Here are a few recent stories related to the kinds of issues we cover on the web site. They'll represent a small percentage of the information available to us, the public, as we fight to provide meaningful recovery services and help for those who've suffered child abuse. We'll add to and update this page regularly. We'll also present stories about the criminals and criminal acts that impact our communities all across the nation. The few we place on this page are the tip of the iceberg, and we ask you to check your local newspapers and law enforcement sites. Stay aware. Every extra set of "eyes and ears" makes a big difference.

August 2011 - Recent Crime News - News from other times August - Week 4

MJ Goyings ~~~~~~~~ Many, many thanks to our very own "MJ" for providing us the majority of the daily research that appears on the LACP and NAASCA web sites. Ms. Goyings is a Registered Nurse and lives in Ohio.

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Download a PDF version of this document.

Child Sexual Abuse UPDATED - March 2011 Child sexual abuse has been reported up to 80,000 times a year, but the number of unreported instances is far greater, because the children are afraid to tell anyone what has happened, and the legal procedure for validating an episode is difficult. The problem should be identified, the abuse stopped, and the child should receive professional help. The long-term emotional and psychological damage of sexual abuse can be devastating to the child.

Child sexual abuse can take place within the family, by a parent, step-parent, sibling or other relative; or outside the home, for example, by a friend, neighbor, child care person, teacher, or stranger. When sexual abuse has occurred, a child can develop a variety of distressing feelings, thoughts and behaviors.

No child is psychologically prepared to cope with repeated sexual stimulation. Even a two or three year old, who cannot know the sexual activity is wrong, will develop problems resulting from the inability to cope with the overstimulation.

The child of five or older who knows and cares for the abuser becomes trapped between affection or loyalty for the person, and the sense that the sexual activities are terribly wrong. If the child tries to break away from the sexual relationship, the abuser may threaten the child with violence or loss of love. When sexual abuse occurs within the family, the child may fear the anger, jealousy or shame of other family members, or be afraid the family will break up if the secret is told.

A child who is the victim of prolonged sexual abuse usually develops low self-esteem, a feeling of worthlessness and an abnormal or distorted view of sex. The child may become withdrawn and mistrustful of adults, and can become suicidal.

Some children who have been sexually abused have difficulty relating to others except on sexual terms. Some sexually abused children become child abusers or prostitutes, or have other serious problems when they reach adulthood.

Often there are no obvious external signs of child sexual abuse. Some signs can only be detected on physical exam by a physician.

Sexually abused children may also develop the following:

Child sexual abusers can make the child extremely fearful of telling, and only when a special effort has helped the child to feel safe, can the child talk freely. If a child says that he or she has been molested, parents should try to remain calm and reassure the child that what happened was not their fault. Parents should seek a medical examination and psychiatric consultation.

Parents can prevent or lessen the chance of sexual abuse by:

Sexually abused children and their families need immediate professional evaluation and treatment. Child and adolescent psychiatrists can help abused children regain a sense of self-esteem, cope with feelings of guilt about the abuse, and begin the process of overcoming the trauma. Such treatment can help reduce the risk that the child will develop serious problems as an adult.

For additional information see Facts for Families:

See also: Your Child (1998 Harper Collins) / Your Adolescent (1999 Harper Collins)

Click here to order Your Child from Harper Collins
Click here to order Your Adolescent from Harper Collins

Excerpts from Your Child on Sexual Abuse

August 27, 2011

Along with appalling evidence of Warren Jeffs' apparent repeated sexual abuse of children, the trial of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints leader revealed new areas that need to be addressed by state and federal lawmakers.

Perhaps most frustrating has been the revelation that case workers have not been on the Yearning for Zion Ranch in Schleicher County in two years. That's despite the removal of more than 400 children from the ranch in 2008 in perhaps the largest child custody case in U.S. history.

Texas Department of Family and Protective Services officials say state District Judge Barbara Walther terminated their involvement when the last case was resolved. Attorneys who represented several of the children disagree, saying the law permits Child Protective Services to visit any time they want.

If the law is unclear, the Legislature needs to remedy the problem. While the FLDS case obviously is extreme, it seems reasonable that the law would permit home visits in situations where there's a question about whether the conditions that led to the initial investigation have improved.

Three and a half years after the raid that garnered international attention, we don't know whether children still are being abused. How can that be?

Under normal circumstances, children could be observed in public school settings. But FLDS children are taught at the ranch and rarely are seen away from it. That raises other questions about whether that type of home schooling warrants some sort of state oversight to ensure that basic instruction standards are being met.

Another glaring disappointment is the lack of federal-state cooperation in dealing with FLDS issues. Since a promising meeting between federal authorities and officials from Arizona, Nevada and Utah in June 2008, nothing has occurred, primarily because of lack of interest shown in Washington.

The FLDS has become expert in manipulating a dearth of multistate cooperation and laws to deal with people who cross state lines, and the situation is unlikely to change significantly just because Jeffs is in prison.

The feds need to get in the game, and that seemed clear to everyone after congressional hearings in the summer of 2008. But if Congress and the administration don't follow through, there at least should be a standing task force composed of officials from Texas and the other states with a large FLDS presence to share information and lay plans for dealing with the problems they all experience.

Finally, the Jeffs trial raised questions about whether — and if not, why — women in the FLDS who made their young daughters available for marriage to adult men should be prosecuted.

The most shocking evidence was an audio recording of Jeffs assaulting a 12-year-old girl, and not only were women present, they apparently participated. No new law is needed to hold accountable those who engage in such behavior.

While there may be an inclination to regard FLDS women as victims more deserving of sympathy than retribution, it's just as true that they typically have been directly involved in the child abuse and that prosecuting them may be necessary to send a strong message.

http://www.gosanangelo.com/news/2011/aug/27/our-opinion-jeffs-trial-reveals-gaps-in-response/?print=1

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Washington

Survivor of human trafficking and sex slavery on set for film shooting in Kirkland

A Russian mob had taken her identity long ago inside a dark warehouse.

But now, on a sunny afternoon, the Korean-American walked past the long white trailers that lined Seventh Street in the Norkirk neighborhood, stopping at her dressing room marked with her name - Chong Kim.

A film crew assistant invited Kim to the set - the inside of a Kirkland house - and asked her if she needed a chair. Another worker brought her a coke. Cast members, hair dressers and makeup artists introduced themselves.

Kim felt like a celebrity.

But amidst the glitz and glam of filmmaking, Kim was confronted with a stark past.

The movie, "Eden," that was partially being filmed in Kirkland Thursday was inspired by her true story as a survivor of domestic human trafficking and sexual slavery. The film stars actress Jamie Chung and actor Beau Bridges.

Eden Productions was on its 13 th day of shooting the feature film, which is being shot entirely in Washington State.

Kim came to Kirkland from Texas to meet the producers for the first time on Thursday.

"It's just so unreal," she said as she watched actors clad in shiny black pants and netted shirts disappear inside the house to play their parts.

"Rolling!" A crew member called.

Kim was 19 when she was trafficked and forced into sexual slavery in 1995. She was studying law enforcement at a technical college in Dallas when she met a soldier at a bar.

"He pretended to be my boyfriend," she recalled.

The man kidnapped Kim, chained her up in the basement of an abandoned house in Oklahoma and destroyed all of her documents. He threatened her and said if she left she would lose her rights and be treated like an illegal alien.

After escaping, a woman from an escort service offered to help. She told Kim she would get paid to go on dates with men. Once she accepted the job, she was raped and sold to who she refers to as her "master" in Las Vegas.

"My traffickers were organized criminals," she explained. "I lived in a distribution warehouse - it wasn't like a brothel or a massage parlor."

In the warehouse, woman and young girls slept on old mats.

"It was kind of like a human market," Kim said, noting women were forced to service up to 35 men per day. "The girls were tapped on the shoulder to be marketed out. Sometimes the girls came back - sometimes they didn't."

During her two-plus years of sexual exploitation, she was transported with about 50 other girls from warehouse to warehouse throughout the country.

Time did not exist.

"When you are being held, there is no clock, no light," she said. "There were times when it would feel like it was forever."

She eventually became a madam and escaped in 1997. "I had to rank up in order to get out," she said, noting her frustration with people asking her why she didn't escape sooner. "It's not like I wanted to be a madam - I did it with the intent to get out."

It took several years for Kim to realize what happened to her. She was interning as a legal advocate for a law firm in 2003 when she heard a Russian woman talk about her human trafficking experience.

"I didn't think of it as human trafficking. In the 90s, we didn't hear of trafficking," said Kim. When she heard the woman's story "I said, 'oh my gosh - she's telling my story.'"

Kim started to speak out about her experience. That is when Seattle native Rick Philips saw a newspaper article and contacted her in 2005. With Kim's help via email, Philips wrote and completed the script four years later.

Colin Plank, who is co-producing the movie with Jacob Mosler - both Seattle natives - said most of the film crew are local. Director Megan Griffith is also from Seattle.

He noted the film is funded in part by a non-profit organization, Washington Filmworks, which supports the state's film industry. Eden Productions is shooting the film in-state for 25 days. Earlier in the week, the company filmed outside footage in Ellensburg and on Friday they moved to Lynwood to shoot a scene at a warehouse.

Plank said Kirkland was a good location for the film because it is quiet and also has ample street parking.

Location manager Dave Drummond arranged to have an interior scene filmed inside Will Diefenbach's Kirkland home. A Microsoft Corp. employee, Diefenbach's home was also the site of a Microsoft commercial, Plank said.

"The part of the film we are shooting today is set in the mid-90s, so his home fits in that genre easily," he said on Thursday.

Kim said she was amazed that the film is coming to fruition and was overwhelmed with the crew's support.

Now 36, she lives in Texas with her husband and son. She has visited universities around the country to speak about her personal story. She has also worked with law enforcement and political officials with the goal of strengthening the advocacy system that reaches out to victims of trafficking.

Officials estimate between 14,500-17,500 people - mostly women and children - are trafficked in the U.S. each year.

Washington was the first state to criminalize human trafficking in 2003. King County prosecuted the state's first human trafficking case in 2009 involving a West Seattle street gang, according to news reports.

But Kim still sees cases where human trafficking victims are tried as prostitutes.

"Many people don't know how to save these girls if they don't know what to look for," she said.

Aside from public speaking, Kim is also a children's advocate for Hoby. There are times, she says, when she has to "get away from the whole trafficking topic."

But when she's confronted with a tough situation, she still calls on her past.

"I hear kids all the time say, 'I'll never amount to anything,' and I tell them, 'If I've been through this, then you can get through this too.'"

More information

For more information about the film, visit www.theedenfilm.com/. To learn more about Chong Kim, visit www.chongkim.net.

Ireland

OPINION

This emphasis on 'trafficking' feeds sex-slavery fantasy

Illegal immigrants who work as prostitutes are not victims but active participants, says Eilis O'Hanlon

'The nature of prostitution remains the same. It's vulnerable and damaged women, often with addiction or childhood abuse issues, degrading themselves for some temporary financial fix. Whether they're from Roscommon or Romania is beside the point'

SOMETIMES it seems as if Ruhama, the non-governmental organisation which helps women involved in prostitution, won't be happy until every kerb-crawler in Ireland is behind bars. "The sex trade is a multi-million euro industry fuelled by their demand," as chief executive Sarah Benson put it last week on the publication of the agency's annual report. "A positive step in overcoming this growth in the sex trade would be to stem demand by criminalising the buyers through legislative change."

Fair enough. If that's what they think will do the trick, go right ahead. Knock yourselves out, girls. Go get 'em. Personally, I don't think that criminalising users will have any more effect than criminalising women, which generally just wastes police and court time; or indeed any of the countless other ruses which have been tried down the centuries.

There's little point going over the evidence again, because it's now become a matter of faith for campaigners rather than reason; but even in Sweden, often lauded for its law criminalising clients, no man who wanted to hire a prostitute has ever been forced to give up the ghost and spend a quiet evening in reading the Bible instead.

Even if the Garda Commissioner did start a rolling policy of targeting the purchasers of sex rather than the suppliers, as he recently indicated he might, prostitution would merely adapt to new circumstances. It always has. The law of supply and demand is too clever and robust to wither in the face of the gimmicky efforts of well-meaning angels of virtue.

Nevertheless, if that's what they genuinely believe, they have every right to campaign for a change in the law. What's becoming increasingly frustrating is the obsession of Ruhama and other organisations with so-called "sex trafficking" as an argument for arresting men who visit prostitutes. Now not only are they filthy beasts who deserve everything they get for using money to lure women into their beds, they're also being held responsible for the alleged growth in human trafficking.

Ruhama's annual report says last year that it helped 80 women who had been trafficked to Ireland. But while organisations may deal with women from many countries who come here to take part in the booming sex trade, whether they're what people generally think of when they picture the victims of sex trafficking is another matter altogether.

Foreign women working as prostitutes in Ireland have been "trafficked" in the loose sense that they may have paid criminals to bring them here, but they're not so much the victims of the trade as active participants in it -- and they certainly weren't "forced into the sex trade", as one newspaper report shrilly described it last week.

No one denies that it's a horrible and demeaning business in which to be involved; that it can be terrifying and dangerous, and that the women who do it have messed-up lives and desperately need help. But it's still essentially an illegal immigration issue rather than the media fantasy of modern day slavery -- a fact borne out by the official evidence.

In the UK, a six-month crackdown involving every single police force in England which raided thousands of brothels failed to find a single victim of trafficking in its truest sense -- an embarrassing result which the police and UK Home Office desperately tried to hush up.

What the operation did find was lots of young foreign women working as prostitutes, many of whom, ironically, were subsequently charged with various immigration and drugs offences.

Same here. Before graduating, every garda now has to complete training to help identity the victims of trafficking; thousands have received additional specialist instruction. As in the UK, there have been some high-profile operations, resulting in a small number of prosecutions for various activities defined legislatively as human trafficking. Nonetheless, as Jim Cusack reported in these pages last week, the overwhelming majority of those prosecuted for brothel keeping in Ireland are still young foreign women working independently or in small groups with one another.

Ireland's Anti Human Trafficking Unit also published a report in 2009 which took a sample of 60 possible or potential victims of trafficking in the period covered and found that only one claimed -- and the word 'claimed' is important because there is no further verification provided -- to have been forced to come to Ireland against their will. In the 2010 report, that number rose to two. Most came at the behest of families and friends, to work illegally, or to study. That they ended up in the sex trade isn't at issue, but to turn around and call that "sex trafficking" is melodramatic to say the least.

Failing to differentiate between forced prostitution and illegal immigration for the purposes of prostitution simply contributes to a moral panic about a practice which, despite many horror stories, remains in the realm of anecdote rather than evidence.

It's only right that women picked up in garda operations are treated with compassion -- though the fact that women who claim to have been trafficked get special treatment in the immigration system, and extra help subsequently in finding work and accommodation, does complicate matters somewhat, giving them an incentive to falsely claim to have been trafficked -- but they've not been rescued from slavery. They've been caught after coming to this country deliberately to break the law. Sent home, many of them come back again at the first opportunity, for the same reason that Irish women become prostitutes too, because there's money to be made.

The nature of prostitution remains the same. It's vulnerable and damaged women, often with addiction or childhood abuse issues, degrading themselves for some temporary financial fix. Whether they're from Roscommon or Romania is beside the point.

The underlying objection to prostitution among campaigners is probably best highlighted by the words of "Amy", an anonymous escort whose testimony forms part of Ruhama's annual report: "Men and women will never be equal as long as prostitution exists."

If that's so, then men and women will never be equal, because prostitution will always be around. Where you have something that someone else wants, and they're willing to pay for it, there can't not be a market. Thankfully, I refuse to allow my daughters' path to equality to be forever barred because a small number of women sell their bodies. To make that the only marker of a society is not only ridiculous, it's perverse.

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/this-emphasis-on-trafficking-feeds-sexslavery-fantasy-2859814.html?service=Print

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Dept of Homeland Security

Secretary Napolitano Announces "Stop.Think.Connect."
Campaign Partnership with Boys & Girls Clubs of America

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Stop.Think.Connect.™ campaign today announced a new partnership with Boys & Girls Clubs of America, which serves nearly four million young people from across the country.

The campaign will provide Boys & Girls Club with tools and resources to help raise awareness among teens, young adults and parents about the importance of cybersecurity and online safety.

"In today's world, Americans can use technology to engage with communities around the globe," said Secretary Napolitano. "Now, more than ever, it is important that all Americans learn to protect themselves online and do their part to ensure that cyberspace is a safe and secure environment for all Internet users."

"Technology skills and access to the Internet are critical in closing the academic achievement gap and leveling the playing field for all children," said Boys & Girls Clubs of America President and CEO Roxanne Spillett. "Equally as important is ensuring online safety by preventing abuse of technology where bullying and other negative behaviors live on indefinitely."

The partnership with Boys & Girls Clubs of America builds on the Stop.Think.Connect.™ campaign's ongoing outreach to youth. Last month, DHS announced a partnership with Drug Abuse Resistance Education (D.A.R.E.) America. In June, the campaign announced winners of the Stop.Think.Connect.™ PSA Challenge, which called on individuals of all ages, non-profit organizations and corporations to create and submit short video PSAs encouraging their fellow citizens to be safe and secure online.

Stop.Think.Connect.™ is a national public awareness effort to guide the nation to a higher level of Internet safety and security by educating and empowering the American public to be more vigilant about practicing safe online habits. The campaign encourages Americans to view Internet safety and security as a shared responsibility at home, in the workplace, and in our communities.

For more than 100 years, Boys & Girls Clubs of America has changed lives, saved lives, and created great futures. The organization's partnership with Stop.Think.Connect.™ adds a cyber education element to the services it provides through guidance programs emphasizing academic success, character and leadership development, community service, and healthy lifestyles.

For additional information on the Stop.Think.Connect.™ Campaign and on the Boys & Girls Clubs of America please click here:

http://www.dhs.gov/ynews/releases/20110826-napolitano-stop-think-connect-boys-girls-club.shtm

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Delaware

Bradley gets 14 life terms

Former Lewes-area pediatrician receives maximum possible sentence for crimes

GEORGETOWN -- Declaring that one chapter of the Earl B. Bradley child rape "nightmare" has concluded, a judge Friday sentenced the notorious pedophile pediatrician to 14 life sentences plus 164 years in prison.

"You will serve the remaining years of your life in jail," Superior Court Judge William C. Carpenter Jr. told the former Lewes-area pediatrician in handing down the maximum possible sentence for raping or sexually abusing 86 children in attacks that he recorded and cataloged. Bradley, 58, is not eligible for probation, parole or early release.

The "vast majority" of Bradley's victims were under 3 years old, lead prosecutor Paula J. Ryan stressed in urging the harshest possible sentence for the once-respected physician whose crimes sent shock waves throughout Delaware and beyond and ranked him among history's worst pedophiles.

"Earl Bradley committed unspeakable acts upon those who could not speak for themselves," Ryan told the judge. "He deliberately manipulated the parents of these children. He manipulated those who worked with him, and he repeatedly and intentionally -- without remorse or hesitation -- attacked and sexually assaulted toddlers and nonverbal children.

"To make indescribable and horrific matters even worse, he videotaped these incidents for his own perverse pleasure, endlessly editing and copying, permanently memorializing his attacks on these children for his own twisted collection," she said.

The bearded, bespectacled Bradley, who has been held in solitary confinement at the state prison near Smyrna since his December 2009 arrest, mouthed a quiet "No" when Carpenter asked if he wanted to speak on his behalf. A gray prison jumpsuit covering his skinny frame, Bradley said nothing else in court during the 15-minute proceeding, only nodding when his lead public defender, Dean C. Johnson, briefly conferred with him. After sentencing, Bradley was led away in handcuffs.

The sentence was broken down this way: one life term for each of 14 first-degree rape counts, 124 years for five counts of sexual exploitation of a child and 40 years for five counts of second-degree assault. Almost all victims -- some of whom still cannot be identified -- were patients, Ryan said.

http://www.delawareonline.com/article/20110827/NEWS01/108270328/Bradley-gets-14-life-terms?odyssey=mod%7Cnewswell%7Ctext%7CHome%7Cs

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Arizona

Buckeye man sentenced for molesting granddaughter

PHOENIX (AP) — A Buckeye man has been sentenced to 347½ years in prison for molesting his young granddaughter.

Maricopa County prosecutors said Friday that James Stark was given seven consecutive life prison terms followed by an additional 102½ years.

The 58-year-old Stark was convicted last month on 18 of 19 counts. The charges included sexual conduct with a minor, molestation of a child, sexual abuse, kidnapping, furnishing obscene or harmful items to minors, public sexual indecency to a minor and indecent exposure.

Authorities say Stark was arrested in January 2010 after his 8-year-old granddaughter told a family member about the abuse.

Buckeye police say Stark had been living in the same home as the victim's family since November 2008. They say Stark allegedly molested the girl for more than a year.

http://www.chron.com/news/article/Buckeye-man-sentenced-for-molesting-granddaughter-2143426.php

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Iraq

Female Trafficking Soars in Iraq

by Rebecca Murray

BAGHDAD, Aug 27, 2011 (IPS)

Rania was 16 years old when officials raped her during Saddam Hussein's 1991 crackdown in Iraq's Shia south. "My bothers were sentenced to death, and the price to stop this was to offer my body," she says.

Cast out for bringing ‘shame' to her family, Rania ran away to Baghdad and soon fell into living and working in Baghdad's red light district.

Prostitution and sex trafficking are epidemic in Iraq, where the violence of military occupation and sectarian strife have smashed national institutions, impoverished the population and torn apart families and neighbourhoods. Over 100,000 civilians have been killed and an estimated 4.4 million Iraqis displaced since 2003.

"Wars and conflicts, wherever they are fought, invariably usher in sickeningly high level of violence against women and girls," Amnesty International states.

Rania worked her way up as a sex trafficker's deputy, collecting money from clients. "If I had four girls, and about 200 clients a day - it could be about 50 clients for each one of them," she explains.

Sex costs about 100 dollars a session now, Rania says. Many virgin teenage girls are sold for around 5,000 dollars, and trafficked to popular destinations like northern Iraq, Syria and the United Arab Emirates. Non-virgins are about half that price.

Girls who run away to escape domestic violence or forced marriage are the most vulnerable prey for men working for pimps in bus stations and taxi stands. Some girls are also sold into marriages by family relatives, only to be handed over to trafficking rings.

Most of Iraq's sex traffickers are predominantly female, running squalid brothels in neighbourhoods like the decrepit Al-Battaween district in central Baghdad.

Six years ago, a raid by U.S. troops on Rania's brothel brought her nefarious career to an abrupt end. The prostitutes were charged along with everyone else for abetting terrorism.

Imprisonment changed Rania's life. While she served time in Baghdad's Al-Kadimiyah lock-up – where more than half the female inmates serve time for prostitution – a local women's support group befriended her. Today she works for them as an undercover researcher, drawing on her years of experience and connections to infiltrate brothels throughout Iraq.

"I deal with all these pimps and sex traffickers," Rania says, covered in black, with black, lacquered fingernails and gold bracelets. "I don't tell them I'm an activist, I tell them I am a sex trafficker. This is the only way for me to get information. If they discover that I'm an activist I get killed."

In one harrowing experience, Rania and two other girls visited a house in Baghdad's Al-Jihad district, where girls as young as 16 were held to cater exclusively to the U.S. military. The brothel's owner told Rania that an Iraqi interpreter employed by the Americans served as the go-between, transporting girls to and from the U.S. airport base.

Rania's co-workers covertly took photos of the captive teenagers with their mobile phones, but were caught. "One girl went crazy," Rania recalls. "She accused us of spying. I don't know how we escaped," she exclaims. "We had to run away - barefoot!"

Before the Gulf War in 1991, Iraq enjoyed the highest female literacy rate across the Middle East, and more Iraqi women were employed in skilled professions, like medicine and education, than in any other country in the region.

Twenty years later Iraqi women experience a very different reality. Sharia law increasing dominates everyday life, with issues like marriage, divorce and honour crimes implemented outside of the court system, and adherence to state law.

"Many factors combined to promote the rise of sex trafficking and prostitution in the area," a Norwegian Church Aid report said last year.

"The US-led war and the chaos it has generated; the growing insecurity and lawlessness; corruption of authorities; the upsurge in religious extremism; economic hardship; marriage pressures; gender based violence and recurrent discrimination suffered by women; kidnappings of girls and women; the impunity of perpetrators of crimes, especially those against women; and the development of new technologies associated with the globalisation of the sex industry."

The International Organisation of Migration (IOM) estimates 800,000 humans are trafficked across borders annually, but statistics within Iraq are very difficult to pin down.

Although the Iraqi constitution deems trafficking illegal, there are no criminal laws that effectively prosecute offenders. Perversely, it is often the victims of trafficking and prostitution that are punished.

IOM is currently working with an inter-ministerial panel to lobby for a new reading of the revised counter-trafficking law, which has been stalled by the government since 2009.

"We have reports about trafficking both inside and out of Iraq," says senior deputy minister, Judge Asghar Al-Musawi, at the Ministry of Migration and Displacement.

"However, I admit that Iraqi government institutions are not mature enough to deal with this topic yet, as the departments are still in their growing phase."

Human Rights Watch (HRW) says the government has done little to combat the issue. "This is a phenomenon that wasn't prevalent in 2003," says HRW researcher, Samer Muscati.

"We don't have specific statistics. This is the first part to tackle the problem; we need to know how significant and widespread the problem is. This is something the government hasn't been doing. It hasn't monitored or cracked down on traffickers, and because of that there is this black hole in terms of information."

Zeina, 18, is an example of an invisible statistic. According to the local Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), she was 13 when her grandfather sold her to a sex trafficker in Dubai for 6,000 dollars. She performed only oral sex with customers until a wealthy man paid 4,000 dollars to take her virginity for one night.

After four years of prostitution, Zeina finally escaped the United Arab Emirates and returned back to her parents in Baghdad. She approached the authorities and took her grandfather to court. However, Zeina has since disappeared. OWFI has learned she was sold again, this time by her mother to a sex trafficker in Erbil.

OWFI director Yanar Mohammed says her office has been threatened for their advocacy against the lucrative trafficking industry, especially reporting on an infamous brothel owner in Al-Battaween district known as Emam.

"In each house there are almost 45 women and it is such a chaotic scene where women get treated like a cheap meat market," describes Mohammed. "You step into the house and see women being exploited sexually, even not behind closed doors. So the woman who runs these houses makes an incredible income, and has a crew around her to protect what she does."

Emam is said to enjoy close ties with the Interior Ministry, and has never had one of her four houses shut down. Despite OWFI's expose, her operations are unaffected.

Mohammed sighs. "Iraq has a whole generation of women who are in their teens now, whose bodies have been turned into battlefields from criminal ideologies."

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=104911

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California

Owner put naked yogurt-store employee inside box, D.A. says

A Monterey Park yogurt shop owner is facing kidnapping and attempted murder charges for abducting a female employee and keeping her inside a box in a soundproof room, prosecutors said Friday.

Robert Yachen Lee alleged lured the employee to a storage room above O My Yogurt on south Atlantic Boulevard early Wednesday, knocked her unconscious and then -- after removing her clothing and dressing her in an adult diaper -- placed her in a box, authorities said.

The victim told authorities that when she came to, she was bound with tape and had a collar around her neck.

Prosecutors believe Lee planned the kidnapping, because the storage room had recently been soundproofed.

The woman was able to free herself and escape to a nearby optometrist's office, where she alerted police.

Lee appeared briefly in Alhambra Superior Court on Friday afternoon. Bail was set at $10 million.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/08/yogurt-store-owner-kidnaps-female-worker-and-keeps-her-up-in-soundproof-room.html

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Pennsylvania

Push to expand definition of child abuse

August 24, 2011

Pennsylvania lawmakers and child advocates are debating a proposal to expand the definition of child abuse.

Doctors are required by law to report child abuse. But right now, when an infant is born with illicit drugs in her system, it's not clear whether that exposure rises to the level of abuse.

Cumberland County State Senator Pat Vance authored a bill that would hold moms responsible if a newborn tests positive for a controlled substance, unless the mother was prescribed the drug lawfully.

Crawford County District Attorney Francis Schultz, who leads the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association, says the proposal is laudable, but lawmakers and law enforcement are still weighing its consequences.

"We want to make sure that it's not going to be a piece of legislation that's going to maybe have a negative impact on pregnant women," he said. "We would never want a situation where mothers are not seeking the proper prenatal care because they've taken some drugs, and they are afraid of what's going to happen to them."

Jenna Mehnert leads the Pennsylvania Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers. She says the issue is complicated because social workers are concerned both with the safety of children and about helping adults manage substance abuse problems.

Mehnert says the Commonwealth has a higher standard, compared to other states, when it comes to proving child abuse.

"There are cases that you or I, the average person, would look at and say, 'That's child abuse.' And, in fact, in many other states it would be considered child abuse in Pennsylvania," she said.

Schultz and Mehnert are testifying Friday, Aug. 26 during a Pennsylvania senate committee hearing on the issue.

http://www.newsworks.org/index.php/local/item/25419-child-abuse-in-pa

In the “Questions and Answers About Sex” section of the HHS website's “Quick Guide to Healthy Living,” (illustration at left) children and infants are described as “sexual beings.” The site indicates:

According to the site, children engage in a variety of sexual behaviors:

Parents should only be concerned about masturbation if a child seems preoccupied with it to the exclusion of other activities. Victims of sexual abuse sometimes become preoccupied with self-stimulation.

The website goes on to explain that discussions of sex with children should not be avoided:

Age 5? Most children at this age are still attempting to overcome the challenge of tying their shoelaces and recognizing simple but oft-used words like “cat” and “car.”

This is not the first time we have seen a group encourage early introductions to sexuality, however. In 2009, the United Nation's Economic, Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) published a 98-page report that included a curricula for children between the ages of 5 and 18 which encouraged teaching children as young as the age of 5 about masturbation and “gender roles, stereotypes and gender-based violence.”

Fox News reported on the UNESCO report:

In other words, not only should parents encourage sexuality in their children, but should also advocate the use of abortion.

UNESCO later published a report entitled “International Technical Guidance on Sexuality Education,” wherein they wrote, “It is never too early to start talking to children about sexual matters.”

That report also indicates that parents should refrain from teaching children about morality, as there are no right and wrong values, and asks parents to encourage children to “experience genital pleasure” from birth until age 2, and by age 3, to encourage “sex play.”

It also discourages parents from enforcing traditional gender identities and indicates that parents who do so are driven by homophobia. Instead, the report encourages parents not to limit how boys and girls express themselves, even if it involves homosexual behavior.

Similarly, the HHS website asserts that it's just as natural for children to think about sexuality with those in the same sex, as it is with the opposite sex, particularly amongst teenagers:

In response to some of the assertions found on the HHS website, Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow at the conservative Family Research Council contends that the federal government should have no role in addressing the sexuality of children and infants:

Those potential dangers are exacerbated by the efforts of a group of mental health professionals, called “B4U-ACT,” to decriminalize and normalize pedophilia. A statement by the group reads:

The goals of B4U-ACT is to encourage tolerance of pedophiles. One wonders what could happen if Americans began to tolerate pedophiles while simultaneously accepting the position that children are in fact sexual beings.

http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/family/8743-hhs-website-advocates-early-sexualization-of-children

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New Mexico

Church airs list of priests accused of sexual abuse

Nearly 10 years after a worldwide clergy sexual abuse crisis erupted in the Boston Archdiocese, Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley today released a long-awaited roster of 159 archdiocesan clerics who have been accused of sexually abusing children.

But O'Malley's action was immediately criticized by Attorney General Martha Coakley and advocates for clergy abuse victims because it lists only those priests who have already been publicly accused, and omits the names of dozens of accused priests from religious orders and other dioceses, as well as those who left the priesthood before accusations were leveled againt them.

“Those names should be disclosed in the interest of the victims and public safety,” Coakley said. “While today was an important first step, we urge the leaders of the Archdiocese to complete this effort toward transparency and publicly disclose the names of those accused from other orders and those who were already laicized.”

O'Malley compiled his list after reviewing all of the abuse allegations in the files of the archdiocese, some going back as many as 70 years, Church officials said, in his most recent attempt to assure parishioners and the public that the Church is doing all in its power to protect children while assisting survivors of abusive clergy.

“The Archdiocese of Boston's commitment and responsibility is to protect children and to ensure that the tragedy of sexual abuse is never repeated,” O'Malley said in a statement that accompanied a posting of the list on the official website of the archdiocese at 2 p.m. today.

O'Malley said he omitted the names of 91 additional accused archdiocesan priests, most of whom are dead and unable to answer the accusations leveled against them, as well as the names of priests from religious orders and other dioceses who have been accused of abusing children in the Boston area. Church officials said approximately 40 priests from religious orders and other dioceses have been accused of molesting children in the Boston area.

Mitchell Garabedian, an attorney who represents clergy abuse victims, said the omissions are a disservice to victims.

“It's disappointing that Cardinal O'Malley omitted the names of 91 additional accused archdiocesan priests since naming them would allow sexual abuse victims to try and heal and perhaps understand that they were not the only ones abused by a particular priest,” Garabedian said.

Leaders of BishopAccountability.org, an organization that tracks accused priests and publicly posts court records from clergy abuse lawsuits, said they believe that up to 70 priests from religious orders and other dioceses -- not the 40 cited by Church officials -- have been accused of molesting children in the Boston Archdiocese.

“There are many victims of Boston priests who will not find the names of their perpetrators on today's list,” the organization said in a prepared statement. “Their misery and isolation will be deepened by today's disclosure.”

O'Malley's tally of 250 accused clerics from the Boston Archdiocese, which he initially suggested he would air more than two years ago, surpasses previous official estimates. In 2003, former Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly completed a 16-month investigation of abuse in the Church, concluding that 237 priests and 13 additional church employees had been accused of molesting nearly 800 minors. But Reilly's tally included an undetermined number of religous order priests, and he did not release the names of the accused.

O'Malley said the clerics on the list that he released have either been publicly accused, or have been found guilty of molesting minors after Church or civil proceedings, or have been cleared of abuse allegations.

In his statement, O'Malley said he made his decisions about which priests to include on the list after balancing “the critically important need to assure the protection of children” with “the due process rights and reputations of those accused clergy whose cases have not been fully adjudicated,” including those who are not alive and are therefore unable to defend themselves.

O'Malley omitted the names of religious order priests and those from other dioceses, he said, because the Boston Archdiocese does not investigate or resolve allegations against them.

“That is the responsibility of the priest's order or diocese,” O'Malley said, adding that it is the policy of the Boston Archdiocese to inform law enforcement authorities of any accusations of sexual misconduct by a priest from a religious order or another diocese and to bar the priest from ministering here.

Barbara Blaine, president of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, called O'Malley's reasoning, “shameless hairsplitting” that endangers children. “This is about safeguarding innocent kids, comforting wounded adults and exposing unhealty secrecy,” she said. “It's not about which individual Catholic official signs which individual Cathlic predator's paycheck.”

The 159 accused clerics -- 157 priests and two deacons -- on O'Malley's list are posted with a searchable database with additional information that could be useful for victims still seeking to identify their abusers. For instance, the information includes dates of birth, dates of ordination, the dates when a priest may have left the priesthood, as well as the assignment history for each cleric, including postings in other dioceses. It also lists any disciplinary action that may have been taken against accused priests, including dates of conviction and dismissal from the priesthood.

O'Malley said the list would be amended as more allegations of clergy abuse are investigated and settled.

The list does not include photographs, Church officials said, in part because the physical appearance of an accused priest may have changed dramatically over the years, making identification more difficult for a survivor, and in part because photographs might encourage cases of mistaken of identity.

“We asked ourselves, ‘Would this be helpful? Would it be fair?” said the Rev. Richard M. Erikson, the vicar general, or number two official in the archdiocese.

Victims of clergy abuse and their advocates have been anticipating O'Malley's action -- with growing impatience -- since March 2009, when O'Malley released a six-page letter outlining a series of policies designed to make abuse prevention and detection a permanent part of the archdiocesan bureaucracy.

Those policies include training for children and Church employees, and criminal background checks for all priests, deacons, educators, volunteers, and other Church personnel who work with children.

In his 2009 letter, O'Malley suggested that the archdiocese was on the verge of publishing a list of priests accused of abuse, along with information on the status of the accusations they were facing.

“This is a complex issue,” O'Malley wrote at the time. “However, my expectation is that in the very near future we will be in a position to report a revision of present archdiocesan policy on this subject.”

After more than a year passed, the impatience with O'Malley came to head when attorney Mitchell Garabedian, in January, posted a list on his law firm's web site of 117 priests and other church employees who, Garabedian said, were accused of sexual abuse by one or more of his clients.

Church officials, underscoring the complexity of compiling such a list, said that abuse allegations against three of the individuals on Garabedian's list were found to be unsubstantiated.

But Garabedian said today that the Church made financial payments to settle the accusations against all of the priests on his list.

O'Malley said his list includes the names of 159 priests who:

Of the 91 accused priests omitted from O'Malley's list:

Church officials said that 25 priests were cleared of abuse allegation and that some have been returned to active ministry.

To see a boston.com list of the priests named by O'Malley, click here. To go to the archdiocese's website and view a searchable database, click here.

http://www.boston.com/Boston/metrodesk/2011/08/church-airs-list-priests-accused-sexual-abuse/3GspOTdeHCh7962Cx2uxSO/index.html

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New Look at City Lapses in Adoption Abuse Case

More than 30 years ago, a Queens foster mother was investigated and cited for scalding a boy in her care. But despite that finding, the city did nothing in the decades that followed to prevent the woman, Judith Leekin, from carrying out one of the most brazen and disturbing child welfare schemes in recent memory.

The failure of child welfare officials to bar Ms. Leekin from the system after that 1980 episode is one of the most striking revelations in new court reports filed in a Brooklyn lawsuit. Ms. Leekin was arrested in 2007; the authorities determined she had adopted 11 disabled New York foster children using aliases, then moved to Florida, where she subjected them to years of abuse — all the while collecting $1.68 million in subsidies from New York City until 2007.

Ms. Leekin's widely publicized case has been portrayed as a colossal breakdown in New York's adoption system. But court documents are now offering a much fuller picture of the city's repeated lapses in detecting the abuse and fraud.

The 1980 episode, for example, occurred at Ms. Leekin's home on 226th Street in Laurelton, Queens, the reports show. When Ms. Leekin later adopted 11 children under four aliases over an eight-year period, she listed the same address; it was never cross-checked, the reports say.

The documents include a deposition by Ms. Leekin, taken in a Fort Lauderdale prison, in which she suggests a possible motive for her use of false identities: her concern that she would be linked to the 1980 abuse episode.

The documents are part of a 2009 civil rights lawsuit against the city brought in Federal District Court on behalf of 10 of the children (the 11th disappeared while in her care and is presumed dead). The suit refers to the city's child welfare system as “a maze of dysfunctional bureaucracy operating under unconstitutional policies and practices.” It also charges negligence by three private organizations that had city contracts to handle some of the adoptions.

The defendants all deny liability. In court documents, they depict Ms. Leekin as a sophisticated serial criminal whose extraordinary scheme fooled varied professionals and could not have been foreseen or detected, given the practices and capabilities of the time.

Lawyers for the parties all declined to comment on the suit.

But in court papers, defense experts said automated systems to cross-check for information like overlapping addresses were not available or required at the time. Fingerprinting was not mandated until 1999. There was no requirement that Social Security numbers be verified — Ms. Leekin had used false ones — nor was it the practice, the defense experts said.

“Leekin was a bold and accomplished fraudster,” wrote one expert, Gregory D. Meacham, a retired F.B.I. agent who specialized in financial crime and fraud investigations. He noted that Ms. Leekin had also misled banks, mortgage lenders and an insurance company.

Richard P. Barth, dean of the University of Maryland School of Social Work, added: “The cruelty that Leekin inflicted on children in her care was horrific. There is no excuse for this. At the same time, it would be speculative to suggest that her deceptions were readily observable.”

But experts retained by the children's lawyers disagreed.

Mark E. Safarik, a retired supervisory special agent in the F.B.I.'s behavioral analysis unit at Quantico, Va., wrote that Ms. Leekin was anything but a criminal mastermind.

“Leekin used the same Laurelton address for all aliases,” he noted. “Stunningly,” he added, “she did not vary this,” even though she knew that the Laurelton address had surfaced in the 1980 investigation.

Ms. Leekin, 66, pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges in Manhattan in 2008. The following year, she pleaded no contest in Florida to state charges of aggravated abuse of children and of disabled adults.

In a jailhouse deposition in October, she came across as defensive and combative as she admitted hitting children as punishment, the 184-page transcript shows. She acknowledged being the subject of the early abuse report, and conceded she “probably” later used aliases out of concern that the earlier episode would have otherwise surfaced.

But she said that as she began adopting children under aliases — “Anne Marie Williams,” “Cheryl Graham,” “Michelle Wells” and “Eastlyn Giraud” — she was never asked for her passport, birth certificate or any other form of identification.

“Yes, I did some wrong things, sir, but they didn't do their investigation,” she said, adding she had been made “a scapegoat.”

“They had references. Did they check out the references? No,” Ms. Leekin said. “You convicted me. You sentenced me. And now you want to come here to get a deposition from me, for what? The city has to take some kind of responsibility.”

Peg Hess, a former professor of social work at Columbia University retained by the plaintiffs, who has reviewed the confidential foster care and adoption records, wrote in her report that throughout the process, Ms. Leekin offered conflicting or false responses when asked about her employment history, income, education, assets and religion.

Mr. Safarik, the other plaintiff's expert, wrote: “Had the defendants simply verified the self-reported information, her lies would have been uncovered.”

Ms. Leekin's beating of and starving the children, her caging them and restraining them with plastic ties and handcuffs, has been detailed in earlier filings and press accounts. But Dr. Hess's report, which also cites children's depositions, offers perhaps the most in-depth look at the horrors inside the Leekin homes in New York and Florida.

Before he was taken in by Ms. Leekin, one child had been learning his letters and colors and how to count to 10; he spoke happily of his friends, teachers and toys, Dr. Hess wrote.

But on his first night with Ms. Leekin in July 1994, she hit his hand with a stick because he picked up a meatball with his fingers, Dr. Hess said. From that day forward, he was beaten with sticks and hangers, and forced to stand for hours at a time with clothes over his head to cover his eyes. He was also removed from school in the second grade.

He has since been found to have post-traumatic stress disorder; and today, at 21, he remains fragile, one lawyer, Theodore Babbitt, wrote to the court: “He wakes up thinking about Judith Leekin and he goes to bed thinking about her.”

Other children adopted by Ms. Leekin also remain in precarious states, Mr. Babbitt wrote. He said one 24-year-old is homeless; a 19-year-old was arrested for domestic violence; a 24-year-old is on round-the-clock suicide watch.

The reports also offer additional details on how Ms. Leekin submitted forged documents to New York to continue receiving subsidies for the children, who had physical or developmental disabilities, including autism and retardation.

From 1995 through July 2007, for example, “Cheryl Graham” was issued $338,989 in checks for the care of three children, including a boy nicknamed Moo, who had Down syndrome, according to Mr. Meacham's report.

Ms. Leekin attached to one 2004 submission a fabricated report card showing Moo was in the ninth grade at a Florida high school, where he was receiving B's and C's.

But Moo was not attending high school, Dr. Hess noted. The authorities have said he disappeared around 1999, when he was about 11. Some of the children reported last seeing him very sick: coughing, suffering from diarrhea and crying. One child recalled that Ms. Leekin wrapped Moo in a blanket and said she was taking him to the doctor. Others recalled he was taken to the hospital. One remembered Moo placed in a “big purple plastic box.” None ever saw him again.

The authorities have investigated his disappearance, but have never charged anyone.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/26/nyregion/new-look-at-city-lapses-in-adoption-abuse-case.html?_r=1&pagewanted=print

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Australia

Crimes cloaked in euphemisms

by Chris Goddard and Neerosh Mudaly

CHILD abuse creates the darkest of shadows. The shadows enveloping the brief life of Felicia (The Weekend Australian, August 20) are perhaps the blackest imaginable.

According to Michael McKenna and Rory Callinan's reports Felicia, aged just 15, had been repeatedly sexually assaulted but not protected. In an extraordinary, almost unbelievable sequence of events, she was briefly removed from home but then returned to be assaulted again. Even after being admitted to hospital with marks around her neck, she was not protected from the crimes.

It is reported that in desperation, as she was about to be assaulted again, she secretly used her mobile phone to record the crime. Imagine being so desperate to be believed that you record yourself being assaulted and are prepared to allow others to hear the resultant degradation.

Even then, after what must have been the most humiliating of experiences, she was not made safe. The shadows must have appeared even blacker. She hanged herself on the veranda a day after her 16th birthday and just weeks after her friend Zoe had killed herself. She left a long suicide letter.

There is a great deal we must learn from Felicia's tragedy, if we have the courage to peer into the darkness. Her brief tortured life reminds us that, for some, being forced to live with abuse is worse than death.

This reflects a large theme from our research with children and young people who had been abused. They spoke of their helplessness, their inability to escape. Some described becoming hostages to the perpetrator, controlled by a terrorist, of having to submit in order to survive.

In spite of what we know of adult survivors of Stockholm syndrome, for example, how difficult it is for them even when free to confront the perpetrators, we fail to acknowledge the pain child victims of abuse suffer. Felicia did what many adults cannot do. She reported the crimes repeatedly. Even then she was not heard.

Crimes against children derail development, black out all hope. Yet many of our responses serve to minimise the seriousness, disguise the offences, and thus undermine the victim. Offenders committing crimes in circumstances similar to Felicia's might be charged with "maintaining a sexual relationship with a child". Yet if the perpetrator repeatedly raped his wife, it would be called rape.

Language that rewrites the crime, hiding the horror, may be a major contributor to the short sentences serious sex offenders receive. Only last month, the Queensland Attorney-General expressed his concern about such minimalist sentencing to the Sentencing Advisory Council.

The law is but one of the serial offenders. Psychiatry and psychology are littered with archeological remains of Greek words. Someone who rapes children may be called a pedophile, originally meaning "a lover of children". Countless hours are wasted, millions of dollars distributed to expert witnesses, while courts debate whether the child rapist is, was, or may temporarily be a pedophile. This from a discipline that, until recently, accused children of lying, fantasising, even being seductive.

The latest word of Greek origin to dominate child protection and minimise the damage done, is trauma, as in "children traumatised by abuse". Trauma means wound, injury. Toddlers may suffer injury when they fall over. As Felicia's short life shows, in many cases child abuse destroys childhoods, blows worlds apart. Of course, the meanings of words change. Unfortunately for children all the changes are aimed at reducing the seriousness of the problem. There are words of Greek origin that more accurately describe the destruction caused by child abuse. Catastrophe is one.

Weasel words also overwhelm child protection, where parents' rights to another chance to be a parent repeatedly take precedence over a child's only chance of childhood. The talk is about vulnerable families not vulnerable children. Children are not assaulted but "at risk". Such words corrupt. Try to find the words assault, violence and crime in child protection documents. Perhaps this is why, in Victoria, it was reported by the Ombudsman that children were recorded as having been seen when workers had merely telephoned the parents and why, in the Northern Territory, the Ombudsman reported "dummy" assessments on children.

There is much more to learn from Felicia's terrible death. Her sad story should remind us that not all the child abuse fatalities involve brutal murders of babies and toddlers, as with Dean Shillingsworth in NSW, the recent case of Hayley in Victoria, or Baby Peter in Britain.

Many child abuse deaths occur later in life. Many young people and adults who commit suicide were the victims of abuse as children. These suicides are not limited to women. There are calls for an inquiry into the Catholic Church in Victoria after Robert Best was sentenced to 14 years and nine months' jail for the abuse of 11 boys. At least 25 victims in the Ballarat area are reported to have killed themselves.

Another poignant theme is apparent in the opening paragraph of Felicia's suicide letter: "Dear everyone, I'm sorry it had to be like this. If there is any chance I can be [forgiven] I will much appreciate it." As our research has shown, children take responsibility for everything that happens, blaming themselves for the rapes and violence, for the problems that result. Felicia actually apologised to everyone for the trouble she had caused.

We need to apologise to her. We failed to protect Felicia when she was alive. We must not fail to respect her in death. Felicia's letter shines some light into the appalling darkness. What she wrote, what she suffered, the mistakes that were made, should not be buried with her.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/crimes-cloaked-in-euphemisms/story-e6frg6zo-1226121529565

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Sexual anarchy: The Kinsey legacy

by Judith A. Reisman, Ph.D. and Mary E. McAlister, Esq.

On August 17, 2011, more than 50 activists attended a conference for “minor-attracted adults,” i.e., pedophiles, which sought to eliminate the “stigma” attached to pedophilia and to redefine pedophilia as a normal “sexual orientation.” The United States Department of Justice has determined that 64 percent of forcible sodomy victims are boys under the age of 12 and that 58,200 children were kidnapped by non-family members in 1999.

So-called “experts” in the field of human sexuality claim that children are sexual not only from birth, but even in the womb and are willing participants in sexual acts with adults.

Children are encouraged to experiment with sex early and often and to engage in sex with members of the same-sex as well as the opposite sex. Sexually transmitted diseases among teenagers are at epidemic proportions, and new and sometimes fatal strands of diseases are being reported. More than 50,000 teens have contracted HIV which has advanced to full blown AIDS and by 1992 more than 7,000 boys and 1,500 girls have died from HIV/AIDS.

How did we get here? How do we stop the madness before we lose an entire generation?

The question of how we got here can be answered by two words: Alfred Kinsey. Even 55 years after his death, Dr. Alfred C. Kinsey continues to profoundly affect American culture. Two of his most ardent supporters, Dr. Carol Vance, Columbia University anthropologist and lesbian activist, and Dr. John Money, an “out” pedophile advocate and pioneer of transgender surgery at Johns Hopkins, have cogently summed up Dr. Kinsey's legacy – a legacy they consider sexual “progress” but is in reality sexual anarchy.

Speaking at a 1998 Kinsey symposium of fellow sexologists at San Francisco State University, Dr. Vance said, “Biography is the battleground.”[1] Should Kinsey be discredited, she warned, “200 years of sexual progress can be undone.”

Dr. Vance's statements echo comments made in 1981 by Dr. Money at the 5th World Congress of Sexology in Israel. They also agreed that the information contained in Table 34, below, and the other data chronicling Kinsey's and his team's widespread child abuse, described in detail in Kinsey's 1948 study on male sexuality, would be the undoing of the “Pre and Post Kinsey eras” globally and in the USA.

In fact, Dr. John Bancroft, director of the Kinsey Institute said at the 1998 conference, which commemorated the 50th anniversary of Kinsey's studies, that he “prayed” that a British television program, “Secret History: Kinsey Paedophiles,” would never be shown in the United States because the public would not understand the “science” involved in Kinsey's publication of tables 30-34. He understood that should those tables be widely publicized in the United States, then the whole field of human sexuality and human sex education would be destroyed.

This field of human sexuality and human sex education and 200 years of “sexual progress” that these elite “scientists” were so worried would be destroyed is better described as sexual anarchy. This sexual anarchy that has given these scientists and their followers prestige, money, credibility and control over the deconstruction of the Judeo-Christian civil society was crafted by Dr. Kinsey.

A gall-wasp zoologist at Indiana University from 1920 to his death in 1956, Dr. Kinsey is most famous for his earth-shaking books, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948)[2] and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953),[3] funded by Indiana University and the Rockefeller Foundation. Dr. Kinsey said that his mission was to eliminate the sexually “repressive” legal and behavioral legacy of Judeo Christianity. He claimed that this “repressive” sexual legacy was responsible for socio-sexual ills like divorce, rape, illegitimacy, venereal disease, juvenile delinquency, promiscuity, homosexuality, adultery, and child sexual abuse.

Furthermore, he argued that if we Americans would admit that we really were engaged in widespread licentious conduct, instead of hypocritically denying it, then these socio-sexual ills would be dramatically reduced.

In large measure, Dr. Kinsey's mission has been accomplished, mostly posthumously, by his legion of true believers–elitists who have systematically brainwashed their fellow intellectual elites to adopt Kinsey's pan-sexual secular worldview and jettison the Judeo Christian worldview upon which this country was founded and flourished.

The result of Dr. Kinsey's mission has been totally antithetical to the utopia he predicted. Instead of reducing the socio-sexual ills that he claimed were rampant in pre-Kinsey America, the implementation of the Kinsey worldview has increased extant global sexual trauma while ushering in a host of new ills that are objectively defined as sexual anarchy. Like a cancer spreading throughout the body, sexual anarchy has spread throughout the fabric of society, affecting every aspect of American life and every man, woman and child.

According to the Rockefeller-funded Kinsey “study,” his “science” proved that humans had all along been copulating like insects or monkeys but systematically and hypocritically lying about their conduct. Adults claimed they were virgins, or maritally faithful, but, according to Kinsey, the truth was that most people were promiscuous and the widespread promiscuity had done no harm to the civil society.

Therefore, Kinsey said, all of the laws restraining sexual behavior–the laws that had favored and protected women, children and the family for generations –were simply old-fashioned leftovers from an uninformed and hypocritical era. Such sex laws were no longer valid in a “sexually enlightened and honest era.”

Enter “Kinsey's pamphleteer,” Hugh Hefner and his Playboy magazine. At Kinsey's urging, the country's laws were gutted to resemble the free love, free life style Kinsey alleged Americans were living all along, and could finally live out with a free and open spirit–no more lies or pretense. Thus the 1955 American Law Institute Model Penal Code jettisoned the “common law” sexual standards that were based upon Biblical authority/precedent for “scientific law” based on Kinsey's allegedly “objective data.”

The ALI recommended laws trivializing rape and allowing fornication, cohabitation, sodomy and adultery. Shortly thereafter, fornication, cohabitation and adultery were decriminalized so that they would become common, normal, and harmless, as Kinsey said they had been all along. In 1957, the United States Department of Defense used Kinsey and his team to conclude that homosexuals do not pose a security risk.

The ALI also recommended changing the definition of obscenity, which the Supreme Court did in 1960. That same year Kinsey's claim that 10% to 37% of the male population is at least sometimes homosexual was used to promote “gay rights” in elite professions, e.g., medicine, psychiatry, social work, education, etc.

In 1961, Illinois became the first state to legalize heterosexual sodomy. In 1962 Ralph Slovenko wrote in the Vanderbilt Law Review that four or five year olds are provocateurs: “Even at the age of four or five, this seductiveness may be so powerful as to overwhelm the adult into committing the offense.”

That same year, the United States Supreme Court declared prayer in public schools unconstitutional[4] and the following year declared that Bible reading in public schools was unconstitutional.[5] The Judeo-Christian worldview was expunged from the classroom. Schools could no longer teach that fornication, adultery or cohabitation were illegal, nor could the health teachers imply that sex should be confined to marriage because that would reflect a “religious,” thus allegedly a non-scientific, worldview.

The only avenue remaining for the teaching of human reproduction was the “scientific,” i.e., Kinseyan, secular worldview.

By 1968 over 51,000 sex professionals had been trained by the unaccredited IASHS (Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality) to teach Kinseyan sexuality in schools and medical schools and to design school sex education curricula. In 1975, the IASHS began to accredit sex educators in “safe sex” through the Ph.D. level.

Contraception became a necessity in the face of the radical changes in the sexual landscape, and so it was legalized in 1965.[6]

As evidence of lack of “consent” became the only criteria for sex crimes, alleged rape victims were commonly challenged as “liking” the rough sex and as consenting to the sexual activity. Prostitution and rape were increasingly referred to as “victimless crimes” in the courts and in the media.

Thus, the right to have sex for ‘fun' and profit became the justification for a sex industry, inaugurated by Kinsey's publicist, Hugh Hefner, that includes child and adult pornography, exhibitionism, prostitution and strip clubs, to name a few. That industry has grown to a multi-billion dollar market, giving its purveyors the resources and clout to negotiate grants to sexology research groups and organizations that create the sex education curricula for the nation's schools, as well as access to lobbyists and, arguably, to state and federal legislators to continue to change the law to favor the sex industry's interests.

Playboy, et. al also have funded Planned Parenthood, Sex Information & Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), the Kinsey Institute, and other “sexology” institutions. In 1967, Playboy provided the first of many grants to the ACLU to support drug use, pornography, abortion, homosexuality, school sex [mis]education and the elimination or reduction of sex offender penalties. Beginning in 1970, Playboy officially granted funds to NORML, the National Organization for the Repeal of Marijuana Laws.

The year 1969 brought about significant events related to the systematic effort to normalize homosexuality as championed by Kinsey 21 years earlier. The Gay Liberation Front was formed at the New York Alternative University. The American Sociological Association officially stated that homosexuality is normal, citing Kinsey's “research.” The National Institutes of Mental Health Task Force on Homosexuality recommended legalizing private consensual homosexual acts (sodomy) citing to Kinsey's “data.”[7] In 1972, the NIMH Task Force, led by Kinseyan disciples, urged that homosexuality be taught as a normal sexual variation in the nation's schools.

“No fault” divorce was ushered in by California in 1970. By 1985, no fault divorce was the law in 49 states. This triggered a massive increase in the divorce rate and the impovertization of women and children, increasing the need for welfare and abortion, with the latter legalized in 1973.[8]

The absence of fathers in the home decreased the economic, social, emotional and spiritual home life, which triggered epidemic child sexual abuse, increased promiscuity, increased criminality–including rape and prostitution–increased venereal diseases and sterility in young women. With no father in the home, children were significantly more vulnerable to molestation by older children, which was redefined as “harmless” peer sex play by Kinsey. This “harmless” sex play led to increased rates of venereal disease, promiscuity, homosexual acting out and suicide.

These disorders then opened the door to additional, more virulent forms of mandated sex [mis]education couched as “pride” in one's sexual “orientation,” anti-bullying, AIDS prevention and more instruction in “safe sex,” including mutual masturbation, oral and anal sodomy and viewing pornography.

By 1981 Dr. Mary Calderone, SIECUS president and past medical director of Planned Parenthood, took Kinsey one step further, asserting that children are sexual in the womb (Kinsey said children were sexual from birth).

Calderone announced that awareness of childhood sexuality was a primary goal of her organization. This set the “scientific” standard for distributing condoms to children nationwide. Therapeutic interventions were instituted to aid the now increasingly traumatized youth. Pharmocological intervention also increased, including mandated Hepatitis B vaccines for infants and HPV vaccines for elementary age children as STD “protections,” both of which were advocated in a 1977 “Child Rights” pedophile manifesto.

Hundreds of pages could be written on these issues and the additional fallout from Kinsey's successful promiscuity propaganda that plummeted Reagan's shining City on a Hill into a state of sexual anarchy.

We must focus now on how we stop the madness – not by ignoring the problem or by giving up in despair. God is on our side, just as He was on the side of those who founded this country. God used 56 God-fearing men to stand up to the largest imperial force in the free world and birth this great nation. He can use us to stand up against the current state of sexual anarchy, return this nation to our Judeo-Christian roots and rescue our children from the enemy who seeks to steal, kill and dstroy. As beneficiaries of God's miraculous creation of these United States we cannot do anything less. Kinsey and his disciples at the Kinsey Institute have had more than 60 years to re-shape American culture. With Dr. Reisman's decades of research we have the weapons to gain the upper hand, and we must band together to create the Judeo-Christian answer to the Kinsey Institute. We have the backing of the God of the universe. We can and must win this battle.

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/sexual-anarchy-the-kinsey-legacy/

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Is Dr. Phil complicit in child abuse?

The show had solicited the videotape with physical discipline after rejecting an earlier submission that had Beagley merely yelling at her child.

The show had solicited the videotape with physical discipline after rejecting an earlier submission that had Beagley merely yelling at her child.

Municipal prosecutor Cynthia Franklin said after the verdict yesterday that the videotaping -- for the purpose of gaining a spot on national television -- was in fact the child abuse committed by Beagley.

But Franklin declined comment on whether the show's producers have any culpability for inciting child abuse.

Whatever the legal analysis on that might be, some people around the country are looking askance at the show's MO.

Last November, the show included video of Beagley putting hot sauce in the mouth of her 7-year-old son and forcing him to take a cold shower.

On Tuesday, Beagley was convicted of misdemeanor child abuse.

But a spokesman for the Dr. Phil show declined to comment on the program's role in the incident, referring CBS 11 to a statement it issued earlier this year:

"When dealing with family dynamics, we routinely accept home videos or ask guests to videotape naturally occurring behaviors and interactions, in order to gain insight into what is happening.

"We were shocked by what we saw, and called for the immediate halting of this behavior and also referred, at the show's expense, both mother and child for evaluation and treatment with appropriate professionals."

But some observers are not buying it.

One of them is Eric Deggans, a media critic for the St. Petersburg Times and National Public Radio.

"Is the show sort of urging people to damage themselves even more just so they can get on television, and then if they actually do get on television, are viewers being presented with a scenario that is faked or forced or untrue? And I think those are the two ethical problems you run into, the places where the show crosses an ethical line."

And Jim Hmurovich, the president of Chicago-based Prevent Child Abuse America goes even further in spreading the blame -- to the corporate sponsors of Dr. Phil and ultimately to the country.

"Why would people want to see a show like that where a child is basically hurt? I think it's an issue of both ethics -- which i'm not an ethicist and I'm not the best person in the world to address that -- but one of common sense. I think people should be asking themselves, 'why do I even want to watch a show like that?' "

Beagley has been convicted, but the question is how many others are culpable.

http://www.ktva.com/news/local/Is-Dr-Phil-complicit-in-child-abuse-128358598.html

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Utah

by Bob Mims

The Salt Lake Tribune

A Mormon bishop is to appear in court next week to face accusations that he deliberately chose not to report child sexual abuse involving a member of his congregation.

Gordon Moon, who also serves as a member of Duchesne County's school board, was summoned to appear before 8th District Judge Edwin Peterson on Sept. 1. Moon is charged with one third-degree felony count of tampering with a witness, and one class B misdemeanor count of failure to report suspected child abuse.

Contacted at his home Wednesday, Moon declined to discuss specifics of the charges against him. "All I can say is that I have faith in the justice system to see this through," he said.

The charges against Moon, 43, reportedly stem from a late July meeting with a teenage member of his congregation. During the meeting, the girl allegedly revealed that she had been sexually assaulted by a teenage boy and Moon advised her not to report the assault to law enforcement.

Duchesne County Sheriff Travis Mitchell and Chief Deputy Dave Boren were out of the office Wednesday and unavailable for interviews, a secretary said. Sheriff's Detective Dan Bruso, who investigated the case, did not immediately return requests for comment.

Bruso was quoted earlier this week in the Uintah Basin Standard as saying that when the girl told her parents of Moon's counsel, they finally reported the incident to law enforcement.

When confronted by police, Moon said he did not believe the girl's disclosure needed to be reported and that the matter could be handled within the church, according to Bruso.

Scott Trotter, spokesman for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said Wednesday that he could not confirm reports that Moon's legal representation in the case was being handled by the church.

"I'm still waiting for clarification on Bishop Moon's legal representation and what it all means," Trotter said.

Moon declined to discuss arrangements for his legal representation but did say he was receiving unspecified assistance from the church. "We're still trying to figure things out," he said.

Earlier, the church had issued this statement when news of the allegations against Moon surfaced:

"The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has zero tolerance for abuse of any kind and is extremely proactive in its efforts to protect children and heal victims from this societal plague. Bishops are instructed on how to report abuse and to follow applicable law."

Moon could face up to five years in prison if convicted of the felony charge, and up to six months in jail if convicted of the misdemeanor.

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/52448399-78/moon-church-abuse-report.html.csp

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Pedophile ex-priest faces court date

Baker, who has served more than five years of a 10-year prison sentence for his 2007 conviction, was scheduled to be released Aug. 18. The petition, filed the same day with L.A. County Mental Health Court, means he will continue to be held while a judge reviews the case, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Tracy Watson.

Prosecutors will argue that Baker can be committed under a law that seeks to more stringently keep tabs on sexual offenders and reduce the risk of recidivism, Watson said.

Passed overwhelmingly by voter initiative in 2006, the law mandated evaluations for thousands more sex offenders than in the past to determine whether their conditions warrant hospitalization after criminal sentences have been served.

Lawyers for Baker filed a motion Wednesday to have the petition dismissed. If they are successful, Baker would be released on parole.

If the petition is not dismissed, the former priest will face a jury trial that will determine whether he should be committed for treatment.

Authorities have said that Baker ranks among the Los Angeles Archdiocese's most prolific child molesters.

He allegedly abused more than 20 youngsters in his 26 years as a priest and had confessed his problem to Cardinal Roger M. Mahony in 1986. Instead of alerting police, Mahony, who was then a bishop, sent Baker to a treatment center in New Mexico and later reassigned him to a series of other parishes, where he allegedly victimized other children.

Baker was first charged with more than a dozen crimes against young men in 2002 but the charges were voided by the U.S. Supreme Court. The court ruled that California lacked the power to retroactively extend deadlines to prosecute older crimes, known as statutes of limitations.

The decision wiped out hundreds of potential criminal prosecutions, and left largely to civil lawyers the task of determining the nature and extent of other sexual abuse allegations.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/08/pedophile-ex-priest-faces-court-date.html

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New York

Health Watch: Support group forming for sexual abuse survivors

The group serves as a safe environment to talk to others who have experienced sexual abuse.

All services provided by the advocacy center are free of charge.

The group will begin at the end of September and intakes are currently being scheduled.

For more information visit www.theadvocacycenter.org or to schedule an intake, call Bonni at 277-3203.

http://www.theithacajournal.com/article/20110823/NEWS01/108230348/Health-Watch-Support-group-forming-sexual-abuse-survivors?odyssey=nav%7Chead

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Opinion

New York

Sexual abuse of children is a major problem

Child sexual abuse is an epidemic affecting youth from all backgrounds and every neighborhood in our country. National statistics released by the United States Department of Justice indicate that one out of three girls and one out of five boys will be sexually abused by age 18. Elementary age children are the most vulnerable to this type of abuse. In 68 percent of cases, a family member is responsible for committing the crime. Only 10 percent of victims are abused by a stranger.

Sexual abuse occurs when an individual forces or coerces a child to perform any sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing a visual depiction or engaging in any form of sexual exploitation. It can be very confusing for the child since the perpetrator is most often someone the child knows and trusts. The offender uses his position to manipulate the child and may trick or threaten the child into performing the act he desires. Offenders spend time grooming their victims and others in the community to earn their confidence and ensure self-protection.

While children in our community are educated in school about sexual abuse and encouraged to speak out to prevent and stop it, many victims are left feeling defeated by a system that fails to protect them. Of the 3.3 million child abuse and neglect cases that were reported to a child protection services agency around the nation in 2009, only 22 percent were substantiated. Children under the age of 11 are not deemed capable of being sworn in a criminal court to testify against their abuser. Without physical evidence or a witness, a young child cannot prove the crime was committed because the testimony of the perpetrator cannot be refuted by the child.

Children who are victims of sexual abuse feel sad, depressed, angry, guilty, confused and afraid. If they were abused by a family member, they experience betrayal. Their frustration is compounded if legal and government agencies that are aware of the crime do not bring the abuser to justice and remove the threat of additional abuse in the future. Research shows that children who were sexually abused are 2.5 times more likely to abuse alcohol and 3.8 times more likely to develop a drug addiction. They are 59 percent more likely to be arrested as a juvenile, and 25 percent more likely to experience teen pregnancy. These statistics suggest that child abuse affects each of us, even if we have not personally experienced abuse, due to the profound effect these social problems have on our country.

Many people are unaware of the magnitude of the threat that faces our children every day. As a parent, I was shocked to learn of the alarming rate of child sexual abuse and appalled that our government has not implemented a more effective law to protect our children from maltreatment. If we are unable to provide our sons and daughters with a basic right such as a safe environment, then how can we expect them to prosper and lead this country into the future?

Angela Pike
Canton

http://www.watertowndailytimes.com/article/20110824/OPINION02/708249979/-1/OPINION02

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Washington

Tacoma mayor signs letter urging website to address underage sex trafficking

by Stacey Mulick

August 23, 2011

Tacoma's Marilyn Strickland, along with seven other mayors in Washington, sent a letter this week to an online classified advertising website and requested more stringent measures to curb underage sex trafficking.

"Backpage.com does not employ adequate safeguards to prevent underage sex trafficking," the letter sent Monday to the CEO of Village Voice Media in New York City. Village Voice is the parent company of backpage.com, the Seattle Times reports.

The Seattle Police Department has recovered 22 children since the beginning of 2010 who'd been advertised on backpage.com. Meanwhile, Tacoma police investigators are looking into 16 cases of juvenile prostitution involving 14 people who had ads on the website.

The mayors request the website require in-person verification of any prospective escort advertiser's identification and proof of identity and age for anyone pictured in an escort ad. Right now, someone advertising on the site has to click a box indicating the person featured in the ad is at least 18.

"There is an urgent need to act quickly, as our cities have continued to find advertisements on your site that reflect underage sex trafficking in recent weeks," the letter states.

Other websites require in-person verification. The letter notes that in the past 18 months, Seattle officials have not found any evidence of prostitution of underage girls on sites that require photo ID.

In addition to Strickland, the mayors of Seattle, Moses Lake, Pullman, Shoreline, Bellingham, Spokane and Kennewick signed the letter.

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/usher/110823

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Psychologist draws on experiences in novel about cycle of child abuse

Dan Dylan provides a psychologist's point-of-view on abuse in the psychological thriller "Chameleon"

ORANGE BEACH, Ala. (MMD Newswire) August 23, 2011 - - Inspired by his years as a clinical psychologist, first-time author Dan Dylan writes about the vicious cycle of abuse in the novel, "Chameleon" (ISBN 1439234140). Adults interested in psychology, sociopathy and the cyclical nature of child abuse may find this novel gripping and realistic.

Retired FBI profiler John Foster, Ph.D., now a respected Chicago psychologist, has diagnosed and treated mental disorders throughout his career, but he finds himself seriously challenged by the diagnostic puzzle that is suspected sociopath Eddie Vinson. Foster becomes snared in a lethal game of one-up-manship and must draw on his years of professional training and experience to anticipate Vinson's actions as he consults with law enforcement to bring him to justice without further loss of life. Foster's brief therapeutic contacts with Vinson yield a complex clinical picture, but there is sufficient evidence to indicate that Eddie was a victim of chronic parental neglect and repeated sexual abuse. "Chameleon" chronicles the evolution of child victim to adult sociopath whose actions and distorted views of self and society at large perpetuate the cycle of abuse.

"Incidents of abuse grab headlines and occur every minute of every day," Dylan says. "Neglect and abuse have consequences that impact us all. In the absence of treatment, some abused children can - and do - become abusive or violent adults."

With more than 35 years of practice in psychology, Dylan has witnessed the cycle of abuse firsthand, often spanning multiple generations, and in extreme cases, adult survivors of abuse pass on to their children the trauma of their own victimization. Thus, using fiction as his medium, Dylan shares with the reader one psychologist's perspective of child abuse and its ramifications.

"Chameleon" is available for sale online at Amazon.com and other channels. It is also available in e-book form.

About the Author:

Dan Dylan is a pen name for the first-time author of "Chameleon." Dylan is a suburban Chicago native who served four years in the United States Air Force during the Vietnam era. Following an honorable discharge, he enrolled at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, where he earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in psychology. Over the years, Dylan has worked at a state psychiatric hospital and in private practice. He has served as a consultant for numerous state and private agencies and as an expert witness in courts throughout Louisiana. Dylan will soon be retiring to his home on the Alabama Gulf Coast where he will continue writing novels.

MEDIA CONTACT:

Dan Dylan
Email: Dan@DanDylan.com
Phone: (318) 446-8419

REVIEW COPIES AND INTERVIEWS AVAILABLE

http://www.mmdnewswire.com/dan-dylan-psychological-thriller-chameleon-63303.html

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Oregon

Unspeakable cruelty to child; no one spoke up

SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Her grandmother predicted a tragic end for the 5-year-old girl who went by the nickname "Little Andie."

"A long time ago I said, 'I just have a feeling something is going to happen to Little Andie,'<" Marrian Turner told Gresham police on April 13, 2010, the day after Oleander Labier died from starvation and chronic abuse.

Turner wasn't the only member of the family who either saw or strongly suspected what the little brown-eyed girl endured. Other relatives knew the girl's bruises came from regular beatings. Some even said they saw Oleander's father force her to eat her own feces and vomit.

And yet they kept quiet, according to 1,293 pages of records released to The Oregonian on Monday by the state Department of Human Services.

Oregon public records law requires child welfare officials to release files on children who die of abuse or suffer grave harm. The files in this case, mostly transcripts of police interviews, tell the story of a tiny baby taken away from her drug-addicted mother only to die at the hands of her father and his long-time girlfriend.

They also tell a story experts say is not uncommon: People know a child is abused but fail to report it.

The records include a Department of Human Services report prompted by a call to a child abuse hotline from someone outside the family in January 2009. The caller was concerned about Oleander's inability to gain weight.

Born prematurely, Oleander had received nourishment through feeding tubes in her nose and stomach. After the call, a state child welfare worker saw the girl, visited the family's home and talked to her preschool teachers. The allegations were determined to be "unfounded," and the case closed the next month.

Human Services spokesman Gene Evans said Monday that the caseworker saw Oleander in person but didn't talk to her away from her parents.

At the time, caseworkers saw no need to continue to follow the family because there were no signs of physical injuries and doctors were overseeing the child's weight and health issues, he added.

Oleander's parents took her out of her day care shortly after the state investigation was closed.

State child welfare officials did not have contact with the family again until April 2010 after Oleander was dead.

The 5-year-old weighed 28 pounds. An autopsy found scars, scrapes and gouges all over her emaciated body. She had five broken ribs and a leg that had been broken more than once.

Oleander's father, Christopher Andrew Rosillo, 24, has since pleaded guilty to murder by abuse and been sentenced to life in prison.

His longtime girlfriend, Guadalupe Quintero, 24, pleaded guilty to manslaughter and three counts of criminal mistreatment and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Melanie Quintero, Guadalupe Quintero's mother who helped care for Oleander when the couple lived with them, later told police she was afraid to tell authorities what was really going on.

By then, the records indicate Rosillo would routinely take the little girl into a room where he would hit her with his belt and other objects.

Melanie Quintero said that she saw Rosillo shove hot peppers down Oleander's throat and that he forced her to eat her own feces after she'd messed her pants.

Other relatives recounted that Rosillo would order his daughter to kneel in a corner for extended lengths of time. One relative told police he'd seen Rosillo pick Oleander up by the neck with one hand.

A few warned Rosillo he shouldn't be treating his little girl that way.

Gresham police and Multnomah County child abuse investigators have called the case one of the worst they've seen because of the prolonged nature and severity of abuse the girl endured over three years.

But Nathan Vasquez, a Multnomah County deputy district attorney, said it's not "completely uncommon" for families and close friends to keep their knowledge or suspicions to themselves.

"Unfortunately," he said, "with cases like this, it has an extremely tragic consequence for the victim."

Katharine Cahn, a faculty member at Portland State University 's School of Social Work, says people are often afraid to speak out against a bully.

"We talk ourselves out of knowing what we know and seeing what we see because we're frightened," she said.

At one point, according to the records, Rosillo's parents were so concerned that they took the girl into their home for three months.

She gained weight, grew talkative and adored adult attention.

But her dad wanted her back, and the grandparents had no grounds to resist. Rosillo's stepfather, Frank Turner, said she appeared to lose weight after that.

Turner noted that the child always had bruises and other marks.

At one point he reported making an anonymous call to a national child abuse hotline. But child welfare and law enforcement officials said they could not find any evidence of a call.

In late 2007, Turner took pictures of Oleander's bruises and other injuries. He finally gave them to police who were investigating her death.

"He abused that little girl," Melanie Quintero, Guadalupe's mother, later told police. "And I'm so sorry I didn't say anything."

http://www.chron.com/news/article/Unspeakable-cruelty-to-child-no-one-spoke-up-2137725.php

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Oregon

'He strangled her, left her for dead and walked away'

Kaplon found guilty on nine charges, including sex abuse, kidnapping and attempted murder of 3-year-old Yreka girl

The man accused of molesting, kidnapping and strangling a 3-year-old Yreka girl found wandering naked on an icy forest road in 2009 is facing life in prison after being found guilty Monday on all nine charges related to the case by a Siskiyou County jury.

Kody Lee Kaplon, 25, was found guilty of attempted first-degree murder, kidnapping with special circumstances that includes inflicting great bodily harm, two counts of lewd acts on a child, sexual intercourse with a child younger than 10, two counts of oral copulation with a child younger than 10, child abuse and child endangering, said Siskiyou County District Attorney Kirk Andrus.

"He strangled her, left her for dead and walked away," Andrus said, adding Kaplon could be facing between 91 years to life in prison.

Kaplon kidnapped the victim from her parents' home on March 2, 2009, police said. Drunk and high on methamphetamine, the man had left a party at about 3 a.m., only to return to the apartment building at 4:30 a.m. Kaplon then snuck into the little girl's bedroom and molested the 30-pound child, the DA said.

"When she cried out, he grabbed her and ran," Andrus said.

Awakened by her daughter's cries, the child's mother watched in horror as Kaplon drove away in his 1992 Pontiac Grand Am. She then immediately called police, he said.

An Amber Alert was issued in three states as officers from California, Oregon and Nevada scrambled to find the missing girl.

Kaplon, who lived in Hornbrook, a small town along Interstate 5 just south of the Oregon/California state line, drove his victim to a remote area in the mountains west of Yreka. After his vehicle became stuck on the muddy trails, Kaplon strangled the little girl to unconsciousness, Andrus said.

Kaplon then hiked to the home of an acquaintance, said he'd overturned his car and needed a lift home. Once home, Kaplon called police about the Amber Alert and denied any involvement with the missing child, Andrus said.

Kaplon was still on the telephone with authorities when police surrounded his home. Kaplon stepped outside and was taken into custody, he said.

Andrus said the break came when Kaplon mentioned the man who'd given him a ride back to town. It was a key tip that helped saved the child, he added.

Police raced to the area, and with the help of local residents, pinpointed their search, said Yreka Police Chief Brian Bowles.

Three adult miners and one juvenile searched the Hawkinsville area, a remote area 15 miles northwest of Yreka. Maneuvering their vehicle over treacherous roads, the miners found Kaplon's Pontiac and searched the trunk for her body. Then they continued to search on foot, he said.

"They followed her little, bare footsteps up a hill," Andrus said. "She was shaking, shivering and naked except for her little wet shirt."

The miner who found the little girl offered emotional trial testimony about discovering the terrified, mud-covered child hiding behind a tiny bush. There were cougar tracks near her footprints, said Bowles.

"We're talking big mountain lion tracks, back and forth in the area," he said.

Her rescuers scooped her up and drove back down the forest roads until they crossed paths with a California Highway Patrol officer. He took the child to Fairchild Medical Center in Yreka, Andrus said.

Tucked into a blanket and curled into a fetal position, the preschooler gave investigators a detailed account of the abuse and the attack, Andrus and Bowles said.

"She said (Kaplon) told her, 'This is your new home,' as he was burying her. She managed to dig herself out," Bowles said.

Three years later, the now 6-year-old girl faced down her attacker while testifying at trial.

"He was looking at her, and she looked right back at him," Bowles said. "We're all just grateful she is alive. This could have had a very tragic ending."

Kaplon is set to be sentenced on Oct. 13, Bowles said.

"He is most likely never going to see a parole board, let alone freedom," Andrus said.

http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110824/NEWS/108240320

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Day-care operator gets 3 years in prison for molesting teen

McClelland pleaded no contest on Aug. 2 to two felony counts of committing a lewd act on a child under 14. In exchange for her plea, two additional counts of committing a lewd act on a child were dismissed.

Detectives arrested McClelland in December after they found her and the boy, who had just turned 13, having sex in a van parked near the Santa Monica Freeway and La Brea Avenue. Police responded to the location after neighbors reported suspicious activity in the vehicle.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/08/south-la-day-care-center-operator-gets-3-years-in-prison-for-molesting-teen.html

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California (see UPDATE below)

Mother suspected of throwing baby from garage was 'calm, stoic,' police say

The 7-month-old boy is in critical condition at UC Irvine Medical Center. His mother, Sonia Hermosillo, has been booked on one count of attempted murder and is being held in Orange County Jail.

by Scott Gold and Abby Sewell, Los Angeles Times

August 24, 2011

When a patrol officer pulled over the tan SUV on Monday night in the city of Orange, there was an empty child's seat in the back. The driver, a mother of three named Sonia Hermosillo, was cooperative and polite.

"Calm. Stoic. No emotion," said Orange police Sgt. Dan Adams.

Her mood was striking, authorities said, considering that hours earlier, Hermosillo had allegedly done the unthinkable — dropped her son over the side of a hospital parking garage.

The 7-month-old boy, Noe Medina Jr., who was dropped from the fourth story and landed on a concrete walkway near an ambulance pad, remained in extremely critical condition Tuesday at UC Irvine Medical Center.

Hermosillo, 31, was booked at Orange County Jail in Santa Ana on one count of attempted murder and was being held without bail. She was confined alone in her cell and was undergoing a psychiatric evaluation, county officials said.

Pockets of Orange, meanwhile, were beset with questions and sadness — particularly at Children's Hospital of Orange County, where the incident occurred.

The hospital, at South Main Street and La Veta Avenue, is one of the nation's busiest and best-known children's hospitals. Inside the parking garage Tuesday, pride in the facility was evident; cars were plastered with CHOC bumper stickers and one car's license plate read RN4NICU — driven by a nurse, presumably, from the neonatal intensive-care unit.

But a few feet away, yellow crime-scene tape had been placed in front of the light-blue railing on the side of the garage where the boy was dropped.

"As an organization dedicated to its mission to nurture, advance and protect the health and well-being of children, CHOC is deeply saddened," the hospital said in a statement.

Hermosillo appears to have picked the garage randomly, police said; they said it does not appear that the baby had ever been a patient at the facility.

According to Adams, at least two people, including a doctor at the hospital, called 911 at 6:20 p.m. Monday to report that a baby had either fallen or been dropped from the side of the garage. After paramedics whisked the baby away, police investigators scoured the garage and then looked at its surveillance video.

The video showed a 2000 Chevrolet Blazer, driven by a woman, pulling out of the garage minutes after the incident. Officers traced the plates to La Habra, then called the police department there to report their findings. La Habra investigators revealed that a short time earlier, they had received a report from Hermosillo's husband that she and their son were missing.

With the investigation focused on Hermosillo, officers throughout the region were asked to keep an eye out for the Blazer. At 10:15 p.m., an officer pulled the car over — on Main Street, directly in front of the Children's Hospital.

Police said they believe they know Hermosillo's motive, but they declined to reveal it. Hermosillo was not believed to have been involved in a domestic dispute or a custody battle, police said.

"We are sure that this act was done on purpose," Adams said.

One former neighbor said the baby may have suffered from some kind of birth defect, and photos of the boy show him wearing some type of helmet. Police said that the baby was not wearing a helmet at the time of the incident and that they are not focusing on any sort of birth abnormality.

No one was home Tuesday afternoon at the apartment on Idaho Street in La Habra where the family lived. Neighbors who lived in the complex, a family-friendly place surrounding a courtyard landscaped with trees and shrubs, said the family had lived there for two months. They had two little girls as well as the boy, and Hermosillo stayed home with the children, they said.

"You would never hear them yelling or arguing," said Teresita Alcala, 18, the apartment manager's daughter.

Alcala said she believed the Hermosillo and her husband, Noe Medina, were immigrants; authorities said it appears that Hermosillo was in the United States illegally.

Residents of the apartment complex said police officers had been at the family's apartment before. Alcala said they came periodically to check on Hermosillo because of her history of mental illness. Medina told the Orange County Register that his wife had been hospitalized for postpartum depression in June, was taking medication and wasn't allowed to be alone with their son.

Sonia Herrera, 40, who lived downstairs from the family, said she had known Hermosillo for about a year because their children went to school together. She remembered seeing Hermosillo riding bicycles and scooters with her daughters.

"She was very happy when she was pregnant with her baby," Herrera said. "She was a lovely mom with her girls."

But Herrera and Alcala said they had noticed a change in Hermosillo in recent weeks. She seemed withdrawn and stayed inside.

"I am so sad," Herrera said. "For me, I think she's sick. I don't think she wanted to hurt" the baby.

Hermosillo's arraignment is scheduled for Wednesday.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-0824-baby-thrown-hospital-2-20110824,0,1853456,print.story

Baby dropped from parking structure dies [Update] Aug. 24, 2011 Prosecutors are charging a La Habra woman with murder after she allegedly dropped her 7-month-old son from the roof of a parking structure. She is now scheduled to be arraigned Thursday on the new charges of murder and child abuse resulting in death, with a maximum sentence of 25 years to life in prison. Noe Medina Jr. died Wednesday morning at about 9:25 a.m., succumbing to the injuries he suffered when he was dropped Monday from the garage of the Children's Hospital of Orange County. His mother, Sonia Hermosillo, 31, of La Habra, had been scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday on charges of attempted murder and child abuse, but the proceeding was continued until Sept. 16 at the request of her public defender. Orange County Superior Court Judge Joe T. Perez set her bail at $1 million. In a brief court appearance Wednesday, Hermosillo wore dark blue jail scrubs. Her curly hair was down and she nodded throughout the proceeding. She was assisted by a Spanish-speaking interpreter. She was being held in a jail medical ward, where she was undergoing psychiatric evaluation, said Jim Amormino, a spokesman for the Orange County Sheriff's Department. She was placed in a solitary cell and was wearing a protective gown to prevent her from harming herself, Amormino said. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/08/baby-dropped-from-parking-structure-dies.html

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They're mainstreaming pedophilia August 22, 2011 Alfred Kinsey's ongoing sexual anarchy campaign has no end in sight. Matt Barber, associate dean of the Liberty University School of Law, and I attended the "B4U-ACT" pedophile conference Aug. 17. To eliminate the "stigma" against pedophiles, this growing sexual anarchist lobby wants the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to redefine pedophilia is a normal sexual orientation of "Minor-Attracted Persons." Adhering to the Kinsey principle of lulling "straights" into a false sense of security, pedophile dress was largely conservative – short hair, jackets, some ties and few noticeable male ear piercings. Matt Barber and I sat in the back of the meeting room among roughly 50 activists and their "mental health" attending female enablers. "Pedophilia, Minor-Attracted Persons, and the DSM: Issues and Controversies," keynoted "Fred Berlin, M.D., Ph.D., as founder, National Institute for the Study, Prevention and Treatment of Sexual Trauma; Johns Hopkins Sexual Disorders Clinic."

However, the sex clinic was initially founded by John Money, Ph.D., to give judges "leeway" to keep child molesters out of jail. Money (deceased), a pedophile advocate, also called for an end to all age-of-consent laws. Dr. Berlin was his disciple.

In 1973, our "post Kinsey era," a small APA committee of psychiatrists, quite terrified by homosexist public harassment, agreed to rely on Kinsey's fraudulent human sexuality "data" to redefine homosexuality as normal, removing it from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of mental disorders.

The APA decision was hyped in college textbooks, law journal articles, judicial rulings, and by 1974 pitched as high-school sex education. Soon the homosexist lobby would sail into primary schools and kindergartens by agitating recurring AIDS "prevention," "bullying" and "hate" panics.

To redefine homosexuality as a normal "orientation," nature not nurture, researchers were told to ignore all data of early sex abuse or other trauma. This hoax was followed by the 1999 U.S. Department of Justice data that found 64 percent of forcible sodomy victims to be boys under age 12.

The latest book from the foremost expert on how sexuality has been twisted in our day: "Sexual Sabotage: How One Mad Scientist Unleashed a Plague of Corruption and Contagion on America"

For after claiming 10 percent to 37 percent of men were sometime homosexual, Kinsey also said children are sexual from birth and so deserve to have sex with adults or youths (taught as a 1974 Planned Parenthood sex ed doctrine).

The APA path to pedophile norms follows the success of the homosexual anarchy campaign. Arguably, the pedophile media lobby directed the passionate boy-boy kisses on the TV series "Glee," to enable fellow "Minor-Attracted Persons" to increasingly be seen as a boy's sex "friend."

B4U-ACT claims to "help mental health professionals learn more about attraction to minors and to consider the effects of stereotyping, stigma, and fear." While the group claimed they want to teach pedophiles "how to live life fully and stay within the law," no one suggested how to stop their child lust or molestation.

Barber asked what "age of consent" the group proposed and what role pornography plays as a causative factor in child sex abuse. No one would answer the first question, and all denied any harm from pornography.

Arguably, due to our presence, Dr. Berlin (who sat next to me during the entire event) admitted that occasionally pornography could trigger sexual acting out. He also expressed a personal belief that pre-pubescent children (that is, under about age 10) cannot consent, and that perhaps even teenagers might be sexually vulnerable.

All speakers focused on pedophiles as healthy, normal and unfairly victimized by stigma and mean words. Following repeated assertions that pedophiles never force children, are gentle and loving, one researcher did cite a child "victim" who was raped and sodomized.

One speaker laughingly compared doing an obscene act "on" a child to doing the same obscene act on a shoe. No one protested, and some chuckled. One young female suggested pedophiles might be helped by engaging in "sex play" using naked pictures of pseudo children, allied with some sadism, bridal gowns, etc. This Ph.D. social worker candidate proudly noted her objection to any "repression."

For their attendance, the pedophile political activists could earn 6.0 units of continuing education credits by the "Maryland Board of Social Work Examiners." These 12 board members credentialed this pedophile academic farce, giving higher education credits to allow felons and near-felons to advance their child sexual abuse agenda by using bogus and fraudulent research. I would encourage people to complain to the board at this link.

Committed to quietly monitoring this meeting, I offered a few unwelcome closing remarks. I noted the arrogance of this group's conclusion that Americans' fear for child safety is due to a puritanical "sex panic." Since the Department of Justice found 58,200 children kidnapped by non-family members in 1999, such fear seems well-placed.

Before leaving the issue of stigma and hate speech, note a few excerpts from BOYCHAT April 15 by some of these "social worker" credentialed pedophiles:

"Judith Reisman" is "with the worst of them … dehumanizing hate speech … extreme christian [sic], right wing … alarmist … creating gross distrotions [sic] … no genuine integrity ... a harlot. … Judith did, in fact, make [Kinsey's sexual stimulation of infants and toddlers] sound like horrendously violent, child sexual assault … horrible, wretched scumbag ... pathetic, sorry excuse for a human being. … The world will become a less wretched place, the second Judith Reisman drops dead [from natural causes, of course, though I'd not complain if she got accidentally ran over by a semi]. ... With Love, Stevie-D."

Love? What was that about stigma and hate speech?

Delaware group eyes child mental health needs

RANDALL CHASE, Associated Press

DOVER, Del. (AP) — A shortage of health care professionals is one of the major hurdles to ensuring adequate mental health treatment for children in Kent and Sussex counties, a study group established by the General Assembly said.

Lawmakers formed the group, which met for the first time Monday, to focus especially on the needs of child sexual assault victims with an eye toward ensuring help for those victimized by former Lewes pediatrician Earl Bradley . He was convicted in June of sexually abusing scores of young patients over more than a decade.

Susan Cycyk, director of the state Division of Prevention and Behavioral Health Services , said a shortage of licensed professionals is a problem.

"It's a very, very huge challenge for us," said Cycyk, whose division, with funding from the state Criminal Justice Council , started the effort to assist families hurt by Bradley.

Adding to the problem is that the number of therapists trained to treat victims of sexual abuse, especially children, is even smaller, officials noted. That may be in part because of how third-party insurers, including Medicaid, reimburse doctors and others.

According to DPBHS, a clinician added to its crisis service after Bradley's arrest served 25 former clients of the ex-doctor — 18 children and seven parents. A social worker charged with reaching out to the area's Hispanic community served another 13 parents, while two local mental health agencies worked with DPBHS to offer support services for 39 more adults.

The division also offered training to scores of health care professionals on how to work with sexually abused children and their families.

But Chuck Webb , who works with DPBHS as a trainer, noted that the problem of child sexual abuse is widespread, and that officials need to look beyond the Bradley case.

"This problem pre-existed Bradley, and it will continue to exist," he said.

The study group must provide its findings and recommendations to lawmakers by March.

http://www.chron.com/news/article/Delaware-group-eyes-child-mental-health-needs-2135262.php

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Tell-tale signs of child sexual grooming are being overlooked, a leading charity has warned.

Barnardo's said just two in five parents believed children were being sexually exploited where they live, despite the prevalence of the problem across the UK.

It urged parents, professionals and young people to be aware of the signs, which can include children going missing for long periods, regularly returning home late, appearing with unexpected gifts or associating with older teenagers or adults.

Anne Marie Carrie, the charity's chief executive, said: "This is a horrific and pernicious crime that everybody needs to be alive to. Vulnerable defenceless girls and boys, who crave love and attention, are groomed then abused in the most callous and calculated way, leaving them deeply traumatised and scarred for life.

"Yet victims continue to go unidentified as tell-tale signs are overlooked. I want mothers, fathers, professionals and young people to have the confidence in spotting these signs. The earlier abuse is identified, the earlier we can stop it."

The poll of more than 1,100 parents also found less than half of parents were able to spot the more subtle signs of children being exploited, such as regularly returning home late (43%).

One in four fathers said they do not feel confident that they would spot whether the relationships their child has are dangerous, compared with one in six mothers.

A report by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre in June found that key agencies involved in child protection have failed to put in place "basic processes" to stop sexual abuse.

There were 2,379 offenders recorded since the start of 2008, mostly men aged 18 to 24, the study found.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5hyu37EKybX2hsIvyAChlwwv8ykHw?docId=N0522571314012726730A

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United Kingdom

Parents Missing Signs of Child Sexual Exploitation, Barnardo's Warns

Only a minority of British parents realise that children are being sexually exploited in their area, a children's charity has warned, despite the issue existing in towns and cities across the UK.

Barnardo's found 77 per cent of parents were confident they could spot whether their child was in danger of sexual exploitation, according to a survey conducted earlier this month.

However only 38 per cent of the 1,147 parents interviewed by ComRes for Barnardos, believed that the sexual exploitation of children was happening in their area.

The charity said it worked with 1,000 victims of child sexual exploitation last year, but said it believes that number to only be the "tip of the iceberg".

The charity said sexual exploitation ranges from sexual relationships in exchange for attention, accommodation or gifts to sex trafficking.

The NSPCC are similarly concerned:
"Every year thousands of children suffer horrendous experiences after being targeted by sex offenders who are adept at conniving a way into their lives. Many of these children are too young to help themselves, others are deceived by cunning manipulation'.

A large part of the problem, according to the chief executive of Barnardo's, Anne Marie Carrie, is that "tell-tale signs are overlooked".

"Defenceless boys and girls, who crave love and attention, are groomed then abused in the most callous and calculated way, leaving them deeply traumatised.

"I want mothers, fathers, professionals and young people to have the confidence in spotting these signs. The earlier abuse is identified, the earlier we can stop it.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/08/23/parents-are-missing-the-s_n_933785.html

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Mom blames Dr. Phil for hot sauce charge

Last Updated: 12:38 AM, August 23, 2011

Posted: 11:47 PM, August 22, 2011

Prosecutors making closing statements in the trial of Alaskan mom Jessica Beagley say “ Dr. Phil ” shares the blame for Beagley forcing her son to eat hot sauce.

According to prosecutors, Beagley -- on trial for child abuse -- wrote to “Dr. Phil” producers after watching a segment entitled “Angry Mom.” The show called her a year later asking if she was still angry -- and, when Beagley said she was, the show agreed to tape her interactions with her family.

Beagley's defense team says she was simply punishing her adopted 7-year-old son for his misbehavior by making him eat the hot sauce.

On one of Beagley's audition tapes for “Dr. Phil,” she's seen yelling at her son and forcing him to swish hot sauce in his mouth for lying -- before putting him in a cold shower as punishment.

Beagley says she wishes she never sent the tapes to “Dr. Phil.”

Beagley's defense attorney, William Ingaldson, says the methods aren't torture or cruel punishment.

The child shown in the video was diagnosed with Reactive Attachment Disorder after the “Dr. Phil” segment aired and charges were brought against Beagley.

Female police 'best' to help abuse victims

by John Morcombe

FEMALE police officers are “more empathetic and better skilled in communication” than many of their male counterparts, Governor-General Quentin Bryce told a conference in Hobart on Monday.

And northern beaches local area commander Supt Doreen Cruickshank agrees.

Opening the Australasian Women and Policing Conference, Ms Bryce said women are “good listeners and great problem solvers”.

“Since many victims of abuse are young girls and women, it simply makes sense that they would feel more at ease talking with a female officer,” she said.

“Community policing is, of course, much more intricate and not simply a job for women.

“It is a complex task for all members of our police force and the way of the future.”

Ms Bryce told the more than 230 male and female police officers from Australia, New Zealand and the Asia-Pacific that there was still a gender imbalance within police services, but that modern technology presented a chance for women to correct that imbalance.

Northern Beaches local area commander Supt Doreen Cruickshank said some male officers were excellent when it came to interviewing female victims.

“But where it's a crime of abuse or sexual assault, it's only natural that a woman would feel more comfortable speaking to a female officer, simply because of the nature of the details they would be asked to provide,” she said.

“If I was in their shoes, I'd prefer to be in the presence of a female officer.

“But when it's a crime of a more general nature, I think women would feel comfortable speaking to any officer, male or female.”

Manly local area commander Supt Dave Darcy said “diversity is strength”.

“The closer we represent the community as a whole, the better service the community gets, be it in anything,” he said.

“In Manly, our senior management team is about 40 per cent women.”

http://manly-daily.whereilive.com.au/news/story/female-police-best-to-help-abuse-victims/

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United Kingdom

Abuse images teacher avoids jail

By Pat Hurst
Tuesday, 23 August 2011

A primary school teacher who downloaded thousands of images of child sex abuse today escaped jail after telling a court it was a source of "comfort" after being abused himself.

Matthew Scott Catherall, 39, had been downloading child porn since his teenage years after being sexually molested by a family member when he was a boy, Minshull Street Crown Court, Manchester, heard.

Catherall was described as an "inspirational and well liked" teacher at Greswell Primary in Denton, Tameside.

He has now been sacked after admitting 18 specimen charges of possessing child pornography at an earlier hearing.

Today he was ordered to complete a three-year internet sexual offending treatment programme, barred from using the internet in private and ordered to sign the Sex Offenders Register for five years.

Passing sentence, Judge Jonathan Geake said: "To any normal person these pictures are quite extraordinarily and deeply unpleasant.

"In my judgment your reasons for doing this were very complex and highly unusual.

"You carried on accessing the indecent images to prove to yourself you were not alone and it provided you with some sense of calm and closure.

"It was a discrete part of your life, unknown to anybody. In all other ways you were leading a good and productive life.

"I have never seen quite so glowing references to a man in all my long experience of sitting in this court.

"This is a case that merits treatment rather than custodial punishment."

The sexual abuse images were among 88 photos on the defendant's laptop, seized from his home in Denton after a police raid on March 4.

They included images up to the worst level of child sexual abuse, the court heard.

A further 2,968 images had been deleted but were recovered by police analysis of the laptop.

None of the images of child abuse involved children from any schools Catherall worked with or of children he had contact with, the court heard.

Catherall was arrested after the UK Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre received intelligence he had subscribed to child porn websites in 2002 while living in the US.

Catherall is originally from the Mormon community in Utah in the US and came to the UK in 2005 on a teacher exchange programme.

While here he met his second wife, Beverley, who was in the public gallery in court today, and he has been a teacher in the UK since 2007.

The court heard while living in the US his first marriage failed because of sexual problems and he then told his father and other family members about the sexual abuse he had suffered between the ages of six and eight from his grandfather.

It then emerged other siblings had also been abused by the same family member.

Saul Brody, prosecuting, told the court the defendant made "full admissions" to police after his arrest.

"He started to look at images as a source of comfort to himself, so he could appreciate he was not alone," he said.

Robert Lancaster, mitigating, said Catherall needed help, not punishment and would only get treatment if he was spared a jail sentence.

He added: "This is a man damaged himself by the abuse suffered as a child."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/abuse-images-teacher-avoids-jail-2342467.html?service=Print

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Costa Rica nabs man sought on Texas child abuse charge

SAN JOSE | Mon Aug 22, 2011 9:59pm EDT

SAN JOSE (Reuters) - Costa Rican authorities arrested a doctor wanted in Texas on child molestation charges on Monday, although the Central American nation's laws protect him from being extradited to face justice, prosecutors said.

German Moreno, 50, had fled Texas for his native Costa Rica while free on bond following a 2005 arrest on nine counts ranging from indecency with a child to sexual assault, according to court documents.

An investigation earlier this month by San Jose-based English-language newspaper The Tico Times revealed that Moreno was operating a clinic in Playa Carmen, a tourist hotspot on Costa Rica's Pacific coast.

Despite an Interpol arrest warrant, local police did not arrest him because Costa Rican law bars extradition of its nationals.

Moreno had previously been convicted in Costa Rica of sexually assaulting minors in the 1990s, although he had fled to the United States before sentencing. Those charges, however, had expired under a statute of limitations, barring authorities from rearresting Moreno, the prosecutor's office said.

A break came in the case last week when a 19-year-old came forward in Costa Rica and filed charges saying he had been molested at age 16 by Moreno, prompting prosecutors to issue a new warrant for his arrest, said Tatiana Vargas, spokeswoman for the chief prosecutor's office.

Investigative police agents arrested Moreno on Monday outside a residence in the northern San Jose suburb of Tibas and were expected to move him to a court in Garabito, a central Pacific region where the new charge was filed, Vargas said.

In Garabito a judge will decide whether to send Moreno to jail while authorities investigate the molestation claim.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/23/us-crime-costarica-texas-idUSTRE77M05W20110823

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Maryland

Harford child psychologist pleads guilty to abusing 3 girls

By Mary Gail Hare , The Baltimore Sun

9:37 PM EDT, August 22, 2011

A Harford County child psychologist pleaded guilty Monday to child abuse and sexual assault of three young girls he had been treating at his Fallston office.

David Wayne Schrumpf, 55, of Whiteford will serve six years in prison, where he will undergo sex offender treatment, under terms of a plea agreement filed in Harford County Circuit Court. He is charged with one count of child sex abuse and two counts of second-degree assault.

Schrumpf will be required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. He must also surrender his license to practice psychology and cannot seek another in any jurisdiction, according to the plea agreement.

The charges arose after one 7-year-old girl reported to her mother that Schrumpf had touched her inappropriately during a session at his office. Two other victims, who were 9 and 10 years old at the time of the abuse, came forward during the investigation, county State's Attorney Joseph I. Cassilly said. All the incidents occurred at Schrumpf's office in Fallston over a year beginning in October 2009, Cassilly said.

Sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 31 in Harford County Circuit Court before Judge Maurice Baldwin.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/harford/bs-md-ha-abuse-plea-20110822,0,6500859,print.story

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Missouri

Beyond Home Ec – Parenting 101

ST. LOUIS, Mo. (KMOX) - As your children head back to class, you may be hoping they'll get what they need to succeed in life. One group says what's lacking are lessons on being parents themselves.

“Why are we waiting until our children become parents?” Asks Rene Howitt, founder and Executive Director of COPE24. The St. Louis non-profit stands for Changing Our Parenting Experience. Howitt's main goal — cutting the rising number of reports of child abuse and neglect.

She's created a video series and curriculum to take into middle and high schools.

“Nobody's taught you the right way to respond to a crying baby, or to a toddler tantrum, or to potty training issues, all of those things that are the most common triggers for child abuse.”

And Howitt says if teens come from tough homes themselves, they have no examples of appropriate ways to parent. She also hopes the program will make teenagers think twice about starting a family before they're really ready.

Since authoring a book about her experience as a foster parent, Howitt's spoken at dozens of school to thousands of students. The COPE24 curriculum launched as a pilot program earlier this year and is expanding to more schools this fall.

Click here for a link to the organization

http://stlouis.cbslocal.com/2011/08/22/beyond-home-ec-parenting-101/

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Ireland

Ireland's sex trade is 'thriving' say campaigners

by Ed Carty

August 22, 2011

About 1,000 women are working as prostitutes in Ireland every day, an agency which supports those in the sex trade said.

Ruhama said it worked with 204 women last year, up 4% on the previous year, while the number of new victims of trafficking it has been alerted to remained static.

The group said there was a 9% increase in the number of women working the streets and seeking help.

Sarah Benson, Ruhama chief executive, said it helped 80 women who claimed they had been trafficked to Ireland.

"This truly exemplifies the global nature of prostitution and trafficking and reflects the complexity of a frontline response such as that offered by Ruhama," she said.

"We are constantly adapting to ensure that we are mindful and respectful of the diverse cultural backgrounds of the women accessing our services."

Ruhama helped 70 women working as street prostitutes through its outreach service. It described Ireland's sex trade as thriving.

But the annual report warned that on any day up to 1,000 women and girls are selling sex in apartments, hotels, on the streets and in private clubs and massage parlours across the country.

Ruhama said that based on the location of women claiming they have been trafficked into Ireland the sex trade is not just a city issue but a feature of small rural parts of the country.

It said the majority of women referred to the agency for the first time in 2010 were working in indoor prostitution as escorts or in brothels.

Ms Benson repeated calls for vice laws to be reformed with the criminal burden placed on those paying for sex and not those selling.

"The focus has rightly turned in recent times, from the women and girls, and the small number of men and boys who are in prostitution towards those who are profiting," she said.

"This includes of course the buyers. The sex trade is a multi-million euro industry in Ireland fuelled by their demand.

"A positive step in overcoming this growth in the sex trade would be to stem demand by criminalising the buyers through legislative change."

Ruhama also called for new legislation to improve the policing of the internet and mobile phones to keep pace with advances in organised prostitution.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/irelands-sex-trade-is-thriving-say-campaigners-2341857.html?service=Print

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by Jennifer Wilson

Dr Jennifer Wilson is an independent social and political commentator, writer, and consultant psychotherapist. She blogs at No Place for Sheep.

The recent Sunday Telegraph campaign against graphic artist Robert Crumb's proposed participation in an exhibition at the Sydney Opera House, used the opinions of anti child abuse campaigner Hetty Johnson to infer that Crumb's work is complicit in creating communities that are unsafe for children and should be banned.

The Tele apparently faxed Ms Johnson (who had previously never heard of the artist) a few copies of Crumb's cartoons, leading her to decide that:

The Sydney Opera House is endorsing the depraved thought processes of this very warped human being. These cartoons are not funny or artistic - they are just crude and perverted images emanating from what is clearly a sick mind.

On hearing about this campaign against him, Crumb cancelled his trip, giving reasons in this open letter to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Anti child abuse campaigners like Ms Johnson have an important role to play in any community. Children must not be abused. We must do everything we can to address child abuse of every kind wherever we find it, because we are cruel and inhuman if we don't.

But it's a symptom of psychosis to mistake illusion for reality. Campaigners such as Ms Johnson are striving to impose a psychotic world-view when they campaign against images such as those produced by Crumb, and closer to home, Bill Henson.

These self-appointed monitors of the human imagination necessarily view the world around them through the eyes of those who are sexually aroused by children. They seek in images of all kinds what they imagine paedophiles desire. They assume certain images will provoke criminal action against children by the viewer, or contribute to creating a climate that encourages and supports criminal behaviour. They have no basis for these assumptions. They have no evidence.

After working for many years with survivors of childhood sexual assault, I can attest that one can eventually see suspicious behaviour everywhere, in the most innocent of gestures, and on reaching that point a sensible practitioner knows it's time to take a break. Yes, there are adults who sexually abuse children. No, it's not everybody. Yes, there are images that paedophiles seek out and exchange. No, they are not every image in art or advertising that feature children. Judging by reports from police units dedicated to uncovering these images, they bear no resemblance at all to anything that can be found in the everyday public domain.

These efforts by campaigners to colonise the public gaze have nothing whatsoever to do with preventing child abuse. Children are overwhelmingly sexually abused by people they know, frequently close family members. There is no evidence at all that they are abused predominantly by sexually crazed admirers of Robert Crumb and Bill Henson, or even by those sad human beings who earn their livelihood designing "sexy" underwear for little girls, and the even sadder mothers who buy it for them.

Here, I have to say that I don't find the linked advertisements guilty of "sexualising" the young models. I believe we need a conversation about what is and isn't sexy and to whom, because it seems to me that campaigners are pushing a moral definition of "sexy" that is not necessarily shared by the whole community. This definition originates in a presumption that the body is primarily a site for the performance of modesty, ought to be revealed only in the privacy of the bedroom, and only to a partner. Public display of the body is "pornifying" or "sexualising," whether we are discussing adults or children.

I find these images of the girls silly and sad. There's not one thing that's "sexy" about them, and that judgment is aesthetic, not moral. The images are degrading not because they sexualise, but because they commodify. The young girls' beauty is not sexualised, it is ruthlessly co-opted and exploited to sell product. The girls are dehumanised because of this, as are we all to varying degrees by the capitalist society in which we live.

It's also worthy of note that these campaigners cannot, apparently, achieve their goals without perpetuating and trafficking in the "offensive" images. So on websites such as that belonging to Melinda Tankard Reist you will find links to purported "evidence" of the "sexualisation" of young girls, sometimes tantalisingly prefaced by comments such as "if you can bear to look". Unless you are willing to take Reist's word for it, you have to open the links.

Without arousing public outrage, the campaigners will cease to exist. They have everything invested in encouraging the viewing and sharing of the images they condemn. The question must be asked, are they too engaged in the process of commodification and exploitation of children to further their own goals? Is this the underlying reason why they are unable to address these matters as corporate and consumer issues?

What campaigners such as Hetty Johnson and Tankard Reist are actually engaged in are diversionary tactics. In blaming the art they do not understand for creating a climate in which the so-called "sexualisation" of children is promoted and nurtured, they are distracting attention from the real culprits and the real offense: child exploitation by corporations and consumers.

Human beings have long been reduced to the status of a commodity in the interests of profit. Greed, not paedophilia underpins the "sexualisation" of children. The personal worth of adults has long been measured by their exchange value: it was only a matter of time before this extended itself to the imposition on children of aesthetically impoverished and crude adult notions of what is "sexy," designed purely to extend the profitability of human exploitation and commodification.

Back to Robert Crumb. Crumb's work is a fine example of the power of catharsis. The artist owns himself as "weird," highly anxious and neurotic, and as possessing a vividly boisterous and frequently self-deprecating sexual imagination. These characteristics imbue his work with powerful feeling, and viewing Crumb's images is often a disturbing experience.

But remember: "Art is dangerous," Picasso claimed. "Art is never chaste. Where it is chaste, it is not art."

The artist's job is often to expose to the rest of us what we might not want to see or acknowledge as human. The best artists won't flinch in their task of expressing what we would most like to deny about humanity. Those who are too afraid to rise to the artist's challenge will demand censorship. They will clamour for the silencing of the artist's imagination because, they claim, there is an inherent link between the imagination, and the acting out of imaginative visions. In other words, they take Picasso's claim that art is dangerous far too literally.

Art is dangerous to the closed mind. Art can take us to emotional experiences and spiritual realisations that are not always easy and comfortable. But art will not turn us into paedophiles. The horrifying photographic images of sexually exploited and tormented children passed around a paedophile ring are not art.

While the artist may be expressing a personal vision, the fact that others can identify with and appreciate the artwork transforms the personal into the universal. Finding imaginative ways in which to safely express the darker and more dangerous emotions is the cathartic experience. The cathartic experience is one that can enable a safe release of unconscious conflicts in the viewer as well as the artist. This is the power of art, and I include in the category "art" all mediums of expression. Dark and dangerous emotions are as human as pleasure and ease. They demand acknowledgement and safe expression. Art offers safe emotional release, both in its making and its appreciation.

This is the experience campaigners such as Johnson and Tankard-Reist wish to deny us. Trapped in a spiral of denial of the aspects of the human they do not like, they campaign to universalise their positions in order to feel validated. They need us all to agree with their moral judgments. They demand that we all adopt the paedophile's gaze, and interpret the art that surrounds us, whatever its form, through that lens. They do not discriminate, their responses are formulaic and tiresome: if it is weird and sick to them, it has to be weird and sick to everyone, and the weird and sick must be silenced and denied. However, we know repression never solved anything.

What currently passes for "sexy" in our culture seems to me to be highly unsubtle, crude and largely uninteresting. Yet these campaigners have somehow managed to turn this one-dimensional representation of human and largely female sexuality into a moral threat of nuclear proportions, especially for our children. Artists such as Crumb and Henson, of all people, have been caught up in this manufactured threat.

All the campaigns achieve is a band-aid solution. An image is removed a video is censored, only to appear in another form at another time. The campaigns do not address the underlying issues. They do not go deeply into the immorality of the increasing commodification of the human. They do not address a global economy that survives only as long as we all consume as much as is possible for as long as we are alive, making the creation of new markets an absolute necessity, even when that market is children and childhood. They do not address the complicity and collusion of mothers and caregivers in the "sexualisation" and commodification of children and childhood. They do attack art, in all its forms, because that is easy and causes a temporary outcry.

The conflation of the "sexualisation" of children and paedophilia with the perceived dangers of art needs to be challenged and resisted whenever it rears its hydra-head. The real role of anti child abuse campaigners is to work for educative and economic services that will help protect children, and that will offer accessible services for adults recovering from the frequently life-long aftermath of childhood abuse.

There is no place for these moral campaigners as arbiters in the world of art. They have proved over and over again that their perspective is warped and one-dimensional, and that censorship is their only response to expressions of the human that they do not understand.

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2850402.html