US Catholic Church new child sex abuse scandal, trafficking of women

also :
Childhood stress leads to adult ill health, studies say
Half the Sky: how the trafficking of women today is on a par with genocide

US Catholic Church tarred with new child sex abuse scandal
(AFP) - 8/19/10 LOS ANGELES - The Roman Catholic Church in the United States has become embroiled in a new pedophilia scandal with six women and one man alleging sexual abuse by a priest over three decades. The lawsuit filed Wednesday in Oakland, California accused Father Stephen Kiesle of acts of sexual abuse between 1972 and 2001, and alleged that Catholic Church officials knew of the crimes but did not stop them...."The Catholic bishops in the United States of America and the Holy See have long facilitated the sexual molestation of children by engaging in the harboring and protection of known child molesting priests," read a copy of the latest lawsuit obtained by AFP. "The bishops and Catholic hierarchs have done so to prevent the priests from being prosecuted and to avoid scandal," the lawsuit read.

It said church figures "have subjected Catholic families and children in these communities to known pedophiles, counting on the devotion and reverence in the communities to keep any further abuse by the priests secret." The plaintiffs, six women and one man, said they were abused by Kiesle throughout childhood and adolescence, although one alleged victim, Teresa Rosson, 48, said she suffered abuse at the hand of the cleric until about a decade ago....The church paid out 436 million dollars in 2008 for sex abuse cases involving clergy members, according to an official report last year. http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gQBBSk_uYg4jA3-9tCdlGsxSDhnw


Half the Sky: how the trafficking of women today is on a par with genocide

The authors of a new book, Half the Sky, say the slavery and abuse of women is the greatest moral outrage of our century
Ed Pilkington The Guardian, 19 August 2010....The story of Neth and Momm is just a small indication of the lengths Kristof and WuDunn are prepared to go to expose the injustices that they see in the modern world. Buying up child prostitutes is pretty extreme, but no more than the message they are seeking to deliver in their groundbreaking book, Half the Sky.

In it, they argue that the world is in the grip of a massive moral outrage no less egregious in scale or in the intensity of despair than the African slave trade of the 18th and 19th centuries or the genocides of the 20th. They believe this outrage is a key factor behind many of the most pressing economic and political issues today, from famine in Africa to Islamist terrorism and climate change. Yet they say the phenomenon is largely hidden, invisible to most of us and passing relatively unreported. At worst it is actively tolerated; at best it is ignored....WuDunn chimes in: "When you hear that 60 to 100 million females are missing in the current population, we thought that number compares in the scope and size. And then you compare the slave trade at its peak in the 1780s, when there were 80,000 slaves transported from Africa to the New World, and you see there are now 10 times that amount of women trafficked across international borders, so you start to think you are talking about comparable weight."....Half the Sky: How to Change the World by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn is published by Virago http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/aug/19/women-slavery-half-the-sky

Half the Sky: how the other half suffer Half the Sky has been described as 'a brutal awakening' and is a bestseller in the US. But can its accounts of violence and injustice to women in the developing world really come as such a surprise?
Germaine Greer The Guardian....The book lays out "an agenda for the world's women focusing on three particular abuses: sex trafficking and forced prostitution; gender-based violence, including honour killings and mass rape; and maternal mortality, which still needlessly claims one woman a minute". Gender-based violence here includes wife-beating in Asia, but not wife-killing in Britain or America. "Rape has become endemic in South Africa" we learn – as if rape had not coexisted with apartheid.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jul/31/half-the-sky-germaine-greer



Childhood stress leads to adult ill health, studies say
Stress in childhood has long-term effects say psychologists 14 August 2010 Adversity and stress early in life leads to long-term ill health and early death, a group of psychologists warn. A series of studies suggest that childhood stress caused by poverty or abuse can lead to heart disease, inflammation, and speed up cell ageing. The American Psychological Association meeting heard that early experiences "cast a long shadow" on health....

Another study presented at the conference showed that childhood events such as the death of a parent or abuse can make people more vulnerable to the effects of stress in later life and even shorten lifespan. Researchers at Ohio State University looked at a group of older adults - some of whom were carers for people with dementia. They measured several markers of inflammation in the blood which can be signs of stress, as well as the length of telomeres - protective caps on the ends of chromosomes which have been linked to age-related diseases. The 132 participants also answered a questionnaire on depression and past child abuse and neglect.

A third study reported some sort of physical, emotional or sexual abuse during childhood. Those who did face adversity as children had shorter telomeres and increased levels of inflammation even after controlling for age, care-giving status, gender, body mass index, exercise and sleep. Study leader Professor Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, said: "Our latest research shows that childhood adversity casts a long shadow on one's health and can lead to inflammation and cell ageing much earlier than for those who haven't experienced these events. "Those reporting multiple adversities could shorten their lifespan by seven to 15 years," she added. Dr Andrea Danese, a clinical lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, said such studies had to be interpreted carefully because there is a chance that people do not recall their childhoods accurately and you can only show an association not prove causality. "But that doesn't mean I don't believe these results.

"The evidence is quite consistent. "It's already been established that childhood stress has an effect on mental health and it now seems like it has an enduring effect on physical health." He said that stress causes an increase in inflammatory proteins which could underpin the physical consequences suggested by the research.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-10965862