From the FBI

Help Us Find Them -- National Missing Children's Day 2016

05/23/16

Earlier this year, two young kidnap victims from Washington State were safely recovered in Mexico after an investigation involving the FBI, local law enforcement partners, and Mexican authorities

Fortunately, their story had a happy ending. Unfortunately, there are still many children in the U.S. whose whereabouts are unknown. So as we approach this year's National Missing Children's Day on May 25, the FBI would like to ask the public for its help in locating any of the victims pictured above from our Kidnapping and Missing Persons webpage.

With its partners, the FBI continues its efforts to eradicate predators from communities and to keep children safe. Ready response teams are stationed across the country to quickly respond to abductions. The Bureau offers a full array of forensic tools such as DNA, trace evidence, impression evidence, and digital forensics. And through improved communications, law enforcement also has the ability to quickly share information with partners throughout the world.

The FBI has several programs in place to educate both parents and children about the dangers posed by predators—in person and online—and to recover missing and endangered children should they be taken. Through our Child Abduction Rapid Deployment Teams, Innocence Lost National Initiative, Innocent Images National Initiative, annual Operation Cross Country operation, Office for Victim Assistance, Child Exploitation Task Forces, and numerous community outreach initiatives, the Bureau and all of law enforcement continue to place a premium on keeping the most vulnerable among us safe and secure.

https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/2016/may/national-missing-childrens-day-2016/national-missing-childrens-day-2016

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FBI Releases New Version of Child ID App

The FBI today is announcing a reboot of its popular Child ID App, which provides parents with an easy way to electronically store their children's pictures and vital information to have on hand in case their kids go missing.

The application, which works on most Apple and Android smartphones and tablets, allows users to store up-to-date images and physical descriptions—like height, weight, birthmarks, etc.—that could help responders in the event of an emergency. The information is stored only on your device—not with your mobile provider or the FBI.

The latest version of the Child ID App contains updated features, including high-resolution image capability, a default recipient field (where you can enter your local police department's e-mail address, for example), and optional automatic reminders to update your children's profiles.

Current users of the Child ID App are encouraged to download the latest version for improved performance and capabilities. Please note that if you had been using an older version of the app (prior to 2.0), you will need to re-enter all relevant information after installing the update.

The app has been downloaded more than 250,000 times since it was released, first on iTunes in 2011 and then for the Android operating system in 2012. The current version, released in April, has been downloaded more than 50,000 times onto devices around the world.

The Child ID App also includes tips on keeping children safe as well as specific guidance on what to do in those first few crucial hours after a child goes missing.

For more information and to download:

•  On iTunes (Apple)

•  On Google Play (Android)

•  Related FBI, This Week podcast

https://www.fbi.gov/news/news_blog/fbi-releases-new-version-of-child-id-app

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From the Department of Justice

Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch Delivers Remarks at National Missing Children's Day Ceremony

Thank you, Beth [McGarry], for that very kind introduction – and for your exceptional commitment, unwavering passion and steadfast devotion to the well-being of America's children. I want to thank Bob [Listenbee] not only for his role in organizing this important event every year, but also for his dedicated leadership at the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, or OJJDP. I want to express my gratitude to John Clark, President and CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC); to Retired Sergeant Mark Simpson, formerly with the Arlington, Texas, Police Department; and to Sayeh Rivazfar, whose extraordinary activism and brave advocacy is born of her own experience as a survivor of abduction. Finally, I'd like to thank all of you who have come together to be a part of this deeply important event.

Every year since National Missing Children's Day was established more than three decades ago, we have come together to honor heroic and exemplary efforts to protect children. That work goes on day in and day out. It is performed by agencies, organizations and individuals around the country. And though it is far from easy – and seldom brings the recognition it deserves – it is fundamental to the values of our nation and inextricably linked to the kind of future we will build together: one in which no parent must experience the nightmare of losing a child; one in which no community must endure the horror of abduction or exploitation; and one in which every child, in every neighborhood, can live and grow in safety without fear.

Building that future and realizing its promise is one of my top priorities as Attorney General, and at the Department of Justice we are deeply focused on that work. Through the Federal Agency Task Force on Missing and Exploited Children, we are improving collaboration among the department's partners and promoting the delivery of federal services for parents and law enforcement, child services and other professionals. Through the Federal Strategic Action Plan on Services for Victims of Human Trafficking in the United States, we are taking coordinated steps alongside other federal agencies to ensure that our response to victims of human trafficking is more coordinated, more comprehensive and more effective than ever before. And as the Internet has become an ever-greater tool for those who would harm the most vulnerable in our communities, the Department of Justice has focused additional resources on combating exploitation that involves technology and cyberspace. Our Internet Crimes Against Children task forces unite more than 3,500 federal, state and local law enforcement and prosecutorial agencies against child exploitations that take place over the Internet. Since their inception, task force investigations have led to the arrest of more than 62,000 individuals suspected of sexually exploiting children – including more than 8,700 in 2015 alone. These task forces are also critical to education – and over the last year, they have made more than 13,000 presentations on Internet safety and supported more than 2,300 regional law enforcement trainings on child exploitation.

We have also forged productive collaborations with vital collaborators like NCMEC – an extraordinary organization that works every day to save lives and restore futures for children across the country, and promotes a range of important programs and initiatives from autism safety to wandering prevention training for law enforcement. NCMEC has been a truly outstanding partner: during FY2015, their hotline received more than 167,000 calls; their CyberTipline made nearly 3.8 million reports regarding apparent child sexual exploitation or online harm to children available to law enforcement; and helped law enforcement identify more than 10,000 victims of child pornography. In the same year, they also helped to resolve the cases of more than 12,500 children who had been reported missing, giving assistance to law enforcement officers and comfort to families around the country.

NCMEC is also a key partner in the AMBER Alert program, which rapidly notifies the public when a law enforcement agency determines that a child has been abducted and is in imminent danger. The AMBER Alert system is one of the most visible recovery mechanisms in the United States, as well as one of the most successful. As of this week, 822 children have been recovered through AMBER Alerts – meaning 822 futures have been restored and hundreds of families have been made whole again. And our commitment to rescuing missing children does not stop at the border. I am proud to say that our Department of Justice has collaborated with the Attorney General of Mexico on the development of Mexico's AMBER Alert System, which has already resulted in the rescue of hundreds of Mexican children. In fact, we helped to arrange a meeting that will occur tomorrow in Mexico between experts from the AMBER Alert systems of the United States, Mexico and Canada to discuss how we can better coordinate across North America.

In the days to come, we will only build upon our efforts. In April, I was proud to announce the publication of the department's National Strategy for Child Exploitation Prevention and Interdiction – a nationwide blueprint that examines existing efforts, assesses new threats and plots a course ahead. It identifies innovative ways in which the federal government and its partners can address child exploitation. And it reaffirms our unwavering commitment to ensuring that every child in America is able to reach his or her potential, free of violence and abuse. This strategy was formulated over the course of a year by an interagency working group that drew upon the expertise of law enforcement at all levels, as well as the experience and knowledge of non-governmental stakeholders, and I will continue to work with all of them – and all of you – to move our vital efforts forward.

And we will move forward – of that I am certain. Because no matter who we are or where we live, we all share a basic concern for the safety and well-being of our young people. Their welfare is the most telling measure of our nation's success – and their potential is the most promising element of its future. It is up to us – all of us – to safeguard that future.

I pledge that the Department of Justice will continue to do its part in this effort. I pledge that we will continue to use every resource at our disposal to find children who have gone missing, to shield them from violence and abuse and to create vibrant and nurturing communities where they can thrive. And I pledge that we will continue to work with skilled and engaged partners like you to deepen the partnerships that we have forged and to build upon the progress that we have made – so that together, we can advance steadily towards a brighter, safer and more just future – for our children and for generations of children to come.

I want to thank you, once again, for your commitment to that future and your dedication to this vital cause. I look forward to all that we will accomplish together in the days ahead.

It is now my privilege to present one of the awards being conferred today. The Attorney General's Special Commendation recognizes the extraordinary efforts of an Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force, an ICAC affiliate agency or an individual assigned to an ICAC task force or affiliate agency for making a significant investigative or program contribution to the ICAC task force program.

In January 2015, the Arizona ICAC Task Force, working with the Phoenix Police Department and the FBI's Sexual Exploitation Unit, opened an investigation of a Phoenix woman suspected of sexually abusing two small boys in her care, photographing the abuse and uploading and sharing the images online. Forensic investigation of the woman's cell phone determined that she was in constant communication with others who were interested in sexually abusing the boys. The woman was arrested and the two boys were rescued. As the scope of the investigation grew, the Arizona task force worked with the FBI, NCMEC, other ICAC task forces, state and local law enforcement agencies across the United States and law enforcement agencies in several other countries to identify new suspects and pursue new leads. The subsequent investigation located a suspect in the United Kingdom who was abusing and exploiting a child in his care. The man was arrested and the child was rescued. Further investigation identified three additional suspects in Arizona, including one who was a convicted sex offender, and one suspect in Oregon. To date, Operation Optimus Prime – as the investigation is known – has resulted in the arrest of more than 25 suspects. This investigation is ongoing and the task force continues to generate leads, suspects and arrests around the world.

For its extraordinary efforts and outstanding work, the Arizona ICAC Task Force has received the Attorney General's Special Commendation. Accepting the award on behalf of the ICAC team is Detective Randall Snyder of the Pinal County, Arizona, Sheriff's Office. Congratulations, and please join us on stage.

Congratulations, once again, to you and your colleagues, and congratulations to all of the outstanding award recipients here today. I want to thank you all, once more, for your hard work, for your passion and for your unwavering commitment to this noble cause. I urge you to keep up the great work.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/attorney-general-loretta-e-lynch-delivers-remarks-national-missing-children-s-day

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Opinion

Stripped of dignity, Cosby's accusors speak

by Laura Landgraf

It's criminal now. Bill Cosby has been charged with aggravated indecent assault for a 2004 incident. The charge comes in just under the wire for the statute of limitation. Many who came forward weren't as fortunate.

I confess that my attitude initially was, "please don't let this be true." I didn't want to lose my image of the esteemed Dr. Huxtable. I wanted to hold on to the part of the past that had us admiring Cosby's genius, his humor, his philanthropy. But he had another past.

I watched the "Dateline" interview with 29 women who stand in solidarity regarding Cosby. A month earlier, I'd seen A&E's "Cosby: The Women Speak." Certain aspects touched me deeply.

These courageous women didn't know one another, yet formed a tremendous bond of belief. For many, this was the first time they were believed. We're a culture that doesn't want to have to listen to, let alone hear, that decency has been denied someone. We don't want to talk about rape, sexual assault, molestation or incest.

We turn a blind eye to impropriety. We must stop doing so.

I am enraged. These women have been wounded on so many levels.

There is something deeply shaming about a person stripping you of your ability to think or act by drugging you. It steals your memory but leaves cruel evidence of your tattered dignity. Most of these women assert that they sipped a drink offered and in moments were incapacitated.

Sexual assault is devastating. Survivors face trauma to their body, shock in their mind and heart, confusion, internalized questions, disbelief and diminished sense of self-worth.

When a handful of these women disclosed what had happened to someone they trusted, they were told, "Don't say anything." "No one will believe you; it'll be your word against his."

But 29 women told stories that span three decades. In their words, it was Andrea Constand, whose 2005 lawsuit against Cosby, caught their eyes and ears. For many, it vindicated their own stories. It emboldened them to speak their truth. Speaking truth lifts the burden secrets put in place. Telling your story gives you community with others who have experienced what you did.

As I watched "Dateline," one woman quoted something Cosby had said to her. Others began to cry. They reported that he had said the same thing to them. These "tells" of shared history anchor them in their truth. As a survivor, I understand the need for anchors. I myself didn't want to believe my own story and that of my sisters.

I doubted me and my memories weren't hampered by drugs. I can hardly imagine the utter frustration for these individual women as each tried to sort it out, to say nothing of attempting to explain it to someone else so as to be believed. Here is where this new community of women will strengthen one another.

I found myself exasperated, no it's more than that -- indignant that Monique Pressley, Cosby's attorney, used that Cosby hasn't been charged with a crime as his shield of innocence. My father impregnated my older sister. She had his baby. Given the times (1950s), he wasn't arrested or charged with a crime. Today he would be. Not being charged with a crime didn't mean my father was innocent. He wasn't. It just meant he wasn't charged.

Pressley further implied that because none of these women reported their incident to police, and none went to a hospital, theirs are not corroborated stories -- therefore suspect.

A person in power allegedly (I hate having to continue to use that word) abused his status. If ever I wanted a person to be honorable, decent, exemplary, it was Cosby. But wanting doesn't make it so.

Years scarred by ravaged hearts are irreplaceable. Kudos to these courageous women for giving voice to their truth. In doing so they have thrown off the weight of secrecy, have been remarkable examples for others to speak their truth, and regardless of a court's decision, have found a measure of justice in breaking the silence.

Now let's see what the law does.

Laura Landgraf is a national author, activist, speaker, and life coach. Her mission is empowering women and men who survived childhood abuse. She has worked with the Victim's Assistance Program in Southern California, led adult support groups for the Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and trained college staff psychologists in child abuse patterns, crisis intervention methods and brief therapies.

http://www.eastbaytimes.com/opinion/ci_29945192/stripped-dignity-cosbys-accusors-speak-east-bay-times

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California

Protesters pressure Whole Foods to sever ties with alleged sex abuser

by Hayley Fox

When the new 365 by Whole Foods Market — a more affordable outpost of the luxury grocery chain — opened Wednesday morning in Silver Lake, the atmosphere in the parking lot was palpably upbeat: pedestrians hustled around clutching reusable totes and a DJ was blasting classic rock and soul.

Yet while many Angelenos couldn't wait to hit the carefully orchestrated organic salad bar, a handful of activists set up on the sidewalk to remind shoppers of a more controversial side to Whole Foods. They were protesting the company and its co-founder/co-CEO, John Mackey — specifically, his relationship to Marc Gafni, a former rabbi who's jumped from one spiritual movement to another, leaving a trail of sexual assault allegations in his wake.

Until March of this year, Mackey served as the co-chairman of the board of directors for Gafni's newest venture, an “activist think tank” based in the Bay Area called the Center for Integral Wisdom. Mackey also reportedly hosted board meetings during that time at his personal ranch in Texas.

“It's important for people like John Mackey to break the silence,” Rabbi Jill Zimmerman, founder of The Jewish Mindfulness Network, told the Journal. “When someone has a long trail of abuse, there were lots of people who didn't speak up who were able to speak up.”

Zimmerman was one of the leaders of Wednesday's protest, which coincided with a parallel demonstration at a Whole Foods in New York. In Los Angeles, Zimmerman was joined by a few sexual abuse activists who propped up posters along Glendale Boulevard that read “Stand Up, Speak Out,” and schooled passersby on Mackey's corporate responsibility and Gafni's history of alleged sexual abuse.

Gafni, born Mordechai Winiarz, grew up in an Orthodox home, became ordained as a rabbi and went on to teach at a youth outreach program in New York. Two women came forward to say Gafni had sexually assaulted them as teenagers, and he later had his ordination revoked. Gafni's been married and divorced three times, accused of plagiarism and tried to start multiple mystical and spiritual movements in the U.S. and Israel, only to have them fall apart at the seams because of lingering distrust and continued accusations.

“It became really clear that what Marc Gafni had done, and what he's done several times, is that he's picked up and gone into another community to continue offending again,” Zimmerman said.

Some have said Gafni has managed to dodge criminal charges because it's common for victims to report abuse years after it occurs, and by then there is often no legal recourse due to the statute of limitations. Just because Gafni was never arrested doesn't mean he's innocent, said Nancy Levine , volunteer protest coordinator for the National Association of Adult Survivors of Child Abuse (NAASCA).

“The argument of ‘Oh, I was never charged,' is not a great argument,” Levine said .

In December 2015, some members of the Jewish community took matters into their own hands. New York-based Rabbi David Ingber — who knew Gafni personally and said he saw him seduce several students first-hand — launched an online petition calling for Mackey, Whole Foods and other Gafni supporters to cut “financial and institutional ties” with the former rabbi. The petition stated that the many allegations made against Gafni “violate the ethical standards and sacred responsibility which governs the relationship between religious teacher and student.”

The petition garnered more than 3,500 signatures in less than six months, and since its debut, Mackey and Whole Foods seem to be quietly distancing themselves from Gafni. But that's not enough for activists like Bill Murray, founder of NAASCA.

“They've just decided to say ‘no comment,' ” he said. “They are allowing pedophilia to go on because they're not taking a stand against it.”

In May, Mackey removed a seven-part video series that he recorded with Gafni from the Whole Foods blog. He replaced it with a statement about his relationship with the former rabbi, claiming it was “conducted strictly” in his personal life and that his connection to Gafni “does not represent an endorsement or support for either Mr. Gafni or the Center for Integral Wisdom by Whole Foods Market.”

However, a link to the videos, available on the Center for Integral Wisdom's website, remains on Whole Foods' blog. And Mackey's headshot and endorsing testimonial — he calls Gafni a “bold visionary and catalytic voice” — is still featured on the homepage of Gafni's personal website.

Neither Gafni nor Whole Foods responded to the Journal's email request for comment, but the Center for Integral Wisdom posted a lengthy online public statement in response to “the current attacks” on Gafni.

“Based on our careful review of extensive documentary evidence, numerous professional evaluations, and our collective experiences with Dr. Gafni, we fully trust that the claims of sexual harassment and abuse are false, and that other claims against him are maliciously exaggerated,” it says.

The statement goes on to explain that Gafni's lawyer has advised him not to comment on the issues “given the defamatory nature of the false accusations.” It encourages readers to visit Gafni's personal website or read one of his books to get a deeper sense of his character.

If Mackey and Whole Foods won't take a stand against Gafni for ethical reasons, Murray hopes they'll consider their stockholders and the prospective financial damages of being associated with a sexual abuser. After all, Whole Foods has plans to open these “quality-meets-value” 365 markets throughout California and the rest of the country — and protesters hope to be right there with them along the way.

“They would like to have that middle class demographic group as their customer base, and they're risking not only not acquiring it, but damaging what they already got,” Murray said.

http://www.jewishjournal.com/los_angeles/article/protesters_pressure_whole_foods_to_sever_ties_with_alleged_sex_abuser

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Oregon

Rape Survivors Testify Against Required Reporting

by Camilla Mortensen

At the University of Oregon, if a student is sexually assaulted and tells her or his instructor, then the professor or graduate teaching fellow must report what happened, whether or not the student wants it reported. This is required reporting, also known as mandatory reporting. Reports go to the UO's Title IX coordinator.

The UO's University Senate voted May 18 on new required reporting rules, with proposed rules narrowly defeated.

For some, required reporting is the best way to handle discrimination and harassment. Others, such as UO psychology professor Jennifer Freyd, UO alum and rape survivor Laura Hanson and Oregon State rape survivor Brenda Tracy, say mandatory reporting can cause more harm than good.

Under Oregon law, workers in “certain professions” are mandatory reporters of child abuse, and according to the UO, “Oregon law requires that all university employees with credible evidence that any form of prohibited discrimination by or against students, faculty or staff is occurring have a duty to report that information.”

Sexual harassment and assault are considered “prohibited discrimination.” But just how that reporting should be done is at the center of a heated debate.

Hanson was unable to leave her job in Portland to come and testify against the required reporting policy, but she sent a statement to be read by Freyd at the meeting.

Hanson writes, “In January 2013, I was roofied and raped by the president of Chi Psi at the University of Oregon. You should already be familiar with how poorly the UO handled my rape report, given that the decisions you're making will directly affect my fellow survivors.”

The fraternity president was found guilty of sexual misconduct under the student code, though not until after the UO forgot to pursue her case for several months, took her counseling records without her consent and created a situation where, on top of being sexually assaulted, she was ostracized by her peers and traumatized by the school's inept handling of her case.

“From my perspective, the UO shouldn't be making these huge policy changes/statements without having a system in place to thoughtfully and effectively resolve the rape complaints received,” Hanson continues.

She tells EW that mandatory reporting “puts adults in a position they would not normally be in. As an adult you don't expect decisions to be taken away from you, especially in a situation where you are already vulnerable.”

Hanson has repeatedly offered to partner with the UO in repairing its system of dealing with sexual assaults — between her case and that of a young woman who says she was gang raped by three UO basketball players, the school has paid out hundreds of thousands of dollars in settling allegations it has mishandled the cases — the UO has rebuffed her offer.

Brenda Tracy also testified against required reporting. In the fall of 2014 she went public with her story of four men, three of them football players, raping her at an apartment near OSU in 1998. OSU apologized and reached out to her to help the school protect rape victims.

When it comes to mandatory reporting, Tracy, like Hanson, say she feels college students can make informed decisions, as opposed to vulnerable populations such as children, the elderly or those with certain disabilities. “It's scary to come forward and use your voice, and it doesn't turn out well for everyone,” she said after tearful testimony before the Faculty Senate.

Tracy says that as an outsider looking in, she thinks OSU is clearer than the UO about who is a mandatory reporter and who is not. OSU's document on “How to Help a Survivor” says employees should “inform the survivor of your responsibility to consult with the Office of Equity and Inclusion.” Hanson agrees that the UO's policies and materials for dealing with sexual assault remain unclear.

UO professor and University Committee on Sexual and Gender Based Violence co-chair Carole Stabile spoke before the Senate on May 11 when the “responsible employee policy” was first brought up by the committee. She said the mandatory reporting policy that came out under former UO president Michael Gottfredson at the time of basketball sexual assault scandal was unclear.

Under the revised policy, Stabile said, survivors have options, such as disclosing to confidential reporters such as counselors.

With regard to the concerns raised by Freyd and others, the committee writes in its rationale that it “recognizes that there are serious arguments raised in opposition to this policy, especially with regard to its potential for discouraging some survivors of sexual violence from seeking confidential assistance.”

It continues, “However, the committee believes, given the substantial resources recently deployed in support of survivors of sexual violence, and the reasonable protections instituted by the university so that survivors continue to control the process of healing and resolution, that it is imperative that such survivors avail themselves of these resources.”

Freyd tells EW , “This is a human rights issue, and I have faith that in time we will all understand it that way. For me I fight this locally and nationally. It may take awhile but I think with effort this movement will succeed — as human rights movements tend to do eventually — and in the meantime I will not make bargains that sell my integrity for political expediency.”

Freyd says at least six universities do not require all faculty to be required reporters. The motion was voted down 16-15 on May 18, and Freyd writes in a note to other faculty, students and community members: “My understanding is that President [Michael] Schill will institute the failed policy as an emergency policy — so in that way our vote did not stop it — but since he will have to do this as an emergency policy it can only last six months and so the Senate needs to propose and pass a permanent policy in that time frame.”

Hanson concludes in her statement to the University Senate, “I am a public survivor because the UO's mandatory reporting policy made me one. Survivors should be empowered and supported by their university community, not have their agency taken from them by the very community they trust.”

Freyd has put together a resource page opposing required reporting at bit.ly/1Uc48Zl .

http://www.eugeneweekly.com/20160526/news-features/rape-survivors-testify-against-required-reporting

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New York

Child-abuse deaths under scrutiny by new Suffolk panel

by Laura Figueroa

Suffolk County has formed a special panel to examine child- abuse-related deaths and other suspicious juvenile deaths, with the goal of preventing future fatalities.

Suffolk Legis. Kara Hahn (D-Setauket) who sponsored legislation to establish a Child Fatality Review Team, said the initiative stemmed from discussions with county Medical Examiner Michael Caplan. He said other states and counties, including Nassau, have established panels charged with finding “gaps in the system” that may have resulted in a child's death.

“It's important that we identify where there is potential for us to make improvements to prevent future losses,” Hahn said, adding that she hoped to form a similar team to examine domestic-violence deaths.

In 2014, the state investigated the deaths of 284 children with a previous history of child abuse reported to authorities, including 12 in Suffolk and two in Nassau, according to the most recent state figures available.

More than a dozen other counties throughout New York have established state-sanctioned Child Fatality Review Teams. The teams focus on “preventing deaths and promoting child safety,” said Monica Mahaffey, spokeswoman for the state Office of Children and Family Services.

Nassau established its team in December 2008, in the months after three children were killed by their mother, Leatrice Brewer, in the family's New Cassel apartment. Brewer, who was later committed to an upstate psychiatric facility, fatally stabbed her 6-year-old daughter, Jewell, then drowned her 5-year-old son, Michael, and 18-month old daughter, Innocent, in a bathtub.

Nassau Department of Health spokeswoman Mary Ellen Laurain said there have been “positive outcomes” from the team's work.

Suffolk now has a Cribs for Kids program that provides low-income parents with a free crib, bedding and an instructional video on best sleeping positions for babies. The program was launched in 2010 after the team noticed a number of infant suffocations that occurred while they were sharing a bed with an adult, Laurain said.

Hahn said that in Suffolk, the panel will hold closed-door meetings four times a year to examine deaths such as that of 17-month old Justin Kowalczik, who was found buried in his family's Farmingdale backyard in October 2012.

Hahn also noted the death of Adonis Reed, 4, of Amityville, who was beaten to death by the boyfriend of a surrogate caretaker in January 2013.

“Especially as time passes you can look at the circumstances in a case with fresh eyes, without making assumptions or trying to assign blame, just giving the cases the close and analytical look they deserve, with the goal of improving the system and saving lives,” Hahn said.

Suffolk's 13-member panel, which was approved unanimously by the legislature and signed into law by County Executive Steve Bellone in April, will be headed by Caplan. It will include pediatricians, child-welfare experts, social workers and law enforcement officials.

Caplan said he hopes the team's work evaluating the deaths of those under the age of 18 “may be able to prevent similar tragedies in the future.”

http://www.newsday.com/long-island/suffolk/child-abuse-deaths-under-scrutiny-by-new-suffolk-panel-1.11852678

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Minnesota

Spike in abuse reports overwhelms Hennepin County child protection system

Abused children are stranded as foster homes and shelter beds fill up.

by Brandon Stahl

A dramatic rise in reported child abuse in Hennepin County is overwhelming child protection workers, filling up foster homes and shelter beds and in extreme cases forcing children to stay with abusive parents, according to county officials and records.

With no other options, some children who need placement into immediate custody for their safety are being left in their homes, county officials say. Or children are getting dropped off at emergency rooms and living there for weeks until a safe home is found, a Hennepin County Medical Center official said.

Children who have been able to get into a shelter at times are ending up stranded there long past the 90 days allowed under state law. Because the placement is supposed to be temporary, they often get only their basic needs met.

Hennepin County is on track to get 20,000 abuse reports this year, an increase of 2,500 over 2015. That's the highest in a decade, according to data provided in April to the county's Child Protection Oversight Committee.

The increase follows sweeping reforms in the past two years that directed counties to more aggressively intervene to safeguard children from abuse and neglect. Those reforms were motivated by widespread public outrage over tragic failures of child protection.

Now child protection workers say they're confronted with so many cases that they cannot give each one the needed attention, putting children at risk. Workers are quitting or voluntarily taking lower-level jobs.

“I've had kids get worse,” said Calvin McIntyre, who works as a child advocate in Hennepin County juvenile court, which is on pace to see its highest caseload in more than six years. “A lot of times you know the reason for those behaviors are because there's no consistency in their life.”

The workload has created turnover in the department and boosted caseloads for remaining employees over national thresholds, said Jennifer DeCubellis, the county's deputy administrator for health and human services.

“We absolutely have concerns about our staff viability,” she said.

DeCubellis said in the short term, the county is working on hiring more workers and finding more beds, and pursuing a long-term strategy of keeping families out of the system by providing more preventive services.

Backlog grows

Janine Moore, the area director of the county's children and family services department, said earlier this month that child protection has a backlog of nearly 300 unreviewed reports, up from 111 in February. Moore said staff examine all cases to determine which ones need immediate response.

Earlier this year, Moore told the committee there were 15 children on a shelter waiting list, meaning they needed to be taken into protective custody but child protection workers had nowhere to put them. At one point, the committee learned, there were 30 such cases, with a wait of up to two weeks before a safe home opened up for a child.

“Quite frankly,” Moore told the committee, “we've been struggling with this for over a year now.”

Currently, 15 to 20 children remain on the shelter waiting list, said Hennepin County Commissioner Mike Opat, co-chair of the oversight committee.

Mother runs

In one case, a judge ordered the county to take immediate custody of four children after their mother repeatedly skipped drug tests and therapy sessions, according to juvenile court records. But the case worker had no open beds for the children and allowed the mother to keep them.

When a bed did open up five days later, the mother fled with the children and went missing. She was arrested Jan. 8 and released after her children were found and put into shelter care.

That's supposed to be a short stay before moving into foster care or returning home. One of the children, who was 10, stayed in a shelter for nearly 90 days and regressed.

“His challenges have increased dramatically,” according to a social worker's report. “He has struggled to be calm and to keep himself and others feeling safe around him.”

Under state law, children can stay in a shelter program for a maximum of 90 days, unless the county is able to get a waiver. Moore told the oversight committee in February there were 20 children who spent more than 90 days in shelter care.

Left at hospitals

About two dozen children in the past year who had nowhere else to go were admitted to the pediatric ward of Hennepin County Medical Center, said the ward's director, Dr. Frances Prekker. Some, said Prekker, had to be confined to the ward because they might run away. Some of the children stayed in the ward for a month, Prekker said.

“It's quite stressful [for the children]. The hospital is a really boring place to live,” Prekker said. “They feel quite isolated.”

Brooklyn Park Police Chief Craig Enevoldsen said his officers have brought young children they suspected were abused to North Memorial Medical Center in Robbinsdale.

“We'd say, I need you to examine this child for any kind of injuries that aren't visible to us, and then tell the ER I have nowhere to take this child,” said Enevoldsen.

Enevoldsen said the situation has improved recently as the county has moved to a 24-hour response, including having child protection workers and supervisors on-call over weekends who can work with police. Moore said the backlog of abuse and neglect cases also should go down with the addition of nine new screeners.

But hiring has been a challenge, with 36 positions still unfilled. It has been nearly a year since the Hennepin County Board approved spending $3.6 million to hire nearly 100 child protection workers. County workers say their caseloads have gotten worse since then. In the past year, 25 child protection workers have quit and 26 have voluntarily demoted themselves, county records show.

Investigators are working about 18 cases at a time, according to their union, AFSCME. Gov. Mark Dayton's Child Protection Task Force recommended that a worker carry “no more than 10” cases.

“Child protection workers are set up to fail with caseloads of more than 10 families,” said AFSCME spokeswoman Jennifer Munt. “We live with constant fear that a child will slip through our safety net.”

Moore said investigators are getting about three to four new cases a week. “That is more than a reasonable caseload distribution,” she said.

In April, Moore told the oversight committee that to hire more staff her department will offer bonuses, increase starting salaries and lower the required experience from three years to one year.

DeCubellis said she doesn't anticipate a decrease in the number of abuse reports.

“I don't see the solution as throwing more resources at it,” she said. “It is, how do we provide better support in our communities and our families so those reports don't happen in child protection to begin with.”

http://www.startribune.com/spike-in-abuse-reports-overwhelms-hennepin-county-child-protection-system/381184691/

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Florida

Couple's arrest report outlines horrific child abuse

by Kevin Robinson

An arrest report alleges a Cantonment couple slammed their young, developmentally delayed childrens' heads into walls and floors, did not regularly feed or bathe them and inflicted "punishments" that left them with bruises, scars and broken limbs.

Spouses Jeffrey Scott Linton, 48, and Rachel Watkins Linton, 34, were arrested at their Muscogee Road residence Tuesday on charges of child abuse and child neglect. The Escambia County Sheriff's Office responded to the residence after receiving a report from the Department of Children and Families detailing severe abuse in the home.

Among the allegations were claims Jeffrey Linton had punished the children by holding them by their feet and hitting their heads on the floor, beating them with a wooden rod and had broken one the children's arms by twisting it behind their back.

The report also alleges that Rachel Linton would hit the victims' heads on the walls.

The allegations against the Lintons are based off photos and witness testimony provided to DCF, according to an ECSO arrest report. There were nine juveniles residing in the home, but the abuses were limited to the three youngest children, according to Sheriff's office officials.

The report notes the children were born prematurely and were developmentally delayed.

All nine children have been removed from the home and placed in appropriate care.

In interviews with investigators, Rachel Linton allegedly denied ever abusing the children. She reportedly said she had once "popped one of the children in the mouth for biting" and that she did sometimes "thump their hands."

Rachel Linton said she never saw her husband abuse the children, but said she would sometimes come home to find them with bruises and injuries. She said that Jeffrey Linton "always gave an excuse to explain them."

She noted she became suspicious after Jeffrey Linton "abused her several times and shot their puppy because it bit him," the report said.

Jeffrey Linton denied ever abusing or seeing anyone else abuse the children. He said the children would sometimes bang their heads against walls and hit each other.

A witness gave a conflicting statement, saying Jeffrey Linton abuses the children "all the time." The DCF report said the Lintons had coached the victims to blame their injuries on other children and told them they would be punished if they talked to DCF.

DCF first became involved in the case after receiving a report that one of the children suffered a broken leg "caused by a sibling" and then a broken arm "caused by a sibling" shortly thereafter. It was later determined that both the victim's arms had been broken.

Photos provided to the agency reportedly showed that all the victims were malnourished and had an array of knots, bruises, lacerations and scars. In a news conference Wednesday, Sheriff David Morgan called the abuse case one of the worst he had ever seen.

The Lintons are being held in Escambia County Jail on a combined bond of nearly $2.5 million. They are being represented by the Office of the Public Defender, according to court records. Assistant State Attorney Anne Patterson will prosecute the case.

The Linton's next court date is tentatively scheduled for June 16.

http://www.pnj.com/story/news/crime/2016/05/26/couples-arrest-report-outlines-horrific-child-abuse/84987474/

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Pennsylvania

There are many things that could be considered child abuse under the law

by Brandie Kessler

Mandated reporting laws in Pennsylvania might seem complicated, but really, the state wants anyone with a concern about a child's safety to report it.

Larry Richardson, longtime president and CEO of the York YMCA, was arraigned Thursday after being charged for allegedly failing to report a 2014 case of alleged child sexual abuse at the YMCA's Camp Spirit in East Manchester Township, according to charging documents .

Richardson told investigators that he followed the law in not reporting the incident to authorities and that it was a case of "sexual exploration" between two 12-year-old boys, documents state..

Although the State Department of Human Services did not comment on the specific case, Cathy Utz, the deputy secretary for the state office of children, youth and families, spoke in general about who should report abuse, and what constitutes abuse.

"What we really talk about is if you're concerned about the safety of a child, then you should make a report regardless of whether you're a mandated reporter or not," Utz said. She said people who report suspected abuse, including mandated reporters and permissive reporters, are protected from civil and criminal liability if they're making a report in good faith.

Permissive reporters, or anyone who has a "reasonable cause to suspect that a child is a victim of abuse," but who isn't legally obligated to report, may call ChildLine at 1-800-932-0313. Mandated reporters, or people who are required by law to report suspected child abuse, must either call ChildLine or submit a report online.

There are many things that could be considered child abuse under the law, some are listed online at keepkidssafe.pa.gov. But people don't need to figure out if what they've heard or what they saw meets the definition of abuse in order to report it, Utz said. And, she said, mandated reporters shouldn't be trying to make that determination before they report.

"Really, make the call, and let someone who is trained make the case as to whether a crime occurred or not," Utz said.

Abuse can occur in many forms and can be perpetrated by many people, including peer-to-peer where the person doing the alleged abuse is also a child, Utz said.

The law outlines the different types of abuse, and how a perpetrator of abuse is defined, including with child-on-child contact. The child-on-child references specify the perpetrator as being age 14 or older.

But Tina Phillips, director of training for the Pennsylvania Family Support Alliance, said the definition of abuse under the law, including the age of the perpetrator, has no bearing on a mandated reporter's obligation to report suspected abuse.

“The mandated reporter doesn't need to know the identity of the perpetrator or the relationship to the child, they need to report regardless,” Phillips said. It's not the responsibility of a mandated reporter to determine if what they've heard about or witnessed meets the definition of abuse, Phillips said, rather the mandated reporter has “a legal obligation” to make a report when they have a suspicion abuse has occurred.

Utz said in cases of child-on-child contact, it's possible the child perpetrating the abuse has been abused.

"Children who are victims oftentimes act out that victimization elsewhere," Utz said.

Utz pointed out that mandated reporters who are legally obligated to report abuse include anyone who has heard of suspected abuse, sometimes from a third party.

"With the changes to the law in December 2014, it removed that hierarchy" that used to exist where a teacher or child care worker would report suspected abuse to their supervisor, and then the supervisor would report to ChildLine. Now, any adult who is a mandated reporter who learns of suspected abuse must report, Utz said.

http://www.ydr.com/story/news/2016/05/26/who-has-report-child-abuse-what-rules/84990136/

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Japan

Japan amends laws to speed up response to child abuse

by Japan Today

TOKYO — The Japanese Diet has passed reform bills to make it easier for welfare authorities to raid homes when they suspect child abuse and to require the involvement of a full range of child welfare specialists in handling cases as instances of child abuse increase.

Under the new child abuse prevention law, enacted with a unanimous vote at the House of Councillors, officials at child consultation centers can enter homes by obtaining court warrants. Previously, officials who suspected child abuse were required to invite parents and guardians to submit to voluntary questioning.

In addition, the amended law on child welfare requires child consultation centers to be staffed by doctors, lawyers, child psychologists and experienced child welfare officials to deal with issues that arise in protecting abused children.

Medical institutions, schools and other child care institutions are required to provide relevant documents on the abused children at the request of the center.

While only prefectures and other designated large cities had been required to set up child consultation centers under the previous law, the new law calls for Tokyo's 23 wards to have them as well.

The reforms enable abused minors under 20 to enter child care facilities, raising the age limit from 18. In addition, child consultation centers are now in charge of consultation and support for adoption and fostering of abused children.

In 2015, police reported a record-high 37,020 minors aged below 18 to child welfare authorities as suspected victims of child abuse, up 28% from the previous year.

Los Angeles

VIDEO

NAASCA participated at Whole Foods 365 protest

Bill Murray, NAASCA founder and CEO, comments about the Whole Foods 365 CEO and it's Board's continued promoting and "institutional enabling" of an admitted pedophile and predator .. captured here on video:

https://www.facebook.com/jillbz/videos/10154187965507179/

NAASCA in the news:

Washington Post

Protesters' problem with new Whole Foods concept: An ex-rabbi's alleged sex scandal

What Whole Foods is calling “365 by Whole Foods Market” is supposed to bring environmentally friendly products to the masses. With its stock price not far above 52-week lows, the company nicknamed “Whole Paycheck” is aiming for a less hoity-toity audience. Tagline: “Make healthy living easy every day. For everybody.”

“It's time for a whole new grocery shopping experience,” the store's website says. “One that strives to be good for your body, your budget, your lifestyle and the planet.”

As the ribbon is cut at the first 365 store in Los Angeles on Wednesday, however, protesters at that location and at a Whole Foods in Manhattan will focus on an issue unrelated to $6 asparagus water and systemic overcharging. The protesters are targeting Whole Foods CEO John Mackey's links to Marc Gafni, a former rabbi who allegedly had sex with a number of his followers, including two teenage girls, as the New York Times reported last year.

“There's a culture of silence around [child sexual abuse]. I believe Whole Foods has an opportunity to really shape that conversation,” said activist Matthew Sandusky, the adopted son of former Penn State coach and convicted pedophile Jerry Sandusky, in a telephone interview with The Washington Post.

Matthew Sandusky, who said he was abused by his father, is involved with the protest through the Peaceful Hearts Foundation, the nonprofit support group for sexual assault survivors he co-founded.

Born Mordechai Winiarz in 1960, Gafni is the founder of the Center for Integral Wisdom — a San Francisco-based “Activist Think Tank” whose “mission is to love outrageously, live outrageously, and create an extraordinary world,” according to its website. Though this mission may seem vague, Mackey, known for his libertarian views and stated desire for businesses to do good, has been visibly involved in the center in recent years.

That involvement, however, has proven controversial. In 2004, a woman told Jewish Journal Gafni “repeatedly sexually assaulted” her over a nine-month period, beginning when she was 13 in 1979. She repeated the claims in a piece published in Forward magazine in January.

“I was a stupid kid and we were in love,” Gafni told the Jewish Journal. “She was 14 going on 35, and I never forced her.”

In email to The Washington Post, Gafni denied any “sexual misconduct,” saying he was 19 at the time of the relationship.

“Charges have never been brought against me, nor have I ever been found guilty in the court of law regarding these false claims,” he said.

In the Jewish Journal, Gafni denied another woman's claim that he abused her when she was 16 in 1986. He also told the New York Times this woman was “highly initiatory” and came on to him , and said her account is “categorically untrue” in a statemented emailed to The Post.

“I take full responsibility for my mistake in having a one-time limited contact … thirty one years ago,” he wrote.

Gafni moved to Israel in 1988, changed his name and founded Bayit Chadash, a community for mysticism and creative worship.  But that community later dissolved after Gafni was accused by his adult students in 2006 of asking them to keep their sexual relationships with him secret.

Gafni later wrote a letter in which he appeared to apologize for his behavior — but then wrote another blaming the controversy on “feminine shadow manipulated behind the scenes by masculine shadow, that is to say women encouraged and manipulated by men.”

“I did not,” Gafni told the Times, “represent myself as someone who didn't sleep with students.” He also told the Times he had asked lovers not for “secrecy” but for “privacy.”

CEO Mackey, meanwhile, has served on the board of Gafni's Center for Integral Wisdom, and has publicized his links to Gafni and the center in the past. He quotes Gafni liberally in his 2013 book “Conscious Capitalism,” and appeared with Gafni in videos discussing the book that, until recently, appeared on Whole Foods' website.

In one such video, Mackey and Gafni discussed the “shadow” of capitalism. From a transcript:

Gafni: One of the things business needs to do is to actually not be demonized, hold the heroic narrative, hold its nobility, and then like any healthy self, living its story, become conscious of its shadow, as opposed to identifying with its shadow.

Mackey: Yes! What's interesting about business is – of course business has its shadow – but it's almost like if it's been turned upside down, and the shadow is seen as the narrative about business and the hidden part is the heroic part of business. So, it needs to be turned completely opposite where business can realize its higher purpose of creating value in the world and helping humanity to progress and prosper. The shadow side will always remain the greedy, selfish, uncaring side that'll still be there, but it should be the shadow side that's seldom seen, not honored, and consciously sought to be overcome.

Gafni: Envy – I think it's so great what you said because envy… Love is: I see your beauty, and I identify you with your beauty, I interpret you through the prism of your beauty. Envy is: I see your shadow, and I identify you with your shadow, and see you through the prism of your shadow. And I think … actually, envy… causes… mass-culture often to interpret business through its shadow as opposed to through its essence.

The videos were replaced with a note from Mackey on May 5.

“My involvement with Marc Gafni and former Board of Directors relationship with the Center for Integral Wisdom is conducted strictly in my personal life and does not represent an endorsement or support for either Mr. Gafni or the Center for Integral Wisdom by Whole Foods Market,” Mackey wrote in the statement. “With that said, I have decided to remove the video interviews I participated in with Mr Gafni, and am doing so to be consistent with the position that this is indeed strictly a personal relationship.” The statement provided a link to the Center for Integral Wisdom website.

Rabbi David Ingber of New York's Romemu synagogue, a former associate of Gafni behind a Change.org petition titled “Stop Marc Gafni from Abusing Again,” said Mackey should publicly break with Gafni.

“It's unbelievable to me that someone who has as much to lose as Mackey would have done so little research” on Gafni, Ingber said. He added: “Talk about conscious capitalism – this is the most unconscious expression of capitalism that you could possibly imagine.”

Sandusky also said he wants Mackey to distance himself from the former rabbi.

In an emailed statement to The Post, Gafni said Mackey's term on the Central for Integral Wisdom's Board ended in March, and that Mackey “has no affiliation with the center at this time.”

“This group of protestors, led by many of my competing adversaries, is using Mackey as a platform to continue their smear campaign designed to destroy my reputation and career,” Gafni wrote. “While combating sexual abuse or harassment is essential and something I fully support, so is providing a fair forum for those being wrongly accused. Publically [sic] lashing out against someone based upon false or distorted information about sexual events is itself a form of abuse.”

Whole Foods declined comment for this story.

Protesters pressure Whole Foods to sever ties with alleged sex abuser

by Hayley Fox

When the new 365 by Whole Foods Market — a more affordable outpost of the luxury grocery chain — opened  Wednesday  morning in Silver Lake, the atmosphere in the parking lot was palpably upbeat: pedestrians hustled around clutching reusable totes and a DJ was blasting classic rock and soul.

Yet while many Angelenos couldn't wait to hit the carefully orchestrated organic salad bar, a handful of activists set up on the sidewalk to remind shoppers of a more controversial side to Whole Foods. They were protesting the company and its co-founder/co-CEO, John Mackey — specifically, his relationship to Marc Gafni, a former rabbi who's jumped from one spiritual movement to another, leaving a trail of sexual assault allegations in his wake.

Until March of this year, Mackey served as the co-chairman of the board of directors for Gafni's newest venture, an “activist think tank” based in the Bay Area called the Center for Integral Wisdom. Mackey also reportedly hosted board meetings during that time at his personal ranch in Texas. 

“It's important for people like John Mackey to break the silence,” Rabbi Jill Zimmerman, founder of The Jewish Mindfulness Network, told the Journal. “When someone has a long trail of abuse, there were lots of people who didn't speak up who were able to speak up.”

Zimmerman was one of the leaders of  Wednesday's  protest, which coincided with a parallel demonstration at a Whole Foods in New York. In Los Angeles, Zimmerman was joined by a few sexual abuse activists who propped up posters along Glendale Boulevard that read “Stand Up, Speak Out,” and schooled passersby on Mackey's corporate responsibility and Gafni's history of alleged sexual abuse. 

Gafni, born Mordechai Winiarz, grew up in an Orthodox home, became ordained as a rabbi and went on to teach at a youth outreach program in New York. Two women came forward to say Gafni had sexually assaulted them as teenagers, and he later had his ordination revoked. Gafni's been married and divorced three times, accused of plagiarism and tried to start multiple mystical and spiritual movements in the U.S. and Israel, only to have them fall apart at the seams because of lingering distrust and continued accusations.

“It became really clear that what Marc Gafni had done, and what he's done several times, is that he's picked up and gone into another community to continue offending again,” Zimmerman said.

Some have said Gafni has managed to dodge criminal charges because it's common for victims to report abuse years after it occurs, and by then there is often no legal recourse due to the statute of limitations. Just because Gafni was never arrested doesn't mean he's innocent, said Nancy Levine,  volunteer protest coordinator for the National Association of Adult Survivors of Child Abuse (NAASCA).

“The argument of ‘Oh, I was never charged,' is not a great argument,” Levine said .

In December 2015, some members of the Jewish community took matters into their own hands. New York-based Rabbi David Ingber — who knew Gafni personally and said he saw him seduce several students first-hand — launched an online petition calling for Mackey, Whole Foods and other Gafni supporters to cut “financial and institutional ties” with the former rabbi. The petition stated that the many allegations made against Gafni “violate the ethical standards and sacred responsibility which governs the relationship between religious teacher and student.”

The petition garnered more than 3,500 signatures in less than six months, and since its debut, Mackey and Whole Foods seem to be quietly distancing themselves from Gafni. But that's not enough for activists like Bill Murray, founder of NAASCA.

“They've just decided to say ‘no comment,' ” he said .  “They are allowing pedophilia to go on because they're not taking a stand against it.”

In May, Mackey removed a seven-part video series that he recorded with Gafni from the Whole Foods blog. He replaced it with a statement about his relationship with the former rabbi, claiming it was “conducted strictly” in his personal life and that his connection to Gafni “does not represent an endorsement or support for either Mr. Gafni or the Center for Integral Wisdom by Whole Foods Market.”

However, a link to the videos, available on the Center for Integral Wisdom's website, remains on Whole Foods' blog. And Mackey's headshot and endorsing testimonial — he calls Gafni a “bold visionary and catalytic voice” — is still featured on the homepage of Gafni's personal website.  

Neither Gafni nor Whole Foods responded to the Journal's email request for comment, but the Center for Integral Wisdom posted a lengthy online public statement in response to “the current attacks” on Gafni. 

“Based on our careful review of extensive documentary evidence, numerous professional evaluations, and our collective experiences with Dr. Gafni, we fully trust that the claims of sexual harassment and abuse are false, and that other claims against him are maliciously exaggerated,” it says. 

The statement goes on to explain that Gafni's lawyer has advised him not to comment on the issues “given the defamatory nature of the false accusations.” It encourages readers to visit Gafni's personal website or read one of his books to get a deeper sense of his character.

If Mackey and Whole Foods won't take a stand against Gafni for ethical reasons, Murray hopes they'll consider their stockholders and the prospective financial damages of being associated with a sexual abuser. After all, Whole Foods has plans to open these “quality-meets-value” 365 markets throughout California and the rest of the country — and protesters hope to be right there with them along the way.

“They would like to have that middle class demographic group as their customer base, and they're risking not only not acquiring it, but damaging what they already got,” Murray said.

http://www.jewishjournal.com/los_angeles/article/protesters_pressure_whole_foods_to_sever_ties_with_alleged_sex_abuser

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Los Angeles

The huge price tag for missing warnings of L.A. teachers abusing students: $300 million and counting

by Richard Winton and Howard Blume Contact Reporters

a recent court hearing, one young man after another claimed that former Franklin High football coach Jaime Jimenez befriended them during summer practice before 9th grade, then sexually abused them.

But it's not the allegations against Jimenez that are at the center of a lawsuit filed this month against the Los Angeles Unified School District. It's about whether school officials once again missed — or ignored — warning signs about Jimenez that prolonged the alleged abuse. 

The nation's second-largest school system has been plagued in recent years by a series of cases in which officials missed indications of teacher misconduct, and in some instances, continued to employ teachers who were under a cloud, or ignored or overlooked direct complaints.

The result is a trail of victimized students and massive payouts to victims and attorneys that have surpassed $300 million in just the last four years. 

The district paid $40 million related to abuse at Telfair Elementary School after plaintiffs claimed the district overlooked earlier molestation allegations made against a teacher. The settlement was $58 million in the case of a George De La Torre Elementary School teacher, who faced numerous accusations of touching students that the district ignored. The biggest payout -- $200 million -- came after revelations that the district knew of complaints dating back to 1983 about a Miramonte Elementary School teacher accused of abusing numerous students in his classroom.

"Districts are not liable for criminal acts," said attorney Mary Jo McGrath, who has advised school districts and conducted investigations for them. "They are liable for what they did not do.”

LAUSD officials acknowledge past mistakes, but insist they have taken strong measures and now have some of the most extensive policies for preventing and uncovering abuse.

But a pattern has emerged: The district announces measures to make students safer, only to discover a new weakness in the system or to find that policies were not followed.

And predators keep surfacing.

Jimenez, 47, has pleaded not guilty to 32 felony counts for alleged wrongdoing stretching as far back as 2001.

Prosecutors say he actively pursued and abused boys from then until early 2015, when he was arrested. That was well after the district imposed a series of reforms in the wake of the Miramonte scandal.

Witnesses ranging in age from 16 to 27 testified in February that, over 14 years, Jimenez, a walk-on coach who assisted the full-time staff, gave them rides from practice, bought them gifts, regularly had students to his house to play computer games and to watch movies and football on TV. They frequently slept over; sometimes he plied them with alcohol, they said.

He allegedly ratcheted up sexual contact, moving from touching to masturbation and sodomy. A fixture in the Franklin community, Jimenez knew some of his alleged victims when they were in elementary school; one testified that the abuse began when he was 9.

The lawyer for some of the victims said it's hard to believe officials at the school didn't suspect something was going on with one of his clients. 

"Teachers and administrators would see him coming and going in (Jimenez's) car and they know that is against policy,” attorney Vince Finaldi said.

That theme, of missing warning signs, or of failing to take seriously when a parent or student complained about discomfort with a teacher, has surfaced repeatedly in recent years.

Complaints against former teacher De La Torre teacher Robert Pimentel spanned a decade.

His supervisor, former district Principal Irene Hinojosa, fielded concerns about Pimentel touching students in 2002, when she documented a conference with the teacher about touching and slapping girls' buttocks and touching their calves. The teacher admitted the conduct, with the excuse that he was on medication, which increased his sex hormones, according to the documents.

Three years later, Hinojosa received a search warrant from the Newport Beach police requesting “Mr. Pimentel's employment and personnel files” because of an investigation into Pimentel's alleged abuse of a minor who was related to him. 

It's not clear whether these early reports rose above Hinojosa, for whom Pimentel worked at two campuses.

In 2009, senior administrators learned of allegations through a report from social worker Holly Priebe-Diaz, who had talked to parents demonstrating against Hinojosa. Their concerns included Pimentel, who, the parents told her, "has been known to touch female students inappropriately...he caresses the girls.” One parent described his rubbing a girl's back and “stroking her bra strap.” 

Thirteen of the damage claims concerned actions Pimentel took after Priebe-Diaz's 2009 report and after the district imposed new internal rules designed to better detect abusive teachers.

Plaintiff attorneys said the district should have acted much sooner against Pimentel.

“They put policies in place. They say they are reforming and then it turns out administrators ignored all the reports,” said attorney John Manly, who has represented some of the abuse victims.

Pimentel was eventually convicted of child abuse and sentenced to 12 years in state prison.

Los Angeles is far from the only school system to grapple with allegations of molestation by teachers. Just last month, a jury ordered the Pomona Unified School District to pay $8 million to a former student who was molested repeatedly by a teacher, including once during a Disneyland visit.

But L.A. Unified's sheer size, and the outrageous nature of several high-profile cases, has kept the issue front and center for several years.

The district's most expensive abuse case involves Mark Berndt, a former teacher at Miramonte Elementary School south of downtown L.A. The district has spent $200 million on claims made by students, and more cases are outstanding.

The size of settlements are also creeping upward. Those first Miramonte claims cost the district about $500,000 each in 2013. Later, similar cases crossed the million-dollar mark. Last week's payouts in the Pimentel case averaged about $3 million per student. The district last week also resolved suits related to former Telfair Elementary teacher Paul Chapel for about $30 million, bringing the total payouts in that case to nearly $40 million.

The largest payment to one victim was $6.9 million in 2012 to a boy repeatedly sexually abused by former Queen Anne Place Elementary teacher Forrest Stobbe.

"Because of these settlements, the injury caused by these criminals truly is an injury to all," said school board President Steve Zimmer. "But I'm not going to say the settlements are too much. There is no amount of money that can undo what was done. The No. 1 concern is the healing of children who were injured under our watch. The second is the activity of a tiny, tiny fraction of employees who were criminals masquerading as teachers." 

District officials say every case is unique and that the circumstances determine the dollars, but the district's accumulated reputation and record may work against it — attorneys for victims routinely cite the district's past mistakes in court filings.

Other potentially costly cases are working their way through the legal pipeline, including that of Jimenez and former Franklin drama teacher Peter Gomez, who was convicted of sexually abusing two boys. Both victims sued the district, with one case settled and another settlement pending, according to court records.

Other active claims relate to former San Pedro High substitute science teacher Michelle Yeh, who last year pleaded no contest to unlawful sex and child molestation involving three boys.

Prosecutors declined to charge former El Sereno Elementary School teacher Armando Gonzalez, but at least three former students have sued the district, alleging he abused them between 2008 and 2010.

School officials said that many of the biggest settlements in recent years have come from allegations of abuse that occurred some time ago. They believe some of the reforms are showing results.

"These settlements involved cases that happened many years ago," general counsel David Holmquist said. "This is in our history and we've taken steps to correct the problems going forward. Students are much safer today than a decade ago.”

Officials cite updated, annual training for parents, students and employees, an increased police presence on campuses and a special investigations team.

The district credits this team with recently unearthing alleged abuse from at least 10 years ago, which led to the arrest last week of Asst. Principal William Webb, a case that already has launched another lawsuit.

"We welcome new ideas," Holmquist said. "If there were a reliable psychological test to screen new hires, we'd do that. If somebody has a good idea, bring it on."

In a recent deposition, an L.A. Unified manager testified that, over a seven-month period, the district pulled 40 employees from schools because of sexual misconduct allegations.

In 2014 and 2015, the district initiated the dismissal of teachers in 28 cases that involved alleged inappropriate physical conduct and 14 that involved alleged sexual contact with a minor. The vast majority resulted in the teacher's departure; a few are still in process.

Across the school system, about 160 employees currently are suspended for a wide variety of possible transgressions while investigations and due process rules play out. 

Statistics suggest that about 1% of teachers and other school employees across the country could be past, current or future abusers, said Terri Miller, president of Stop Educator Sexual Abuse Misconduct & Exploitation, which is based in Las Vegas.

L.A. Unified is far from alone in having mishandled cases, she said.

"It is a problem all over," Miller said.

L.A. teachers whose conduct led to sexual abuse payouts since 2012:

• $200 million* -- Mark Berndt, Miramonte Elementary
  
• $58 million -- Robert Pimentel, De La Torre Elementary
  
• $40 million -- Paul Chapel, Telfair Elementary
  
• $6.9 million -- Forrest Stobbe, Queen Anne Place Elementary
  
• $320,000 -- Jason Leon, Portola Middle School 

*includes legal fees

Source: L.A. Unified School District; court documents

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-la-unified-payouts-for-sex-abuse-20160525-snap-story.html

California

Corey Feldman Says 'I Would Love to Name Names' of Hollywood's Child Predators

by Clover Hope

Last weekend and through the week, Elijah Wood brought the issue of pedophilia in Hollywood into the spotlight again by talking about the prevalence and many victims of child predators. Expanding on that, former child actor Corey Feldman went into further grim detail and spoke directly about his own abuse in a recent interview.

In a conversation with The Hollywood Reporter , Feldman—who's been open about being a victim of child abuse—describes the predatory environment surrounding kids in Hollywood as “a growing problem, not a shrinking problem.” In particular, he talks about the rape of his friend Corey Haim, who died in 2010 after battling addiction.

Feldman tells THR :

“He had more direct abuse than I did. With me, there were some molestations and it did come from several hands, so to speak, but with Corey, his was direct rape, whereas mine was not actual rape. And his also occurred when he was 11. My son is 11 now and I can't even begin to fathom the idea of something like that happening to him. It would destroy his whole being. As I look at my son, a sweet, innocent, 11-year-old boy and then try to put him in Corey Haim's shoes, I go, ‘Oh my God — well of course he was erratic and not well-behaved on sets and things like that.'”

Feldman later theorizes that “Haim's rapist was probably connected to something bigger and that is probably how he has remained protected for all these years.”

When asked what types of people were responsible for the incidents (producers, studio heads, etc.), Feldman says he'd love to name names but points to the issue of power dynamics:

“I'm not able to name names. People are frustrated, people are angry, they want to know how is this happening and they want answers and they turn to me and they say, “Why don't you be a man and stand up and name names and stop hiding and being a coward?” I have to deal with that, which is not pleasant, especially given the fact that I would love to name names. I'd love to be the first to do it. But unfortunately California conveniently enough has a statute of limitations that prevents that from happening. Because if I were to go and mention anybody's name I would be the one that would be in legal problems and I'm the one that would be sued.”

Feldman adds that “the lawmakers in California” need to better address the protection of child actors. “If somebody came forward with a suit against one of these people [who molested me],” he says, “I would certainly be more than happy to back them up. But that hasn't happened.”

Are these people still working in Hollywood?

One of them is. He's still prominently in the business today.

And have you ever confronted him yourself or run into him?

We've run into each other many times but no, I've never confronted him.

One of the more disturbing revelations from Feldman is his recollection of industry parties where kids anywhere from 10 to 16 years old would interact with adult men in attendance. “They would throw these parties where you'd walk in and it would be mostly kids and there would be a handful of adult men,” says Feldman. “They would also be at the film awards and children's charity functions.”

“The lure for kids is that they work in adult world. All of their friends become adults and they very rarely get to interact with other kids,” he adds. “So when somebody approaches you and says, ‘Hey, this is a Hollywood party where you get to hang out with the powerful people in Hollywood,' well that sounds like a great opportunity.”

And they're being molested or raped at these parties?

I didn't say that but I'm saying that's —

You're saying they're groomed?

Exactly, that's the networking and that's when you become pals with them and you get their phone numbers and you get their mom's phone numbers and the next thing you know they talk to the moms and say, “Hey, I want to take Corey out to an event, this would be great for him, let me pick him up and take him.” And they turn that power over right away to the publicist or the photographers.

Feldman was also asked about his friendship with Michael Jackson, who faced multiple child molestation allegations when he was alive. “He was a friend and our relationship did not end well. We had a falling out and that was due to the fact that there was definitely a dark side to him,” says Feldman. “But that dark side in no way connected itself to pedophilia by my estimation.”

http://jezebel.com/corey-feldman-says-i-would-love-to-name-names-of-hollyw-1778871417

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California

A Timeline of Child Abuse in Hollywood

by Abigail Rowe

Following Elijah Wood's recent comments in the Sunday Times , public attention has quickly turned to entertainment industry “vipers,” and those leveraging their position and prestige to sexually exploit children. The actor spoke to the UK paper about the prevalence of abuse and the difficulty in addressing it, because victims “can't speak as loudly as people in power.”

Wood later clarified his remarks on Twitter, explaining that, while this is an issue he feels “is an important one that should be discussed,” his interest was piqued by a recent documentary, not personal experience. He stressed: “I cannot speak with any authority beyond articles I have read and films I have seen.”

The role of the celebrity in industry abuse cases is often used to shape its narrative. Wood's interview marks just one more in a myriad of recent examples. The celebrity abuser, as much as the celebrity victim, or the celebrity activist, elevates the issue; recently revived allegations against Bill Cosby and Woody Allen have not only dominated the news cycles over the past year, but much of the conversation around industry abuse itself. It is crucial to hold both men accountable for their actions. But it is also important to realize that many of these Hollywood abusers, and the majority of their victims, are not household names. In a 2012 report on child sexual abuse cases, the Los Angeles Times wrote that a number of cases involved “lesser-known assailants employed at all levels of the industry,” from an on-set tutor to an acting coach, along with talent agents, managers, and production assistants. Because the abuse is so widespread, the boys and girls affected are likewise at “all levels” of their career: from child stardom to suburban aspiration.

As with the weight of their names, the new developments in the Allen and Cosby cases have the effect of making Wood's remarks feel particularly timely, and they are. But they have been relevant for much longer. Below, we constructed a short timeline of the major cases and developments in Hollywood abuse history. The majority of incidents we recorded took place or were reported after 2000, when a series of lawsuits and court documents filed over the last decade brought the crimes to light for the first time. This timeline by no means comprises all of the abuses and allegations. Given the nature of the crimes and the fact that, according to RAINN, roughly 68 percent of sexual abuse cases went unreported in the last five years, doing so would be impossible. Hopefully, by continuing to stress the realities children in the industry face and the legal loopholes that for years allowed abuse to easily take place, the discussion around abuse in Hollywood will more accurately reflect (and actively help) its victims.

1976-1977

•  Actor Todd Bridges of Diff'rent Strokes says he was abused by his publicist starting around age eleven or twelve.

1977

•  Roman Polanski charged on five counts of sexual abuse against 13-year-old Samantha Jane Gailey.

1986

•  On the set of The Lost Boys, Corey Haim confesses to Corey Feldman that “an adult male convinced him that it was perfectly normal for older men and younger boys in the business to have sexual relations.”

1987

•  Bob Villard, a children's agent who represented Leonardo DiCaprio, charged with transportation of child pornography.

1988

•  Director Victor Salva convicted of molesting the 12-year-old boy starring in his debut feature, Clownhouse.

1990s

•  Marc Collins-Rector and Chad Shackley allegedly host lavish parties attended by teenage boys.

•  Actress Thandie Newton faces an abusive casting director who asks her to “touch herself,” and circulates the footage “among other industry moguls.”

1992

•  Dylan Farrow tells her mother about her father's abuse, which is later recorded in Allen's custody suit that same year.

2001

•  Bob Villard sentenced to three years probation after discovery of “thousands of photographs of boys in skimpy bathing suits” in his home.

2002

•  Lawsuit filed against Collins-Rector, Shackley, and their company, Digital Entertainment Network, Inc.

2004

•  Jason Michael Handy sentenced for two felony counts, one of lewd acts on a child and one for distributing sexually explicit material by email.

2005

•  Bob Villard charged with committing a lewd act on a 13-year-old boy.

2012

•  Martin Weiss, a children's talent manager, pleads no contest to two charges of oral copulation with a child under the age of fourteen.

•  Bill protecting child actors from working under registered sex offenders passed into law.

2014

•  Jason Michael Handy faces second arrest for child abuse after working as a production assistant for Nickelodeon.

•  Lawsuit against Bryan Singer, Garth Ancier, David Neuman, and Gary Goddard filed.

2015

•  Amy Berg's documentary An Open Secret, exposing child abuse in Hollywood, is given a theatrical release in three cities.

•  SAG-AFTRA threatens to sue Berg over her claims in An Open Secret .

2016

•  Ronan Farrow speaks out for the first time against his father, Woody Allen.

It's jarring to see these allegations, convictions, histories and arrests in their succession. Worse yet is to see that, until 2012, there was no law at all preventing convicted child molesters from working with children in the entertainment industry as casting directors, managers, photographers, publicists or career coaches. All of those roles place an adult in a position of power over a child who could be exploited by promises of success. Wood's claims that industry abuse is “all organized” may sound alarming. But to look at the extent of the allegations over just the last two decades, and to know they can only scratch the surface, is more alarming still. Encouraging dialogue in an industry that has actively tried to suppress it is a crucial step towards justice.

http://www.complex.com/pop-culture/2016/05/hollywood-child-abuse-timeline

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New York

Predators Shielded as NY Senate GOP Nixes the Child Victims Act; Cuomo Meets with Adult Survivors

by Binny Pryanovich

Adult survivors of child sex abuse and molestation were bitterly disappointed on Monday, when State Senate Republicans voted against legislation that would reform the statute of limitations on how much time victims have to file charges against their abuser.

Senate Democrats sought to attach the measure to another bill in the hopes of forcing a vote on the issue, according to a report in the Daily News. The report indicated that they had tried to push it through as a “hostile amendment” to a bill proposed by Senator Richard Funke (R-Rochester) that would require certain establishments to display a poster with information regarding the national human trafficking resource center hotline. Speculation continues to abound as to precisely why the GOP has been intentionally dragging their feet on deciding the future of this legislation.

Senator Brad Hoylman, a Democrat from Manhattan, who had sponsored the Child Victims Act said, “It's a shame today that the Senate chose not to side with the survivors of childhood sexual abuse, and instead continued to aid and abet predators by refusing to fix New York's broken statute of limitations for these abominable crimes.”

Ruling that the Hoylman bill was not germane to the crux of the legislation was Senator Joseph Griffo, (R-Utica) who presided over the session.

Hoylman had argued the amendment was germane because human trafficking typically involves child sex victims, as was reported by the Daily News. “Child sex abuse is a widespread problem,” he said. “We can do something about it today.”

Partisan politics was at play when just 29 senators, none of whom happened to be Republicans, voted by a show of hands to overturn Griffo's ruling. The effort collapsed as they did not garner the majority of votes needed to have the ruling overturned.

Democrats in the New York State Senate are at a disadvantage in terms of proposing new legislation because of the GOP majority in the chamber and their ability to control the agenda in terms of what bills will arrive at the floor for a vote.

Kathryn Robb, an activist who says she was sexually abused by her brother told the Daily News that, “I was only looking forward to some sort of vote just so we can call out those senators that stood with predators and not the children of New York. It exposes them for where they stand.”

An upstate New York investor, Gary Greenberg, will be fervently pursuing justice for survivors of child sex abuse through the creation of a political action committee that will target state senators who did not cast their votes for the Child Victims Act.

Speaking to the Daily News, Greenberg, who had been himself been a victim of child sexual abuse in 1966, said that his preference would have been for Senate Republicans to grant a straight up or down vote rather than the Democrats going for the hostile amendment option.

“Why would you delay voting on a law that would protect children, out predators, and help people heal?” Greenberg asked. “Why would you delay that a day?”

For their part, the GOP said they are not opposed to the passage of the Child Victims Act, but see the Democratic initiative to have it passed as a grandstanding effort.

“The Senate Democrats have engaged in an unfortunate political stunt at a time when we are attempting to have an honest and serious discussion about this issue. While we are currently reviewing a number of bills on this topic, it's clear that the members of the Senate Republican Conference will continue to work extraordinarily hard to protect the victims of sexual assault,” a Senate GOP spokesman said.

The Democrats, though, said if the Republicans were serious about addressing the issue they would have let it come to the floor.

The Assembly Democratic majority still hasn't decided whether it will address the issue before the end of the session.

Speaker Carl Heastie (D-Bronx) said he has begun surveying his members on where they stand.

Last week, Governor Cuomo jumped into the fray and met personally with five survivors and two victims' advocates.

Cuomo had left the bedside of his girlfriend Sandra Lee after she had undergone breast reconstruction surgery to attend the meeting. Lee underwent a double mastectomy last year.

A number of state politicos and elected officials have been less than willing to give their full throated endorsement of the proposed Child Victims Act before the legislative session ends on June 16th, according to a NY Daily News report.

After the meeting, MaleSurvivor executive director Chris Anderson, one of the abuse survivors, said, “To be in that room and be heard by the governor was very powerful. We felt like there was a lot of compassion in that room. I walked out really feeling that we all had been heard.”

“To be in that room and be heard by the governor was very powerful,” MaleSurvivor executive director Chris Anderson, one of the abuse survivors said. “We felt like there was a lot of compassion in that room. I walked out really feeling that we all had been heard.” The delegation that met with the governor were touched that he decided to give them his undivided attention, despite the fact that his girlfriend had just had surgery performed.

“We were moved by the fact that he saw us with his significant other in the hospital,” said Marci Hamilton, law professor and advocate for survivors of sexual abuse.

Sources close to the lobbying efforts have speculated that the state's top leaders are more than reluctant to champion the Child Victims Act legislation because of the power of the Catholic church. Some have opined that the church would have the most to lose financially if lawsuits by victims were filed against them for not doing anything to prevent the molestation from taking place on their premises.

For the last eight years, Mark Meyer Appel of the Voice of Justice has devoted the lion's share of his time to conducting well organized lobbying efforts in Albany to call for a major reform in the statute of limitations.

“It is our moral responsibility as Orthodox Jews, as upright citizens of this country, to make it our business to eliminate these predators, “ intoned Mr. Appel. “Because child sexual abuse gets swept under the proverbial rug in Orthodox circles , it very often comes out many years later. I worked with victims who were abused over 20 years ago, and who never pursued their cases out of fear and always remained mum about it. One day, without warning, a trigger will go off in their brain and all the nightmarish memories will surface and they will be reliving the abuse. Now, however, as adults they do want to redress their grievances in a court of law and that right should be afforded to them,” he said with palpable emotion reverberating in this voice.

http://jewishvoiceny.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=14609:predators-shielded-as-ny-senate-gop-nixes-the-child-victims-act-cuomo-meets-with-adult-survivors-&catid=112:new-york&Itemid=295

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The Parent's Guide to Child Abuse: 17 Warning Signs and Ways to Prevent It

by Tanvier Peart

Every 10 seconds, child abuse is reported. Everyday, four to seven children die from child abuse and neglect. As unfathomable as it is to ever think someone would want to hurt a child, sadly, it's happening. What's even more heartbreaking is that many children are suffering in silence as their parents have no idea they're being victimized.

"We currently live in a day and age where abuse is on the rise and children are falling victims on daily basis, without their parent's awareness," notes Kemi Sogunle, award-winning author and founder of the nonprofit Love Not Hurt. As moms and dads, it's our job to do our best to protect our kids.

No matter how uncomfortable the subject of child abuse is, it needs to be discussed.

Here are common warning signs for parents to look out for, and steps moms and dads can take to help keep their children safe.

Child abuse warning signs

Dr. Claire Nicogossian is a licensed clinical psychologist who has created the following shortlist of child abuse warning signs based on her 20 years experience and past observations.

• Noticeable personality changes (depending on the child's age and severity of the situation)

• Nightmares, difficulty sleeping, and regressive behavior -- like bed-wetting or urination accidents with no previous history, and acting younger in a dramatic way

• May display sexualized or inappropriate behavior

• Are extra clingy

• Maladaptive coping --including hairpulling, cutting, skin picking, loss of appetite or excessive eating (even food hoarding)

• Anger or aggression towards self and others, especially at school (acting out)

• Changes in academic performance, like a decline in grades and being withdrawn from once enjoyable activities and pastimes

• (Unexplained) bruising, injuries, and scars -Reluctance to be alone or with a particular person

Dr. Nicogossian also points out that child abuse often occurs with someone the child knows (a neighbor, caregiver, family member, friend). In addition to physical cases, child abuse also encompasses emotional and sexual abuse.

How to protect your child from abuse

As Dr. Eliza Belle, a licensed psychologist, says all parents can do is the best they can. While there's no way to guarantee your child will never experience hurt or pain, here are a few steps parents can take to help protect their child from abuse.

Try to build trust. "Children often view parents as the opposition or enemy, depending on the stage of development they're in. This is why it's so important to try and build trust through truth, and not just a strict set of rules," advises Dr. Belle. Listen. Even if it's unrelated to abuse, get in the habit of allowing your child to come to you for open and honest discussion. And, when your kid tells you something, believe it. Don't be afraid to get real. Have an age-appropriate discussion with your child about the realities of this world. Talk with your son or daughter about body parts and inappropriate play. Reassess your squad. It's okay to be cautious about who you let spend time with your child. "When choosing friends and intimate partners -- as well as family members and co-workers -- to be in the same space as your child, take the time to assess who they really are. Wanting to be vigilant and preventative doesn't have to cause suspicion or fear of every person that isn't you. It does, however, require you to be cognizant of who's in your life," warns Dr. Belle. "Do not readily leave your child alone with people without careful consideration." Follow up with your child. How was your day? What kind of things did you and [name of caregiver] do? There's nothing wrong with asking your child open-ended questions about their day with someone when you weren't present. Reaffirm and praise your child. "Many child abusers prey on children who show signs of low self-esteem, a fear of failure, or being let down," notes Dr. Belle. Always lead with love, and reiterate to your child that he or she is good enough. Don't go to the extreme. "Make discipline choices for your children that are appropriate and reflect your intended outcome. Extreme or spontaneous physical punishment can cause an unhealthy view of correction. In fact, some children will grow to expect it from other loved ones -- and even strangers," Dr. Belle points out. Always trust your gut!

http://www.essence.com/2016/05/26/parents-guide-child-abuse-17-warning-signs-and-ways-prevent-it

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Texas

DFPS working to prevent child abuse

by Christy Millweard

The Department of Family and Protective Services is working to prevent child abuse before it happens.

We often hear about the awful cases of child abuse or neglect that cause Child Protective Services to intervene, but DFPS said there are resources for parents to deal with the stress of parenting.

"None of us are really taught to be parents, it's something we just learn on the job,” said Andy Miller, president and CEO of Any Baby Can.

Miller said they offer parenting classes, saying education is key to preventing abuse.

"We know that when parents are stressed, when they feel frustrated, or worse when they feel they have no options and no support, that's when families can be at risk,” said Miller.

Stacy Bruce, vice president with Safe Alliance and executive director of the Austin Children's Shelter said they want to put an end to that risk of child abuse or neglect.

"We know that the key to stopping, ending child abuse is prevention,” said Bruce. "We know that if we can get to those families with those little ones, we do have much more of an opportunity to affect change and the trajectory of the life of those children, but also the families."

With their programs, they offer in home support, therapy, and classes for parents and kids. Bruce said one program, Strong Start, focuses on children under the age of 5.

According to Sasha Rasco, assistant commissioner for prevention and early intervention at DFPS, they used to focus a lot of the prevention programs on youth, but now that they see 80 percent child abuse fatalities happen under the age of 5, they're shifting the emphasis to the younger group.

Rasco said these resources are important in preventing abuse.

"The whole idea being that we get to families that might be struggling a little, but wouldn't yet warrant a call to CPS, so it's thinking ahead,” said Rasco.

Both of these organizations are resources for parents in Travis County, but Williamson County could see their own programs soon.

"It's important to give parents the skills they need to do this job well,” said Rasco.

Texas lawmakers designated a little more than $100,000 over the next two years, solely for prevention.

Williamson County is competing with 15 other counties for eight grants, money that would allow the counties to decide which prevention programs would be best in their community to prevent abuse.

"What parents have told us is they get lots of information about immunization, and school and the physical care of their children, what they're missing is how to deal with the stress of of being a parent...what do you do when you're baby won't stop crying in the middle of the night and you haven't gotten any sleep," said Rasco.

If you want to find resources near you, go here to search by county at the DFPS website.

Go here for information from Help and Hope.

http://www.kvue.com/news/local/dfps-working-to-prevent-child-abuse/215165865

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Indonesia

Child sex abuse in Indonesia now punishable by chemical castration

by Angela Dewan

Child sex abuse is now punishable by death and chemical castration in Indonesia after its president on Wednesday issued a new law following the brutal gang rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl.

The battered body of the victim was discovered, naked and tied up, in a forest on the island of Sumatra after she was attacked by a group of teenagers in April. Seven offenders have been jailed for 10 years.

"Sexual violence against children, as I have said, is an extraordinary crime," President Joko Widodo told journalists, according to a statement.

"We hope that this law will be a deterrent for offenders and can suppress sexual crimes against children," Widodo said, also tweeting the news on his official account.

New rules

Chemical castration is the use of drugs to reduce libido or sexual activity. It is a legal form of punishment in South Korea, Poland and the Czech Republic, as well as in some U.S. and Australian states.

Convicted pedophiles who have served jail sentences could also be forced to wear ankle monitors so that authorities can trace their movements.

The law is effective immediately, although Indonesia's parliament has the power to overturn it or demand revisions.

"These acts threaten and endanger children, and they destroy the lives and development of children for the future," the president's statement said.

The law was drafted to address a significant increase in cases of sexual violence against children, Widodo said, although he gave no statistics to illustrate an increase.

The country has long struggled with a high incidence of sexual violence, and several cases have been reported recently.

Prominent cases

Earlier this month, a woman was raped and murdered by three men on the outskirts of the Indonesian capital, Jakarta.

The case of the 14-year-old girl in Indonesia has drawn comparisons to the horrific gang rape and murder of a 23-year-old medical student in New Delhi in 2012, which triggered protests and led to tougher laws against sexual assault.

Widodo was elected in 2014 and was seen as a promising figure for reform in the Southeast Asian nation of 250 million people.

But he drew international criticism last year when he rejected appeals for clemency and green-lighted the execution of 13 drug traffickers, many of them foreigners, by firing squad. He also had authorized the executions of a group before them, ending a four-year period in which the country appeared to be cooling on capital punishment. Indonesia is again preparing to carry out a fresh round of executions.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/05/25/world/indonesia-sex-abuse-chemical-castration/index.html

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Protesters' problem with new Whole Foods concept: An ex-rabbi's alleged sex scandal

“It's time for a whole new grocery shopping experience,” the store's website says. “One that strives to be good for your body, your budget, your lifestyle and the planet.”

As the ribbon is cut at the first 365 store in Los Angeles on Wednesday, however, protesters at that location and at a Whole Foods in Manhattan will focus on an issue unrelated to $6 asparagus water and systemic overcharging. The protesters are targeting Whole Foods CEO John Mackey's links to Marc Gafni, a former rabbi who allegedly had sex with a number of his followers, including two teenage girls, as the New York Times reported last year.

“There's a culture of silence around [child sexual abuse]. I believe Whole Foods has an opportunity to really shape that conversation,” said activist Matthew Sandusky, the adopted son of former Penn State coach and convicted pedophile Jerry Sandusky, in a telephone interview with The Washington Post.

[What to expect from Whole Foods' new, low-price grocery chain]

Matthew Sandusky, who said he was abused by his father, is involved with the protest through the Peaceful Hearts Foundation, the nonprofit support group for sexual assault survivors he co-founded.

Born Mordechai Winiarz in 1960, Gafni is the founder of the Center for Integral Wisdom — a San Francisco-based “Activist Think Tank” whose “mission is to love outrageously, live outrageously, and create an extraordinary world,” according to its website. Though this mission may seem vague, Mackey, known for his libertarian views and stated desire for businesses to do good, has been visibly involved in the center in recent years.

That involvement, however, has proven controversial. In 2004, a woman told Jewish Journal Gafni “repeatedly sexually assaulted” her over a nine-month period, beginning when she was 13 in 1979. She repeated the claims in a piece published in Forward magazine in January.

“I was a stupid kid and we were in love,” Gafni told the Jewish Journal. “She was 14 going on 35, and I never forced her.”

In email to The Washington Post, Gafni denied any “sexual misconduct,” saying he was 19 at the time of the relationship.

“Charges have never been brought against me, nor have I ever been found guilty in the court of law regarding these false claims,” he said.

In the Jewish Journal, Gafni denied another woman's claim that he abused her when she was 16 in 1986. He also told the New York Times this woman was “highly initiatory” and came on to him , and said her account is “categorically untrue” in a statemented emailed to The Post.

“I take full responsibility for my mistake in having a one-time limited contact … thirty one years ago,” he wrote.

Gafni moved to Israel in 1988, changed his name and founded Bayit Chadash, a community for mysticism and creative worship.  But that community later dissolved after Gafni was accused by his adult students in 2006 of asking them to keep their sexual relationships with him secret.

Gafni later wrote a letter in which he appeared to apologize for his behavior — but then wrote another blaming the controversy on “feminine shadow manipulated behind the scenes by masculine shadow, that is to say women encouraged and manipulated by men.”

“I did not,” Gafni told the Times, “represent myself as someone who didn't sleep with students.” He also told the Times he had asked lovers not for “secrecy” but for “privacy.”

CEO Mackey, meanwhile, has served on the board of Gafni's Center for Integral Wisdom, and has publicized his links to Gafni and the center in the past. He quotes Gafni liberally in his 2013 book “Conscious Capitalism,” and appeared with Gafni in videos discussing the book that, until recently, appeared on Whole Foods' website.

In one such video, Mackey and Gafni discussed the “shadow” of capitalism. From a transcript:

Gafni: One of the things business needs to do is to actually not be demonized, hold the heroic narrative, hold its nobility, and then like any healthy self, living its story, become conscious of its shadow, as opposed to identifying with its shadow.

Mackey: Yes! What's interesting about business is – of course business has its shadow – but it's almost like if it's been turned upside down, and the shadow is seen as the narrative about business and the hidden part is the heroic part of business. So, it needs to be turned completely opposite where business can realize its higher purpose of creating value in the world and helping humanity to progress and prosper. The shadow side will always remain the greedy, selfish, uncaring side that'll still be there, but it should be the shadow side that's seldom seen, not honored, and consciously sought to be overcome.

Gafni: Envy – I think it's so great what you said because envy… Love is: I see your beauty, and I identify you with your beauty, I interpret you through the prism of your beauty. Envy is: I see your shadow, and I identify you with your shadow, and see you through the prism of your shadow. And I think … actually, envy… causes… mass-culture often to interpret business through its shadow as opposed to through its essence.

The videos were replaced with a note from Mackey on May 5.

“My involvement with Marc Gafni and former Board of Directors relationship with the Center for Integral Wisdom is conducted strictly in my personal life and does not represent an endorsement or support for either Mr. Gafni or the Center for Integral Wisdom by Whole Foods Market,” Mackey wrote in the statement. “With that said, I have decided to remove the video interviews I participated in with Mr Gafni, and am doing so to be consistent with the position that this is indeed strictly a personal relationship.” The statement provided a link to the Center for Integral Wisdom website.

Rabbi David Ingber of New York's Romemu synagogue, a former associate of Gafni behind a Change.org petition titled “Stop Marc Gafni from Abusing Again,” said Mackey should publicly break with Gafni.

“It's unbelievable to me that someone who has as much to lose as Mackey would have done so little research” on Gafni, Ingber said. He added: “Talk about conscious capitalism – this is the most unconscious expression of capitalism that you could possibly imagine.”

Sandusky also said he wants Mackey to distance himself from the former rabbi.

In an emailed statement to The Post, Gafni said Mackey's term on the Central for Integral Wisdom's Board ended in March, and that Mackey “has no affiliation with the center at this time.”

“This group of protestors, led by many of my competing adversaries, is using Mackey as a platform to continue their smear campaign designed to destroy my reputation and career,” Gafni wrote. “While combating sexual abuse or harassment is essential and something I fully support, so is providing a fair forum for those being wrongly accused. Publically [sic] lashing out against someone based upon false or distorted information about sexual events is itself a form of abuse.”

Whole Foods declined comment for this story.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/05/25/first-whole-foods-365-store-met-with-protests-over-ceos-ties-to-ex-rabbi-who-allegedly-had-sex-with-underage-girls/

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Bill Cosby Accuser Jennifer Thompson: One of the Teens He Had Sex with Was Me

by Jeff Truesdell

Two days before Bill Cosby was ordered to trial on allegations he drugged and sexually assaulted a woman in 2004, a document re-surfaced in which he admitted having sexual contact with teens sent to him by a modeling agency.

Jennifer "Kaya" Thompson, who spoke with PEOPLE exclusively in 2005, confirms she was one of those teens.

The document, which was re-released Sunday by the Associated Press includes portions of Cosby's depositions from 2005 and 2006 in a long-settled civil suit.

During those depositions, Cosby was asked about an unnamed aspiring actress and model he met when she was 17, and he acknowledged that an agency would send "five or six" models each week to the studio where he filmed The Cosby Show . His contact with the young woman – which Thompson says is her – continued as she became 18 or 19.

Q: On a later occasion you had her masturbate you with lotion. Did that ever happen?

A: Yes.

Q: (She) used the lotion to rub your penis and make you ejaculate?

A: Bingo.

That the young woman in question is Thompson was confirmed by Thompson herself and a source who separately verified Thompson's identity for PEOPLE as the individual in that encounter.

(The deposition record also describes encounters between Cosby and Therese Serignese, who earlier told PEOPLE exclusively that she was 19 when she met Cosby in Las Vegas in 1976. He says in the deposition that he gave her quaaludes before they had sex. Serignese is currently one of three women who have filed a libel lawsuit against Cosby.)

Thompson first told her story to PEOPLE in 2005 as part of the magazine's investigation into early allegations made against Cosby. At the time Thompson was "Jane Doe No. 2" in a civil suit brought against Cosby by Andrea Constand, the former Temple University employee who alleged he drugged and assaulted her in 2004. Constand's claims are at the heart of the current criminal case against Cosby that is unfolding this week in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.

Thompson, now 45, went public with her story as Jena T. in November 2014 – and then, to bolster her credibility, revealed her full identity via PEOPLE four months later.

"I decided to speak my truth," she said at the time. "I would rather go to bed at night knowing that I've been honest."

Thompson's detailed account described how, in 1988, she took a day trip to New York City on a whim from her home in Maryland, walked into a modeling agency, and that same day was sent to meet Cosby.Cosby called her startled mother on the phone, encouraged Thompson's move to the city, and later had Thompson and her parents to dinner at his home. Both Thompson and her mother Judith, who died this year, said he assured them he would help with her career and keep watch over her.

Within days of her subsequent move to New York, however, Jennifer Thompson says Cosby's attention became more than paternal. Much, much later, after her withdrawal from him and retreat back home, she returned to confront him a final time.

"He knew on some level that I was probably ready to give in," she told PEOPLE in her original interview. "I'm allowing the rubbing. He put his leg between my two legs, but I wasn't excited. But I knew that that was the point – I had to get him excited."

She claims Cosby told her where to find lotion in the house. "I'm like a robot, and that is what I became, and that is what I did for him," she said. "I'm sure he fixed something to drink. He knew that I was ready to submit. The whole thing was like – I just knew that I gave him a hand job."

Before she left, Thompson says Cosby gave her $700. That experience and its long buildup left her with trust and self-esteem struggles that lasted for decades, she says.

At the time "Jena T." first went public, Cosby attorney Martin Singer dismissed her then-anonymous account as "unsubstantiated." Thompson, who lives in Florida, has never brought a civil or criminal complaint of her own against the entertainer, but she is now among more than 50 women who've since raised allegations against him.

With Cosby in court now in the Constand case, Thompson tells PEOPLE she's "pleased" the judicial system has taken up the matter. "There should be a jury of peers, a judge, and laws to apply surrounding actions of harm against another being," she says.

Cosby has denied Constand's allegations, saying the sexual contact between them was consensual. He has also denied similar allegations from more than 50 women.

Thompson adds: "I am determined to continue to be honest and forthright regarding my experiences at 17 years of age (and the following decades) surrounding this public figure. I now realize that the beings that I am helping the most are the ones who are still silently suffering (victims of another) and I will not get any applause from them readily, if ever. For them I will be grateful for this walk."

She adds: "In a humble manner, having just lost my very dear and supportive mother, I am moving forward with my eyes on the horizon."

http://www.people.com/article/bill-cosby-acciser-jennifer-thompson-teen-victim

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New York

Timothy Cardinal Dolan ripped for delaying talk on child sex abuse

by Michael O'Keeffe

The time may not be right for Timothy Cardinal Dolan to talk about child sex abuse, but advocates say it's long overdue.

Victim-turned-advocate Kathryn Robb says Dolan is putting a new generation of kids in danger by opposing legislation that would allow adult victims of child sex abuse to seek justice in claims that would likely affect predator priests.

Robb ripped Dolan after the leader of New York's 2.6 million Catholics told the Daily News on Saturday at rally for farm worker rights that he was ready to discuss efforts to reform the law — but not just yet.

Time, however, is running out to eliminate the statute of limitations on child sex abuse since the state Legislature's session ends June 16.

“It may not be time for you Cardinal Dolan, but it is time for survivors of sexual abuse and the children of the state of New York,” said Robb, who said she was molested by her eldest brother George Robb while growing up on Long Island. “We as responsible citizens who care about the safety of children and justice are not waiting for his call.”

New York's statute of limitations bars victims of childhood sexual abuse from filing criminal charges or civil claims after their 23rd birthday. Victim advocates say it is one of the most restrictive in the nation.

Supporters of the Child Victims Act say the Catholic Conference, the lobbying arm of church's bishops, has been the bill's biggest obstacle. The CVA — one of a handful of bills under consideration — would eliminate the civil and criminal statutes of limitation for victims.

A spokesman for the archdiocese said he would discuss a Daily News request for a sit-down with the cardinal. The spokesman said Dolan declined to talk about sexual abuse Saturday because he did not want to overshadow the farm worker rights rally.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/cardinal-dolan-ripped-stalling-talk-child-sex-abuse-article-1.2648910

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Nicaragua

A preacher's flight from justice

by Mark Mueller and Brian Donohue

Additional reporting by Enrique Lavin and Vinessa Erminio

Estelí, Nicaragua — More than 200 guests sang "Feliz Cumpleaños" — Happy Birthday — to the man they'd come to celebrate in this city's most elegant banquet hall in November. Mariachis strolled the room, serenading the Dominican-born preacher and his friends.

Gregorio Martinez, a self-proclaimed prophet and missionary with ties to the Assemblies of God, the world's largest Pentecostal denomination, had but one request of those gathered for his 48th birthday, according to three people who attended.

No pictures.

None.

Martinez had reason for caution. He needed to remain a ghost.

For more than a year now, Martinez has been a fugitive from New Jersey, where a jury took just 30 minutes to convict him of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old boy he knew from his Hudson County church.

Permitted to remain free on $250,000 bail despite additional sexual assault counts pending against him, Martinez disappeared within weeks of the verdict.

A two-month investigation by NJ Advance Media traced him to Estelí, a city of 120,000 in Nicaragua's northern highlands.

The investigation, encompassing dozens of interviews in Nicaragua and New Jersey, showed how easily a convicted criminal slipped from the grasp of law enforcement, fleeing the country without a valid passport and building a new life in which he continued to have contact with children. Martinez faced a sentence ranging from probation to five years in prison.

His former defense lawyer, Louis Serterides, said it appeared Martinez "wasn't going to take any chances" by returning for sentencing once he learned he'd been charged with molesting three more people, all young adults. A conviction on those counts could have sent him to prison for a decade.

"He's very canny, and he's a con artist, and you don't realize that until you're well into your professional relationship with him," Serterides said. "Certain things start to pop up, and you realize you're dealing with a three-dollar bill here."

Beyond the factors that eased Martinez's escape, NJ Advance Media's inquiry revealed gaps in the child-protection measures employed by some Assemblies of God churches: A positive word from a pastor opened doors for a predator vetted by no one.

An Assemblies of God official said Martinez was not ordained by the group and was therefore not subject to a mandatory criminal background check. Yet simply by attending the group's meetings, networking with its ordained pastors and preaching at its churches, Martinez gained enough trust to be fully accepted by ministers and parishioners alike.

NJ Advance Media found that Martinez's work in Estelí had been facilitated by Verardo Acosta, a prominent New Jersey pastor and former Assemblies of God leader in the state.

Acosta, 58, of Bergenfield, acknowledged he wrote a letter of recommendation on Martinez's behalf about four months after the conviction and vouched for him on a trip to the Central American nation in November, telling a council of ministers Martinez represented him there.

The pastor said he also spoke to Martinez by phone as often as three times a week until early this year.

A second Assemblies of God minister from New Jersey, Uriel Sanchez, 38, spent several days in Nicaragua with Martinez in late January, preaching with him at a large outdoor event and staying with him at a church compound in Estelí, according to people who say they saw the pair together. Sanchez presides over a church in the Trenton area.

Both New Jersey pastors said they were unaware of Martinez's arrest and conviction, which were covered extensively by local media and picked up by news aggregation websites. The stories remain among the top search results under his name on Google.

The probe further revealed how two of Martinez's close friends — a mother and son who served as alibi witnesses at his trial and who secured his bail with property they now stand to lose — knew he was in Nicaragua but did not alert authorities, according to people who said they met them there.

Jersey City residents Paula Martinez, 52, and Kelvin Martinez, 28, who are not related to Gregorio Martinez, were among the guests at the birthday party in Estelí, the three fellow attendees said.

Both remain deeply involved in a Jersey City church where Gregorio Martinez's father, Arturo, serves as pastor, the father confirmed.

In a brief telephone interview, Paula Martinez initially said she did not know Gregorio Martinez's whereabouts. Told that several people in Estelí had placed her and her son at the party, she grew angry and said she could "explain what happened" but needed to return to work.

She later canceled an interview scheduled for the next day.

"I talked to my son, and I want to talk to my lawyer first," she said. She would not name the attorney.

Both Paula and Kelvin Martinez declined further comment when a reporter knocked on the door of their home on Whiton Street in Jersey City.

Paula Martinez's older sister, Maria Sanchez, who lives in a second-floor apartment at the home, said she is baffled by the allegiance shown to Gregorio Martinez by her sister and nephew, saying it's as if they are under the preacher's spell.

Sanchez — who is not related to Uriel Sanchez, the pastor who visited Estelí — said she has no doubt the two have been in contact with Gregorio Martinez since he fled. Her sister, she said, told her Martinez escaped with a fraudulent passport obtained from a fellow Dominican living in New Jersey.

"They know," Sanchez said. "They know where he is, may God strike me down."

He bounces lightly, rhythmically, on the balls of his feet, one hand clutching a microphone, the other cradling the head of a sobbing woman who leans into his chest.

Gregorio Martinez is delivering the Holy Spirit, and his audience is in thrall.

Dressed in a mustard-yellow shirt, gray slacks and matching gray vest, he moves from person to person in an Orlando, Fla., church, shouting in Spanish about the devil and redemption, sin and deliverance.

He whispers in ears. Lays on hands. Speaks in tongues, voice undulating.

Ba ba ba ba ba la ba ba ba ba ba ya ba ba.

At the preacher's touch, men bow their heads, crying. Women crumple to the floor. A young girl, all coiled energy, flails her arms wildly and snaps her head from side to side, ponytail whipping.

The scene is captured in one of five videos posted to a YouTube account under Martinez's name in 2012, the same year he groped his 13-year-old victim.

Martinez, not yet closely associated with the Assemblies of God, appears to have used the account as an advertisement of sorts: traveling preacher delivers inspiration, expels demons.

He called himself Evangelista Gregorio Martinez Lázala — he has used the last name intermittently, records show — and he included an email address for those who wanted more information. An email sent by NJ Advance Media this spring received no response.

The circumstances of Martinez's trip to Orlando could not be determined, but it is common for Pentecostal pastors to share the stage with visiting preachers, particularly those known to enliven crowds, according to interviews with pastors in New Jersey and Nicaragua.

Martinez was such a preacher, traveling to Spanish-language churches across New Jersey and beyond, according to testimony at his trial.

A balding man of medium height with arching eyebrows and a splash of freckles, he infused his talks with passion and intensity, rousing the faithful with a voice that whipsawed from near-whisper to crescendo.

"People believe him and follow him because he's very charismatic," said the mother of Martinez's victim. "He gets people to trust him. He plays the game very well."

The woman, whose name is being withheld to protect the identity of her son, now 17, was among those who gave Martinez her trust. She said she stood at his beck and call, driving him around and performing some of his household chores. She said she believed he was a prophet of God.

In reality, prosecutors now say, he used the name of God as a cudgel to force himself sexually on victims.

Beyond the 13-year-old victim, the Hudson County Prosecutor's Office charged Martinez during and after his trial with assaulting three other men, ages 18 and 19, who were members of a prayer group he led in Jersey City.

Separate indictments allege Martinez groped, penetrated or tried to penetrate his victims through "physical force or coercion." Two of the men were abused for months at a time in 2009, the indictments state.

The third adult victim told police Martinez twice tried to penetrate him late in 2014, while the preacher was out on bail, and continued to fondle him until Jan. 10, 2015, just a month before Martinez's trial, according to the indictment.

In all of the assaults, authorities said, Martinez told the men they would be "going against the will of God" or committing a sin if they resisted.

The mother of the 13-year-old boy said she met Martinez at Union City's Third Bethesda Pentecostal Church, one of scores of small Pentecostal churches that dot New Jersey's Latino neighborhoods. Martinez, who lived with his parents in a first-floor apartment on New York Avenue in Jersey City, served as a deacon at the church.

The mother said he arrived in New Jersey from the Dominican Republic at least six years ago, following other members of his family to the state. Authorities said Martinez was a permanent legal resident, or green card holder, at the time of his arrest.

The mother called him an opportunist who targeted divorced or separated women trying to manage children alone, as she was at the time. She said she believes Martinez is also manipulating Paula Martinez and milking her for cash.

"He's using Paula," the mother said.

Paula Martinez put up two properties to secure Martinez's release from jail after his arrest, said Martin Melendez, a partner in Big Lou's Bail Bonds, the Jersey City company that stands to lose up to $225,000 if Gregorio Martinez is not caught.

The firm holds liens on the Whiton Street home and on a second house on Grove Street in Elizabeth, Melendez said.

A veteran fugitive-hunter, Melendez said he remains surprised by some people's devotion to Martinez.

"Everyone seems to feel sorry for him," Melendez said. "Paula said to us, 'I'm prepared to lose everything. He's innocent and the truth will come out.' "

The bail bondsman said it was as if Martinez was "brainwashing these individuals."

From the moment the witness took the stand, Louis Serterides said, he feared his case was doomed. Martinez's victim, by then 15, spoke directly and with composure during the February 2015 trial in Superior Court in Hudson County.

"He was so compelling a witness," the defense lawyer said. "So forthright. I don't think there was any doubt in the jury's mind this kid was telling the absolute truth. I sat there and said to myself, 'Oh my God, we're in trouble unless we can really pull a rabbit out of the hat.' "

The boy testified the attack took place in his mother's minivan in June 2012. They were returning from a night-time church service when the mother stopped at a North Bergen Wal-Mart to shop for a few items.

In the back of the minivan, the boy said, Martinez began to touch his leg, then moved his hands to the teen's genitals and fondled him. Martinez, the victim testified, leaned over and kissed him.

Paula Martinez, Kelvin Martinez and a friend testified for the defense, saying that on the night of the attack, Gregorio Martinez visited them at the Whiton Street home for an evening of dinner, socializing and prayer.

The jury rejected the account, swiftly finding Gregorio Martinez guilty of aggravated criminal sexual contact, child abuse and endangering the welfare of a child.

Hudson County Assistant Prosecutor Linda Claude-Oben did not ask for Martinez's bail to be revoked immediately after the verdict, and Superior Court Judge Mitzy Galis-Menendez did not raise the issue, according to an audio recording of the trial's final day.

Assistant Prosecutor Leo Hernandez, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office, said Claude-Oben had a recollection that she did ask for bail revocation and that it was denied, but it is not reflected in the Feb. 25 recording NJ Advance Media obtained from the court. It is possible she made the request on another occasion.

"It is standard procedure for prosecutors to ask for bail revocation upon conviction," Hernandez said.

Martinez, whose passport had been seized after his arrest, was ordered to return to court for a pre-sentence review three weeks later.

He never showed up.

Asked why she did not revoke Martinez's bail at any time, Judge Galis-Menendez referred questions to Winnie Comfort, a spokeswoman for the judiciary.

Comfort said Martinez had appeared in court throughout his trial and that the most serious charges on which he was convicted were third-degree offenses, which carry a presumption of probation at sentencing.

The additional charges, she said, would not weigh into a judge's decisions on bail.

"There can be cases where it seems that something should be done, but people are innocent until judged by a jury of their peers," Comfort said. "Sentencing guidelines are pretty clear."

Serterides, who has practiced law for 40 years, suggested judicial decisions are not always so uniform in practice. With the new, more serious charges against his client, a presumptive sentence of probation likely "would have gone out the window," he said.

Officials at the prosecutor's office, unaware of Martinez's precise location until contacted by NJ Advance Media, asked for the public's help in finding him.

"I can tell you we're actively investigating it along with other law enforcement agencies at the federal level," said Hernandez, the spokesman.

Martinez's father maintains his son is innocent, saying Gregorio Martinez was falsely accused after discovering a member of the church had misused money.

"Revenge," Arturo Martinez said. "It was revenge."

Arturo Martinez is now pastor of Elohim Christian Church, which is affiliated with the Assemblies of God, in Jersey City. The church was previously located in North Bergen. Gregorio Martinez served as co-pastor there after he left Third Bethesda Pentecostal Church in Union City following the arrest.

A slight man who tends daily to his gravely ill wife, Arturo Martinez said his son received a death threat by telephone toward the end of the trial. The father punctuated the statement with a throat-slashing gesture.

"When he left, he was afraid," Arturo Martinez said. "Someone was going to kill him. He left running."

The father's claim could not be verified. He said his son did not tell police about the alleged threat.

Asked if he knew Verardo Acosta, the North Jersey pastor who wrote a letter of recommendation for Gregorio Martinez, Arturo Martinez paused for several seconds.

"I want to ask a lawyer before I answer that," he said.

A missionary arrives

Blocks off the highway, down rutted dirt roads lined with tiny, tin-roof houses, Iglesia Eben-Ezer resembles a small fortress.

All but destroyed when historic floodwaters spilled across Central America in 1998, the church was rebuilt, made larger and stronger, with sturdy brick walls and thick, arched wooden doors. It lies on a dead-end street, flanked by a culvert, two hours north of Nicaragua's capital, Managua.

It is a fine place to lie low.

Gregorio Martinez arrived there last summer, according to the pastor, Pedro Matamoros. The visitor was both expected and readily accepted.

A preacher for more than 30 years, Matamoros serves as secretary of the Assemblies of God council in Estelí.

He is also the gatekeeper for missionaries and money that flow into the region from congregations in New Jersey, having developed a relationship with Verardo Acosta when the American pastor first visited the city to preach in 2014, both men said.

For a two-year period ending in December, Acosta was the presbyter, or supervisor, of the Assemblies of God North Jersey district, which stretches from the state's northern border with New York to Lakewood, the organization confirmed. Acosta remains co-pastor, with his wife, of Fountain of Salvation Church in Elizabeth.

"Acosta called and said he was sending someone from the Dominican Republic," Matamoros, 54, said in a series of interviews over three days in Estelí. "He said he was just finishing up a project there."

It wasn't an unusual arrangement.

For decades, the Assemblies of God has expanded aggressively across Latin America and Africa, its mission to evangelize and to build churches in places where Catholicism typically dominates the religious landscape. The group, founded in 1914 and based in Springfield, Mo., now claims a worldwide membership of 67 million, with some 3.1 million adherents in the United States.

In Estelí, Martinez was to work as an auditor of sorts, ensuring that money sent from New Jersey was being properly used to buy construction materials for churches, pastoral housing and soup kitchens, Matamoros and Acosta said.

Matamoros said he told Acosta he would first need a letter of recommendation to satisfy the local Assemblies of God council. Acosta, he said, emailed one promptly, writing that Gregorio Martinez was known to him and was authorized to represent the North Jersey district, Matamoros said.

Neither man would provide a copy of the letter. Acosta called it "private."

Martinez's arrival followed weeks later, Matamoros said. The pastor set Martinez up in a bedroom off the courtyard of the church's residence. It would be his home for the next seven months.

Few places are more hospitable to fugitives from the United States than Nicaragua, a country of 6 million whose government the Reagan administration sought to topple by secretly arming rebels in the mid-1980s.

While the two nations share an extradition treaty signed in the early 1900s, Nicaragua has not formally extradited anyone to the U.S. in the "recent past," according to State Department literature available online. Asked for more detail about extraditions, both the State Department and the Justice Department declined to comment.

In Estelí, Martinez had come to a city of contrasts. Bombed heavily during the civil wars that wracked Nicaragua in the 1970s and 1980s, the city center has been remade into a thriving business district filled with restaurants and nightclubs.

The region is a hub for cigar tourism, with miles of lush tobacco fields feeding factories that employ workers night and day. Americans and Europeans regularly visit the factories, buying boxes of cigars to take home.

Outside the business district, poverty runs high. Wild dogs scavenge for scraps along dusty roads. Many homes lack electricity and glass windows.

Sebastian Matamoros, the adult son of the pastor who hosted Martinez, said he initially saw the missionary from New Jersey as a "gift" because he was helping to deliver badly needed supplies and to erect churches in remote neighborhoods.

Pedro Matamoros said he grew to trust Martinez implicitly, viewing him as a surrogate son. He brought the preacher from neighborhood to neighborhood, he said, introducing him to residents and pointing out areas in need.

Jessenia Zarate met him for the first time on one such visit. Zarate lives with her husband, a pastor, north of Estelí, miles off the two-lane Pan-American Highway. Rock-strewn dirt roads lead to Zarate's hilltop community. The final leg of the trip must be made on foot or by motorcycle.

"He wanted to establish himself here for new projects," Zarate said. "He was trying to find residency (in Nicaragua)."

Martinez returned from time to time to gather receipts for construction materials and worker wages as a new church, Iglesia El Eden, rose on the top of the hill, Zarate said. Completed in December, the church now has 15 adult members and provides food once a day for 60 children, Zarate said.

When Martinez preached, "people received the Holy Spirit," she said, but he wasn't personable to her outside church.

"He didn't like me," Zarate said. "When I tried to talk to him and get to know him, he didn't open up."

Martinez was more friendly to Zarate's children, she said.

"He really liked to pray for kids," she said. "He told my eldest son he was going to be a pastor."

Zarate said she suspected nothing amiss.

"When someone comes recommended, we accept them and don't ask questions," she said.

Spark of suspicion

It was the birthday party that led to the first doubts.

Zarate and Matamoros said they were among 200 to 300 guests at Salon Kristal, a banquet hall that typically hosts weddings on Estelí's southern outskirts. Another member of Matamoros' church said he also was there. The man declined to be identified.

All three said they met Paula and Kelvin Martinez, the alibi witnesses at Martinez's trial, during the Nov. 28 party, where guests dined on pastries and dishes of chicken and rice.

The church member said Martinez claimed to have a rich wife in the United States and that, one day, he would buy vehicles and other gifts for his friends in Estelí.

The parishioner said he wondered why that rich wife wasn't with Martinez, particularly on a day when so many other people had gathered for a lavish party. The man said he found it even more odd that Martinez asked his guests not to take pictures.

A month later, in late December, the man ran Martinez's name through Google, finding stories about the arrest and trial, he said.

Separately, Matamoros began to have his own doubts, he said.

Single men are less than ideal preachers in Matamoros' community of churches, he said. Husbands and wives are sometimes co-pastors. Often, wives are involved in some aspect of ministry. Homosexuals are anathema, Matamoros said, noting he had personally "cured" three or four in recent months — part of an outreach ministry in which he said he also counsels street prostitutes and drug addicts.

Matamoros said he was praying with Martinez one day after the birthday party when he asked him why his wife wasn't at his side.

"And he answered, 'Pastor, my wife is very sick,' " Matamoros said. "I said, 'So sick she can't come here to see you?' I told him the ministry doesn't allow someone to be alone for a long time. I asked questions from all sides. He became angry and said, 'You're smothering me with all these questions.' "

By late January, the pair's friendship would be in tatters, Matamoros said, and Martinez would soon be gone.

Clashing accounts

Precisely how Matamoros found out about Martinez's past remains unclear. In interviews, he gave differing accounts, at first saying members of his church brought it to his attention after they discovered it on the Internet.

Later, he said he learned about it only after someone claiming to be a brother of Martinez called him unexpectedly on Jan. 22 to warn him Martinez had certain "tendencies" toward children.

"He said, 'My brother has harmed people,'" Matamoros said. "I was sick from that day on."

The pastor said he did not remember the brother's name or know where he had called from.

Matamoros is more consistent about what happened next, and his contention, repeated by other ministers in Estelí, has led to a bitter rift between the pastors in Nicaragua and New Jersey amid claims of lies and cover-up.

Immediately after learning about Martinez's conviction, Matamoros said, he called Verardo Acosta, the Elizabeth pastor who wrote the letter of recommendation, and demanded he arrange Martinez's removal from Estelí.

"I was raging over this situation," Matamoros said. "How do you think I feel to be a pastor of a church and he was here so long?"

Three days later, on Jan. 25, the Trenton-area pastor, Uriel Sanchez, arrived in the city, staying with Martinez at Iglesia Eben-Ezer, Matamoros said.

"When Uriel came here, I asked him to take Gregorio away," Matamoros said, adding that he viewed Sanchez's arrival as a direct result of his call to Acosta.

Sanchez documented part of his trip to Estelí on Instagram, posting photos of himself preaching at an outdoor religious event that drew thousands of worshipers. Martinez preached at the venue the same night, according to multiple people who attended.

The fugitive's time in Estelí ended on Monday, Feb. 1, about two weeks before NJ Advance Media arrived, Matamoros said.

At 4 a.m. that day, he said, Martinez and Sanchez climbed into a car driven by another Assemblies of God minister, Erving Matute, with their luggage in hand. Both were headed for the airport in Managua in time for a 9 a.m. flight, Matamoros said.

In multiple interviews, Matute confirmed Matamoros' account, saying he drove Martinez and Sanchez to the airport that morning. Sanchez was headed back to New Jersey, Matute said. The minister said he assumed Martinez would be on the same flight but didn't ask.

Sanchez, in a telephone interview, called the story a lie.

The son of a well-known Assemblies of God minister, Sanchez presides over Ministerio Double Uncio, or the Ministry of the Double Anointing, in the Trenton area. He is building a large church off Route 130 in East Windsor, according to photos he posted on Instagram.

He said he knew Martinez as a pastor from Jersey City and that he preached at Martinez's church two to three years ago, but he said he was unaware of the man's conviction.

Sanchez acknowledged Matute drove him to the airport in Managua as his trip to Estelí came to a close, but he said Martinez wasn't in the car with him.

"I'm going to follow my God," Sanchez said. "I got four kids. I'm a minister, and I'm going to follow my God here. You're trying to accuse me. You're trying to accuse me of something that people are making up."

Asked if he saw Martinez in Estelí, Sanchez responded, "Did I see? I'm sorry. You're breaking up."

For the third time during the interview, the line went dead.

Sanchez did not answer follow-up calls placed over two weeks. At his Hamilton Township home, where two surveillance cameras are trained on the front steps, no one answered the door.

Acosta, too, denied some elements of Matamoros' account, saying in an hourlong interview outside his home that the Estelí pastor did not call him to complain about Martinez and that Martinez was already in Estelí when Matamoros asked for the letter of recommendation.

"I found out he was in Nicaragua because Matamoros called me and said, 'Listen, there's a pastor from (New Jersey). He thinks he knows you,' " Acosta said. "I said, 'Oh yeah, I know him. He's been coming to meetings.' And that was it."

He also reiterated he knew nothing of Martinez's conviction, saying that while he was familiar with the preacher through Assemblies of God gatherings, he never asked about his personal life and, as a result, felt comfortable writing the letter of recommendation.

"This is the first I'm hearing of this," Acosta said of the criminal case.

The pastor said he hadn't spoken to Martinez by phone in some time, adding that he guesses it was January. Martinez told him he'd had a falling-out with Matamoros and would be moving on, but he didn't say where he was going, Acosta said.

"I don't even know where he is," the pastor said. "I don't know what he's doing."

The hunt for Gregorio Martinez went cold.

Burying a controversy

For all the mystery and finger-pointing, no one in Nicaragua, apparently, contacted authorities to alert them that a convicted child abuser was in their midst after they learned about Martinez's past.

Matamoros said he would not do so because he had been made aware of no evidence to suggest Martinez abused children in Estelí. At the same time, the pastor said he would not disclose to the full membership of his church that Martinez had molested a child in the United States.

That mindset angered parishioners at Iglesia Eben-Ezer, where Martinez lived. After a two-hour Sunday night service filled with music, preaching and fiery exhortations for donations, parishioners approached reporters for NJ Advance Media, saying they had recently heard rumors of trouble in the preacher's past but had been given no concrete information. They said they wanted to know more.

"It hasn't been discussed openly, and it should be because it's a risk," said Javier Blandon, 39, who has been attending the church for two decades. "Someone could be doing something he shouldn't be doing, and how would we know about it?"

When Matamoros saw reporters talking to parishioners outside the church, he became furious and threatened to summon the national police, calling it "harassment."

The pastor wasn't alone in his apparent desire to let the issue quietly wither.

Enrique Osorio, an attorney who presides over the Assemblies of God council in Estelí, said he strongly believes in the protection of children, but he supported Matamoros' stance against publicizing Martinez's past once it came to light.

Osorio said he also saw no need to alert authorities in Nicaragua.

"I wouldn't go to the police for a crime that was committed in the United States," Osorio said. "This is a Gregorio Martinez problem. Not ours. If a victim comes out here, I will go straight to the police."

A top Assemblies of God official in the United States said he found it "alarming" that Martinez was so easily accepted by the group's churches and pastors after a conviction for child molestation.

The official, Manuel Alvarez, serves as superintendent of the Spanish Eastern District of the Assemblies of God, headquartered in the Bergen County community of Old Tappan. The district spans 17 states, from Maine to Tennessee, and includes Washington, D.C. In all, it represents 455 churches, Alvarez said.

He said the group performs criminal background checks and credit checks on all candidates for ordination. But because Martinez was not ordained by the Assemblies of God, he was not subject to the safety procedures. Moreover, his relationships with pastors and the recommendation of Acosta provided him a certain legitimacy.

"It could be that a lot of people knew him, so they took it for granted," Alvarez said. "That's part of our culture. We take someone at their word. In today's world, that's becoming very difficult.

"That, to us, is alarming," he continued. "We need to alert our pastors that if they are to write a letter of recommendation for someone, they should really check with our office or get some guidance on the matter."

NJ Advance Media highlighted another potential shortfall in the group's policies.

Alvarez said the Spanish Eastern District will sometimes allow a church to be affiliated with the organization even if its pastor is not yet an ordained Assemblies of God minister. That's the case with Elohim Christian Church, where Martinez's father, Arturo, now serves as pastor and where Gregorio Martinez once served as co-pastor.

The church became affiliated with the Assemblies of God on Feb. 23, 2015, Alvarez said. At the time, coverage of Gregorio Martinez's ongoing trial could be found in the Jersey Journal and on the Internet. Two days later, Martinez would be convicted.

"That's something we need to look at," Alvarez said.

'He has to be stopped'

Martinez's victim no longer attends church, his mother said.

He goes to the gym regularly and does well in school, but the smooth-talking preacher has scarred the teen, she said.

The mother said she, too, remains alienated from some of the friends she had in common with Martinez.

"They still believe in him," she said. "They don't believe me. That's the power he has over them."

She said she fears Martinez has other victims who have not come forward and that he will create new victims if he is not caught.

"He has to come to justice," she said. "He has to be stopped. He has to be behind bars."

https://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/page/the_search_for_preacher_gregorio_martinez.html

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The Case for Trauma-Informed Teaching

by Dani Bostick

As a child, I was the perfect student. Organized, diligent, engaged, and sharp, I took pride in my work and earned consistently excellent grades. I was also a victim of child sexual abuse through much of elementary school and middle school. When I brought my perpetrator to justice as an adult, former teachers and mentors were stunned. I did not fit the profile as a victim. School was my sanctuary. Overachievement my cover story.

As a teacher and a mental health counselor, I have encountered victims of child sexual abuse and other forms of domestic trauma. Some create a façade of competence and normalcy, compartmentalizing their pain and dissociating from their painful reality. Others struggle to process the horrors they face at home, acting out in class, unable to focus or forge normal friendships and interactions. Some present as bullies, others loners, still others ‘the bad kid.'

Since childhood trauma is often hidden by a culture of shame and silence, teachers are often unaware of their students' suffering. Required training on abuse for teachers usually relates to mandated reporting, but trauma can also have an impact on students in the classroom, affecting their interactions with peers, learning style, attention span, and behavior.

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder can mirror other problems and is often misdiagnosed as anxiety, depression, ADHD, and even learning disabilities. Students who suffer trauma as the result of abuse—or neighborhood violence, extreme poverty, illness, and other upsetting episodes and situations—can exhibit poor memory, short attention span, disruptions in sleep, dysfunctional social relationships, impulsivity, aggression, self-harm, avoidance of triggers, problems with physical health and hygiene, emotional dysregulation, and, paradoxically, emotional numbness.

Certain students, like me as a child, fly under the radar, appearing to be well-adjusted, competent children. Others attract the attention of teachers, peers, and guidance counselors, but often for negative reasons. Negative attention and labels beget more negative behavior and a diminished sense of self-worth. It is difficult for students, administrators, and teachers to break that cycle.

Overachievers appear self-motivated, less needy of praise and recognition, while poorly behaved students disrupt the learning environment, frustrating both classmates and teachers. It is hard to value unlikable, disruptive students. And, some of the highest achievers do not appear to need as much interaction and support from teachers.

Becoming trauma-informed can help educators shift their mindset and perhaps approach all students more compassionately. When victims of trauma feel safe, they are less likely to become triggered and resort to methods of self-preservation that are either disruptive to the classroom or impair their ability to learn and process information. That same sense of trust and safety can also help students feel more comfortable disclosing their abuse and getting the help they need.

For much of the year, students spend more waking hours at school than they do at home. School can be a nurturing, positive environment where students feel safe. School can also exacerbate the effects of trauma, fortifying victims' destructive messages and beliefs about the world and themselves.

A basic understanding of trauma could help teachers approach students more compassionately and provide a sense of stability and unconditional acceptance that victims of abuse do not experience at home. School could end up being the only place they feel valued, appreciated, seen, and heard. Compassion and understanding are two of the most powerful classroom management tools. After all, teaching is not just about managing a classroom and conveying information. There is a lot more at stake.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dani-bostick/the-case-for-traumainform_b_10065658.html

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Minnesota

Sex abuse victims say Minn. law brought hope, chance for justice

by Todd Melby

As a kid, Jon Landstrom spent hours in the pool churning out lap after lap. His dedication paid off when he won a spot on the Roseville Stingrays, an elite regional swim team.

But an encounter with an assistant swim coach would change how he felt about going to the pool.

"He wanted to have his hands on me," Landstrom recalled. "Even if it was in front of people, he wanted to pet me or have his hands on me."

The inappropriate behavior escalated until one day the coach sexually molested him, he said. "He called me tiger, which to this day gives me the creeps. It was sick."

This was the 1970s and Landstrom was only 12 years old. He said he was scared and didn't know who to tell about what was going on. So he kept quiet. Eventually, he went to therapy and began talking about it with his family. In 2012, he called a lawyer, but the attorney said he couldn't help — the statute of limitations had expired and there was no legal remedy.

It was true. For years, victims of childhood sexual abuse from long ago had little standing in Minnesota courts. In 1989, Minnesota passed a "delayed discovery" law that gave victims six years from the time of adult awareness of past abuse to file suit. In 1996, the Minnesota Supreme Court interpreted that to mean six years after becoming an adult, that is age 24.

The ground shifted in 2013 when the Legislature passed the Minnesota Child Victims Act. The law lifted the statute of limitations, giving past victims of child sexual abuse three years to sue abusers and the organizations that employed them or directed their volunteer activities.

That window closes today. In those three years, more than 900 people have sought damages for incidents that would've been barred under the old law. The Child Victims Act brought many new hope and a chance for justice. It's also shaken the Catholic church and other institutions.

"There have been resignations. There have been prosecutions. There has been kind of a public shaming," said Jeff Anderson, the St. Paul attorney who filed that first case under the act and hundreds more that followed.

The transparency "has increased public awareness and that has increased institutional awareness," he added. "So yes, every day, every day single day, I believe we are seeing change."

The near-unanimous approval for the act masked a tough fight in the years before its passage.

In 2007, then-state Rep. Steve Simon began working on a bill that would eventually become the Child Victims Act. After talking to victims and studying case law he became convinced of the need for change, though his legislation died in committee or on the House floor during three consecutive legislative sessions.

"It was wrong to close the courthouse doors and deny them a day in court to even make an accusation about something that happened to them that shaped the course and trajectory of their lives. It was wrong," said Simon, a chief sponsor of the Child Victims Act who is currently Minnesota secretary of state.

"This is an area where there is a tremendous stigma attached where the victims," he added. "The survivors of childhood sexual abuse feel all sorts of feelings. Shame. Guilt."

Once it did pass, it didn't take long for victims to start coming forward. John Doe 1 filed a lawsuit just a few weeks later, alleging abuse at the hands of a Catholic priest in 2013. The case was eventually settled.

Landstrom sued the Amateur Athletic Union, the sports association that oversaw the Roseville Stingrays. Suits have also been filed against the Children's Theater Company and the Boy Scouts.

But the majority have been filed against the Catholic church — more than 400 alone against the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis, and more than 100 against the Duluth diocese.

Clergy abuse claims eventually forced the Twin Cities archdiocese into bankruptcy. It has been selling off assets to help pay off claims likely to reach millions of dollars.

There has been significant upheaval in church leadership, including the resignation of Archbishop John Nienstedt. And the church has vowed to change.

In October 2014, Anderson held a joint news conference with church officials to announce a series of steps to bring more transparency to church handling of clergy abuse. Auxiliary Bishop Andrew Cozzens represented the church at that news conference.

"What we're doing is not about a publicity stunt. It's not about a slogan," Cozzens said. It's about a deep desire to bring healing."

Some, though, remain skeptical.

"I believe it's been changed for show, changed due to external pressure. And I believe quite frankly, to assume otherwise is to be extremely naive and reckless," said David Clohessy of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests.

Still, whatever the impact on institutions, the law has been good for victims, said Jeanne Ronayne, executive director of the Minnesota Coalition Against Sexual Assault.

"They've borne the impact of what happened to them for decades," she said. "Their life took a course that was totally different trajectory because of what happened to them because. Someone needs to be held accountable."

Ronayne said she believes the bill could have gone further and eliminated any statute of limitations for past claims.

Steve Simon doesn't disagree with Ronayne but he said he didn't have the votes for a longer window and the three-year limit was a compromise with a high payoff.

"What we got in return for that, going forward, for all incident of childhood sexual abuse going forward, there will be no statute of limitations of any kind," he said.

State Rep. Steve Drazkowski, R-Mazeppa, was one of seven house members who opposed the bill in 2013. Three years later, he's still not a fan.

"We're looking at 30 years later. I can't remember what I did three years ago, more or less 30 years ago," he said. "I don't think this is good policy. It certainly was brought by the trial attorneys. They have made a lot of hay on this so far."

Lawyers representing victims will likely make millions in coming years. But for Landstrom and others, the Child Victims Act has brought the chance to face his alleged abuser in court and close a dark chapter in his life.

"This has been 43 years in the making," he said. "So I'm coming forward."

http://www.mprnews.org/story/2016/05/25/sex-abuse-victims-say-minnesota-law-brought-hope

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The staggering statistics on childhood sexual abuse

by Audra Jennings

Part 1 of an interview with Andrew J. Schmutzer
Co-Author of Naming Our Abuse: God's Pathways to Healing for Male Sexual Abuse Survivors

From Penn State to the Catholic Church scandal, stories of sexual abuse are covered in the national media, but news reports do not reveal all the facts of how prevalent abuse is among males. "The standard statistic is that one in six boys is sexually abused before the age of 18 (1in6.org). However, Male Survivor recently reported one in four men has been sexually abused," Andrew J. Schmutzer, co-author of Naming Our Abuse: God's Pathways to Healing for Male Sexual Abuse Survivors (Kregel Publications), explains. "One thing to understand about these statistics is that they are largely based on self-reporting, so they have been historically hard to come by. As specialists know, men don't readily talk about their abuse."

Given the staggering statistics, why then does the church seem to be averse to addressing the issue? This was the question asked by Schmutzer and his co-authors, Daniel A. Gorski and David Carlson, as they began their own journey toward recovery from childhood sexual abuse in their church support group. They also found most of the books on bookstore shelves were written for women. In response, they joined together to tell their stories in Naming Our Abuse .

Q: What brought the three of you together to write Naming Our Abuse ?

We had all been part of a standard support group at our church, and while the work within the group had been helpful, it had run its course; we needed something more. We needed to dig into our stories. Beyond "12-step" programs, we needed to slow down and take time to investigate "the wreck," as we called it. We wanted an open-ended time to sit in our personal stories - come what may - and face the "muck" of it all, without time constraints and well-intentioned platitudes.

Q: It seems we hear more about sexual abuse among girls and women than we do boys and men. Could you share some of the statistics regarding male sexual abuse?

It's not that it just "seems." Media and the culture, in general, don't explore male sexual abuse. The standard statistic is that one in six boys is sexually abused before the age of 18 (1in6.org). However, Male Survivor recently reported one in four men has been sexually abused. One thing to understand about these statistics is that they are largely based on self-reporting, so they have been historically hard to come by. As specialists know, men don't readily talk about their abuse.

Delayed admission is also far greater among men than women, meaning they report much longer after the abuse (about 10 -15 years later). A younger generation of male survivors is starting to talk earlier than my generation (age 50) did. Male sexual abuse tends to be more gruesome. Men may seek counseling for symptoms (e.g., depression, anger) but not even recognize that sexual abuse is the underlying cause.

Q: What are some of the stereotypes Christian men are often judged by that can make it difficult for them to be honest about their abuse?

Some of the most common misconceptions include:

• All sexual encounters are exciting.

• All pain is going to be used by God.

• Patriarchy only affects women.

• Men have healed if they don't victimize others.

• If the abuser was female, it wasn't abuse.

• Victory, leadership and tearless faith are signs of strength and honor.

• Weakness is both unmanly and unspiritual.

• Men only cause suffering; they can't be raped and victimized.

Q: Sometimes when a family member is named as the abuser, the rest of the family's first instinct is to defend the abuser rather than protect the abused. What should a family do when they learn abuse has occurred?

Seek immediate help for the victim. Make sure the victim is safe. Get help for the abuser. For Christians, this means going outside to the police, then inside for professional therapy and care for the entire family. Abuse always has a context that has directly or indirectly sanctioned the actions of the abuser. Much like the alcoholic family, the entire abusing family also needs help. It's rarely just sexual abuse; typically emotional, spiritual or physical abuse also occurs in the same home. There's always a power shake-up in such a home!

Q: What are some of the warning signs families should be aware of if abuse is happening within the home, at school or anywhere else?

This is not a complete list, but some of the most obvious signs would be:

• A child is afraid to visit the babysitter or other key places.

• A child is receiving gifts from the person he is afraid of.

• A child's grades suddenly drop or an activity is sharply avoided.

• An older child starts bedwetting.

• A child evidences adult-level awareness of sex and anatomy (e.g., drawings).

• A child is suddenly shown attention by "that person."

• A child plays violently or erotically with toys or objects.

• A child shows obsession or avoidance of sexuality and his body.

• A child engages in self-harming (e.g., cutting or burning himself).

Q: How can churches be more supportive of victims and aid in the recovery process?

There are actually many things a church can do for their abused members:

• Offer support groups for both male and female survivors.

• Have a complete policy on sexual abuse and interaction with abusers.

• Talk about abuse in sermons, not just abortion, trafficking or pornography.

• Develop a library that has books on sexual abuse for youth and adults.

• Support professional counselling for abused people.

• Offer well-designed corporate services for the abused-silence is not an option any more.

• Teach people how to lament, such as reading psalms and written prayers.

• Let survivors give their testimonies and talk about their struggles.

• Bring some mature survivors into leadership as "wounded healers" that others can follow.

• Put small cards in bathrooms where survivors can privately find further information about support groups.

• Bring in trained speakers who can instruct and guide the laity about abuse.

Q: Why is forgiveness not the same as reconciliation? Do victims of CSA need to reconcile with their abusers?

Reconciliation may not even be safe or in some cases possible, if the abuser has passed away. Forgiveness needs the fruit of trust before reconciliation can occur. Forgiveness chooses to release negative will against the offender, but that does not mean the forgiver will not struggle to live out that "legal" decision they've made. Reconciliation, on the other hand, does require both parties to move toward each other. Reconciliation does not happen 99% of the time because the trauma does not permit it. Sexually abusing a child destroys the foundation of that person. Because of the abuse, the deep structure of their relationship has been damaged.

For example, if two adults in a marriage may not be able to heal and recover from an affair, think about a child. A child abused during their developmental years can have too much pain and damage to overcome in order to reconcile that relationship. Abusing a child is like taking a knife to a CD - scars will remain.

http://blogs.christianpost.com/books/the-staggering-statistics-on-childhood-sexual-abuse-27662/

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Washington D.C.

Senate Passes Grassley's Bill to Track Sex Offenders, Protect Rights of Victims

by Caffeinated Thoughts

(Washington, DC) The U.S. Senate passed legislation championed by Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley to keep communities informed of the whereabouts of convicted sex offenders and to expand and protect the rights of sex assault victims. The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act Reauthorization passed the Senate by a vote of 89-0.

“Too many kids are falling prey to sexual predators. The names Johnny Gosch, Eugene Martin and Jetseta Gage bring heartbreak to Iowans. And too many people have had to cope with the physical and emotional trauma of a sexual assault. I introduced this legislation to help prevent future tragedies and ensure that victims have a good shot at justice. Today's vote in the Senate reaffirms our commitment to protecting the rights of those who have experienced a sexual assault while helping communities across America work together to guard against future atrocities,” Grassley said.

Correction: The bill sponsored by Grassley borrowed heavily from S.2566, the Sexual Assault Survivors' Right Act that was authored by U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) with the input of Amanda Nguyen and introduced by U.S. Senators Shaheen, Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT).

The original Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act , which passed in 2006, established nationwide notification and registration standards for convicted sex offenders to bolster information sharing between law enforcement agencies and increase public safety through greater awareness. The bill's funding authorization expired several years ago

The bill that was approved in the Senate today reauthorizes key programs in the 2006 act to help states meet the national standards and locate offenders who fail to properly register or periodically update their information as the law requires. Specifically, Grassley's bill reauthorizes the Sex Offender Management Assistance Program, a federal grant program that assists state and local law enforcement agencies in their efforts to improve sex offender registry systems and information sharing capabilities. The bill also extends the Jessica Lunsford Address Verification Grant Program, which makes available federal grants to states and localities to periodically verify the home addresses of registered sex offenders. Finally, the bill authorizes resources for the U.S. Marshals Service to aid state and local law enforcement in the location and apprehension of sex offenders who fail to comply with registration requirements.

This bill also established new rights for victims of sexual assault and human trafficking offenses. These provisions ensure that victims of federal crimes of sexual violence cannot be denied or charged for forensic exams, and that sexual assault evidence collection kits must be preserved without charge for the statutory limitation period or at least 20 years. It would authorize Justice Department grants to states that ensure that sexual violence survivors are notified of any applicable legal rights. It also calls for the creation of a federal working group to develop best practices relating to the care and treatment of sexual assault survivors as well as the preservation of forensic evidence in sexual violence cases. Finally, the Grassley amendment, which was developed with the input of victim advocates and other senators, would extend the statutory deadline by which many child survivors of human trafficking offenses can file civil lawsuits against their perpetrators.

The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act is named for a six-year-old Florida boy who was kidnapped and murdered in 1981. Adam's father, John Walsh, collaborated with Congress to develop the 2006 law and this reauthorization bill. Cosponsors of Grassley's bill include senators Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Christopher Coons (D-Del.), among others. The bill is also supported by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Rise, Shared Hope International, and Polaris.

The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act Reauthorization is the 17 th bill reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee under Grassley's leadership, all of which have enjoyed bipartisan support.

U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) released a statement in support of Grassley's bill:

I am grateful to Senator Grassley for his leadership and work on this important, bipartisan legislation which reauthorizes federal programs to improve the tracking of sex offenders and introduces new rights for victims of sexual assault.

Under the Adam Walsh Reauthorization Act, state, local, and tribal governments will continue to receive federal support in their efforts to implement and improve sex offender registries, promote a heightened awareness of these criminals, and ultimately ensure greater public safety.

In addition, this legislation provides added rights and protections to victims of sexual assault. The bill creates a joint working group to collaborate on best practices for treating survivors of sexual assault, and it also extends the statute of limitations for child survivors to file civil lawsuits against perpetrators.

We absolutely must do all we can to both protect the survivors of sexual assault and try to prevent such heinous crimes from happening in the first place.”

Text of the bill is available HERE.

Below are Grassley's remarks Monday on the Senate floor:

Prepared Senate Floor Statement by Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa

Chairman, Senate Judiciary Committee

On the Adam Walsh Reauthorization Act of 2016

Monday, May 23, 2016

Mr. President, today we'll vote on The Adam Walsh Reauthorization Act of 2016. Passage of this bipartisan bill will send a strong and clear message to the American people about Congress' steadfast commitment to keeping our children safe from sexual predators and other violent criminals

Many of us supported the original Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, which is so named for a six-year old boy who was abducted and tragically murdered nearly 35 years ago. Adam Walsh was abducted on July 27, 1981 from a mall in Hollywood, Florida. In what is every parent's nightmare, Adam's remains were found two weeks later, more than a hundred miles from his home.

This year marks the 35th anniversary of his disappearance. In the intervening years, his parents, John and Reve Walsh, have dedicated their lives to protecting children from harm and bringing child predators to justice. John Walsh collaborated on the development of the original Adam Walsh Act, and he has continued to provide invaluable insight regarding the reauthorization bill that is before us today.?

This bill is yet another bipartisan measure that the Senate Judiciary Committee reported unanimously in the 114th Congress. Senators Hatch, Schumer, and Feinstein, who all cosponsored an early Senate version of the 2006 Adam Walsh Act, have once again joined as original cosponsors of this legislation. I want to also thank our Committee's Ranking Member, Senator Leahy, as well as Senator Ayotte and other members of this chamber who have joined as cosponsors or contributed in some way to the bill's success.

As a reminder, the Adam Walsh Act originally was enacted in response to notorious cases involving children who had been targeted by adult criminals, many of them repeat sex offenders. The names Johnny Gosch, Eugene Martin and Jetseta Gage, for example, still bring heartbreak to all Iowans. Johnny Gosch was a twelve year-old paperboy delivering newspapers in West Des Moines, Iowa, when he disappeared in 1982. Two years later, thirteen year-old Eugene Martin, disappeared in Des Moines, Iowa—also while delivering newspapers. And ten year-old Jetseta Gage, was kidnapped, raped and murdered by a convicted sex offender in rural Johnson County, Iowa in 2005.

The original Adam Walsh Act was enacted in response to these and many other cases involving missing children. The 2006 law established numerous programs, but their authorization expired some years ago. Several of these programs, for which Congress continues to provide funding in the annual appropriations process, are the centerpiece of the Adam Walsh Act and are key to its successful implementation. This bill would extend the authorization for these pivotal programs.

First, this bill would reauthorize the Sex Offender Management Assistance Program. It's estimated that there are more than 700,000 registered sex offenders in the United States. This program helps states to meet national notification and registration standards for these sex offenders. It also helps state and local law enforcement agencies improve their sex offender registry systems and information sharing capabilities.

Second, this bill would extend the Jessica Lunsford Address Verification Grant Program. Who can forget Jessica Lunsford, for whom this program is named? This nine year old Florida girl was abducted and murdered by a registered sex offender who lived nearby. Her story is not unlike that of Jetseta Gage.

The Jessica Lunsford Program authorizes grants to state and local governments to help fund programs that verify the residences of registered sex offenders. Having accurate information on where sex offenders live is crucial to ensuring that law enforcement can adequately protect the safety of children and keep the public informed.

Third, this bill authorizes continued funding for the U.S. Marshals Service to support local efforts to track down sex offenders who fail to register as such or who later disappear from the system. These fugitive apprehension activities, authorized under the original Adam Walsh Act, continue to be funded by appropriators but they need to be reauthorized. Extending the authorization signals Congress' continued commitment to ensuring that these activities continue.

Fourth, during the committee markup of this bill, I offered a substitute amendment that incorporates a package of new rights for sexual assault survivors. It was accepted with the unanimous support of our Committee members. Several members worked with me on its development, and I appreciate their contributions. I want to especially thank Ms. Amanda Nguyen, a young woman who has bravely spoken out about her experience of sexual assault. Amanda, who founded a nonprofit known as Rise, originated the idea for a survivors' rights package and urged me to incorporate such language in this bill.

The package we adopted in the Judiciary Committee includes new rights, under our federal criminal code, for victims of sexual assault offenses.

These rights are in addition to those already available to all victims of crime under the federal criminal code. They include the right not to be prevented from, or charged for, receiving a medical forensic exam. They include the right to have a sexual assault evidence collection kit preserved without charge for the statutory limitations period or 20 years. They include the right to be informed of the results of that kit's analysis as well as policies governing the kit's collection and preservation. They include the right to notice when the government intends to dispose of a sexual assault evidence collection kit. Rise endorsed these provisions last July.

The bill reported by our Committee also clarifies that the Justice Department can make discretionary grants available, under the Crime Victims Fund, to states that agree to notify sexual assault survivors of any applicable rights under state law. The bill calls for the establishment of a federal working group to disseminate best practices for the care and treatment of sexual assault survivors and for the preservation of forensic evidence. The bill also would extend the statutory deadline by which child victims of certain human trafficking and child abuse offenses can file suit against their perpetrators.

We also added language to the bill, at the suggestion of the United States Judicial Conference, to clarify that courts can supervise sexual offenders after their release from civil confinement. Courts already do this in practice, just as they do with criminal offenders after their release, but this legislation clarifies judges' authority to do so.

Before concluding, I should mention that the Adam Walsh Reauthorization Act not only has the bipartisan support of members of this chamber, but also has the support of groups that advocate for child protection and safety, such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

It has been endorsed by two leading anti-human trafficking organizations, Polaris and Shared Hope International. And as already mentioned, the current version has the support of John Walsh and Rise.

Finally, I want to reiterate that the 35th anniversary of the abduction of and murder of young Adam Walsh will take place in July. It is my hope that we can send this legislation to the President's desk before that date elapses. As a father, as a grandfather, I cannot stress enough the importance of making this bill's passage a priority for the 114th Congress.

We cannot bring back Adam Walsh, Jetseta Gage, Jessica Lunsford, or the other innocent children we have lost under such terrible circumstances. But we can do our best to honor their memory and to protect America's present and future children by extending these key programs that were authorized under the original Adam Walsh Act.

I yield the floor.

https://caffeinatedthoughts.com/2016/05/senate-passes-adam-walsh-reauthorization-chuck-grassley/

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United Kingdom

'Paedophilia CAN be cured with drugs': Expert speaks out as trial of medication to control 'unwanted' sexual urges begins

by Madlen Davies

Can drugs 'cure' paedophilia?

It is a question Swedish scientists seeks to answer in a unique new trial.

Earlier this week, MailOnline revealed researchers are testing whether a medicine normally used to treat advanced prostate cancer can rid men of 'unwanted' sexual urges towards children.

It is hoped the £1,000-a-year ($1,415) prostate cancer medicine Degarelix - a drug that stops testosterone from being produced - will reduce sex drive and curb urges.

Testosterone is involved in several of the most important risk factors for committing child sex abuse, including high sexual arousal, diminished self-control and low empathy, psychiatrist and lead researcher Christoffer Rahm said.

Belinda Winder, Professor of Forensic Psychology and Head of the Sexual Offences, Crime and Misconduct Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University, says the drugs do work to control sexual urges - and similar types are already being prescribed in the UK.

However, she warns the drugs will not solve the problem of child abuse - as many who offend against children are perfectly capable of controlling their sexual urges but choose not to, understanding the damage they are inflicting.

Writing for The Conversation, she explains exactly what defines a paedophile and how drug treatment can help...

Scientists in Sweden are working on a 'cure' for paedophilia. The trial involves a drug that disrupts testosterone.

Forcing or persuading children to have sex is one of the worst things a person can do to them.

Sexual abuse causes serious emotional and physical harm, and can ruin a child's capacity to have healthy relationships as an adult.

However, we mustn't confuse all sexual abuse of children with paedophilia.

Paedophiles are sexually attracted to children but they may, or may not, act on their urges.

In fact, my experience indicates that most of the people who abuse children are not paedophiles.

Research by Alanko and colleagues, looking at the question of whether paedophilia was inherited, showed approximately 5 per cent of men in the study with paedophilia had offended against children.

In fact, people who offend against children, in my experience, are (mostly) men who are obsessed with sex and are looking for a sexual outlet, regardless of the age of the victim.

In our research, which looked at whether medication was helpful for sexual offenders who struggled with their obsession with sex, we found while over 90 per cent of them had committed offences against children, most of them had also abused adults.

And, in some cases, victims included both males and females, showing a broad pattern of offending.

These abusers will seek out any possible opportunity for sexual satisfaction and sadly children are often vulnerable and easy prey.

Clinicians use the following criteria from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - the 'bible' of psychiatric conditions - to diagnose paedophilia:

•  Over a period of at least six months, recurrent, intense sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges or behaviours involving sexual activity with a prepubescent child or children (generally age 13 years or younger).

•  The person has acted on these sexual urges, or the sexual urges or fantasies cause marked distress or interpersonal difficulty.

•  The person is at least 16 years of age and at least five years older than the child or children in Criterion A.

MOST PAEDOPHILES DON'T ACT ON THEIR URGES

Many researchers think paedophilia is a sexual orientation (like heterosexuality), rather than a psychosexual disorder or illness.

Regardless of which it is, it's very difficult for people to live with.

Discovering at puberty that your sexual preference is for children, is usually a terrifying and depressing realisation.

Think back to when you were 13 or 14 years old and just beginning to become strangely drawn to the boys or girls around you.

Now think what it would have been like if those feelings were not for your own peer group, but for much younger children.

You might wonder or worry a bit at first, and, as time went on, worry a lot.

Why are you so different? What is wrong with you? Who can you talk to about it?

It's tough enough for teenagers to talk to their parents about sex, let alone tell them they are a paedophile.

What we need to do, as a society, is to understand that some people are sexually attracted to children.

More than this, we also need to understand that this attraction to children does not bring with it an uncontrollable urge to force sexual attention on children.

Or course, there will be a small number of people who either can't or won't control their sexual urges, but for the most part, they can and they will.

Think of yourself in a similar situation with your preferred partner type.

How easy do you find it to control yourself in a roomful of the type of people you are attracted to? It's not so difficult to do, is it?

MEDICATION TO MANAGE SEXUAL AROUSAL

But what about paedophiles who do act on their urges (as well as sex offenders who prey on children) – do the drugs work for them?

As the researcher leading the evaluation of the use of these types of drugs in the UK prison service, I can reassure you they do reduce people's obsession with sex.

The drugs seem to work well and it is great they are being offered (in this case) as a prevention tool.

It's also important they are offered alongside psychological treatment to further help people control their urges.

As of April 1, 2016, both medication and psychological treatment are being offered in the UK across the whole of the prison service.

Some charities, such as the Safer Living Foundation, are also looking to offer them as a prevention tool for people who have not yet committed an offence.

KEEPING CHILDREN SAFE

Although testosterone-disrupting drugs can help sex offenders control their urges, they may not be a cure for paedophilia.

As already described, most people who offend against children are not paedophiles.

Most paedophiles are perfectly capable of controlling themselves and understand the damage that will be done to children by sexual abuse.

We need to stop panicking about paedophiles, and focus our efforts on offering treatment and help to anyone struggling with their sexual urges.

That's what will help our children grow up safely.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3596522/Paedophilia-cured-drugs-Expert-speaks-trial-medication-control-unwanted-sexual-urges-begins.html

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Pennsylvania

Audit finds thousands of unanswered calls to state's child-abuse hotline

by Karen Langley

HARRISBURG — Thousands of callers to Pennsylvania's child-abuse hotline since 2014 hung up or were disconnected before ever reaching a caseworker, a state audit has found.

During a review of the ChildLine hotline, the auditor general's office determined 22 percent of the calls last year — or nearly 42,000 — were unanswered, up from just 4 percent the year before.

One caller in 2015 waited approximately 51 minutes before getting to speak with a caseworker, and another caller stayed on hold for approximately 53 minutes before hanging up, according to the report.

The auditors classified unanswered calls as any from people who hung up before being connected to a caseworker or whose calls were terminated because the hotline system queue was full.

Not every caller reaches out to report abuse, officials say. Some, for instance, want to know more about training of mandated reporters.

Still, such “an alarming rate” of unanswered calls — along with inadequate staffing — may have put abused children further at risk, officials said.

“In 42,000 unanswered calls, it is very possible that something happened to a child as a result of that,” Auditor General Eugene DePasquale said Tuesday at a Capitol news conference. “But we have no way of knowing that one way or the other, and that's our biggest problem.”

Pennsylvania's child protective services law underwent significant changes during the time of the audit, adding new groups of people as mandated reporters of child abuse and requiring additional training.

Even before that, concerns had been raised about the support given to ChildLine. In 2012, the union representing hotline caseworkers complained they had struggled for years with high turnover and understaffing.

The auditors recommended the Department of Human Services determine how many workers it needs to ensure all calls are answered and that callers are not placed on hold for an unreasonable amount of time.

Cathleen Palm, founder of the Center for Children's Justice, said she and other advocates asked in 2010 for an audit of ChildLine.

Ms. Palm said that protecting children works only if people believe in the system. “We've got to get to restored confidence in the child welfare system,” she said.

In a written response included in the report, DHS Secretary Ted Dallas wrote that within days of taking office, the Wolf administration began working to improve the situation at ChildLine. The portion of unanswered calls to the hotline peaked at 43 percent in January 2015, he wrote, but had dropped to 12 percent by March 2016.

The department has been hiring more caseworkers and supervisors and requested more money, he wrote.

“While progress has been made in improving the dropped and abandoned call rate, hiring and training additional staff, as well as improving operations, remains a priority,” he wrote.

The auditors praised the department for how it has worked to address the problems at the hotline.

Jeff Sheridan, spokesman for Gov. Tom Wolf, said in a statement that when the administration took office, the ChildLine program was “an absolute mess.”

Despite the reduction in unanswered calls, he said, more funding is needed to meet the goal of picking up 96 percent of all calls.

“We are committed to continuing our work with the Legislature to implement the law and to finding ways to direct additional resources to ChildLine,” Mr. Sheridan said, “and we are pleased the auditor general is now involved in the process and has highlighted the need for more funding and additional staffing.”

Dept of Justice

Press Release

Australian Man Arrested after Allegedly Traveling to the Southland Seeking to Have Sex with 6-Year-Old Child

LOS ANGELES – An Australian man was arrested over the weekend when he arrived at a Los Angeles-area hotel allegedly to buy a 6-year-old boy for sex.
Michael Quinn, 33, of Melbourne, was charged in a criminal complaint filed in federal court on Monday with traveling to the United States for the purpose of engaging in illicit sexual conduct with a minor. The complaint also charges Quinn with attempted sex trafficking of a minor.

Quinn was arrested Saturday by special agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). After the complaint was filed on Monday afternoon, Quinn made his initial appearance in United States District, where he was ordered held in jail pending a detention hearing on Friday.

“Predators who travel overseas to sexually exploit children do not just victimize children in faraway lands,” said United States Attorney Eileen M. Decker. “As this case shows, children everywhere are vulnerable to such predators, including children right here in Los Angeles. The Internet has helped to enable the child sex tourism industry by making the world a smaller place, but this case, and others like it by my office, show that such international predators can and will be brought to justice.”

According to the affidavit filed in support of the criminal complaint, the investigation began earlier this month after undercover HSI special agents met Quinn on a social networking site that caters to individuals with a sexual interest in children. Quinn told undercover agents he was traveling to Los Angeles and wanted to “meet up with a dad who shares his young ones.” Quinn explained to the undercover agent he was hoping to meet “other pervs” in the U.S. and ultimately agreed to pay a human trafficker $250 to provide him with a young boy with whom he could engage in illicit sex.

On Saturday afternoon, Quinn went to a Los Angeles-area hotel expecting to meet with three fellow child predators for a party, during which the men would engage in sex with boys provided by the sex trafficker. Quinn went to the hotel room not realizing the men inside were actually undercover HSI special agents. A short time later, another undercover agent, posing as the sex trafficker, arrived to collect payment for the children. After Quinn handed the sex trafficker his money, law enforcement authorities came into the hotel room and took him into custody.

“Millions of tourists flock to Los Angeles every year for all this city has to offer, but if you’re coming here to sexually exploit children, expect to be met by law enforcement, not a welcome mat,” said Joseph Macias, special agent in charge for HSI Los Angeles. “As this case vividly illustrates, the advent of the Internet means youth are now vulnerable to exploitation by sexual predators not just around the corner, but around the globe. Pedophiles should be on notice, HSI and its law enforcement partners are using all of the resources at our disposal to combat this reprehensible behavior and hold the perpetrators responsible for their crimes.”

The ongoing investigation is being conducted by HIS, with assistance from the FBI and the Los Angeles Police Department’s Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force.

A criminal complaint contains allegations that a defendant has committed a crime. Every defendant is presumed to be innocent until and unless proven guilty in court.

The child sex trafficking charge is punishable by a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in federal prison and a maximum term of life without parole. Traveling with the intent of engaging in illicit sexual conduct with a minor carries a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison.

This case is a product of Project Safe Childhood, a Department of Justice initiative launched in 2006 to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse, and HSI’s Operation Predator, an international initiative to protect children from sexual predators.

Led by the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the DOJ Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals state and local resources to locate, apprehend and prosecute those who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit: www.justice.gov/psc

Since the launch of Operation Predator in 2003, HSI has arrested more than 12,000 individuals for crimes against children, including the production and distribution of online child pornography, traveling overseas for sex with minors, and sex trafficking of children. In fiscal year 2014, more than 2,000 individuals were arrested by HSI special agents under this initiative.

HSI encourages the public to report suspected child predators and any suspicious activity through its toll-free Tip Line at 1-866-DHS-2-ICE or by completing its online tip form. Suspected child sexual exploitation or missing children may be reported to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, an Operation Predator partner, via its toll-free 24-hour hotline, 1-800-THE-LOST.

FROM:  Thom Mrozek
Public Affairs Officer
United States Attorney's Office
Central District of California (Los Angeles)
O: (213) 894-6947
M: (213) 494-9261

www.justice.gov/usao-cdca

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New York / New Jersey / Pennsylvania

Child Sex Abuse Victims to Walk Brooklyn Bridge

by Courtney M. Soliday

New York Pending Child Sex Abuse Legislation

NY Assembly Bill 2872A A. 2872A (civil elimination and 1-year civil window)
Senate Bill 63A S. 63A (civil elimination and 1-year civil window)
Assembly Bill 8567 A. 8567 (criminal elimination)
Senate Bill 6436 S. 6436 (criminal elimination)
Assembly Bill 09877 A. 09877 (criminal and civil elimination, plus 1-year civil window)

Pennsylvania Pending Child Sex Abuse Legislation

PA House Bill 1947 H.B. 1947 (retroactive/revival civil extension to age 50, and criminal elimination)

Additional Information on the pending legislation available at: http://SOL-Reform.com

The event is described on Facebook as follows:

It is time for politicians to make our Children their number 1 Priority. Join Assemblywoman Margaret Markey and Senator Brad Hoylman in taking a stance to end NY Statute of Limitations for Sexual Abuse claims.

Victims, Survivors, Advocates, Parents, Grandparents, Children and Activists Unite. We will start gathering at 12pm on the cadman plaza park (north lawn),we will be giving t-shirts. Please bring posters and signs. Then we will march over Brooklyn bridge and end at City Hall park.

Follow the WALK FOR A WINDOW Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1693905780883178/ and Professor Marci A. Hamilton on Facebook for the latest updates.

Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood says Hollywood is gripped by a powerful pedophile ring and Tinseltown is covering up a 'seedy' underbelly full of predatory 'vipers'

Elijah Wood, 35, claims young actors are being  abused  in Hollywood; Says Tinseltown is allegedly sheltering around '100 active abusers'

by ABE HAWKEN

Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood claims that young actors in Hollywood are being sexually abused by predatory high-powered 'vipers' working in the industry..

The Hobbit actor, 35, told The Sunday Times that the child abuse is 'probably still happening'.

Shocking allegations that top Hollywood figures have been protecting child abusers have circulated widely in recent years.

Several industry figures have been convicted following claims of sex abuse and former child actors - including The Goonies actor Corey Feldman, 44 - claimed he was 'surrounded' by molesters when he was a teenager.

Anne Henry, co-founder of Bizparentz - a group to help young actors - said that Tinseltown is currently sheltering around '100 active abusers'.

Wood, who stars in his new film The Trust told The Sunday Times that his mother had protected him from abuse when he first arrived in Hollywood aged eight. 

But he said: 'I've been led down dark paths to realise that these things are probably still happening.'

The actor, who played Frodo Baggins in Lord of the Rings, believes that other actors remain in danger.

He added: 'If you're innocent, you have very little knowledge of the world and you want to succeed. 

'People with parasitic interests will see you as their prey. What upsets me about these situations is that the victims can't speak as loudly as the people in power.'

Wood was talking to the Sunday Times about Jimmy Savile, a British entertainer who sexually abused dozens of victims over five decades.

He was knighted by the Queen and his crimes were only revealed after his death, despite years of rumor and innuendo and led to allegations of a cover-up by government figures and broadcasting chiefs. 

Henry believes that around three quarters of child actors that 'went off the rails' later in their life had been abused in Hollywood.

She said: 'This problem has been endemic in Hollywood for a long time and it's finally coming to light.

'Very bad people are still working here, protected by their friends.' 

In the last 10 years, several wealthy and significant people involved in the industry have been convicted.

Some have left prison and returned to Hollywood and continued to work with children.

Wood, who now knows he was lucky to avoid being abused, compared the allegations in Hollywood to the claims linked to Savile following his death in October 2011.

Wood said: 'You all grew up with Savile - Jesus, it must have been devastating. Clearly something major was going on in Hollywood. It was all organised.

'There are a lot of vipers in this industry. There is a darkness in the underbelly - if you can imagine it, it's probably happened.' 

Feldman, who was one of the biggest child stars in the 1980s, was abused when he was a young actor.

He said: 'The No 1 problem in Hollywood was and is - and always will be - pedophilia.' 

Other child actors were reportedly told by adults that it was perfectly normal for older men and younger boys in the industry to have sexual relations.

Feldman told a British tabloid four years ago: 'When I was 14 and 15, things were happening to me. These older men were leching around me like vultures.'

He went on to suffer with alcoholism, mental health problems and became addicted to drugs.

His friend, Corey Haim, another child actor, died of pnemonia aged 38 in 2010. Feldman claims a 'Hollywood mogul' is to blame for his friend's death.

He said abusers are still working and are some of the richest and most powerful people in the business.

It was also claimed that a number of pool parties were held in Los Angeles during the late 1990s - primarily hosted by millionaire businessman Marc Collins-Rector.

At these parties, Collins-Rector and other men are said to have sexually assaulted teenage boys, according to lawsuits filed in 2000 and 2014.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3603386/Lord-Rings-star-Elijah-Wood-says-Hollywood-gripped-powerful-pedophile-ring-Tinseltown-covering-seedy-underbelly-predatory-vipers.html

India

A false sense of security and an illusion of public safety?

by Dr. Asha Bajpai

Recently, many expressed their anger and resentment towards a sex offender and voiced outrage for a juvenile justice system that would release such a person after ‘only three years' in a correction home. Very few were willing to give the offender a chance, or accept him in their neighbourhood. People hate and despise such sexual offenders and think they should be ‘locked up for life'. Other criminals also consider them too abominable to associate with; remember the reported assault of an accused in the Nirbhaya case in prison by fellow prisoners. The Indian government has started work on putting together a register of convicted sex offenders that will also be published. Reportedly, guidelines are being prepared in consultation with various ministries. The register will include a wide range of details about convicted sex offenders, including names, addresses, telephone numbers and their current photographs. The crimes the register would cover range from stalking and voyeurism to rape and aggravated sexual assault. Child offenders are also proposed to be included in this register. According to the Government: “It will instill fear in the minds of repeat sexual offenders and the public would benefit from it.”

In the times we are living in, it is politically correct to take a harsh stand on the matter of sexual offenders in the interest of ‘public safety', and there is a presumption that they cannot be reformed and are likely to re-offend. Remember how the Juvenile Justice Act 2016, lowering the age of children in conflict with law was passed though it violated the Constitution of India, the Supreme Court's judgments, international laws, views of experts and scientific brain studies. Such knee-jerk reactions may possibly succeed in providing a sense of false security or an illusion of public safety, but only initially.

Following a number of highly publicised violent crimes, all states in the US passed various laws to decrease recidivism and promote public safety. But the resulting stigmatisation of sex offenders resulted in disruption of their relationships, loss of or difficulties in finding jobs, difficulties finding housing, and decreased psychological well-being, all factors that could increase their risk of recidivism.

There are some studies that laws denying them a variety of employment, social and educational opportunities may actually increase re-offending. The sex offender label may prevent these individuals from starting a new life and making new acquaintances, with the result that it may be extremely difficult for them to discard their criminal patterns.

Taking into account the provisions of the current Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, a 14 year-old child who may have engaged in ‘sexual experimentation' with a younger child will also be considered a sex offender and included in the register. Their opportunities for further schooling, employment will be blocked and they may develop a sense of hopelessness. Putting their names on a public registry inhibits them from reintegrating into the society.

Reviews in some states in the US have shown that it is not clear whether or not the huge costs of registration outweigh the benefits. It is really important that these children get proper treatment, intervention, and their needs are addressed so they don't re-offend. And, I think that is far more effective than a registry.

We need preventive programmes within communities, schools, homes and families so that children in need of care and protection are prevented from turning into children in conflict with law.

We need more programs for the protection of witnesses and victims and survivors of sexual assault.

Dr. Bajpai is a professor of law and former Dean, School of Law, Rights and Constitutional Governance at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai

http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/news/a-false-sense-of-security-and-an-illusion-of-public-safety/article8635156.ece

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Childhood abuse and neglect take their toll

by Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea

Editor's note: This is the first part of a four-part examination of the clergy sex abuse scandal in the Catholic church. Read more about the series here: "Hell, hope and healing."

The past two decades have witnessed an interdisciplinary explosion of new information about the prevalence and aftermath of child abuse and neglect.

From 1995 to 1997, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kaiser Permanente conducted a study of more than 17,000 Americans to determine how many had been subjected to adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and what symptoms and disorders they suffered that differentiated them from those patients who did not have such histories. At the same time, researchers in clinical, developmental and neuropsychology, along with neurobiologists and trauma specialists, have increased our understanding of the potential impact of early abuse and neglect on virtually every aspect of a victim's life.

So what do we know?

The CDC data indicates that only a little over one-third of subjects had no ACEs; 26 percent had one; 15.9 percent had two; 9.5 percent had three; and 12.5 percent had four or more. The study found that symptoms and disorders in ACE survivors were correlated with the number of ACEs experienced and with the frequency and/or intensity of each particular stressor. Let's make this real.

The U.S. Census Bureau tells us that in 2014, there were about 245.2 million Americans over 18, meaning that more than 156 million adults have histories of ACEs, with more than 30 million having four or more. Over 50 million of us were sexually abused before the age of 18. Over 30 million watched our mothers get hit.

Think about these numbers when we get to the aftermath of adverse childhood experiences. Big numbers, but by now you may be wondering why you are being deluged with all this information. Isn't the issue for Catholics "just" the sexual violations of kids by priests and the sometimes still-ongoing cover-up by bishops and provincial superiors?

I would say no. While clergy sexual abuse is the ACE most haunting the church right now, it is important that Catholics take in and feel that more than every other person in their pew has a history of ACEs and every eighth person has had four or more of these devastating childhood experiences, many of which are not single episodes, but ongoing incidences of abuse, neglect, watching mom get beaten, or coming home to a drunk parent.

If churches are to be field hospitals, as Pope Francis so eloquently suggests, we should all understand who the patients really are and what they suffer, even when they don't look obviously injured. The abused and neglected are not "them"; they are us.

We now know that ACEs can have major effects on every aspect of human functioning. Symptoms and disorders increase commensurately with the more types of ACEs we have been subjected to and the more times those ACEs have occurred. Let's quickly review what happens to ACE victims and survivors.

Physical health: It is now clear that early trauma is correlated with a plethora of symptoms and disorders potentially disrupting virtually every system of the human body. With such conditions as high blood pressure, chronic pain diseases, migraines, irritable bowel syndrome, obesity, and sleep disorders, ACE survivors have more medical problems, are on more medications, and use the health system more than other Americans do.

Scientists now believe that much of this stems from a surfeit of stress hormones coursing through the bloodstream and compromising the immune system. Stress hormones are great in an emergency, but they are supposed to go back to normal levels when the crisis is over. Kids who are being abused or neglected are in emergency mode so much of the time that their stress hormones are always high, stay high into adulthood, and do physical damage over time.

In addition to medical problems, many survivors are afraid of doctors, dentists and the invasive procedures that may ensue in the course of care and therefore avoid seeking help until they are sicker and conditions are further along.

Cognition: We also now know that ACE survivors often have disrupted cognition. Part of what ACEs overwhelm is the young person's ability cognitively to contain, process and put into words the trauma they are facing.

The survivor often has attention deficits, memory problems and an inability to concentrate consistently. Contradictory thought processes ebb and flow with little predictability. One moment, we are speaking as an intelligent adult, capable of complex, flexible, abstract and self-decentered thinking. Under sufficient internal or external stress, however, or in situations somehow reminiscent of past abuse, our cognitive integrity shatters and becomes locked in rigidly inflexible, self-centered thought patterns, simplistic black-and-white opinions devoid of nuance and an immutable conviction that the future is destined to be both short and unalterably dim.

Today, we can actually view this happening on PET scans that show different brain areas lightening and darkening when a trauma survivor's stress level changes. This happens differently than in people with no adverse childhood experiences, indicating that trauma actually changes the neurobiology of the brain.

Emotions/affect: When a child is overwhelmed by ACEs, especially over time, the autonomic nervous system is overstimulated, creating anxiety and fear and releasing stress hormones. The young person's brain tries to compensate for this hyperarousal by releasing endogenous opioids that calm the system down, often to the point of psychic numbing.

Over time, this results in the person's inability to successfully modulate emotion so she or he may swing from states of intense affect to those marked by numbed passivity. Our ability to judge the true danger of a present-day situation is damaged; we may confuse people around us by overreacting or underreacting to current situations.

Relationships/intimacy: ACE survivors' expectations of others are forged in the fires of trauma. Often needy, but expecting rejection, neglect or worse from others, they may shift rapidly from dependent clinging to rage or cold aloofness.

Often the adult survivor's history is littered with unsuccessful friendships, work relationships, and romances that confuse and hurt both them and those around them.

Especially where the ACEs have included sexual abuse, normal sexual functioning is elusive. Even sex with a beloved other can trigger flashbacks or terrifying emotional states that interrupt sexual encounters or lead us to avoid sex. Sexual abuse survivors may blame their bodies and sexual responses for the abuse and can be too ashamed to be comfortably sexual.

Heterosexual boys abused by men may be tormented with doubts about their sexual orientation. On the other hand, homosexual boys who are sexually abused are robbed of the opportunity to grow gradually into their sexuality; instead, the perpetrator imposes it on them.

Sense of self: ACE survivors often have a fractured sense of self. One part of the traumatized child may be formed as a precocious individual who can learn, make friends, get a job later in life, and obtain an education. This may be the person two spaces away in the pew that seems to be just a regular Joe. Another aspect of the person, however, remains a frightened, grief-stricken child who emerges when conditions are reminiscent of the original trauma.

For victims of priest abuse, for example, a Roman collar, someone clicking rosary beads, or certain hymns can evoke this child. The survivor, no longer firmly rooted in the present, may experience the memories, fears and bodily states he or she felt back then.

Behaviors: Most survivors think that they were somehow responsible for what happened to them or in their families. We impose standards on ourselves that we would never turn on another survivor — we should have stopped it; we could have prevented the domestic violence; if we spent more time with Dad, he would have stopped drinking. Depending on the nature of the adverse childhood experience, survivors feel dirty, ashamed, worthless and self-loathing.

Often they take their guilt, rage and self-hatred out on themselves through self-destructive behaviors like substance abuse (which also deadens psychic pain); promiscuous and unprotected sex; walking alone in dangerous areas at night; cutting legs, thighs, arms and pubic areas; tearing out eyebrows and hair; hustling or prostituting; or making suicidal gestures.

Sometimes they die. In fact, ACE survivors are almost three times as likely as other individuals to make at least one serious suicidal gesture in their lives.

Spirituality: Research indicates that many ACE survivors turn away from religion and even from God. We develop our image of God through the way we are parented early on and through religious experiences we may have.

Our capacity for awe, for experiencing wordless times of wonder and transcendence, depend in large measure on the nature of our early relationships. When these are betrayed through abuse, neglect, witnessing domestic violence, or serious dysfunction, our capacity to surrender to the ineffable that is God may be destroyed.

The especially heinous aspect of sexual abuse by priests and the depravity of the cover-up and unapologetic stance of bishops and provincial superiors often renders asunder the young person's ability to look to God for comfort and mercy. Instead, the priest as God to the child or adolescent has become a criminal transmitter of evil.

Author and clinician Richard Gartner quotes one patient who was sexually abused by a priest: "It taught me that there is a lie in the world. As I grew up and gave up on my piety, I grew to hate the smells, sounds, feelings of church. ... My spirituality and ability to believe in a higher power were destroyed."

So how does the man or women a few spaces down in the pew seem so, well, normal? In the next piece in this series, I address the processes of healing and the resilience that can transform the deepest of wounds into just noticeable scar tissue.

Part 2 of this series, focusing on hope and healing for survivors of sexual abuse, will be posted soon on NCRonline.org.

[Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea is author of Perversion of Power: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church and a psychologist who has been working with sexual abuse survivors for 30 years.]

http://ncronline.org/news/accountability/childhood-abuse-and-neglect-take-their-toll

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There is hope for survivors to heal

by Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea

Editor's note: This is Part 2 of "Hell, hope and healing," an NCR four-part series on sexual abuse. You can read the series introduction and Part 1, which are also available at the feature series page Hell, hope and healing.

In the first article of this series I discussed the commonality and damage of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), including clergy sexual abuse. Here, I focus on the hope that most trauma survivors can heal because of inherent or learned resilience and/or through access to healing resources.

Resilience

Since the 1980s, when child abuse and domestic violence emerged from society's skeleton closet, researchers and clinicians have rightly prioritized the tremendous wounds caused by adverse childhood experiences. Recently, however, researchers also have concluded that while about two-thirds of trauma survivors will experience at least some negative outcomes after trauma, almost another third will emerge into adults who seem not to have been deeply affected by earlier traumas.

Even more exciting are indications that resilience can be learned or expanded to moderate the long-term impact of traumatic stress on the body, mind and spirit.

The American Psychological Association defines resilience as "the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or even significant sources of threat." Resilience researchers like Dennis Charney and Steven Southwick have investigated the genetic, biological, social and spiritual factors contributing to resilience. They and others have identified a number of factors that appear to endow an individual with resilience:

•  Above average intelligence.

•  An internal locus of control. A sense that the individual can determine his/her own fate, even when trauma occurs.

•  An optimistic cognitive style. Resilient individuals tend to be able to find the silver lining in even the darkest, most thunderous clouds. They are able to imagine a time when life will be better.

•  A close, safe relationship with at least one adult not involved in the trauma. This is an area in which abusive priests were often the most despicable and damaging. Children known by predator priests to be in difficult home situations, or kids who came to the priests for advice or comfort about other traumas, were often selected as victims. Instead of responding to an already hurting young person with kindness and mercy, abusing clergy too often became another trauma for the child or teen.

•  A consistent faith and/or cultural traditions that provided hope and a steady belief system. Once again, we see the travesty of priests whose sexual violations robbed victims of a faith-based building block of resilience to life's challenges.

•  A good sense of humor, even when life is tough.

It is important to note that all researchers point to sexual abuse while young as a particularly pernicious ACE that results in multiple times the risk of trauma-related challenges than other ACEs do. Early sexual trauma also is likely to correlate with the most serious symptomatology.

Further, resilience researcher Emmy Werner maintains that even the most resilient person has a breaking point. The trauma survivor's breaking point may be lower than for those not coping with past ACEs and the sexual abuse survivor's breaking point is likely to be lower still.

At the same time, the research and my 30 years of working clinically with sexual abuse survivors convince me that healing is possible even when wounds from sexual abuse are deep and suppurating. Part of trauma-focused psychotherapy, in fact, is increasing resilience, also known as strengthening ego functioning.

Trauma recovery

Psychotherapy with a well-trained trauma expert is often essential to healing from traumatic childhood experiences. There are a number of clinical approaches to trauma recovery, but the most comprehensive include the following factors:

Telling the narrative: It is important for a trauma survivor to tell their story to another who bears witness to it. Unlike the first time around, the survivor has control of the timing and pace of being "in" the ACE; the locus of control begins to be assumed by the patient.

Memories can be painful and sometimes are at first acted out as much as "remembered" in the way we usually think of that. It may be in therapy that survivors put some of their traumatic experiences into words for the first time. Doing so begins to structure the memories, gradually taking some of the affective heat out of them.

Building ego strength: Survivors often come to treatment feeling and acting out of control. Part of trauma therapy is teaching grounding and relaxation techniques, and strategies to put time between impulse and action in order to reduce danger and instill a sense of control and mastery. Individuals with serious substance abuse problems must be in a recovery process in order to benefit from any therapy. Twelve-step program involvement is often a crucial adjunct to therapy.

Differentiating between past and present: With post-traumatic stress disorder, time is distorted. Something happening in 2016 that is sufficiently evocative of some aspect of the earlier ACE creates a kind of time travel. Survivors then experience themselves as if the ACE is happening right now. They feel and act in ways that confuse them and those around them.

In therapy, the survivor gradually is able to register and process a situation as it is now and to react accordingly. Often, this is accomplished within the therapeutic relationship as therapist and patient identify and work through perspectives on and feelings about one another and about the therapeutic process.

Medication: Because a survivor's moods and affects are often out of kilter due the impact of trauma on the neurophysiology of the brain, she or he may need medication, sometimes even for life. Today, there is a wide range of psychopharmacological approaches to depression, anxiety, difficult mood shifts, sleep disorders and other PTSD symptoms.

There is no way around suffering in order to heal, but one does not have to suffer unnecessarily, and medications can make life more bearable as the survivor and therapist work together on the inherently unbearable.

Integrating the personality: One of the wonders of the human psyche is its ability to cope with the awful. When trauma has been especially severe, the mind may split experience into a variety of compartments representing elements of ACEs that would be too overwhelming to process, store or remember as a whole.

This dissociation allows some aspects of the personality to grow and even to thrive while other parts remain trapped in timeless terror, rage and helplessness. In therapy, survivor and clinician identify dissociated aspects of the personality and work with them to foster a more unified internal world for the patient.

Re-entering the body: Many survivors of abuse and/or neglect are alienated from their bodies. Some coped as children by leaving their bodies during traumatic times. Patients describe having been on the ceiling looking down at the child being abused or standing at the door with their hands over their ears as "he" was penetrated anally by a priest.

Somatic experiencing techniques like asking the patient to describe what they feel in their stomach as they describe some past or present experience can be helpful. The therapist who notices changes in posture, positioning in the treatment room, a movement or shift of the eyes can inquire about them, thus helping survivors to become acquainted with how their bodies feel and what part of their trauma narratives their bodies hold and express.

Repairing the sense of self: I have never encountered a survivor patient who did not in some way blame her/himself for the early trauma. The viciousness of the patient's self-loathing is often breathtaking. Putting guilt and shame where it belongs -- on the shoulders of the adult who committed harm or enabled someone else to harm -- loosens internalized attachment bonds to figures that once were loved and vitally important to the survivor.

The patient is in a predicament: Selfblame protects those attachments but requires cognitive and affective contortions that deplete resilience; relinquishing self-blame and self-hatred and putting the ACE in proper perspective with blame placed on the responsible adults is a loss of attachment bonds that is terribly painful.

It also can evoke long-held-at-bay rage that the survivor has usually turned against the self. Anger, rage and a demand for restitution often marks a period of trauma recovery that is important in restoring wholeness. This is a revitalizing phase of recovery, but it becomes problematic if the survivor cannot move beyond it. At some point, raging must make way for mourning.

Mourning: Perhaps the most soul-searing yet most necessary component in trauma therapy is the survivor's mourning for the childhood that never was and never will be. Survivors almost universally feel cheated at some point in therapy. They have suffered, cried, raged, worked hard -- sometimes for years -- to heal and there is no restoration, no making it up, no justice.

As one patient cried out, "This is too much. I can't stand it -- I won't -- you can't make me. I can deal with the abuse -- maybe, perhaps. But the idea that I can't go back, that my childhood is broken forever -- I can't live with that. I won't know that I never was and never will be just a kid."

That was then, this is now: When the survivor seems to have completed a mourning process and is functioning well on most days in most ways, the good trauma therapist begins almost to turn the tables on the survivor. Having spent perhaps years encouraging the patient to relate their narrative, feel the pain and loss, have empathy for the terrorized child they once were, and mourn the childhood that is gone forever, we guide the patient into considering what life can be now, reminding them (if it is true) that no one is traumatizing them now. It is here that the therapist can help the survivor build or expand on resilience.

Resilience researcher Charney gives a "prescription" for enhancing resilience, and you do not need a therapist for all of it. He and others suggest:

•  Fostering a positive attitude and optimism. In therapy, the therapist reality checks unproductive negativity. Was the argument with your wife really catastrophic? Did anything good come out of it? Could you help something positive emerge from it?

•  Find a resilient role model. An Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor familiar with trauma, a martial arts teacher who mentors, or a next-door neighbor who becomes a friend may offer a model of resilience that increases the survivor's own resilience, while also expanding his/her circle of relationships.

•  Practice healthy coping skills. Take a walk instead of a drink; exercise instead of crawling into bed when feeling down; call a friend or read the paper at a busy Starbucks rather than isolating.

•  Develop a supportive people network. A 12-step program, book club, exercise class, volunteer activity can get someone out of their head or down mood and into the dance of life again. Researchers stress that positive, high-quality social support enhances resilience, protects against trauma-related psychological problems, improves functioning in people who have life challenges associated with PTSD, and -- especially hopeful -- reduces the medical problems and early mortality experienced by some trauma survivors.

•  Practice physical wellness. Regular exercise, good nutrition, keeping up with medical appointments, good sleep and hygiene all increase resilience to stress.

•  Look at things in perspective. Especially early in treatment, survivors may use perspective as a defense against recognizing the depth of their own pain. Sayings like, "I know there are people who have it worse than me" or "Think of those Syrian refugees. Compared to them, I am blessed," pronounced early on are often attempts to avoid the survivor's own pain and suffering. Later, however, taking that kind of perspective helps all of us to place our own current stress on a useful scale and therefore enhances resilience.

•  Engage in altruistic activities. Volunteering, caring for family in friends who are in distress, and other practices of generosity and altruism are linked to improvements in PTSD symptoms. Even having a pet to care for can be a source of relationship and meaning.

•  Take some mindfulness training, learn to meditate or engage in centering prayer. Both meditation and mindfulness practices reduce stress, increase optimism and help keep perspective.

•  Engage in a faith tradition or spiritual activity. Both correlate with increased resilience. It is another tragedy of the Catholic sexual abuse crisis that faith was often shattered along with body and mind boundaries. Sexual abuse has been called "soul murder" and sexual abuse by clergy is an icon of spiritual felony.

Many abuse survivors eventually do find a spiritual path in nature, neo-Paganism, connection with the Feminine Divine, or Native American prayer and rituals, and some return to a church. As therapists, we support any spirituality that provides soul succor to the survivor and that is not harmful to the survivor or to others.

The elements of trauma treatment described here are schematic and stereotypical. They do not play out linearly and they are more complicated and fraught than this outline may suggest. At the same time, they do represent key aspects of what trauma recovery therapy includes.

Part 3 of this series, focusing on ways in which survivors not only heal, but also grow through the meaning they derive from their suffering and their healing journeys, will be published in an upcoming issue of NCR and then subsequently posted to NCRonline.org.

[Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea is author of Perversion of Power: Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church and a psychologist who has been working with sexual abuse survivors for 30 years.]

http://ncronline.org/news/accountability/there-hope-survivors-heal

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Colorado

Protesters trying to change how child abuse is punished in Colorado

by Ashley Michels

DENVER – A group of strangers who found each other on Facebook are trying to change the punishment for child abuse.

The group came together after watching a viral video of Weld County mother Katrina Kennedy allegedly hit her son and threatening to kill him. She was arrested and charged with two misdemeanor counts of child abuse without injury.

“I got sick to my stomach and I felt very angry,” said Harmony Johnson.

Johnson is a child abuse survivor herself. She created a Facebook group in reaction to the video aimed at getting justice for the two year old boy and organized a protest at the Colorado State Capitol on Sunday in reaction to Kennedy's punishment.

“I feel that child abuse needs to become a felony,” Johnson said.

The video got more than 400,000 views on Facebook and YouTube, but Johnson had a difficult time getting supporters to show up in person. She was the only protester for about half an hour.

“To me, I'm making a different and I am maybe just a small voice, but I'm also a really loud voice,” she said. “We really are planning on changing this law as fast as we can.”

One by one, more supporters showed up. While it was still a small gathering, the group has big hopes for an even bigger change.

“Make sure that [the little boy] has justice and every other child that is a victim of child abuse,” Johnson said.

Right now, the little boy, who FOX31 is not identifying, is safe. He is staying with child protective services.

Kennedy Flores remained in jail Sunday night. She is ordered to have no contact with her son and is due in court on Friday.

http://kdvr.com/2016/05/22/protesters-trying-to-change-how-child-abuse-is-punished-in-colorado/

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Montana

Children in crisis: Missoula, state grapple with increasing child abuse cases

by CHELSEA DAVIS

MISSOULA — There's a sense of helplessness surrounding the rise in child abuse and neglect cases in Missoula and across the state.

Watson Children's Shelter built a second shelter in July 2010. It's full, and there's a waiting list. The shelter is not the first resort, said director Mike Boehm. Most who walk through the doors have suffered "profound abuse."

If they were to build a third shelter, Boehm worries it would be full in no time.

Child abuse is showing no signs of letting up. If anything, it's getting worse, according to Missoula County and state data. The increase in child abuse and neglect cases parallels a rise in meth cases — not a coincidence, people in the child protection systems say.

“The status of the Montana child protection system is deeply troubling,” according to a recommendations report released Tuesday by the Protect Montana Kids Commission, established by Gov. Steve Bullock last fall to examine issues in the system. “The system is in crisis and is experiencing an enormous growth in caseload.”

There are a record number of Montana children in foster care this year, according to the report — 3,179. That's more than double the number in 2008. The commission agreed with the correlation: Most of the spike can be attributed to parental drug abuse.

Of those 3,179, more than 1,000 were removed due to their parents' meth abuse. That's up from 230 children in foster care due to parental meth abuse in 2010.

Montana courts handled more than 2,300 child abuse and neglect cases in 2015, up from 1,600 in 2014.

Missoula County's data falls in line with the statewide trend.

In 2015, 173 child abuse and neglect cases were filed in Missoula County. That's a stark increase from the 51 cases filed per year from 2007 to 2011.

“Our DN (dependency and neglect) cases are slightly ahead of this time last year,” said Missoula County Attorney Kirsten Pabst.

From 2013 to 2015, the number of meth cases opened in Missoula County rose 137 percent.

“Meth cases are still consuming an inordinate amount of resources,” she said.

Deputy county attorney Kelly Henkel reported that about 80 percent of the DN cases she's filed this year are meth-related. The rest are alcohol-related, or have elements of mental health challenges and physical abuse. All of those children have been removed from the home, with 70 percent placed with family members or close family friends, and the rest going into foster care.

Court Appointed Special Advocates of Missoula saw its cases triple in three years, ending 2015 with 180 cases.

“It's drugs, drugs and drugs,” said Youth Homes executive director Geoff Birnbaum. “It's the one thing we know, let's put it that way.”

'Flooded'

On a Youth Homes caseworker's first day of in-home parent visitations in Lewis and Clark County, their caseload was full.

“The oldest kid was 5 and as young as a month old, and every one of the cases had … drug and alcohol, and mostly drugs,” Birnbaum said. “I think the drugs people are using, starting with marijuana, are stronger than ever before. When you go to Oregon and you get legal marijuana, it's powerful compared to what it was in the '60s and '70s. What that tells you is people aren't just getting a buzz. They're gone. They're not available.”

The number of drug abusers has stayed fairly steady during the years, Pabst said, but the types of drugs and where they come from has changed.

“We're just flooded … flooded with methamphetamine from Mexico,” she said. “There's just such a rampant supply. We're seeing a huge influx in product coming from the superlabs in Mexico versus 10 years ago when we were dealing with meth problems and a lot of it was cooked locally.

“It's a huge money-making venture for these labs in Mexico. They've got state-of-the-art equipment, engineers, chemists, versus when it was just real small-town and inconsistent in 2005 and 2006 when we were dealing with such a resurgence.”

A day at the children's shelter

At 2 p.m., Quinn Kessler starts her day at Watson Children's Shelter.

Kessler, an evening case manager, reviews the communication log, where staff write down the day's events and what's on the schedule for that night, what appointments are coming up that night, for example, if a child has a visitor.

She's worked there for 12 years, since she was 18 years old.

“I was three years older than our oldest kid,” she said.

Program director Deboruah Madonna's story is similar. She started at Watson when she was 19, and has now worked there 28 years. But she's been connected to the shelter far longer. As a child, she grew up next to the shelter and would play with the children, not knowing why they were there.

Within the first three weeks of a child's stay, they're enveloped in services — dental, vision, physical, mental health evaluation, counseling and an educational assessment. Watson works with attorneys, a CASA, Department of Public Health and Human Services and family. Meanwhile, parents start treatment plans and in-home services are put in place.

At 4 p.m., three more staff come in to help Kessler as the children get back from school. There's an afternoon snack and they unwind from the school day before dinner, appointments and showers.

Dinner is family-style at 5 p.m.

After dinner, it's homework time. Many are in specialized programs at school because of gaps in their education, so there's a lot of catch-up work. With all of that missed schoolwork, the kids could be working for hours every night, but that stress isn't healthy for them, staff say. At some point they cut off the studying and let the kids relax — playing, then quiet time, then bedtime.

"We want them to be kids, because often kids come in here, with the type of abuse or life they've had, they haven't had the chance to be a child," Madonna said.

Staff also have a rule that every child gets at least three positive reinforcements a day.

•  “We really try to build the children up while they're here," she said. "When you come to shelter care, it's the uncertainty. If you think about going into somebody's home, they're strangers — you're scared and you're frightened. We're strangers to them.”

•  Watson takes in children up to 14 years old. The average stay is 60 days, though children in the more extreme cases — sexual and emotional abuse —often stay longer. The first choice is for parents to be able to get their children back; second is another family member. But many go into foster care, and others to residential treatment homes.

•  "They become almost like brothers and sisters here, in a way, because they're living together," Madonna said. "I ran into a girl yesterday at Walmart and she's having her third child and we were talking about other shelter kids that she still is in contact with. She named one of her kids after her because they're best friends."

Shocking reality

CASA of Missoula executive director Jeri Delys had one word for the child abuse and neglect spike — meth.

“If you think about what meth does, how can you take care of yourself, let alone a child?” she said.

The images of the Montana Meth Project's “Not Even Once” campaign stuck with Delys, but reality was more shocking. When she traveled to Mineral County for a meth dealer's case, she had a vision of what the person would look like — emaciated, with bad teeth and sores on her face.

Then Delys saw the woman and nearly did a double-take: She looked exactly like Delys' sister.

“It scared me,” Delys said. “It's so well-hidden. If you think about somebody who's intoxicated, you can tell. But the signs of a dealer, what do they look like? I was just in my own little bubble. It was extremely eye-opening to me.”

A CASA is assigned to a child in a DN case. The CASA is a trained community volunteer who becomes the voice for that child, “an independent fact-finder.” They have a court order to interview whomever they need.

Nearly every CASA works one case at a time — though last year CASA of Missoula had to ask some to take on two — and they're at about 125 CASAs right now. There are 80 kids on the waiting list.

“We're just seeing a steady increase, which is difficult to manage,” she said. “It's important that our program be able to keep up and it's hard, and I think anybody who does this kind of work will tell you the same thing. It's very difficult.”

In 2013, St. Luke Community Healthcare and Providence St. Joseph Medical Center, both in Polson, started collecting data on newborns at risk for neonatal abstinence syndrome. NAS is essentially withdrawal for a baby whose mother was using opioids during pregnancy. That year, 15 percent to 19 percent were at risk. In 2014, it jumped to 22 percent. In 2015, it was nearly one-third.

By January and February of this year, at St. Luke alone, nearly 50 percent were at risk.

“That really touches on everything we're experiencing,” Delys said.

She doesn't know what it will take to slow the rise in cases, or stop it altogether.

“I have no idea. I wish I knew. That's the $10,000 question.”

'We've got to get better'

Policies need to be enacted to help parents and children before a crisis occurs, Missoula County Commissioner Stacy Rye said at April's "State of the Young Child," including universal prekindergarten, flexible work schedules and high-quality childcare.

Many businesses still fall behind in offering parental leave, she said, and daycare isn't cheap.

“We do more and more each day,” Rye said. “We're so busy that we're dazed.”

Birnbaum said publicly funded day care would take a lot of pressure off families.

“There's definitely nurses that would tell you … that we know the kid who goes home that we're worried about,” he said.

Removing a child from their home isn't simple, according to state law.

“But the cases we're seeing, it's like, what took you so long?” Birnbaum said. “And I don't mean that negatively, because I think they're (Child and Family Services Division) trying. But everybody's full. The hospital's full, the shelters are full.

“I think we've got to get better as a system in getting people to be willing to involve. I think that some of it's just cultural. People defend themselves as parents. When people call me, the first thing I try to do is to make them realize that everybody doesn't know what the hell to do with their kid. And if we can do that, I think we'd get more families the help they need.”

Pabst said locally, prevention efforts and addiction treatment must be the top priorities.

“Working with projects like the Montana Meth Project, and schools," she said. "But it's hard when it's such a monumental challenge.”

As meth abuse grows, so do serious domestic violence cases. And while children are not directly involved, being around it “is just as traumatizing,” she said.

“We've seen a spike in felony domestic cases,” Pabst said. “What meth does to people from a social standpoint from our professional position is that it turns what would be perhaps petty criminals and turns them into felons. These extremely violent cases we're seeing more often than not are tied to meth abuse: assaults with weapons, strangulation.”

Birnbaum's message was simple: We can't give up.

“I have a former Youth Homes kid who wound up losing her children in her early 20s," he said. "She had a meth addiction, went to prison for three years and lost custody, came out, stayed sober, filed to get shared custody and got it back.

“It's possible.”

http://billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/montana/children-in-crisis-missoula-state-grapple-with-increasing-child-abuse/article_e4609208-9d54-528a-9278-41629023146c.html

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Oregon

Parents seek justice, turn to social media in child abuse case

by Cory Marshall

(Pictures on site)

SHERWOOD, Ore. -- A picture of an Oregon toddler allegedly bruised by his babysitter has gone viral.

Sherwood residents Alicia Quinney and her boyfriend went on a date back in March, leaving Quinney's 1-year-old son Jacob in the care of a family friend for about 2 hours.

When they got home later that night, the babysitter was asleep on the couch and Jacob was crying hysterically.

"The next morning, he woke up and that's when I saw Jacob," Quinney said. "The first thing I saw was a black eye."

They rushed Jacob to the hospital where he underwent several tests and filed a police report.

Sherwood Police say they do not believe the parents were responsible for the bruises. Instead, detectives say they are certain the babysitter, who KATU is not naming because he has not been charged, is responsible.

Weeks later and with no arrest, Jacob's dad Joshua Marbury turned to social media detailing their ordeal and posting the heartbreaking pictures, which show Jacob in the bath with a black eye and severe bruising on the right side of his face.

As of Sunday morning, the post had been shared nearly 200,000 times.

While the Washington County District Attorney's office says a final decision on whether they will file charges has not been made, a spokesperson for Sherwood Police says Oregon law would be difficult to prosecute Jacob's alleged abuser.

The law in reference is the 2012 ruling by the Oregon Court of Appeals which makes it difficult to prove "substantial pain" in child abuse cases where the victim cannot speak. The legal interpretation makes it difficult to file charges in cases where the child is an infant or toddler, developmentally challenged or scared to speak out against their alleged abuser.

Paul Mones is a California attorney licensed in Oregon who specializes in children's right's cases. He is not connected to the case but sees clear-cut issues with the 2012 ruling.

"It's giving a license to those abusers to injure children. If those children were in California, for example, or across the border -- across the bridge up in Washington, that would not be the situation because the mere fact of the presence of bruises. The mere fact of the presence of scratches, etc. is an objective indicator of the injury," Mones said. "To really look at the issue of whether a person can verbalize the emotional pain or can verbalize 'Oh, I can't move my arm' is really against everything we know about modern understanding of child abuse and the effect on children."

In an email to KATU News, the Washington County District Attorney's Office says they are continuing to evaluate how the ruling would effect their ability to prosecute the case.

"His whole face, arm, back... [there were] bruises everywhere! He was screaming! He was crying! How does a baby communicate? They cry," Quinney said. "It's not fair and I want my son to have justice and I want everybody else who is dealing with this to be able to come forward and be the voice for the people that need help."

Since KATU's story aired, a Change.org petition has been set up asking the Oregon Supreme Court to overturn the 2012 ruling "to ensure Justice for Jacob."

There is also a GoFundMe account called #JusticeforJacob that has raised more than $4,000 for the family. Quinney told KATU the money will go toward helping household expenses and counseling for the couple's oldest child who they say has been showing signs of regression since her brother's abuse.