O’Reilly, has been down this road before. Sure he’s a ratings juggernaut who delivers big money to Fox ($180 million in advertising dollars in 2015, according to Kantar Media), but he was fingered as a harasser in Carlson’s suit and another one 12 years ago — infamously filled with graphic details….
In that 2004 lawsuit, Andrea Mackris, a producer on his show, claimed he had made unwanted sexual advances and lewd comments to her in a series of phone calls and dinner conversations.
According to Mackris, O’Reilly told her on multiple occasions to buy a vibrator, called her when it sounded like he was masturbating and described to her his sexual fantasies, which included using a loofah — which he referred to as a “falafel thing” — on her private parts.
That suit was settled — after two weeks of blistering tabloid headlines — allegedly for millions of dollars, with no admission of liability by O’Reilly…. http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv/fox-news-bill-o-reilly-hit-sex-scandal-article-1.2942873

Investigation Discovery Announces Thrilling New Season of Hit Series ‘Vanity Fair Confidential’
— A Co-Production from Investigation Discovery, Condé Nast Entertainment and Truly Original, Season Three of VANITY FAIR CONFIDENTIAL Premieres Monday, January 23 at 9/8c –
(Silver Spring, Md.) – Investigation Discovery (ID) announced today the return of the network’s hit series, VANITY FAIR CONFIDENTIAL, from Truly Original, in partnership with Condé Nast Entertainment. Kicking off a thrilling third season on Monday, January 23 at 9/8c, VANITY FAIR CONFIDENTIAL takes viewers deep inside the vaults of iconic publication Vanity Fair to review some of the most sensational true crimes of the century. From salacious sex scandals to cold-blooded murder, the 12-part season explores the real-life dramas of the rich and powerful, and features new, exclusive insights about the crimes from the Vanity Fair writers and editors who worked closest to these cases….
Nightmares on Main Street by Leslie Bennetts – premieres Monday, February 27 at 9/8c
Throughout late summer and fall of 1991, children come forward with chilling accounts of animal and human sacrifices at Fran and Dan Kellers’s day care in Austin, Texas. At the same time, multiple women from across the nation speak publicly about memories of being chained to altars while babies were removed from their wombs. These are stories of horrifying ritual abuse that divided families, communities, mental health experts and law enforcement officials….A judge and jury must assess pleas of innocence and decide who should be locked up for life, and who should go free.
https://corporate.discovery.com/discovery-newsroom/investigation-discovery-announces-thrilling-new-season-of-hit-series-vanity-fair-confidential/

Facts about Fran’s Day Care – Keller Case
State’s highest criminal court throws out 1992 convictions of sexual assault at Austin day care.
Court declines, however, to find Dan and Fran Keller innocent in case involving claims of satanic abuse….
Here are a few facts about the Fran’s Day Care case:
1. Children’s parents were alerted when children returned home from daycare wearing their under clothing inside out or wearing other children’s underwear and sometimes having wet hair.
2. The children who were old enough to speak reported sexual assaults by Dan Keller and other visitors to the school. The older children also reported assaults on younger, pre-verbal children at the school.
3. The Kellers attempted to evade arrest by fleeing to Las Vegas. They were captured there wearing disguises. Fran has bleached her hair blond.
4. A co-defendant, Doug Perry, a sheriff’s deputy, pled guilty, turned state’s evidence, testified against the Kellers, and received a 10-year probated sentence. Perry is a registered sex offender in Texas.
5. The defense did not retain an expert witness in defense of the Kellers. They only produced a copy of Richard Gardner’s book, Sex Abuse Hysteria, in response to the allegations against the Kellers.
6. The prosecution did not discuss ritual abuse until the subject was raised by the defense at which point the prosecution’s expert witness, Randy Noblitt, explained what ritual abuse is and how it works. He also provided testimony in response to the production of the Richard Gardner book intended by the defense to demonstrate in unreliability of sex abuse claims by children. (The book’s theme is that all people are latent pedophiles and that parents receive vicarious sexual gratification from their children’s sexual experiences). https://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/articles/frans-day-care/

Nightmares on main street  AUTHOR(S) Bennetts, Leslie  PUB. DATE June 1993  SOURCE Vanity Fair;Jun93, Vol. 56 Issue 6, p42  ABSTRACT  Examines the phenomena of satanic cults and claims of horrifying ritual abuse in otherwise tame neighborhoods. Memories of childhood experiences; Ritualist sacrifices of babies and people; Forced impregnation; Psychological and physical scars; Imposed fears; Law enforcement responses; Federal Bureau of Investigation files; Social workers responses; Skepticism; Credibility of claims; Children’s testimonies.  http://connection.ebscohost.com/c/articles/9306305772/nightmares-main-street

Fort Polk soldier writes horror novel – and it’s based on real-life events
Sunday Jan 15, 2017 By RACHEL STEFFAN
Sgt. 1st Class Joseph “Joe” Willie, a Hammond native, writes under the name of J.P. Willie. He has served 17 years in the Army, with three to go until retirement. He has been all over the world. Now he is back in Louisiana at Fort Polk, with his wife Corrie and their five children.
One might assume that growing up in rural Hammond, Louisiana, Willie would have had a quiet, southern upbringing, and he did. But he had some horrific, first-hand experiences due to a long string of activities surrounding the occult, and these fueled his first novel….
the inspiration for his novel, “Blood in the Woods,” comes from a different place.
…he felt he could write a horror novel about the things that happened in this area.
The story, about the devious and violent activities of devil worshippers, is based on actual events from Hammond in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The book is officially fictional because he dramatized the story, however, it is based in his real experiences, memories, and court documents.
Willie recalls that he and childhood friends would sometimes find small animals gutted open on a makeshift altar in the woods. That is in the book, and the group of friends in this coming-of-age novel are also real….
The real-life case
This case made Tangipahoa Parish infamous for some time, and it still comes up in pop culture. The events which took place in and around Hosanna Church may have served as inspiration for the 2014 HBO series “True Detective.”
“Some people in Hammond are still uncomfortable talking about it,” Willie said.  In May 2005, Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff Daniel Edwards, told The Baton Rouge Advocate that members of the Ponchatoula cult, who were accused of abusing children and animals, said they carried out the practices for years as part of a devil worshiping ritual involving cat blood.
Willie said the regular pastor of Hosanna Church, Louis Lamonica Jr., ran these rituals inside the church at night. Lamonica’s own children were being assaulted by the “dark congregation.”
In his confession, Lamonica claimed he had performed satanic rituals, child sexual abuse, and animal sacrifice in the church, and that he was not alone. He asserted that there were five other participants, including his wife, Robin, and, notably, a sheriff’s deputy, Chris Labat.
Willie’s point of view is particularly poignant as a writer, because he was a kid running around, bumping into the remnants of the cult’s activities. He is not just telling someone else’s story.
As the summary on his book states, the characters spent their time “playing in the woods, shooting pellet guns, blowing up mailboxes, fighting at school, and the beginnings of interests in girls.” Eventually, the characters “stumble upon something horrific in the woods one evening and their lives quickly take a turn.”
“The book is extremely graphic and truly disturbing, especially to parents,” Willie said.
Willie makes the distinction between Satanists and devil worshippers.
“I knew some soldiers who were open Satanists,” he said. “They told me quite a bit about it. They don’t believe in God or a devil. Their antics are a mockery of the Catholic Church. They believe they are their own gods, and they do whatever their hearts desire.”….
Devil worshippers, meanwhile, take violent action and maintain religious rituals.
“It’s a lot of blood sacrificial offerings. Out in the country, where I lived, there were lots of cattle and farmers. Devil worshippers were killing cows and ripping their hearts out on a regular basis.”
Willie emphasized that the book is not promoting or glorifying these occult activities….
http://www.beauregarddailynews.net/news/20170115/fort-polk-soldier-writes-horror-novel—and-its-based-on-real-life-events

Child abuse in Army families may be under-reported By HealthDay News      Dec. 14, 2016
WEDNESDAY, Dec. 14, 2016 — Child abuse within U.S. Army families may be significantly under-reported, a new study suggests.
Researchers found that only one-fifth of diagnosed child abuse and neglect cases among U.S. Army-dependent children from 2004 to 2007 had a substantiated report with the Army’s Family Advocacy Program (FAP). The program is responsible for investigating and treating child abuse.
That’s less than half the rate (44 percent) of child abuse cases substantiated by civilian Child Protective Services, according to the study. The investigation was conducted by researchers at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the U.S. Army FAP.
The implication is that “some children are falling through the cracks of a broken system,” said study senior author Dr. Dave Rubin, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia….
The results were published Dec. 12 in the journal Child Abuse & Neglect.
http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2016/12/14/Child-abuse-in-Army-families-may-be-under-reported/5541481740490/

Child abuse in the military: Failing those most in need  By David S. Cloud  Dec. 29, 2016
In September 2011, Army Sgt. 1st Class Crispen Hanson’s commander at Ft. Bliss ordered him into a military treatment program for child abusers. Texas child welfare authorities had formally reported a “reason to believe” the 20-year Army veteran had severely beaten his 6-month-old son, Malachi, leaving him with a broken leg.
For the next four months, Hanson met weekly with a therapist from the Family Advocacy Program, a $200-million-a-year Pentagon program known as FAP that seeks to prevent child abuse in the ranks.
When Hanson completed the therapy, FAP officials closed the case and a state judge allowed him to see his infant son.
But three months later, on April 9, 2012, El Paso paramedics called to Hanson’s house found Malachi dead. An autopsy found “blunt force injuries” and “innumerable contusions of the head, torso and extremities.”
The county medical examiner ruled the death a homicide.
Last year, Hanson pleaded guilty to two counts of injuring a child after prosecutors agreed to drop murder charges. A state judge sentenced him to probation. The Army gave him an honorable discharge and a full pension of about $28,000 a year….
Previously unreleased reports by the Army, Navy and Air Force reveal numerous cases where military officials knew or suspected that child abuse or neglect was occurring — but failed to intervene or to alert the Family Advocacy Program or state child welfare agencies, The Times found.
In many cases, the reports blamed military personnel for failing to report cases of abuse and neglect to FAP officials.
FAP “is not accessing those most in need due to … failure on the part of others to report concerns or maltreatment incidents,” warned an  internal 2014 report on 27 deaths in Army families.
“In several cases, command was aware of ongoing abuse but failed to report it,” it added.
A 2014 report on 50 deaths in Air Force families over five years reached a similar conclusion.
“In numerous cases … Air Force employees and other individuals were aware of suspected child maltreatment or domestic abuse and did not report it to FAP or any other authority,” it said….
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-child-abuse-military-20161229-htmlstory.html

Soviet dissident had thousands of child abuse images, UK court told
Vladimir Bukovsky downloaded indecent images and films over 15-year period, Cambridge crown court hears
The Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky downloaded thousands of indecent images of children over a 15-year period, most of them featuring boys, a court has been told.
Bukovsky, 73, is charged with 10 counts of making and possessing indecent photos and one count of possessing an indecent computer-generated graphic. He denies all charges.
William Carter, prosecuting, told a jury at Cambridge crown court on Monday that Bukovsky’s computer was identified during an operation by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre. Police arrested him in O  ctober 2014 at his home on the outskirts of Cambridge.
Bukovsky, who was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1976, told detectives he had indecent material, the court heard. “He [Bukovsky] responded immediately by saying he did download images and that they would be on the computer in his study,” Carter said….
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/dec/12/soviet-dissident-vladimir-bukovsky-downloaded-thousands-of-child-abuse-images-uk-court-told

Chilling evidence of organized child sex abuse revealed in survey
Odette and her sisters Rosemary and Lucy are among the victims of what a new survey by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection suggests is a widespread tragedy — child exploitation rings led by parents of the abused.  By Robert Cribb Tues. Jan. 17, 2017   It would often happen late at night.
A father, respected as a professional and family man, would awaken his two toddler daughters and take them to his back office, away from the bedrooms where their mother and siblings slept.
Groggy and confused, the girls would follow his instructions and pose naked against a studio backdrop or with props such as boas and coconut bras and hula skirts.
As they grew older, strange men would arrive when their mother was away. Under their father’s guidance, the girls would reluctantly agree to do what they were told.
“I would see him over me and we were both naked,” recalls Odette, now 23, one of three sisters speaking publicly for the first time about the abuse their father inflicted. “He would tell me it was a special bond for us.”
The father would post their special bond with parents and abusers across the U.S. and Europe as a central player in an international child exploitation ring involving more than a million images.
Odette and her sisters Rosemary and Lucy (pseudonyms they chose) are among the victims of what a new international survey conducted by the Canadian Centre for Child Protection suggests is a widespread tragedy — child exploitation rings led by parents of the abused….
Responses from 128 child abuse survivors across North America and Europe found 52 per cent were victimized by a network of abusers, overwhelmingly involving their own parents, who shared images and even their children themselves with others. In most cases — nearly 70 per cent — images were then shared with millions more strangers online.
Most survivors are haunted by the online life of the imagery. More than 70 per cent surveyed said that the imagery never ends and makes them feel vulnerable to being recognized. About 90 per cent said their abuse affected both their education and professional success, in part because they know their victimization continues online.
About 30 per cent said they had been recognized by someone who saw their images online. Of those, 64 per cent said they were “targeted” — either blackmailed or propositioned….
The survey defines organized sexual abuse as involving multiple offenders, primarily parents and relatives, creating and sharing child sexual abuse images, exchanging children for sexual purposes or engaging in “sadistic, torture-related and ritualistic abuse.”
The story of the three sisters is the story of most child abuse victims. Their abuse, like 60 per cent of survey respondents, involved a parent, most often a father. Like the more than 80 per cent of respondents, they are female.
The exploitation of the sisters began, like nearly 90 per cent of survey respondents, before age 12. Like all respondents in the survey, their abuse was recorded….
That father, whose name is being withheld to protect the identity of the women, is in prison. He was sentenced more than a decade ago, along with more than 20 others, to 30 years for conspiracies to sexually exploit children and produce and distribute sexually explicit material.
Dozens of children were victimized by the group, court records show….
https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2017/01/17/chilling-evidence-of-organized-child-sex-abuse-revealed-in-survey.html

How Jehovah’s Witnesses Leaders Hide Child Abuse Secrets At All Costs  Monday, December 12, 2016
Trey Bundy / Reveal   The leadership of the Jehovah’s Witnesses has boldly defied court orders to turn over the names and whereabouts of alleged child sexual abusers across the United States.
Since 2014, courts have slapped the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ parent corporation, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, with multimillion-dollar judgments and sanctions for violating orders to hand over secret documents.
The documents could serve as a road map to what are likely thousands of alleged child abusers living freely in communities across the country, who still could be abusing kids. The files include the names of known and suspected perpetrators, the locations of their congregations and descriptions of their alleged crimes….
For more than 25 years, Jehovah’s Witnesses officials have instructed local leaders — known as elders — in all of the religion’s 14,000 U.S. congregations to hide sexual abuse from law enforcement. Instead, abusers were to be handled internally.
That secrecy is a tenet of the religion. Jehovah’s Witnesses are taught to avoid the outside world. They don’t vote or serve in the military and usually don’t go to college.
Predators purposefully exploit that isolation, said Kathleen Hallisey, a London attorney spearheading similar civil lawsuits in England.
“I think they choose those types of environments very carefully, where they know they can operate with impunity, and unfortunately, the policies of the Watchtower allow them to continue to do that again and again and again,” Hallisey said….
Zalkin is quite familiar with the details of the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal. In 2007, he negotiated a $200 million settlement for more than 100 victims of clergy abuse. After that case made news, he began receiving calls from victims of abuse in all sorts of institutions, including universities and the Boy Scouts of America.
About a dozen of those calls came from ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses. Several of them named the same abuser: Gonzalo Campos. Those cases led Zalkin to the Watchtower’s secret documents.
Campos was a Jehovah’s Witness who sexually abused at least seven children in San Diego congregations in the ’80s and ’90s. During that time, Watchtower leaders knew Campos was abusing children but did not report him to law enforcement, according to testimony by congregation elders. Instead, they promoted him to the position of elder….
Campos has admitted to abusing Jehovah’s Witness children in a sworn deposition….
http://www.kpbs.org/news/2016/dec/12/how-jehovahs-witnesses-leaders-hide-child-abuse-se/
https://www.revealnews.org  /article/how-jehovahs-witnesses-leaders-hide-child-abuse-secrets-at-all-costs/

Australian Jehovah’s Witnesses protected over a thousand members accused of child abuse, report says  By Samantha Schmidt November 28, 2016
Over the course of about six decades, more than 1,000 members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses were accused of sexually abusing Australian children, according to a new report. Victims were ordered to keep quiet. Not one of the alleged perpetrators were reported to the police.
Now, a royal commission in Australia has found the church demonstrated a “serious failure” to protect children from the risk of sexual abuse and relied on outdated policies and practices to respond to such allegations.
A 107-page-long report released Monday detailed a number of ancient policies that exhibited what the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse referred to as a “serious lack of understanding of the nature of child sexual abuse.”
One such practice, derived from scripture, requires church elders investigating incidents to secure a confession from the person accused or the testimony of two “credible” witnesses to the same incident, two witnesses to separate incidents of the same kind, or strong circumstantial evidence testified to by at least two witnesses. The accuser also has to justify his or her allegations to church elders, often in front of the alleged perpetrator.
The commission’s findings were based on a close examination of the allegations — which averaged one a month for 65 years and were recorded in sealed files along with the church’s responses — along with the findings of a 2015 public hearing.
The report found that the Jehovah’s Witness organization’s internal system for responding to complaints of child sexual abuse was not child or survivor focused, “in that it is presided over by males and offers a survivor little or no choice about how their complaint is addressed.”
“The sanctions available within the organization’s internal disciplinary system are weak and leave perpetrators of child sexual abuse at large in the organization and the community,” the report also concluded….
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/11/28/australian-jehovahs-witnesses-protected-over-a-thousand-members-accused-of-child-abuse-report-says/

Child abuse unreported and ‘enabled’ at Yeshivah, Royal Commission finds  Timna Jacks  November 29 2016   Leaders at Yeshivah Melbourne and Yeshiva Bondi have been accused of failing to report child abuse to police and allowed paedophiles unfettered access to children, in strongly-worded findings of the royal commission.  The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse released findings of high-profile investigations into child abuse at the religious Jewish institutions on Tuesday. The Orthodox centres, which operate as synagogues, schools and community hubs, followed a worrying “pattern” in responding to child abuse, the commission found. In the face of repeated reports of child abuse, the institutions assured victims they would act in defence of the victim, but no action was ultimately taken, the commission said.
“We were told that the responses of leadership groups to the adverse experiences of survivors and their families ranged from inaction to enabling those adverse experiences. The responses were perhaps in part to protect the reputations of individuals or the institutions concerned.”….
The commission found that despite reports of child sexual abuse, they had a “continued association with, presence at or employment at the institutions”.
Abuse was often not reported due to a Jewish law, known as Mesirah, which forbids a Jew from handing over another Jew to a secular authority.
As a result, victims who reported their abuse to police were treated as “outcasts”, the commission heard.
“We heard evidence that those perceived by some in the community to be sinners because of communication about child sexual abuse, and family members of those perceived to be sinners, were met with disapproval by some leaders of the community and by some members of the community more generally.”….
http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/child-abuse-unreported-and-enabled-at-yeshivah-royal-commission-finds-20161129-gszwek.html

describes abuse
Child abuse: Documenting Australia’s shame By Phil Mercer BBC News, Sydney  December 19, 2016
In Australia, a boy of 10 is raped by an Anglican clergyman, who cuts his victim with a small knife and smears blood over his back in a twisted ritual to symbolise the suffering of Christ.
This happened in the 1960s in Cessnock, a former mining town in the New South Wales Hunter Valley, but only now has this and other decades-old stories of sexual violence and degradation been heard, catalogued and, crucially for many victims, believed.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is an unprecedented investigation into an epidemic of depravity across Australia.
The far-reaching inquiry began in 2013 and has heard from thousands of survivors of paedophiles who worked, or volunteered, in sporting clubs, schools, churches, charities, childcare centres and the military….
For four days earlier this year, the senior Vatican official was quizzed, denying any personal wrongdoing but conceding the organisation had made grave errors.
“I am not here to defend the indefensible,” said Cardinal Pell. “The Church has made enormous mistakes, is working to remedy those, but the Church has in many places – certainly in Australia – mucked things up.”
When he was 13, John Ellis, a former altar boy, was molested by an Australian monk who was also implicated in a suspected paedophile ring at a former Catholic boarding school in the Scottish Highlands….
“The most important thing for people in being invited to give their own stories and having their stories valued is that somebody cares,” Mr Ellis told the BBC news website.
“For many, many years people have been silenced, people have been fearful of what reaction they will get if they were to tell their truth. The overwhelming emotion people have when they have had that opportunity is empowerment.”
When it hands down its final report at the end of 2017, this painstaking inquiry will have lasted for almost five years. Already, more than 1,700 cases have been referred to the authorities, including the police…. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-38301488

FBI ends child abuse investigation of Brad Pitt  CBS News November 22, 2016  LOS ANGELES — The FBI is not further pursuing an investigation into an allegation of child abuse against Brad Pitt, the agency announced on Tuesday. The FBI said it had conducted a review of the alleged incident and no charges will be filed.  Pitt has been accused of abuse in an alleged altercation involving his son Maddox, 15, aboard a plane that landed in Los Angeles in September….
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fbi-ends-child-abuse-investigation-of-brad-pitt/

U.K. Police Identify Suspects in Probe of Child Abuse at Soccer Teams
Child sex abuse allegations involving soccer teams are latest to rock some of Britain’s most respected institutions
By Jenny Gross  Dec. 9, 2016
LONDON Authorities have identified 83 suspects linked to allegations of child abuse at professional and amateur soccer teams, British police said Friday, in an escalating scandal that is again rattling trust in a pillar of British society.
The announcement comes the day after a report said hundreds of police officers and personnel used their positions of authority to sexually abuse vulnerable people, some of whom were in custody at the time. According to the inquiry by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate Constabulary, police forces in England and Wales received 436 reported allegations of abuse of authority for sexual gain in the two years to the end of March.
In recent years, Britain has been stung by revelations of sexual abuse in some of its most respected institutions, prompting soul-searching about how such abuse persisted, in some cases for decades….
In the latest case, hundreds of allegations of sexual abuse in U.K. soccer have emerged since the Guardian newspaper last month published the account of Andy Woodward, a former professional soccer player, who said he was abused by his coach.
Nearly 350 people have come forward to allege sexual abuse in soccer and other sports in recent weeks, most of them men who were between seven and 20 years old when the abuse happened, the National Police Chiefs’ Council, which coordinates police operations, said. The alleged offenses occurred between the 1960s and the early 2000s….
http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-k-police-identify-suspects-in-probe-of-child-abuse-at-soccer-teams-1481316245

Hundreds report football child abuse to police  1 December 2016 UK  About 350 victims have reported child sexual abuse within UK football clubs, police chiefs have said.
The National Police Chiefs’ Council said a “significant number of calls” had been received after several former players alleged past abuse by coaches.
Its figures are also based on details from existing investigations as well as referrals from a new NSPCC helpline.
Greater Manchester Police said it was investigating reports from 35 people, and had identified 10 suspects.
Assistant Chief Constable Debbie Ford said the force had received calls on a daily basis from victims as well as people with concerns….  http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-38172940

Britain shocked by growing soccer child abuse scandal  World News  Thu Dec 1, 2016  By Michael Holden  LONDON  What began as a harrowing account of child abuse suffered by a former professional English soccer player last month has lifted the lid on what could be one of the worst pedophile scandals Britain has ever known…..
The allegations of child sex abuse in English soccer from the 1970s through to the 1990s has shocked Britain and led to deep soul-searching in the game amid fears hundreds of young boys might have been involved.
In a sign of how widespread the abuse might have been, British police said on Thursday that about 350 victims had come forward to report sexual abuse within soccer clubs and indicated the number was likely to rise.
Britons are still reeling from another massive pedophile scandal involving one of their most-loved celebrities, Jimmy Savile, a cigar-chomping BBC television star who abused hundreds of youngsters over six decades.
Savile used his fame to gain access to children and then cow them into silence. His crimes did not come to light until his death aged 84 in 2011.
“It is a sickeningly familiar tale,” an editorial in the Sunday Observer said. “Report after report has revealed how institution after institution – the Catholic church, the BBC, the National Health Service, councils acting in loco parentis for children in care – have chosen to look the other way when signs emerged of child abuse within their walls.” …. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-abuse-soccer-idUSKBN13Q4XK

Football sex abuse: Crewe launch child abuse investigation 27 November 2016 UK
Crewe Alexandra will hold an independent review into the way they dealt with historical child sex abuse allegations, the club has announced.
It comes as a fifth former player made claims of of sexual abuse against ex-Crewe youth team coach Barry Bennell. Crewe said they were determined a thorough investigation took place at the earliest opportunity.
Bennell, now 62, has served three jail sentences for child sex offences, including one last year.
In a statement, Crewe Alexandra said it “believes an independent review, to be conducted via the appointment of external legal counsel, is the correct way forward in the circumstances”…..
The Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA) told BBC Radio 5 live that more than 20 of its members have been in contact about allegations of historical child sexual abuse….
Police forces in Hampshire, Cheshire, Northumbria and London have opened investigations into historical child sexual abuse claims in football. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-38118429

Chelsea paid me £50,000 to prevent child abuse revelations – Johnson December 2, 2016  Jon Fisher  Former Chelsea forward Gary Johnson claims he was paid £50,000 by the club to prevent him disclosing allegations of child abuse.
Johnson says he was sexually abused by Chelsea’s former chief scout Eddie Heath, who is now dead, after being groomed by him from the age of 13. Heath worked at Stamford Bridge from 1968 to 1979.
Child abuse is football’s worst-kept secret
Chelsea agreed a settlement with Johnson in relation to Heath’s conduct and it is understood to be the only claim of this nature that the club is currently dealing with.
“I think that they were paying me to keep a lid on this,” Johnson said in the Daily Mirror, which reported that Chelsea had waived the confidentiality clause in the settlement to the 57-year-old….
http://www.sportingnews.com/soccer/news/chelsea-paid-me-50000-to-prevent-child-abuse-revelations—johnson/zjuaocfzw7541e489376gamx4

Edward Heath abuse claims: Police defend investigation
2 December 2016  UK   An inquiry into child sex abuse claims involving ex-Prime Minister Sir Edward Heath is exploring a “significant number” of lines, police say. Wiltshire Police Chief Constable Mike Veale has defended Operation Conifer, insisting it is not a “fishing trip or witch-hunt”.
He said officers had received “allegations spanning a significant number of individuals”.
It emerged last month that two people had been arrested and bailed.
Former Conservative prime minister Sir Edward died at his home in Salisbury in July 2005, aged 89.  In an open letter, Mr Veale said he would not be “buckling under pressure to not investigate or to conclude the investigation prematurely”.  He said he wanted to “set the record straight” amid press reports the inquiry was floundering.
‘Satanic abuse’
The chief constable described Sir Edward as an “extremely prominent, influential and high profile person”. “The decision to undertake this incredibly complex and challenging investigation was not taken lightly particularly knowing, or at least expecting, that we would be placed under intense scrutiny,” he said.  Mr Veale also confirmed reports that satanic ritual sex abuse was a feature of the investigation, although he said it was a small part and did not relate to Sir Edward.  http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-38190489

Edward Heath child abuse investigation ‘not a witch-hunt’
Wiltshire chief constable says significant number of people have disclosed claims of historical abuse against ex-prime minister  Vikram Dodd and Owen Bowcott Friday 2 December 2016
The chief constable of the force investigating claims that Sir Edward Heath sexually abused children has vowed not to buckle under “unacceptable” media pressure, insisting the investigation into the late prime minister is not a “fishing trip” or a “witch-hunt”.
A “significant number of individuals have disclosed allegations of abuse”, the Wiltshire police chief, Mike Veale, said on Friday in an extraordinary 1,600-word statement that sought to rebuff media criticism and keep the 15-month investigation on track.
The Guardian understands that at least 15 people have made allegations to the police around the country claiming Heath, who died in 2005, was involved in the sexual abuse of children.
Multiple sources say the Wiltshire-led Operation Conifer remains live and the claims are regarded by police as credible, with inquiries continuing into whether they can be shown to be true or disproved. Police are describing the complainants as “victims” in private….
Dr Rachel Hoskins, an expert on ritual sacrifice who has been asked by detectives to examine claims made against Heath and others as part of Operation Conifer, has been highly critical of the investigation….
Heath was prime minister from 1970-74. A world-class yachtsman in his spare time, he took Britain into what was then the European Economic Community. His time in power was beset by industrial strife, and confrontations with the then powerful trade unions plunged Britain into a three-day week.
He was elected leader of the the Conservative party in 1965 and won the 1970 election…..
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/dec/02/edward-heath-child-abuse-investigation-not-a-witch-hunt

David Beckham tattoos come to life for child abuse campaign  By Judith Burns Education reporter  5 December 2016
David Beckham’s tattoos have taken on a life of their own in a Unicef film highlighting physical and psychological abuse that can leave lasting marks. In the one-minute film, scenes of violence against children appear as animated tattoos on the former footballer’s body.  David Beckham, now a Unicef goodwill ambassador, said he had been shocked by children’s accounts of violence. He is urging people to share the film on social media.
Meaningful marks
Beckham, 41, said his real tattoos represented happy or important memories, but the film was highlighting the fact millions of children bore marks they had not chosen – the long-lasting scars of violence and abuse.  The animations in the film depict forms of violence that children endure in places where they should be safe, such as their homes, schools, online and in their communities. The father of four, said he was committed to doing “everything I can to make the world a safer place for children and to speak out on issues that are having a devastating impact on children’s lives”. “One of those issues is violence,” he said.  “Every five minutes, somewhere in the world, a child dies from violence.
“Millions more are in danger of physical, emotional and sexual abuse that could destroy their childhoods forever.”….
Two-thirds of 190,000 children and young people around the world who responded to a Unicef call for information via its online U-report tool, said they had personally experienced physical or verbal abuse or knew someone else who had.
The responses suggested the biggest perpetrators were:
police and other law enforcers (33%)
other children and young people (29%)
parents or care givers (28%)
teachers (9%)….   http://www.bbc.com/news/education-38207684

Violence marks forever – Join David Beckham and end violence against children
David Beckham chose the marks on his skin, but millions of children bear marks that they haven’t chosen. Violence against children is wrong. It’s on all of us to end it.
https://www.youtube.com/   watch?v=2Q3OPfPEvQk&feature=youtu.be

Police break up massive Norwegian paedophilia ring NTB/The Local 21 November 2016
Norwegian police have filed charges against 51 individuals involved in a grotesque paedophilia ring thought to be one of the largest child sexual abuse cases in the nation’s history. Dubbed ‘Operation Dark Room’, the police action revealed a number of atrocities against children as young as infancy.    Police seized 150 terabytes of data material in the form of photos, movies and chat transcripts between members of various paedophile networks.  “The material shows the abuse of children of all ages, including infants,” Hilde Reikrås, the head of Operation Dark Room, said at a press conference on Sunday.  Reikrås also gave examples of the scope of the horrific abuse….
http://www.thelocal.no/20161121/police-break-up-massive-norwegian-paedophilia-ring

describes violence
Soldiers, police search Mexican state after grisly discovery
AP November 25, 2016  ACAPULCO, Mexico — Soldiers and police fanned out Friday across the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, chasing a wounded gang leader and trying to quell a wave of violence that included the discovery of hidden graves holding dozens of bodies and a camp where gunmen stored the severed heads of nine rivals in a cooler.,..
When one of the joint military-police patrols happened upon the camp earlier this week, it found a kidnapped man and what appeared to be clandestine burial pits. Investigators initially reported finding a dozen bodies. After days of digging, they discovered 32 bodies in 17 pits.
The camp is near the area where nine decapitated bodies were found dumped on a roadside last week. The nine heads found in coolers at the camp may belong to those bodies, investigators said. The bodies and heads were taken to forensic labs in a bid to identify them.
The area has been the scene of turf battles between two rival drug gangs – the Rojos and the Ardillos – who engage in extortion, kidnappings and killings. That rivalry has resulted in hundreds of deaths and disappearances in recent years.
But in recent weeks the violence has spread to other areas, apparently as a result of turf battles between two or three other gangs, including the La Familia and the Tequileros gangs.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/guerrero-mexican-state-grisly-discovery-human-heads-hidden-graves/

Cult child sex abuse case starts  by TPN/ Lusa, in News · 15-11-2016
The trial of the leader of a fake religious sect called “Verdade Celestial” (Celetial Truth) and seven other defendants accused of sexually abusing children in a farm near Palmela, south of Lisbon, is to begin this Tuesday.
The main pedophile was arrested in June 2015 when he was pretending to be a psychologist and called himself the leader of the religious sect. He has been charged with dozens of crimes of rape, pimping, child pornography, some of which against his own son.
The accusation said the defendants “showed total disrespect for the children” who attended the farm for tutoring or to participate in activities organised by the religious leader who convinced them that the sexual abuse they were subjected to was “purifying acts”.
The cult leader is also suspected of charging other child molesters who wanted to abuse the children who went to the farm.
http://www.theportugalnews.com/news/cult-child-sex-abuse-case-starts/40196
Article in Portugese about the case: Setúbal  seita religiosa que abusava de crianças enfrenta justiça ) TVI24
http://www.tvi24.iol.pt/sociedade/verdade-celestial/seita-religiosa-que-abusava-de-criancas-enfrenta-justica-em-setubal

Twin Cities Archdiocese fund for abuse victims to reach $130M  New insurance settlements boost archdiocese payout plan for 400 abuse victims.   By Jean Hopfensperger Star Tribune  November 15, 2016
The fund for victims of clergy sex abuse would double from a proposed $65 million to $130 million under an amended bankruptcy reorganization plan filed Tuesday by the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.
The increase comes primarily from new insurance settlements with the archdiocese. The archdiocese would contribute about $13 million to the fund, as would the parishes.
The proposal was swiftly criticized by victims’ attorneys as being too easy on insurers and too stingy on the part of the archdiocese.
More than 400 people have filed claims against the archdiocese in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, alleging its clergy sexually abused them as children. Under the new plan, each victim would receive an average payout of about $300,000….
http://www.startribune.com/130m-twin-cities-archdiocese-raises-amount-for-clergy-abuse-victims/401313485/

Former Guam priest admits abuse, says church knew   11 November 2016
A retired priest in Guam says the island’s Catholic Church leadership has known for decades about sex abuses committed by clergy since the 1950s.
Louis Brouillard, who is a confessed abuser, made his comment in a statement released in connection with civil lawsuits filed by several former altar boys, who allege sexual abuse at the hands of Guam priests decades ago.
Pacific Daily News reports Mr Brouillard saying his only form of punishment for molesting at least 20 boys at the time was to say prayers – as instructed by the then Archbishop Apollinaris Baumgartner.
Mr Brouillard, who is now 95 and living in Minnesota, said his sexual contact with children was known to other priests, including the Archbishop Baumgartner, who led the church on Guam for 25 years from 1945.
Mr Brouilliard served as a priest on island from the late 1940s to 1981.
He says the Catholic Church should be honest and truthful regarding what happened on Guam during his time there.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/317899/former-guam-priest-admits-abuse,-says-church-knew

3 more child sex abuse lawsuits filed against Guam priests
USA Today Network Haidee V Eugenio, Pacific Daily News (Guam) November 17, 2016
HAGATNA, Guam — Archbishop Anthony S. Apuron and former priest Louis Brouillard, along with the Archdiocese of Agana, face three new lawsuits alleging child sex abuse, which were filed Thursday afternoon by two former altar boys and by the estate of a deceased former altar boy.
The lawsuits are possible because of a recently passed Guam law that lifts the civil statute of limitations for those accused of abusing children, as well as the institutions that supported them….
Diaz, a resident of Barrigada, alleges that other priests and representatives of the Archdiocese of Agana, including Bishop Apollinaris Baumgartner and other defendants, were aware of Brouillard’s sexual abuses.
But Diaz said these other priests deliberately remained quiet and withheld such information from third parties, including his parents and law enforcement authorities in order to protect Brouillard and the archdiocese “thereby placing their loyalty above their duty to protect the minor children and their legal responsibilities.”
On Oct. 3, Brouillard released a signed statement admitting to sexually abusing at least 20 boys, and asked for forgiveness from his victims. Brouillard’s first public admission of his sexual abuses of boys on Guam was in August, during a phone interview with Pacific Daily News.
Brouillard has said the Catholic Church leadership on Guam knew about his actions for decades but he was only told to say prayers as a penance….
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2016/11/17/3-more-child-sex-abuse-lawsuits-filed-against-guam-priests/94052114/

Catholic priest accused of organising orgies in rectory and pimping out 15 women
Italian 48-year-old allegedly hid pornographic home videos in covers bearing the names of popes
Peter Walker   Catholic Father Andrea Contin, a parish priest in the northern city of Padua in Veneto, is under police investigation on suspicion of living off immoral earnings and psychological violence.
A variety of sex toys and videos, purportedly showing orgies taking place on the San Lazzaro church premises, have been seized after complaints from three female parishioners.
The 48-year-old also allegedly concealed pornographic home videos in covers bearing the names of various popes.
He is accused of farming out some of his lovers to men on wife-swapping websites, according to The Times.  The priest also allegedly took his female friends for stays at a naturist and swingers resort in Cap d’Agde on the southern French coast.
Catholic Father Andrea Contin, a parish priest in the northern city of Padua in Veneto, is under police investigation on suspicion of living off immoral earnings and psychological violence.
A variety of sex toys and videos, purportedly showing orgies taking place on the San Lazzaro church premises, have been seized after complaints from three female parishioners.
The 48-year-old also allegedly concealed pornographic home videos in covers bearing the names of various popes.  He is accused of farming out some of his lovers to men on wife-swapping websites, according to The Times.  The priest also allegedly took his female friends for stays at a naturist and swingers resort in Cap d’Agde on the southern French coast…..
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/catholic-priest-orgies-rectory-church-andrea-contin-padua-padova-veneto-italy-a7505851.html

Turkey should reject child abuse law shielding men who marry from punishment: U.N.
By Umberto Bacchi  Mon Nov 21, 2016
LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – A bill that could allow men accused of sexually abusing girls in Turkey to avoid punishment if they marry their victim would create a climate of impunity for child abuse in the country, U.N. agencies warned on Monday.
The Turkish parliament gave preliminary backing to the controversial proposal put forward by the ruling AK Party last week.
MPs are due resume the debate on Tuesday before a second and final vote.
Several U.N. agencies criticized the legislation, which they said was akin to an amnesty for child abusers and could expose victims to further suffering at the hands of their abusers.
“Any forms of sexual violence against children are crimes which should be punished as such,” the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF, the United Nations Population Fund, UNFPA, U.N. Women and the U.N. Development Programme in Turkey said in a joint statement on Monday.
“We call on all Members of the Turkish Grand National Assembly to do their utmost in ensuring that all girls and boys in Turkey are better protected from all forms of sexual abuse.”…
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-politics-law-sexcrimes-idUSKBN13G22K

Turkey child rape protests: Thousands take to streets against law that would let men off if they marry victim
‘We will not shut up. We will not obey. Withdraw the bill immediately,’ chant protesters
Harriet Agerholm     Sunday 20 November 2016
Thousands have taken to the streets of Istanbul and other cities in Turkey to protest against a bill that would allow child rapists to walk free if they marry their victims.
The country’s government insists the law would help resolve legal challenges caused by widespread child marriage in the country, yet critics argue the bill legitimises rape.
In Istanbul, protesters clapped and chanted: “We will not shut up. We will not obey. Withdraw the bill immediately.”
About 3,000 people gathered in Istanbul’s Kadikoy square, many waving placards that said: “Rape cannot be legitimised,” and “AKP, take your hands off my body” – in reference to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) that proposed the bill.
Similar demonstrations were held in other cities, including Ankara, Izmir and Trabzon.
If the law passes, men who sexually abuse girls under 18 without “force, threat or any restriction on consent” and marry them could have their convictions quashed or avoid prosecution….
The proposed change would apply to cases between 2005 and 16 November 2016.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/turkey-child-rape-protest-thousands-law-men-freed-marry-victim-istanbul-ankara-izmir-akp-erdogan-a7428166.html

Ritual Abuse and Mind Control

 Leah Remini Vs. The Church Of Scientology A&E’s new reality show follows Remini as she takes on the enormous church she left behind Teo Bugbee
“When I first started filming this show, I thought I would just be documenting stories of families torn apart by the Church of Scientology’s policies and practices,” intones the once comedy actress and now justice crusader Leah Remini as she stares straight into the camera, the image pushing in on her face. “What I uncovered was much deeper and darker than I ever expected.” Last night, A&E launched a new series called Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath from the outspoken actress and longtime Scientologist as she continues to fight against what she sees as the hypocrisy and abuses of her former religion….
The series is mostly comprised of interviews that Remini made with former members of Scientology detailing the horrors that they experienced during their time in the church, from Scientology’s policy of cutting off contact between family members who leave, to fraud, to physical and sexual abuse. A lot of these allegations have been made public before, but the openness about sexual abuse is relatively new information in the narrative around Scientology and its problems, along with what former Sea Organization member Amy Scobee describes in the first episode as the church’s practice of punishing abuse from within a secret internal system. But for the most part, the stories that Remini seeks to tell are like others that have trickled out in recent years, as Scientology has incurred more and more high-profile defections….
Remini retreads the story she told in her book, Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology, about her own involvement with Scientology. Her mother fell in love with a man who introduced the family to the religion, and he left her as she was pregnant with their child. Remini became the breadwinner as soon as she could, as she and her mother were taken in by other Scientologist families who promised support so long as they were a part of the religion. For people who have heard the story before, Remini juices the narrative up with the threats and smears currently coming her way from the spokespeople for Scientology. If the church thinks they could scare viewers away by accusing Remini of turning on the church for her own personal gain, Remini is there to read those accusations at the start of the hour, noting that the Church of Scientology lists her collaborators as “deadbeats, admitted liars, perjurers, wife-beaters, and worse.” …. http://www.mtv.com/news/2959021/leah-remini-vs-the-church-of-scientology/

Leah Remini’s Series Could Be Scientology’s Church Abuse Scandal
What makes Scientology a cult instead of just an extreme religion? The two latest episodes explained the difference better than any of the previous episodes.
By Bethany Mandel December 27, 2016
….The first new episode was an aired edition of a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) in which actress Leah Remini answered viewers’ questions about the cult. She sat opposite the former International Spokesman of Scientology and one of its most famous defectors, Mike Rinder, and interviewed a series of the most famous foes of Scientology, including the subject of a groundbreaking book, entitled “The Unbreakable Miss Lovely.” It’s from perhaps the most famous contemporary Scientology chronicler, a journalist who first exposed the group.
….The video is of a pep rally. In it, Cruise introduces his friend and religious leader, telling the booming audience present for the 2004 award ceremony for the “IAS Freedom Medal of Valor”: “I want to tell you something. I have never met a more competent, a more intelligent, a more tolerant, a more compassionate being. I have met the leaders of leaders. I have met them all. So I say to you COB [Chairman of the Board], we are lucky to have you, thank you.”
Miscavige’s official title in the Church of Scientology is chairman of the board of the Religious Technology Center. But who is he really? Rinder described him another way: “the undisputed dictator of Scientology.”
Miscavige executed a takeover of Scientology’s leadership after the death of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard. What makes Remini’s series unique from other shows on Scientology, such as the HBO documentary “Going Clear,” is that it is from the perspective of former Scientologists and focuses on their experiences exclusively. It explores what it is like being part of a religion at the upper echelons with Miscavige at the helm.
Remini and Rinder interviewed Jefferson Hawkins, the former chief propagandist for the group, who says he left after Miscavige assaulted and terrified him. During this interview, Remini explains to her fellow defectors the desperation she feels about exposing and taking down Scientology by any means necessary, including flooding its headquarters with airplane-dropped pamphlets and bringing in law enforcement…. http://thefederalist.com/2016/12/27/leah-reminis-series-scientologys-church-abuse-scandal/

Ex-Scientologists tell disturbing stories about David Miscavige, the ‘pope of Scientology,’ on A&E series December 21, 2016
Actress Leah Remini left the Church of Scientology in 2013 – after 35 years as a devout member – and ever since, she has been on a crusade to expose the controversial organization’s secrets. On “Scientology and the Aftermath,” her new series on A&E, Remini seeks to “delve deep into shocking stories of abuse, heartbreak and harassment experienced by those who have left the church and spoken publicly about their experiences.”
Tuesday night’s episode had a theme: Disturbing stories about the organization’s leader David Miscavige, whom ex-members refer to as “the pope of Scientology,” as well as the “undisputed dictator.”….
Remini also interviewed people about Miscavige’s alleged physical abuse against his staff, including Jeff Hawkins, who was the Scientology “marketing guru” for years. He joined because as a self-proclaimed hippie in the late 1960s, he liked the idea of Scientology’s anti-war stance and spiritual component, particularly the strong belief about the afterlife.
So Hawkins signed a billion year contract and started working closely with Miscavige. Then, he says, Miscavige assaulted him several times. During one incident, he explains, Miscavige once started making fun of him in a room full of people; and when Hawkins asked him not to, Miscavige took that as a sign of disrespect and started hitting him in the face.
Hawkins says that he, as well as everyone in the room at the time, was too afraid to fight back. Initially, he thought the bad times would pass; but when he realized Miscavige would be running Scientology for a very long time, he left the church.
In response, the church disputes many of Hawkins’s statements and says he is an “obsessed anti-Scientologist” who was expelled for “unsavory personal conduct,” and has a long record of malfeasance, and that he fabricated stories about violence from a staff member….
http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/tv/ct-scientology-david-miscavige-pope-of-scientology-20161221-story.html

How an Accused Child Rapist Allegedly Brainwashed an Entire Family as His Cult
By Harriet Sokmensuer December 28, 2016
To his neighbors, Lee Kaplan was quiet and aloof. His three-bedroom Pennsylvania home was hidden behind overgrown shrubbery and at times almost seemed empty. However, behind closed doors, authorities allege Kaplan was living with 12 young girls who considered him a prophet of God as he repeatedly sexually abused them.
To Kaplan, six of the girls were not only his followers but also his “wives,” Bucks County authorities allege….
In June the girls were rescued by Lower Southampton police, and in November Kaplan pleaded not guilty to more than a dozen charges including rape of a child and involuntary deviate sexual intercourse.
He allegedly not only fathered two children with the eldest girl but also sexually abused five of her younger sisters over the course of years, with the consent of their parents, Bucks County District Attorney Matthew Weintraub said.
“This guy set up a virtual feeding ground of victims,” Weintraub told PEOPLE in a previous interview, calling the situation “cult-like.”….
Authorities say Kaplan went unnoticed for years because the girls’ parents also believed Kaplan was a prophet.  The children were raised Amish, born with no birth certificates and home schooled together, officials say, but the Stoltzfus family left the Amish community after they met Kaplan, a former business partner of Daniel’s….
http://people.com/crime/lee-kaplan-child-rape-pennsylvania-sex-cult/

Burke Ramsey Sues CBS and Several Experts for $750 Million Over JonBenét Series  By Chris Harris December 28, 2016
Burke Ramsey has filed a second defamation lawsuit over a recent CBS docuseries that advanced the theory he killed his younger sister, JonBenét, more than two decades ago, PEOPLE confirms.
After suing forensic pathologist Dr. Werner Spitz in October for $150 million in damages, lawyers for Burke on Wednesday filed another civil suit — this one, naming CBS as well as Critical Content LLC, the production company behind The Case of: JonBenét Ramsey, and seven experts and consultants featured in the special, which aired over two nights in mid-September.
PEOPLE obtained a copy of the second suit, which seeks $250 million in compensatory damages and $500 million in punitive damages.
In addition to listing Spitz as a defendant, the suit filed Wednesday names retired FBI Supervisory Special Agent and criminal profiler Jim Clemente; criminal behaviorist Laura Richards; Jim Kolar, a former lead investigator in the JonBenét Ramsey murder investigation; forensic linguistics expert James Fitzgerald; statement analyst Stanley Burke; and forensic scientist Dr. Henry Lee….
http://people.com/crime/burke-ramsey-jonbenet-cbs-series-lawsuit/

Sharia courts have no place in UK family law. Listen to women who know Pragna Patel
There must be no religious arbitration in family matters. It leaves minority women vulnerable to control by fundamentalists   We oppose any religious body – whether presided over by men or women – that seeks to rule over us.” So say more than 300 mostly Muslim women, but also others from different faiths who have been abused in their personal lives. These women are voicing their alarm, through a powerful statement published by Open Democracy, about the growing power of religious bodies such as sharia councils, and demand that their voices also be heard in the current debate.
From their own lived experiences, they warn against any attempt to normalise profoundly regressive religious codes of conduct as the basis of social interaction with, and policy development aimed at, minority women. They do so against the backdrop of Louise Casey’s report that warns of minority women who are trapped in abuse and isolation, and two ongoing inquiries into sharia councils: one initiated by the government and the other by the home affairs select committee.
The signatories to the statement have witnessed, experienced or fled from the horrors and degradations of “honour” killings, domestic violence, child and ritual abuse, forced marriage, polygamy, rape and sexual assaults. They speak out against religious impositions that exacerbate their daily struggles to live their lives as they choose. They reject the forces of fundamentalism and patriarchy that seek to divide and govern through surveillance and control of female sexuality….
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/14/sharia-courts-family-law-women

Matriarch of Alleged Killer Church Cult Sentenced in Teen’s Fatal Beating  By Chris Harris December 7, 2016   The matriarch of a small religious sect that former members insist is a cult will spend the next two years in jail for her role in the prolonged, deadly beatings of two teenage brothers who tried to leave the group, PEOPLE confirms.
Traci Irwin, 50, was sentenced on Monday after pleading guilty in Oneida County Court in New York to two counts of felony unlawful imprisonment.
Irwin was charged, along with eight other members of the Word of Life Church, with the fatal beating of Lucas Leonard. The 19-year-old was savagely whipped and battered intermittently over a 12-hour period inside the church, which is located in New Hartford, New York — a suburb of Utica.
Lucas’ brother, 17-year-old Christopher Leonard, was also attacked in the Oct. 11, 2015, incident, but survived with numerous injuries.
The church’s 29-year-old pastor, Traci’s daughter Tiffanie Irwin, also participated in the beatings, as did the boys’ parents, Deborah and Bruce Leonard, and the brothers’ half-sister, Sarah Ferguson….
All told, nine people were indicted for their roles in the attack. Eight defendants accepted deals from the prosecution. Only Ferguson stood trial; she was convicted in July of manslaughter and assault and was sentenced to 25 years….
http://people.com/crime/traci-irwin-killer-church-cult-matriarch-sentenced-beating-death/

Thirty Years in Captivity
One woman’s escape from a London cult.
By Simon Parkin   December 3, 2016
Rosie grew up in a succession of decrepit houses in South London with one man and a rotating cast of women, who claimed that they had found her on the streets as an infant. The man, Aravindan Balakrishnan—Comrade Bala, as he wanted to be called—was the head of the household. He instructed the women to deny Rosie’s existence to outsiders, and forbade them from comforting her when she cried. “Balakrishnan told us that lesbianism was caused when females cuddle female babies,” one of the women, Aisha Wahab, told me recently. “No one dared show affection.” Rosie was not registered with local authorities, health-care providers, or schools. As a child, she often stood by a window, hoping that passersby would notice her. Once, after she exchanged greetings with the granddaughter of an elderly neighbor through a hole in the garden fence, Balakrishnan warned her that the girl intended to lure her away to be held hostage. He regularly lost his temper with Rosie, beating her and threatening to kill her. Sometimes, after an argument, she would retreat to the bathroom, to check whether the toilet still flushed. “When it worked, I kissed the handle,” Rosie, who is now thirty-three, recalled earlier this year. “I told it, ‘Thank you for being on my side.’ ”
One day in 1995, when Rosie was twelve, Balakrishnan showed her an identification card from the hospital where she was born. In a box marked “relationship to child,” Sian Davies, one of the women living in the house, had written “mother.” The revelation sat strangely in Rosie’s mind; at the time, she explained, she “didn’t have a concept of parents.” …
Balakrishnan, meanwhile, is serving a twenty-three-year prison sentence, having been found guilty, late last year, of child cruelty, false imprisonment, and sexual assault against two women….
http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/thirty-years-in-captivity

HIV-ridden ‘DEVIL’ who had sex with kids in £3 ‘cleansing’ faces just FIVE YEARS in jail
A MONSTER with HIV who claims he was paid £3-a-time to have sex with children as young as 12 for “sexual cleansing” is facing only five years in prison.  By Henry Holloway / Published 17th November 2016   Eric Aniva, better known as the Hyena, claims the girls as young as 12 took “pleasure” in the abuse he subjected them too while he was paid by their parents in a “sexual cleansing ritual”.
HIV-positive Aniva confessed to having unprotected sex with 104 women and girls as part of a his bizarre rentalservice.  He did not tell families who hired him for the sexual initiation about his status before having sex with the women and girls….
The “sexual cleansing” is common practice in the southern region of his home nation Malawi.
Women and girls are expected to participate at various points in their life – such as when they hit puberty, if they have an abortion, or if their husband dies. Young girls are sent to “initiation camps” by their family before they hit puberty where they are taught how to have sex by older men….
Presidential spokesman Mgeme Kalilani said: “While we must promote positive cultural values and positive socialisation of our children, the president says harmful cultural and traditional practices cannot be accepted in this country.” He added: “These horrific practices, although done by a few, also tarnish the image of the whole nation of Malawi internationally and bring shame to us all.”….
http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/562792/Hyena-Rapist-HIV-Eric-Aniva-Malawi-104-Rape-Sexual-Cleansing-Ritual-Girls-Camps-Court-Jail
 
Naivasha locals raid witch doctors havens after kids mysterious deaths
Nov. 17, 2016   By GEORGE MURAGE  Operations came to a standstill in Karagita estate, Naivasha, after residents conducted a major operation targeting witch doctors. They moved door to door looking for the “traditional healers” accused of being behind their woes. Trouble started two weeks ago when two children were reported missing and later found murdered in what are believed to have been ritual killings. Police are holding a 12-year old boy in connection to the mysterious murders. During the raids, residents found paraphernalia used by witch doctors to ‘treat’ their patients. Pictures of church pastors, women, and men from neighbouring areas were also found in one of the homes that was raided by more than 300 residents.
Youth leader Elijah Ngotho said the witch doctors were to blame for the disappearance of the minors in the area.  He said the operation was meant to rid the area of fake healers, a majority of whom he noted were from neighbouring countries. http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2016/11/17/naivasha-locals-raid-witch-doctors-havens-after-kids-mysterious-deaths_c1457570

After abuse as a girl, U.N. albinism expert aims to end ritual murders
World News Wed Nov 16, 2016 By Katy Migiro
NAIROBI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – When Ikponwosa Ero was five years old, she couldn’t walk down the street in Nigeria without being abused for having albinism — a lack of pigmentation in the skin, hair and eyes….
People with albinism are frequently shunned, attacked and even killed across Africa. In many countries, their body parts are believed to bring wealth and good luck and are prized in witchcraft for use in charms and magical potions.
Ero’s mother comforted her, telling her that God does not make mistakes, and fought for her to attend school, despite her poor eyesight, a common problem for people with the condition….
Ero’s priority is to end the brutal machete attacks on people with albinism by assailants seeking to use their body parts in witchcraft.
More than 600 attacks have taken place in 26 African countries since 2007, with almost two-thirds of the victims being children, she said.
“There is the witchcraft belief that if the attacks are happening to people while they are alive, then the potion is more powerful,” Ero said….
Ero was accompanied by Isaac Mwaura, Kenya’s first member of parliament with albinism, who organized in October a beauty pageant for people with albinism in Kenya to reduce stigma….
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-africa-rights-albinos-idUSKBN13B2JQ

2 Million Protesters Demand South Korean President Resign Over Major Shaman Cult Scandal
By Anugrah Kumar , Christian Post Contributor   Around 2 million demonstrators in South Korea called for the resignation of President Park Geun-hye on Saturday over a major scandal involving her 60-year-old confidant, who is the daughter of a Shamanistic cult leader.
The crowd gathered at the Blue House, the presidential residence, in Seoul to demand Park’s resignation over allegations that she allowed Choi Soon-sil, who does not hold an official government post, to mastermind governmental policy and decision making and thereby accumulate millions of dollars in donations to her foundations, according to CNN.
Protests against Park, who was baptized in the Catholic Church when she was a student at the Jesuit-run Sogang University, have been taking place for over five weeks. Park later reportedly identified herself as having no religion.
Choi, the daughter of a South Korean Shamanistic cult leader, Choi Tae-min, from the Eternal Life Church, has allegedly been allowed to view confidential documents and presidential speeches, and is charged with abuse of power, fraud and coercion.
Choi has reportedly received spiritual guidance from her father for years.
Shamanism is a practice that involves a practitioner reaching altered states of consciousness in order to perceive and interact with a spirit world and channel these transcendental energies into this world….           http://www.christianpost.com/news/2-million-protesters-demand-south-korean-president-resign-over-major-shaman-cult-scandal-171744/

Swirling Scandal Involving Shamanistic Cult Threatens S. Korean President October 29, 2016 Elise Hu  Tens of thousands demonstrated in cities across South Korea on Saturday, demanding President Park Geun-hye step down from office. Her approval rating has hit an unprecedented low of 14 percent and Park’s ordered all 10 of her senior aides to resign, following revelations an unelected, unappointed confidant was receiving advance copies and altering dozens of confidential policy speeches. They have led to charges that the friend is a secret “puppet master” and the real power behind “the throne.”
President Park apologized to the country in a rare nationally-televised address this week. She said she sought her old friend’s opinion only in the early part of her presidency, before her staff was in place.
It goes beyond tinkering with speeches, however. This scandal involves not only tens of millions of dollars and charges of influence-peddling, but of spiritual guides from a “Shamanistic prophet,” voices from the dead and — wait for it — dressage, the competitive form of horse-dancing….
The old friend of the president’s, Choi Soon-sil, also runs two non-profit foundations that prosecutors say boasted of its ties with the president to collect more than $70 million in donations from the country’s major conglomerates. Prosecutors opened up an investigation into the foundations in early October, and are seeking Choi, who is accused of siphoning some of those funds for personal use — including to cover equestrian training for her daughter, Chung Yoo-ra. (Choi emerged in Germany over the weekend and denies any wrongdoing.)….
Choi Soon-sil is the daughter of a man the president considered her mentor, Choi Tae-min. He claimed to be a pastor from a tiny pseudo-Christian sect, but a leaked diplomatic cable from the U.S. Embassy describes him as a ‘Rasputin’-like character and his “church” is described by Korean media as more of a “Shamanistic cult.” The New York Times explains further:
“Mr. Choi was the founder of an obscure sect called the Church of Eternal Life. He befriended Ms. Park, 40 years his junior, soon after her mother was assassinated in 1974. According to a report by the Korean intelligence agency from the 1970s that was published by a South Korean newsmagazine in 2007, Mr. Choi initially approached Ms. Park by telling her that her mother had appeared in his dreams, asking him to help her.
Mr. Choi was a former police officer who had also been a Buddhist monk and a convert to Roman Catholicism. (He also used seven different names and was married six times by the time he died in 1994 at the age of 82.) He became a mentor to Ms. Park, helping her run a pro-government volunteer group called Movement for a New Mind.”….
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/10/29/499864915/swirling-scandal-involving-shamanistic-cult-threatens-s-korean-president

Clerics alarmed by ‘witchcraft’ killings, missing children  Nov. 23, 2016 By GEORGE MURAGE
Clerics in Naivasha have expressed alarm at what they suspect are ritual and withcraft killings and abductions. They called for investigation and punishment of criminals involved in crimes against women and children. They also want deportation of traditional healers back to Uganda and Tanzania.
They cited the recent case on Karagita Estate where two minors were murdered and mutilated. They said many minors are missing.  After the children were murdered, Karagita residents last week raided several houses belonging to suspected witchdoctors and collected paraphernalia….
http://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2016/11/23/clerics-alarmed-by-witchcraft-killings-missing-children_c1459471
 
Ritual abuse: The ‘Rats’ of Shah Daulah  December 30, 2016 Majid Bashir  Ritual abuse in the name of religion, not the religious teachings- be they from Islam or any other religion- promote unethical practices that mar fundamental rights of various weaker segments of society.
Since children are among the most vulnerable parts of society, so they have to suffer a lot in terms of their health, education and development due to social and religious rituals.
The conversion of normal healthy children into the so-called ‘rats of Shah Daulah’ at the shrine of the Sufi saint Shah Daulah in District Gujrat by putting an iron ring over the head of the newly born children to control growth of their heads and minds while allowing rest of the body grow.
According to the tradition, those issue-less parents who come to pray at the shrine vow that if they become fertile, their first-born would be delivered to the shrine administration, so that rest of the children they can grow in their home environment.
They first such babies received by the shrine administration undergo the inhuman practice of being forced to be abnormal so that they can be sent for beggary and other abnormal practices and are dubbed the ‘Rats of Shah Daulah’.
We see them in green dresses in almost every city and they are reportedly controlled by a mafia of beggars.
These children are reportedly abused physically and sexually.
Their deformity renders them only useful for begging as they cannot perform any other income activity.
This is one of the many kinds of ritual abuse occurring in Pakistan.
Ritual abuse is more commonly practiced by the so-called ‘Pirs’ or faith healers who exploit a person’s weak faith or state of mind, either due to a disease or an unfulfilled want.
Occurring of such abuses of human rights are not confined solely to the physical nature of abuse rather they consort to all forms of abuse of child rights in violation of domestic laws and international conventions.
In the name of relieving people from the control of genies or any diseases, the patients are tortured badly; some of them reportedly succumb to their injuries.
In such circumstances, girls are molested or sexually abused by the so-called spiritual healers.
These unethical rituals continue unabated in the absence of a specific laws that deal with ritual abuse.
In the worst-case scenario, if during performing such rituals the victim is severely injured or killed, only then such abuse is considered as crime under various offences governing abuse of child rights in Pakistan…. http://nation.com.pk/columns/30-Dec-2016/ritual-abuse-the-rats-of-shah-daulah

‘I knew they would stone me to death or sell me’: British sex slave held captive and raped nightly for 13 years reveals she finally escaped when they planned to take her to Pakistan
‘Anna Ruston’ penned tragic story of 13 years of abuse from taxi driver ‘Malik’
He abducted her at 15 because he knew no-one would miss the homeless teen
‘Raped her, prostituted her to other men and she had four babies that he sold’
Authorities ‘were afraid to help her for fear of being seen as discriminatory’
By James Dunn and Richard Spillett for MailOnline  29 December 2016
A British sex slave has told how she was abducted aged just 15 by an Asian taxi driver and endured 13 years of horrific abuse while locked up in his home.
Anna Ruston claims that her captor branded her his ‘white s***’ and repeatedly raped her, before prostituting her out to other men and ‘selling’ the four babies she gave birth to during her ordeal.
She was forced to go to the toilet in a can in the corner of the room, and is still haunted by the smell of garlic, which reminds her of her captor.
Authorities have come in for criticism today after it emerged the woman was taken to hospital with injuries on a number of occasions, but was never left alone with doctors or nurses.
She eventually escaped after being told the family were taking her to Pakistan, where she feared she would be ‘stoned to death’ or sold….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4071876/British-sex-slave-tells-held-captive-repeatedly-raped-13-years-Muslim-cab-driver-sold-four-babies.html

Charles Manson follower seeks parole 47 years after killings Thu Dec 29, 2016. Associated Press
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Patricia Krenwinkel, once a devout follower of cult killer Charles Manson and now the longest-serving female inmate in California, appeared again Thursday before a parole board — 47 years after she helped kill pregnant actress Sharon Tate and six other people.
Krenwinkel, 69, has been denied parole 13 times since her conviction in the 1969 slayings.
She acknowledged during her trial that she chased down and repeatedly stabbed Abigail Ann Folger, the 26-year-old heiress of a coffee fortune, at Tate’s home and helped kill grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, the following night.
Los Angeles County prosecutors say Krenwinkel carved the word “war” into Leno LaBianca’s stomach, then wrote “Helter Skelter” in blood on the couple’s refrigerator….
Krenwinkel was a 19-year-old secretary when she met Manson at a party. She testified at her previous parole hearing that she left everything behind three days later to pursue what she believed was a budding romance with him.
She wept and apologized, saying she became a “monster” after she met Manson.
“I committed myself fully to him. I committed myself to the act of murder,” she said then. “I was willing to sacrifice others’ lives for my own.”
Prosecutors say the slayings were an attempt to ignite a race war after which Manson and his followers would rise from the rubble to rule the world….
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/usworld/ap/charles-manson-follower-seeks-parole-years-after-killings/article_045f1afd-2ca4-5868-b71e-5e256bde4804.html

Charles Manson’s cult left 7 dead and killed a dream, too Jan 04, 2017  By JOHN ROGERS and SCOTT SMITH Associated Press  LOS ANGELES (AP) – The seven grisly murders carried out by Charles Manson’s disciples during the summer of 1969 did more than turn the hippie cult leader into the leering face of evil on front pages across America.  To many, the bloodbath exposed the scary underside of the counterculture movement and seemed to mark the end of the peace-and-love era that burst upon the country just two years earlier during San Francisco’s Summer of Love.  “The ‘Summer of Love’ was more a media event than anything else,” Todd Gitlin, one of the nation’s foremost historians of the 1960s, told The Associated Press in an email Wednesday. “But if hippie paradise was a myth, it was a myth that a lot of people believed in. Manson damaged it gravely.”….
A petty criminal who had been in and out of jail since childhood, Manson reinvented himself during the Summer of Love as a long-haired, Christ-like guru spouting Bible verses and Beatles lyrics.
After attracting a few dozen followers from San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury district, many of them young women, runaways or other lost souls, he took them to an old movie ranch on the edge of Los Angeles that he transformed into a commune of sex, drugs and music.
On Aug. 9 and 10, 1969, he sent some of his devotees out on a murderous mission to two of Los Angeles’ wealthiest neighborhoods, where they killed pregnant actress Sharon Tate, several of her society friends and others. Most of the victims, including coffee heiress Abigail Folger, were stabbed.
Tate’s husband, Oscar-winning director Roman Polanski, was out of the country at the time.
Authorities would learn that Manson had hoped the killings would touch off a race war. He had apparently gotten the idea from a twisted reading of the hard-rocking Beatles song “Helter Skelter.”
The slayings shocked the country with their savagery. Messages like “Pigs” and a misspelled “Healter Skelter” were scrawled in the victims’ blood on their walls and doors, and the city was paralyzed in fear. Residents of Los Angeles’ nearby Laurel Canyon neighborhood, then a haven for musicians, began locking their doors.
The youngest member of the original Manson Family, Leslie Van Houten, a teenage runaway and former homecoming princess from a Los Angeles suburb, said he had brainwashed her and others with sex, LSD, constant readings from the Bible, repeated playings of the Beatles’ “White Album” and rambling lectures about triggering a revolution….
http://www.wgem.com/story/34178332/charles-mansons-cult-left-7-dead-and-killed-a-dream-too

Killer Charles Manson’s failing health renews focus on cult murder saga
By Richard Winton, Matt Hamilton and Hailey Branson-Potts   January 4, 2017 The long saga of Charles Manson, the cult leader whose murder spree more than four decades ago made him a subject of hate, fear, revulsion and fascination, moved to a hospital in downtown Bakersfield this week.
Inside Mercy Hospital, Manson was being treated for gastrointestinal bleeding related to his colon, and according to one source with knowledge of his condition, was seriously ill. Manson was rushed there Sunday from Corcoran State Prison, and it remains unclear when his medical treatment will end….
Manson and other members of his so-called family were convicted of killing actress Sharon Tate and six other people during a bloody rampage in the Los Angeles area during two August nights in 1969. Prosecutors said that Manson and his followers were trying to incite a race war that he believed was in the Beatles’ song “Helter Skelter.”  Tate, the wife of director Roman Polanski, was 8½ months pregnant when she was killed at her hilltop home in Benedict Canyon on Aug. 9, 1969. Besides Tate, four others were stabbed and shot to death: Jay Sebring, 35; Voytek Frykowski, 32; Abigail Folger, 25, a coffee heiress; and Steven Parent, 18, a friend of Tate’s caretaker. The word “Pig” was written on the front door in blood. The next night, Manson rode along with his followers to the Los Feliz home of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca, then left three members to kill the couple.
Manson has incurred more than 100 rules violations since 1971. Over the years, he has been cited for assault, repeated possession of a weapon, threatening staff and possessing a cellphone, Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said in an email Wednesday. “Suffice it to say that he cannot be described as a model prisoner,” she said….
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-manson-bleeding-20170104-story.html

describes violence
Hofstra fraternity accused of sickening hazing rituals By Chris Perez  December 6, 2016
Members of the Sigma Pi fraternity at Hofstra University took hazing to new heights last year — with never-before-seen pictures depicting a slew of stomach-churning rituals, including vomiting on one another and being covered from head-to-toe in hot sauce.
The images, published Tuesday by the Hofstra Chronicle, show students being subjected to a wide range of abuse over the course of the Fall 2014 and Fall 2015 pledge processes.
They were obtained during a semester-long investigation, in which numerous acts of “extreme hazing” were uncovered within the now-defunct fraternity — such as forced favors, a merit and demerit system and anti-Semitic imagery, according to the school newspaper.
In one photo, three “pledges” from the Fall class of 2015 can be seen sprawled out on the ground, with their bodies covered in flour. Another shows a student locked in a small cage, which is intended to hold the smallest person in the pledge class.  Syed Ali John Mehdi — a former student and member of Sigma Pi’s Beta-Alpha class of Spring 2015 — told The Chronicle that the student chosen to sit in the cage is ultimately forced to remain inside for indefinite periods of time, which are then made longer if they are unable to correctly answer a question about the fraternity or its members….  http://nypost.com/2016/12/06/hofstra-fraternity-accused-of-sickening-hazing-rituals/

Greater Jakarta: Gatot Brajamusti named abuse suspect  The Jakarta Post Jakarta  Tue, November 15 2016  The Jakarta Police have named cult leader, and husband of singer Reza Artamevia, Gatot Brajamusti a suspect for the sexual abuse of several of his followers.
Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Awi Setiyono said DNA evidence supported the abuse allegations made by a number of his former female followers. “The suspect did not deny [the police’s findings],” Awi said. Investigators have charged Gatot under the 2002 Child Protection Law and the Criminal Code, with a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison. One of his victims filed a police report in September after Gatot’s cult came into spotlight, following a police raid on Gatot’s compound in Sukabumi, West Java. She claimed Gatot had raped her over the previous 10 years, starting from when she was 16 years of age….He is alleged to have used crystal methamphetamine in his ritual activities including having sex with many women….
http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2016/11/15/greater-jakarta-gatot-brajamusti-named-abuse-suspect.html

Growing up with The Family: inside Anne Hamilton-Byrne’s sinister cult Cruel and charismatic, Anne Hamilton-Byrne was the Australian leader of a doomsday cult who thought she was the Messiah. Abigail Haworth on the woman behind The Family   Abigail Haworth Sunday 20 November 2016
Anne Hamilton-Byrne…leader of The Family, the Australian doomsday cult she founded in the 1960s, she claimed to be Jesus reborn as a woman.
….One of the few female cult leaders in history – and apparently one of the cruellest – Hamilton-Byrne operated in almost total secrecy over two decades. Hidden away in the countryside outside Melbourne, The Family’s motto was “Unseen, unknown, unheard”. The police, acting on information from two child escapees, raided the cult in 1987. It emerged that over the years Hamilton-Byrne had collected 28 children through bogus adoptions and “gifts” from followers, dressing them in identical clothes and bleaching their hair platinum. To keep her eerie brood under her control, they say she subjected them to vicious beatings, starvation and emotional torture.
“Anne wasn’t giving love,” says Parker, whose young son was one of Hamilton-Byrne’s victims. “She was offering it and then taking it back. She broke people’s spirit.”
The glamorous guru used the same tactic on her adult followers, handpicking them from Melbourne’s wealthy professional elite with promises of spiritual fulfilment in the 1960s and 70s when new age seeking was all the rage. “I’ve been waiting for you,” she’d say on first meeting a potential recruit. “You are special
Preaching a mishmash of Christianity, eastern mysticism and apocalyptic prophecy, she allegedly forced followers, including children, to take dangerous amounts of LSD and other hallucinogenics as part of prolonged initiation rites. Once they had submitted, she’d dictate every aspect of their lives. “There was only one rule: do absolutely everything she said,” says David Whitaker, a former child survivor. “That included what to think, what to wear, what to eat, who to marry, who not to marry. Total obedience.”    The children were initiated with ‘huge, relentless doses of LSD’ in trips that lasted for days…
By the time of the police raid, Hamilton-Byrne had broken up families, destroyed marriages and left her child victims with lifelong psychological scars. A number of followers tried to kill themselves, either during their time in The Family or after they escaped. Tragically, some succeeded. The cult leader amassed an estimated AU$150m (£90m) through property, land and cash donated by followers. She hid overseas and was eventually arrested in 1993 on relatively minor fraud charges….
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/nov/20/growing-up-with-the-family-inside-anne-hamilton-byrnes-sinister-cult

Azealia Banks Cleans Blood-Stained Room She’s Used to Practice Witchcraft for 3 Years: ‘Real Witches Do Real Things’  By Dave Quinn December 30, 2016
Just when one thought 2016 couldn’t provide any more surprises, here comes Azealia Banks.
The 25-year-old rapper posted a series of disturbing videos to Instagram on Friday, where she admitted to practicing “three years worth of brujería” (the Spanish word for witchcraft) before beginning to clean the room she’s been using for the apparent animal sacrifices.
Panning the camera around what looks to be a closet in Banks’ apartment, the room is a troubling sight to see. Its walls are covered with what appeared to be hardened stains of blood — while a mix of feathers and a black substance cover the room’s wood-floors. It also looks like at least two dead chickens can be seen on the floor.
“The amount of crap that’s about to come off my floor right now guys? Oh my God,” she explains in the video. “You know I got to scrape all this s— up. I’ve got my sandblaster, and my goggles — it’s about to go down.”  “Real witches do real things,” she added.
Banks, who is wearing protective goggles and a bandana in her hair, then begins to clean the floors with a sander…. http://people.com/music/azealia-banks-witchcraft-brujeria-peta-statement/

Member of ‘Cult-like’ Church Sentenced  Owen Sound  by Kevin Bernard Tuesday, December 20, 2016
No jail time for man convicted of assault in connection with a Chatsworth Area Church.
Two men have now been convicted and sentenced in connection with an investigation into a “cult” like church in Chatsworth.
61 year old Judson King of Oakville plead guilty last Friday (Dec. 16th) to 3 counts of assault and was sentenced to a 12 month conditional sentence (no jail time),  3 years probation, a 10 year weapons ban and he must submit a DNA sample….
King, and his younger brother Fred were arrested in April of 2014 following a 16 month OPP probe into allegations of physical and sexual assault by 7 victims, involving a leader of the Church of Jesus Christ restored.
57 year old Fred King who was known as the “Prophet”, plead guilty earlier this year to 9 counts of assault and was sentenced in September to 18 months in jail, and 2 years probation….
The OPP investigation started, after an Owen Sound woman went public with her allegations of physical and sexual abuse at the hands of “cult” leaders.
Carol Christie wrote her story in a book, “Property: The True Story of a Polygamous Church Wife”,  which was released in mid-2013.
The former church member alleged abuse and polygamy at a compound on Concession 2 south of Owen Sound, near Chatsworth.
She told Bayshore Broadcasting news how she spent nearly 40 years in what essentially was a CULT and she suffered physical and emotional abuse at the hands of the Prophet.
http://www.bayshorebroadcasting.ca/news_item.php?NewsID=89811

How Political Mind Control Works – Joe Brewer Jul 21, 2016
We were told the internet age would harken in a rebirth of democracy—or the beginnings of it in places where it has never been. That the power elites of old would be overwhelmed by the self-organizing masses. That the real power of centralized hierarchies would be supplanted by the new power of emergent social movements.
And now we have millions of people in the United States rallying against the system by supporting Donald Trump. We see that a choice architecture in our elections is structured to give us one of two pro-corporate candidates who serve the status quo logic of exploitative economic policies that funnel wealth from those very same self-organized masses into the bank accounts of themselves and their crony peers….
One of the most important discoveries to come out of this large body of research (spanning fields like psychology, linguistics, evolutionary studies, neuroscience, anthropology, and computer science) is that the human mind is physically structured to conceal the meaning-making process from conscious awareness.
We look out into the world and it “just makes sense” to us. Our brains wire themselves across our lives to recognize familiar patterns—filling them in where they only partially appear….
But we don’t have conscious access to the photons hitting our retinas to deliver this visual information into our skulls. We aren’t able to feel the part of our visual cortex that detects edges and boundaries or fills in colors as this information is sent on to other parts of our brains to signify emotional significance and produce “gestalt” meanings that arise fully formed in our awareness.
This is how our minds work. We construct illusions of meaning that we then act out as meaningful things while we go about our lives. We experience the world as richly structured and meaningful because our brains and bodies evolved across millions of years to become the cultural animals we are today….
I want to make the provocative claim that the illusion of power IS a kind of real power. This is how Donald Trump as a symbolic icon (or Hillary Clinton as a cultural meme) can wield so much influence to preserve status quo arrangements of economic and political power.
Throughout the history of our species, our ancestors spent 99% 0f their time living in small hunter-gatherer societies made up of a few dozen to a few hundred people. They were almost entirely egalitarian because everyone knew everyone else and would-be dictators were kept in place through dynamic processes of shaming, incentivizing, expelling, or in rare cases executing them….
But all of this changed with the rise of large, hierarchical city states after the birth of agriculture some 10,000 years ago. As division of labor arose across the growing populations in these settlements, it became possible for a power elite to take advantage of social divisions to divide the population against itself and stay in power.
Flash forward to the time when technological advances enable us to produce vastly complicated systems of education and communication. Where we have video and audio information merged into television content and a literate population capable of thinking and acting through rich “downloads” of culture telling them who to trust, where their people came from, what is good and just about the tribe they belong to, and how other tribes are the root cause of their woes.
This kind of environment “selects” for the use of propaganda to divide and conquer a population. It enables the stories about reality to float across the minds of many people (who then repeat them reflexively each time the relevant prompts are present in their environments). This creates a situation where the illusion of power is one of the most powerful tools for social control available….
And the same power elites (who stand for corporate control of our own government as a tool of foreign exploitation of governments overseas) remain in power. They control us by letting our illusions run rampant.
Said another way, it is us who are collectively in control. But our blindness to the roles we perform unconsciously keep us from seeing it. We are the invisible energy—the life force of politics?—?that these elites use to become powerful.
I say enough is enough. It is time for more awakenings….
https://medium.com/@joe_brewer/the-illusion-of-power-is-a-kind-of-real-power-d0ba1dce8e9f#.2t203pkqo

Lawsuit filed in Ooltewah sexual assault claims Hamilton County Schools covered up abuse
December 17th, 2016 by Kendi A. Rainwater
A second federal lawsuit filed in connection with the Ooltewah High School rape case claims Hamilton County Schools and some of its employees allowed a culture of bullying and sexual assault to fester at the school, leaving students unprotected.
The lawsuit was filed Friday by the family of an Ooltewah High School basketball player who was sexually assaulted by older players during the team’s trip to Gatlinburg, Tenn., nearly a year ago.
Before the trip, the victim referred to as “Roe” in court papers endured months of harassment and beatings by teammates, which was a ritual on the team, according to the lawsuit.
“OHS has lionized sports and athletes to the point of protecting athletes who engage in misconduct,” the lawsuit states.
For years coaches and administrators ignored the abuse or covered it up, enabling the older players to attack four freshmen with pool cues during the Gatlinburg trip, the lawsuit claims.
One boy was injured so severely he had to undergo emergency surgery. That boy filed a federal lawsuit in September against the school board and former Ooltewah High School employees…..
http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/local/story/2016/dec/17/lawsuit-filed-ooltewah-sexual-assault-claims/403490/

Investigating Hope: The complaint  By Ryan Santistevan | December 1, 2016 Investigating Hope: The Series
This article is one in a series of investigative pieces about a complaint filed with ASU regarding accusations against on-campus ministry Hope Church.
Four categories of conduct violations, six categories of unhealthy practices, eight categories of emotional and psychological abuse, 44 indicators of religious cult- activity, 14 contributors and 123 pages — this makes up a complaint submitted to ASU detailing the alleged damage inflicted by on-campus ministry Hope Church.
However, before things went sour, each author on the complaint was united by one thing: The welcoming embrace of a church that sought to offer them a home and a family.
The complaint has also been turned into a blog, called Hope Church ASU Cult Investigation, run by a former member of Hope Church.
Multiple former Hope Church members said the organization makes students uncomfortable, creates unhealthy relational dynamics and provides an emotionally and psychologically damaging environment for its members. Members said the church uses “brainwashing” techniques and provides a distorted interpretation of Biblical doctrine to advance the interests of the church.
In the complaint, the term “cult” was used 34 times.
Dr. Felix Salomon of the Phoenix Institute of Psychotherapy said a cult can be defined in many ways, but he defines it as a closed, totalistic subgroup or subculture that demands complete allegiance and the giving up of individuality and autonomy on the account of its members.
Kolton Nelder is one of the 14 former members who wrote a testimony in the collaborative complaint. He and other members said they faced constant pressure to follow the direction of Hope Church leadership without question. Not going with the flow was frowned upon….
http://www.statepress.com/article/2016/12/spcampus-asu-hope-christian-church-religious-cult-controversy-1-complaint

The Impact of Child Abuse Can Last a Lifetime Dec. 19, 2016 By Steven Reinberg HealthDay Reporter MONDAY, Dec. 19, 2016 (HealthDay News) — The traumatic effects of child abuse and neglect can persist for decades, often with substantial economic consequences, researchers report.
“We found associations of child neglect and abuse with adult socioeconomic circumstances at age 50,” said lead author Snehal Pinto Pereira.  Physical, social or emotional abuse in childhood was linked at midlife to a greater risk of time off from work due to long-term sickness, said Pereira, a research associate at University College London’s Institute of Child Health. Mistreatment in childhood also lowered the odds of owning a home, she said.  “The associations for child neglect were linked to their poor reading and mathematics skills in adolescence, which in turn could hamper their ability to find work and progress in the job market,” she explained. The research is only observational and doesn’t establish a direct cause-and-effect relationship. Still, it appears that children who suffered more than one type of abuse were most likely to be thwarted economically….
The study was published online Dec. 19 in the journal Pediatrics.
Child abuse and neglect are major public health problems in the United States, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In 2014, around 700,000 American kids suffered from abuse or neglect. More than 1,500 died from it, the CDC said. Toddlers younger than 3 account for more than one-quarter of victims, the agency said. One study estimated that 1 in 4 children experiences some form of child abuse or neglect in their lifetime, according to the CDC….
http://health.usnews.com/health-care/articles/2016-12-19/the-impact-of-child-abuse-can-last-a-lifetime

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