EXCLUSIVE: Pedophiles Find a Home for Social Networking -- on Facebook
By Jana Winter September 28, 2010 FoxNews.com
Child Abuse Wiki http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Main_Page
The world’s largest pro-pedophilia advocacy group uses Facebook to connect with its members throughout the world; to find and exchange photos of children; to hone its members' predatory behavior; and to identify, target and reel in child victims, an investigation by FoxNews.com reveals.
Facebook says it has a strict policy against the posting of content that supports groups engaged in child exploitation, yet a simple, five-second search on Facebook, conducted on Sept. 23, yielded dozens of pages devoted to the infamous North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA). Many of those pages featured numerous photos of unnamed boys, some of whom appeared to be too young for kindergarten.
The same day, FoxNews.com found hundreds of links to NAMBLA’s website on Facebook, which has more than half a billion users worldwide. And posts on known pedophile blogs and chat rooms show an organized effort by pedophiles to use the social networking site to prey on children....
a search for “North American Man/Boy Love Association” on Facebook on Sept. 23 produced 87 different groups. Some appear to have been created as a joke, or in protest, but there are others that appear nefarious.
The page for “Greensburg group of the North American Man Boy Love Association,” in the category of “Common Interest-Philosophy,” features a photo of a child around 4 years old.
“N.A.M.B.L.A. (East Lansing Chapter) also has a photo of a child, who appears to be about 5 years old.
Another, “NAMBLA” in the “Organizations-Advocacy Organizations” category, features a photo of a man being kissed on the cheek by a small child. Its description reads: “We are the North American Man/Boy Love Association. Our sole purpose is to push forward the concept that a consenting man (18+) and a consenting minor (-18) can have a sexual and loving relationship legally. Feel free to send your questions comments or constructive criticism to [redacted e-mail address]. Thank you for your time and support and remember keep fighting the good fight!”
The web address for NAMBLA’s Wikipedia page is provided in the contact information section....
Posts on the pedophile blog Boy Chat reveal a larger strategy for using Facebook. Users provide tips on using the site to assist others in having real-life conversations with children; share tips for evading the eye of law enforcement while trolling Facebook for victims; post changes in privacy policy of social media sites; and even suggest specific individuals to target. In one post, a Boy Chat user points out a specific Facebook user — a former child star — whose profile, they say, holds a trove of desired photos.....
James Marsh, an attorney who represents victims of child sexual exploitation, says Facebook must do more than just what is required by law.
“Facebook has a moral and public duty to monitor and stop this activity on their site. Hiding behind legal technicalities is not enough to be a good corporate citizen in the digital age,” Marsh said. “Facebook needs to put children ahead of profits and do what Congress and the American people expect -- protect our kids from criminals....” ....
UPDATE: On Tuesday, Sept. 29, following the publication of this article, NAMBLA spokesman Arnold Schoen replied to a request for comment that was emailed to him six days earlier. Schoen wrote: "If you really investigated, you would learn that actually we have never set up any pages on Facebook. And we certainly haven't ever used facebook to connect with our members, to find or exchange photos, to "hone predatory behavior:, or to "identify, target and reel in child victims....
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/09/28/pedophiles-find-home-social-networking-facebook/
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
The Recovered Memory Project, Critiquing “Capturing the Friedmans”
The new format of the Recovered Memory Project. This project began as an archive of corroborated cases of recovered memories of traumatic events. It grew from two dozen cases to over 100, and 5 new cases have just been added, for a total of 106 cases. The archive of corroborated cases of recovered memories is now located at the tab labeled “Case Archive.”
The project has expanded over time to include scholarly resources—abstracts and citations of scientific articles in support of the phenomenon of recovered memory (see the tab labeled “Scholarly Resources”). Thirty-one new resources have been added, including articles from the past three years. The section has been reorganized by topic and now includes sections on memory disturbances in survivors of childhood abuse, survivors of the Holocaust, and war veterans; the neurobiology of memory disturbances....
http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/
Critiquing “Capturing the Friedmans” September 7, 2010
....a careful examination of court records reveals that Capturing the Friedmans leaves out important evidence of guilt and distorts many facts in the case. Most pertinent to this blog is the assertion that the case may have been built on hypnosis. There is no credible evidence for this claim. Indeed, in an October 2007 hearing, Friedman’s own lawyer described the single excerpt in the movie about hypnosis as “reliable evidence of nothing” (p. 12). It is fair to characterize the movie, he went on, as “containing interviews, cut and spliced, and taken out of context.” Those problems and other inaccuracies are addressed in the video critique below. One might wonder why someone who failed two lie detector tests, pleaded guilty, told the judge he was “sorry for [his] actions,” asked for “assistance with [his] problem,” and then reaffirmed his guilty plea from prison would ever be embraced as innocent.
Includes the video "What Was Left Out? A Critique of "Capturing the Friedmans."
http://blogs.brown.edu/recoveredmemory/2010/09/07/capturing-the-friedmans/
Friday, September 24, 2010
What the Pope Knew, Pope refused to defrock pedophile priest, Bishop Long
also:
Sex abuse victim learns of Pope's role
4th man sues Ga. megachurch pastor
Paedophile postman groomed up to one THOUSAND children on Facebook and Bebo using fake profiles
"What the Pope Knew" Reported by CNN’s Gary Tuchman WEBWIRE – September 01, 2010 Investigative documentary exploring pope’s role in managing the child sexual abuse crisis - debuts
Saturday, September 25at 8:00pm ET & PT on CNN/U.S. and CNN International
During his first papal visit to the U.S., Pope Benedict XVI reached out to victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests, unprecedented for the Vatican. He became the first pope to directly and personally apologize to victims for their trauma. He was the first to acknowledge publicly that the Church had systemically erred in the way that it had transferred offending priests to new parishes, putting more children at risk, instead of reporting offenders to law enforcement. A new era of accountability seemed to have dawned.
But Benedict’s role in managing the child sex abuse scandal while he was Archbishop of Munich and Freising, and as a powerful cardinal at the Vatican, has now come under scrutiny. CNN national correspondent Gary Tuchman reports for What the Pope Knew, investigating some of the most notorious pedophile priest cases in the United States and finds that the pope, as Cardinal Ratzinger, had direct responsibility for how they were handled. CNN’s investigation reveals that Ratzinger opposed or slowed down the defrocking of some priests, including convicted child molesters.
http://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=122331
Sex abuse victim learns of Pope's role
Editor’s note: A one-hour CNN special, “What the Pope Knew,” will air this Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 25 and Sept. 26, at 8pm and 11pm ET. This story is drawn from that report.
By Brian Rokus CNN Special Investigations Unit
MORRISONVILLE, Ill. September 24th, 2010 – Matt McCormick was in the seventh grade when Father Alvin Campbell gave him a ride home from a baseball game. As they were driving along country roads, Campbell put his hand on McCormick’s thigh and “just left it there.”
It was the first time the priest had touched him. During the next three years, McCormick says, the abuse would go much further.
That was 25 years ago. Just three months ago, he learned that Pope Benedict XVI played a role in keeping his abuser in the church when CNN told him about a letter signed by the pontiff – then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger – refusing to defrock the pedophile priest....Father Campbell was convicted in 1985 on multiple sexual assault charges. He served half of his 14-year sentence. He was released in 1992 and died 10 years later.
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/24/sex-abuse-victim-learns-of-pope%E2%80%99s-role/
APNewsBreak: 4th man sues Ga. megachurch pastor
AP By GREG BLUESTEIN, Greg Bluestein, Associated Press Writers –
ATLANTA – 9/24/10 A fourth young male member of Bishop Eddie Long's megachurch is suing the prominent pastor, claiming Long coerced him into a sexual relationship.
The lawsuit was filed by Spencer LeGrande, a member of New Birth Charlotte. New Birth Charlotte is a satellite church run by Long in Charlotte, N.C. The lawsuit said Long told LeGrande "I will be your dad" and invited the 17-year-old to journey to Kenya with him in July 2005. LeGrande said that Long gave him a sleeping pill on that trip and that the two engaged in sexual acts.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100924/ap_on_re_us/us_pastor_abuse_allegations_lawsuit
Paedophile postman groomed up to one THOUSAND children on Facebook and Bebo using fake profiles 25th September 2010
A postman who used social networking sites to groom up to 1,000 children – some of whom he sexually abused – was jailed for eight-and-a-half years yesterday.
Michael Williams, 28, used different profiles to target children he met on his post round, while doing school runs as taxi driver, and as the secretary of a football club.
He tricked his victims into performing sex acts on a webcam or to meet him in parks, beaches and at his home in Penryn, Cornwall, where he abused them....He also pleaded guilty to voyeurism and possessing indecent images.
Devon and Cornwall Police have identified about 500 victims he groomed or abused but believe there could be up to 1,000 youngsters in total because hundreds are too scared to come forward.
Williams, of Tresooth Lane, Penryn, worked as a postman in his home town, where he was regarded as cheerful and helpful....Police searched his flat and found 1,342 indecent images of children, 20 videos featuring children he met on the internet and 800 ‘chat logs’.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1314900/Facebook-Bebo-used-paedophile-postman-groom-children.html
Sex abuse victim learns of Pope's role
4th man sues Ga. megachurch pastor
Paedophile postman groomed up to one THOUSAND children on Facebook and Bebo using fake profiles
"What the Pope Knew" Reported by CNN’s Gary Tuchman WEBWIRE – September 01, 2010 Investigative documentary exploring pope’s role in managing the child sexual abuse crisis - debuts
Saturday, September 25at 8:00pm ET & PT on CNN/U.S. and CNN International
During his first papal visit to the U.S., Pope Benedict XVI reached out to victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests, unprecedented for the Vatican. He became the first pope to directly and personally apologize to victims for their trauma. He was the first to acknowledge publicly that the Church had systemically erred in the way that it had transferred offending priests to new parishes, putting more children at risk, instead of reporting offenders to law enforcement. A new era of accountability seemed to have dawned.
But Benedict’s role in managing the child sex abuse scandal while he was Archbishop of Munich and Freising, and as a powerful cardinal at the Vatican, has now come under scrutiny. CNN national correspondent Gary Tuchman reports for What the Pope Knew, investigating some of the most notorious pedophile priest cases in the United States and finds that the pope, as Cardinal Ratzinger, had direct responsibility for how they were handled. CNN’s investigation reveals that Ratzinger opposed or slowed down the defrocking of some priests, including convicted child molesters.
http://www.webwire.com/ViewPressRel.asp?aId=122331
Sex abuse victim learns of Pope's role
Editor’s note: A one-hour CNN special, “What the Pope Knew,” will air this Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 25 and Sept. 26, at 8pm and 11pm ET. This story is drawn from that report.
By Brian Rokus CNN Special Investigations Unit
MORRISONVILLE, Ill. September 24th, 2010 – Matt McCormick was in the seventh grade when Father Alvin Campbell gave him a ride home from a baseball game. As they were driving along country roads, Campbell put his hand on McCormick’s thigh and “just left it there.”
It was the first time the priest had touched him. During the next three years, McCormick says, the abuse would go much further.
That was 25 years ago. Just three months ago, he learned that Pope Benedict XVI played a role in keeping his abuser in the church when CNN told him about a letter signed by the pontiff – then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger – refusing to defrock the pedophile priest....Father Campbell was convicted in 1985 on multiple sexual assault charges. He served half of his 14-year sentence. He was released in 1992 and died 10 years later.
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/24/sex-abuse-victim-learns-of-pope%E2%80%99s-role/
APNewsBreak: 4th man sues Ga. megachurch pastor
AP By GREG BLUESTEIN, Greg Bluestein, Associated Press Writers –
ATLANTA – 9/24/10 A fourth young male member of Bishop Eddie Long's megachurch is suing the prominent pastor, claiming Long coerced him into a sexual relationship.
The lawsuit was filed by Spencer LeGrande, a member of New Birth Charlotte. New Birth Charlotte is a satellite church run by Long in Charlotte, N.C. The lawsuit said Long told LeGrande "I will be your dad" and invited the 17-year-old to journey to Kenya with him in July 2005. LeGrande said that Long gave him a sleeping pill on that trip and that the two engaged in sexual acts.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100924/ap_on_re_us/us_pastor_abuse_allegations_lawsuit
Paedophile postman groomed up to one THOUSAND children on Facebook and Bebo using fake profiles 25th September 2010
A postman who used social networking sites to groom up to 1,000 children – some of whom he sexually abused – was jailed for eight-and-a-half years yesterday.
Michael Williams, 28, used different profiles to target children he met on his post round, while doing school runs as taxi driver, and as the secretary of a football club.
He tricked his victims into performing sex acts on a webcam or to meet him in parks, beaches and at his home in Penryn, Cornwall, where he abused them....He also pleaded guilty to voyeurism and possessing indecent images.
Devon and Cornwall Police have identified about 500 victims he groomed or abused but believe there could be up to 1,000 youngsters in total because hundreds are too scared to come forward.
Williams, of Tresooth Lane, Penryn, worked as a postman in his home town, where he was regarded as cheerful and helpful....Police searched his flat and found 1,342 indecent images of children, 20 videos featuring children he met on the internet and 800 ‘chat logs’.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1314900/Facebook-Bebo-used-paedophile-postman-groom-children.html
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Deaf victim of sex abuse suing pope, 100,000 children in prostitution in the US
also: A Dreamy New Era For Fish - Experiments with LSD-25
Deaf victim of sex abuse is suing pope, and going public with his story for the first time
Editor’s note: A one-hour CNN special, “What the Pope Knew,” will air Sept. 25 and Sept. 26, 8pm and 11pm ET. This story is drawn from that exclusive report.
By Scott Bronstein CNN Special Investigations Unit September 23rd, 2010
MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin – Terry Kohut has kept a dark secret for nearly 50 years. Now he is breaking his silence, becoming a key figure in the sex-abuse crisis in the Catholic Church and the growing controversy over what Pope Benedict XVI did about it.
When Kohut was barely a teen, and for years afterward, he says, he was sexually molested and assaulted by the headmaster and priest of the school where he lived, St. John’s School for the Deaf, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. What occurred there is one of the most notorious cases of sex abuse in the Catholic Church.
Kohut was not alone. From 1950 to 1974 the headmaster of St. Johns, Father Lawrence C. Murphy, raped and molested as many as 200 deaf boys, according to court and church documents.
Kohut has now filed the first sex-abuse lawsuit against the Vatican actually naming Pope Benedict, previously known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, as a defendant.
Ratzinger was once head of the Vatican’s powerful CDF, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, charged in certain circumstances with investigating the sexual abuse of minors by priests. And though church records show the abuse by Father Murphy was brought to the attention of Ratzinger and the CDF years ago, a church trial against the headmaster was stopped and he was allowed to remain a priest.
The Vatican’s “policy of secrecy” in abuse cases, and its “directives to conceal the sexual abuse of children” by priests, the lawsuit says, helped bring about the abuse of Kohut and others by Father Murphy....
Steven Geier and Carl Nelson were also deaf students who say Father Murphy sexually assaulted them repeatedly. They say Father Murphy would prowl the dorm at night, visiting boys in their beds, raping and sexually assaulting them. He would also routinely assault and molest his victims in one of the church’s most sacred places – the confessional – church documents show....Minnesota attorney Jeff Anderson is the lead lawyer in Kohut’s lawsuit. Anderson has filed hundreds of lawsuits for sexual abuse victims of priests, and has obtained a massive trove of internal Vatican documents to build his case against the pope. He says numerous abuse cases show that Vatican officials all the way to the top, including then Cardinal Ratzinger, did little to help the victims, and were mostly interested in protecting the church from scandal....Groups of boys tried to tell local police and even the local District Attorney in Milwaukee about what was being done to them, according to Kohut, Geier, Nelson and others CNN interviewed. But no one ever believed their story, and local police even drove them back to the school, returning the boys to Father Murphy.
After years of allegations and reports of abuse, and threats of lawsuits, local bishops finally moved Father Murphy in 1974 to remote northern Wisconsin. There, more abuse allegations later surfaced.
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/23/deaf-victim-of-sex-abuse-is-suing-pope-and-going-public-with-his-story-for-the-first-time/
Meet Katie: She Was a Prostitute in Seventh Grade
September 22, 2010
Every year, at least 100,000 children are forced into prostitution in the United States. Portland, routinely voted one of the most livable cities in the country, hides a dark secret: It is a national hub for child sex trafficking, police and victims' advocates say. Meet Katie -- a 13-year-old girl who says she was plucked from the street to dance at a strip club in the seventh grade.
http://abcnewsradioonline.com/headlines/2010/9/22/meet-katie-she-was-a-prostitute-in-seventh-grade.html
A Dreamy New Era For Fish
Experiments with LSD-25 and other hallucinogenic drugs indicate it may be possible to spook trash fish up—and out—of angling waters Robert H. Boyle
March 30, 1964
Howard Loeb, senior aquatic biologist at the New York State Conservation Department Fish Laboratory in Livingston Manor, is feeding fish LSD-25 and other hallucinogenic drugs ordinarily used in treatment of the mentally disturbed, and if the experiments work out successfully—which they show promise of doing—their application will have a wholly revolutionary effect not only on angling but on commercial fishing as well.
....Several years ago Dr. Harold A. Abramson, Director of Psychiatric Research at South Oaks Psychiatric Hospital in Amityville, N.Y., chanced to read of Loeb's work on carp poisons, and he offered a suggestion: use LSD-25, a hallucinogenic drug derived from d-lysergic acid, originally found in the ergot fungus that grows on rye. Discovered by a Swiss pharmaceutical firm nearly two decades ago and later patented, LSD-25 is a potent tool in mental-illness research. It enables patients to recall events that occurred in very early childhood and that may be at the root of their difficulties. The drug is perhaps best known to the general public because of the psychological effects it brings about. Colors take on great depth, music is physically felt rather than heard and happiness or frustration is often extreme. It produces in a normal person a state believed to be similar to schizophrenia.
That is why Dr. Abramson started experimenting with LSD. He is one of the supporters of the theory that schizophrenia is caused by a chemical imbalance in the body. If he could use LSD or another derivative of d-lysergic acid on a laboratory animal to bring about simulated schizophrenia, then find another chemical agent that could block this simulated case, he would have a strong clue to the mechanism involved in clinical schizophrenia.....
Loeb first began testing with LSD-25, then, with the help of an American pharmaceutical house, Eli Lilly and Co. of Indianapolis, started testing other compounds made from d-lysergic acid. So far Loeb has tested some 40 drugs supplied by Lilly on carp, goldfish, golden and common shiners, blacknose dace, yellow perch, pumpkinseed sun-fish, white suckers, bullheads, brook trout and brown trout. With the exception of the trout and the bullheads—which swim to the surface—the fish pop up to the top of the water, swim backward and often go into a stupor. Goodness knows what kinds of hallucinations carp have—perhaps they dream they are gefilte fish—but they become noticeably lighter in color. Transferred to a fresh tank, affected fish appear intoxicated up to several hours, then become darker in color and start to respond by sight to people and approaching nets. Left in the original test tank, the fish snap to after several days. "My idea in experimenting with these drugs," says Loeb, "is to find out which ones bring the fish up the best with a modest dose and then become nontoxic the quickest."....
"Loeb," says Dr. Abramson, who marvels at the progress, "is doing real pioneering. He has the foresight to explore the unknown. He's doing important work in experimental biology, and I wouldn't be surprised if in studying fish he came up with a contribution of definite value for our work on mental illness."
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1075800/index.htm
Deaf victim of sex abuse is suing pope, and going public with his story for the first time
Editor’s note: A one-hour CNN special, “What the Pope Knew,” will air Sept. 25 and Sept. 26, 8pm and 11pm ET. This story is drawn from that exclusive report.
By Scott Bronstein CNN Special Investigations Unit September 23rd, 2010
MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin – Terry Kohut has kept a dark secret for nearly 50 years. Now he is breaking his silence, becoming a key figure in the sex-abuse crisis in the Catholic Church and the growing controversy over what Pope Benedict XVI did about it.
When Kohut was barely a teen, and for years afterward, he says, he was sexually molested and assaulted by the headmaster and priest of the school where he lived, St. John’s School for the Deaf, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. What occurred there is one of the most notorious cases of sex abuse in the Catholic Church.
Kohut was not alone. From 1950 to 1974 the headmaster of St. Johns, Father Lawrence C. Murphy, raped and molested as many as 200 deaf boys, according to court and church documents.
Kohut has now filed the first sex-abuse lawsuit against the Vatican actually naming Pope Benedict, previously known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, as a defendant.
Ratzinger was once head of the Vatican’s powerful CDF, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, charged in certain circumstances with investigating the sexual abuse of minors by priests. And though church records show the abuse by Father Murphy was brought to the attention of Ratzinger and the CDF years ago, a church trial against the headmaster was stopped and he was allowed to remain a priest.
The Vatican’s “policy of secrecy” in abuse cases, and its “directives to conceal the sexual abuse of children” by priests, the lawsuit says, helped bring about the abuse of Kohut and others by Father Murphy....
Steven Geier and Carl Nelson were also deaf students who say Father Murphy sexually assaulted them repeatedly. They say Father Murphy would prowl the dorm at night, visiting boys in their beds, raping and sexually assaulting them. He would also routinely assault and molest his victims in one of the church’s most sacred places – the confessional – church documents show....Minnesota attorney Jeff Anderson is the lead lawyer in Kohut’s lawsuit. Anderson has filed hundreds of lawsuits for sexual abuse victims of priests, and has obtained a massive trove of internal Vatican documents to build his case against the pope. He says numerous abuse cases show that Vatican officials all the way to the top, including then Cardinal Ratzinger, did little to help the victims, and were mostly interested in protecting the church from scandal....Groups of boys tried to tell local police and even the local District Attorney in Milwaukee about what was being done to them, according to Kohut, Geier, Nelson and others CNN interviewed. But no one ever believed their story, and local police even drove them back to the school, returning the boys to Father Murphy.
After years of allegations and reports of abuse, and threats of lawsuits, local bishops finally moved Father Murphy in 1974 to remote northern Wisconsin. There, more abuse allegations later surfaced.
http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/23/deaf-victim-of-sex-abuse-is-suing-pope-and-going-public-with-his-story-for-the-first-time/
Meet Katie: She Was a Prostitute in Seventh Grade
September 22, 2010
Every year, at least 100,000 children are forced into prostitution in the United States. Portland, routinely voted one of the most livable cities in the country, hides a dark secret: It is a national hub for child sex trafficking, police and victims' advocates say. Meet Katie -- a 13-year-old girl who says she was plucked from the street to dance at a strip club in the seventh grade.
http://abcnewsradioonline.com/headlines/2010/9/22/meet-katie-she-was-a-prostitute-in-seventh-grade.html
A Dreamy New Era For Fish
Experiments with LSD-25 and other hallucinogenic drugs indicate it may be possible to spook trash fish up—and out—of angling waters Robert H. Boyle
March 30, 1964
Howard Loeb, senior aquatic biologist at the New York State Conservation Department Fish Laboratory in Livingston Manor, is feeding fish LSD-25 and other hallucinogenic drugs ordinarily used in treatment of the mentally disturbed, and if the experiments work out successfully—which they show promise of doing—their application will have a wholly revolutionary effect not only on angling but on commercial fishing as well.
....Several years ago Dr. Harold A. Abramson, Director of Psychiatric Research at South Oaks Psychiatric Hospital in Amityville, N.Y., chanced to read of Loeb's work on carp poisons, and he offered a suggestion: use LSD-25, a hallucinogenic drug derived from d-lysergic acid, originally found in the ergot fungus that grows on rye. Discovered by a Swiss pharmaceutical firm nearly two decades ago and later patented, LSD-25 is a potent tool in mental-illness research. It enables patients to recall events that occurred in very early childhood and that may be at the root of their difficulties. The drug is perhaps best known to the general public because of the psychological effects it brings about. Colors take on great depth, music is physically felt rather than heard and happiness or frustration is often extreme. It produces in a normal person a state believed to be similar to schizophrenia.
That is why Dr. Abramson started experimenting with LSD. He is one of the supporters of the theory that schizophrenia is caused by a chemical imbalance in the body. If he could use LSD or another derivative of d-lysergic acid on a laboratory animal to bring about simulated schizophrenia, then find another chemical agent that could block this simulated case, he would have a strong clue to the mechanism involved in clinical schizophrenia.....
Loeb first began testing with LSD-25, then, with the help of an American pharmaceutical house, Eli Lilly and Co. of Indianapolis, started testing other compounds made from d-lysergic acid. So far Loeb has tested some 40 drugs supplied by Lilly on carp, goldfish, golden and common shiners, blacknose dace, yellow perch, pumpkinseed sun-fish, white suckers, bullheads, brook trout and brown trout. With the exception of the trout and the bullheads—which swim to the surface—the fish pop up to the top of the water, swim backward and often go into a stupor. Goodness knows what kinds of hallucinations carp have—perhaps they dream they are gefilte fish—but they become noticeably lighter in color. Transferred to a fresh tank, affected fish appear intoxicated up to several hours, then become darker in color and start to respond by sight to people and approaching nets. Left in the original test tank, the fish snap to after several days. "My idea in experimenting with these drugs," says Loeb, "is to find out which ones bring the fish up the best with a modest dose and then become nontoxic the quickest."....
"Loeb," says Dr. Abramson, who marvels at the progress, "is doing real pioneering. He has the foresight to explore the unknown. He's doing important work in experimental biology, and I wouldn't be surprised if in studying fish he came up with a contribution of definite value for our work on mental illness."
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1075800/index.htm
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Huge child porn ring - 30,000 customers, China's crackdown on human trafficking
http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Main_Page
HUGE child porn ring with Arizona link
China's crackdown on human trafficking frees 16,517 abducted women, children
--
HUGE child porn ring with Arizona link - Katie Raml, Nicole Longhini Sep 22, 2010
An international child porn ring with ties to Arizona has been shut down.
For the first time, law enforcement officials are sharing the latest, inside details in a case involving 30,000 customers, 132 countries and more than 230 websites.
Law enforcement officials from around the globe are calling it the most important child pornography bust in the history of the Internet.
Matthew Allen is Special Agent in Charge for Homeland Security Investigation and Immigration Customs Enforcement in Arizona.
He oversees any leads identified in Arizona by the international child pornography bust, otherwise known as Project Flicker.
"If the average American were to see it they would be completely outraged at the kind of victimization that goes on," Allen said. "[It] resulted in more than 5,000 leads in the United States involving individuals who have subscribed or downloaded child pornography from websites."....
Among those identified as customers were 10,000 Americans. Individuals who subscribed were given access to images and videos of sexually exploited boys and girls, some possibly as young as three-years old. "[Their ages] spanned from infancy all the way to adulthood," Allen said.
http://knxv.m0bl.net/w/main/story/14177879/
China's crackdown on human trafficking frees 16,517 abducted women, children - English.news.cn 2010-09-20
BEIJING, Sept. 19 (Xinhua) - Chinese police freed 10,621 women and 5,896 children who had been abducted for human trafficking as of September 6,since the Ministry of Public Security launched a crackdown on trafficking the crime in April last year.
In the campaign, police nationwide apprehended 2,398 human trafficking gangs and handled 13,500 such cases, said the ministry in a statement on Sunday.
Further, the police put 15,673 suspects under criminal detention and handed out administrative penalties on 1,518 people, it said.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2010-09/20/c_13520175.htm
HUGE child porn ring with Arizona link
China's crackdown on human trafficking frees 16,517 abducted women, children
--
HUGE child porn ring with Arizona link - Katie Raml, Nicole Longhini Sep 22, 2010
An international child porn ring with ties to Arizona has been shut down.
For the first time, law enforcement officials are sharing the latest, inside details in a case involving 30,000 customers, 132 countries and more than 230 websites.
Law enforcement officials from around the globe are calling it the most important child pornography bust in the history of the Internet.
Matthew Allen is Special Agent in Charge for Homeland Security Investigation and Immigration Customs Enforcement in Arizona.
He oversees any leads identified in Arizona by the international child pornography bust, otherwise known as Project Flicker.
"If the average American were to see it they would be completely outraged at the kind of victimization that goes on," Allen said. "[It] resulted in more than 5,000 leads in the United States involving individuals who have subscribed or downloaded child pornography from websites."....
Among those identified as customers were 10,000 Americans. Individuals who subscribed were given access to images and videos of sexually exploited boys and girls, some possibly as young as three-years old. "[Their ages] spanned from infancy all the way to adulthood," Allen said.
http://knxv.m0bl.net/w/main/story/14177879/
China's crackdown on human trafficking frees 16,517 abducted women, children - English.news.cn 2010-09-20
BEIJING, Sept. 19 (Xinhua) - Chinese police freed 10,621 women and 5,896 children who had been abducted for human trafficking as of September 6,since the Ministry of Public Security launched a crackdown on trafficking the crime in April last year.
In the campaign, police nationwide apprehended 2,398 human trafficking gangs and handled 13,500 such cases, said the ministry in a statement on Sunday.
Further, the police put 15,673 suspects under criminal detention and handed out administrative penalties on 1,518 people, it said.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2010-09/20/c_13520175.htm
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Promise to Protect Video, District Attorney on Baran case
Promise to Protect Video:
Oak Ridge Child Rescue Initiative
(Fighting Child Pornography on the web)
http://www.promisetoprotect.org/video
D.A. Capeless decides not to continue prosecuting Baran - June 09, 2009 - For immediate release - Berkshire District Attorney David F. Capeless has decided not to continue prosecuting the criminal case against Bernard Baran.
At a Tuesday morning press conference, District Attorney Capeless gave the following statement:
“After careful consideration, I have decided to no longer prosecute the case against Bernard Baran. My decision is not based upon any judgment that Baran did not do what he was convicted of by a jury twenty-four years ago. In fact, I remain convinced that those twelve jurors delivered a correct verdict.
I acknowledge that there were mistakes made back in 1984 and 1985. But the passage of twenty-four years has done more to damage any further prosecution of the case than anything that happened back then. The damage that has occurred to the memories of witnesses, and the damage that will occur from bringing forth the remaining memories of the victims compel me to realize that going forward is not in the interests of justice....Those decisions did lead me to pursue the available legal avenues to maintain the verdicts – in the Trial Court and the Appeals Court. That argument has not been successful, and I accept the decisions of the courts.
My decision today is made foremost in the best interests of the victims....I have legitimate concerns about their ability to accurately recall events of twenty-four years ago. But I have an even greater concern for the damage those recollections might cause. My conversations with them, during the past five years and most recently, have made clear to me that the pain they endured was real. For those who have been able to put the pain behind them, I do not want to bring it back. For those who could not put the pain behind them, I do not want to deepen the trauma....
They each know (the victims) that what happened to them twenty-four years ago was very real. They each also expressed an appreciation that the twenty-plus years Baran spent in prison were just as real. For them, there has been a real measure of justice. Now, it is time to put this behind us.”
http://www.mass.gov/?pageID=berpressrelease&L=1&L0=Home&sid=Dber&b=pressrelease&f=20090609_baran_bernard&csid=Dber
Oak Ridge Child Rescue Initiative
(Fighting Child Pornography on the web)
http://www.promisetoprotect.org/video
D.A. Capeless decides not to continue prosecuting Baran - June 09, 2009 - For immediate release - Berkshire District Attorney David F. Capeless has decided not to continue prosecuting the criminal case against Bernard Baran.
At a Tuesday morning press conference, District Attorney Capeless gave the following statement:
“After careful consideration, I have decided to no longer prosecute the case against Bernard Baran. My decision is not based upon any judgment that Baran did not do what he was convicted of by a jury twenty-four years ago. In fact, I remain convinced that those twelve jurors delivered a correct verdict.
I acknowledge that there were mistakes made back in 1984 and 1985. But the passage of twenty-four years has done more to damage any further prosecution of the case than anything that happened back then. The damage that has occurred to the memories of witnesses, and the damage that will occur from bringing forth the remaining memories of the victims compel me to realize that going forward is not in the interests of justice....Those decisions did lead me to pursue the available legal avenues to maintain the verdicts – in the Trial Court and the Appeals Court. That argument has not been successful, and I accept the decisions of the courts.
My decision today is made foremost in the best interests of the victims....I have legitimate concerns about their ability to accurately recall events of twenty-four years ago. But I have an even greater concern for the damage those recollections might cause. My conversations with them, during the past five years and most recently, have made clear to me that the pain they endured was real. For those who have been able to put the pain behind them, I do not want to bring it back. For those who could not put the pain behind them, I do not want to deepen the trauma....
They each know (the victims) that what happened to them twenty-four years ago was very real. They each also expressed an appreciation that the twenty-plus years Baran spent in prison were just as real. For them, there has been a real measure of justice. Now, it is time to put this behind us.”
http://www.mass.gov/?pageID=berpressrelease&L=1&L0=Home&sid=Dber&b=pressrelease&f=20090609_baran_bernard&csid=Dber
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Ex-child prostitute sues Village Voice over sex ads, Palmdale group update
Ex-child prostitute sues Village Voice over sex ads
By Jacqui Cheng 9/19/10
A teenage child trafficking victim has filed a lawsuit against Village Voice Media, for knowingly allowing her pimp to post ads for her "services" on the popular backpage.com. The pimp, Latasha Jewell McFarland, has already pleaded guilty to prostitution charges, but the victim (going by M.A. in the complaint, as she is still a minor) says that Village Voice knew that the photos being posted of her were illegal but "failed to investigate for fear of what it would learn."
M.A. says she was 14 when she was found as a runaway by McFarland, who began pimping out M.A. for $100 per sex act (McFarland took half the earnings). In order to advertise M.A.'s services, McFarland took pornographic photos of M.A. and posted them on backpage.com in the personals section for those seeking sex. McFarland pleaded guilty earlier this month to photographing M.A. in pornographic poses, posting child porn on backpage, paying the site for the postings, transporting M.A. for the purpose of pimping her out for sex, and collecting money for M.A.'s sexual services.
In the complaint, however, M.A. accuses Village Voice of having knowledge that the explicit photos were 1) of a minor, and 2) for prostitution services. No evidence is outlined in the complaint that explicitly points to Village Voice having this knowledge, but M.A. says the company aided and abetted her pimp in facilitating prostitution and child pornography. She also argues that Village Voice should not be granted immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act—a law that has historically protected websites from being held liable for the content posted by users.
"Defendant had a strong suspicion that the aforementioned crimes were being committed," reads the complaint. "Defendant had a desire that these posters accomplished their nefarious illegal prostitution activities so that the posters would return to the website and pay for more posting."
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/09/ex-child-prostitute-sues-village-voice-over-sex-ads.ars
PDF copy of complaint
http://ia360705.us.archive.org/3/items/gov.uscourts.moed.108973/gov.uscourts.moed.108973.1.0.pdf
Leader of religious sect held for evaluation
Group found safe hours after going missing in Southern California Missing sect members found, but questions remain
By JACOB ADELMAN 9/19/2010 PALMDALE, Calif. — The leader of a breakaway religious sect was hospitalized Sunday for a mental evaluation, after members of her group went missing and left behind evidence that they were awaiting the rapture or some catastrophic event. Reyna Marisol Chicas was placed under a 72-hour mandatory hold after it was determined she was not able to care for herself or others, said Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Thomas Kim. Chicas gave investigators a false name and was rambling during questioning, Kim said. She told deputies she had no children, even though her two kids were with her.
Ending a frantic search, deputies found Chicas and 12 others just before noon at Jackie Robinson Park near Palmdale after getting a tip from a local resident, said sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore. He said all members are safe.
....The men told investigators they believe group members had been "brainwashed" by Chicas, and one expressed worries that they might harm themselves, Parker said. One of the children is 3, and the others range from 12 to 17. When deputies arrived at the park they found the children playing on swings and the adults on a blanket praying out loud in Spanish.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39255711
By Jacqui Cheng 9/19/10
A teenage child trafficking victim has filed a lawsuit against Village Voice Media, for knowingly allowing her pimp to post ads for her "services" on the popular backpage.com. The pimp, Latasha Jewell McFarland, has already pleaded guilty to prostitution charges, but the victim (going by M.A. in the complaint, as she is still a minor) says that Village Voice knew that the photos being posted of her were illegal but "failed to investigate for fear of what it would learn."
M.A. says she was 14 when she was found as a runaway by McFarland, who began pimping out M.A. for $100 per sex act (McFarland took half the earnings). In order to advertise M.A.'s services, McFarland took pornographic photos of M.A. and posted them on backpage.com in the personals section for those seeking sex. McFarland pleaded guilty earlier this month to photographing M.A. in pornographic poses, posting child porn on backpage, paying the site for the postings, transporting M.A. for the purpose of pimping her out for sex, and collecting money for M.A.'s sexual services.
In the complaint, however, M.A. accuses Village Voice of having knowledge that the explicit photos were 1) of a minor, and 2) for prostitution services. No evidence is outlined in the complaint that explicitly points to Village Voice having this knowledge, but M.A. says the company aided and abetted her pimp in facilitating prostitution and child pornography. She also argues that Village Voice should not be granted immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act—a law that has historically protected websites from being held liable for the content posted by users.
"Defendant had a strong suspicion that the aforementioned crimes were being committed," reads the complaint. "Defendant had a desire that these posters accomplished their nefarious illegal prostitution activities so that the posters would return to the website and pay for more posting."
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/09/ex-child-prostitute-sues-village-voice-over-sex-ads.ars
PDF copy of complaint
http://ia360705.us.archive.org/3/items/gov.uscourts.moed.108973/gov.uscourts.moed.108973.1.0.pdf
Leader of religious sect held for evaluation
Group found safe hours after going missing in Southern California Missing sect members found, but questions remain
By JACOB ADELMAN 9/19/2010 PALMDALE, Calif. — The leader of a breakaway religious sect was hospitalized Sunday for a mental evaluation, after members of her group went missing and left behind evidence that they were awaiting the rapture or some catastrophic event. Reyna Marisol Chicas was placed under a 72-hour mandatory hold after it was determined she was not able to care for herself or others, said Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Thomas Kim. Chicas gave investigators a false name and was rambling during questioning, Kim said. She told deputies she had no children, even though her two kids were with her.
Ending a frantic search, deputies found Chicas and 12 others just before noon at Jackie Robinson Park near Palmdale after getting a tip from a local resident, said sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore. He said all members are safe.
....The men told investigators they believe group members had been "brainwashed" by Chicas, and one expressed worries that they might harm themselves, Parker said. One of the children is 3, and the others range from 12 to 17. When deputies arrived at the park they found the children playing on swings and the adults on a blanket praying out loud in Spanish.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39255711
Protest the Pope rally, Palmdale Cult-like group, East Congo rapes
Protest the Pope rally sees 10,000 march through London's streets - Crowd carries messages condemning papal stance on condoms, homosexuality, women's rights and child abuse scandal
Tracy Mcveigh guardian.co.uk 18 September 2010 Day three of Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Britain and it was a day for protests and anti-papists under bright blue skies in central London. Around 10,000 people took to the capital's streets for a Protest the Pope rally and march against what the organisers called "papal intolerance" and to condemn the state funding of the visit.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/18/pope-benedict-xvi-protest
Abuse victims call pope's apology 'PR, not penitence' - Faith & Reason Sep 18, 2010
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/Religion/post/2010/09/pope-sexual-abuse-scandal-apology/1
Victim's message to pope: Our souls were 'murdered'
Americans travel to U.K. to demonstrate against abuse 'cover-up' Video By Ian Johnston msnbc.com 9/16/2010 Barbara Dorris, outreach director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) victims' group, told msnbc.com that they wanted to see a publicly accessible, worldwide register of priests who were "credibly accused predators," so parents could find out if their children were at risk. They also want the pope to hand over internal church documents about sex-abuse accusations to local police for investigation and bishops who were complicit in the "cover-up" of sexual abuse to be disciplined.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39207699/ns/world_news-europe
Eight Children & Four Adults Missing with Palmdale Cult Leader
9/18/2010
Reyna Marisol Chicas (LACSD)
PALMDALE - Five adults and eight children from Palmdale, including one whom authorities described as a "cult-like leader,'' are missing under "questionable circumstances,'' but there's no evidence they are planning to commit group suicide, a Los Angeles sheriff's captain said.
However, an all-out search was in progress Saturday night in the Antelope Valley area to check on their welfare, said sheriff's Capt. Mike Parker.
All are El Salvadoran immigrants, and left behind evidence they are waiting for the Rapture, or end of the world, he said.
The situation began at 1:45 p.m. when two husbands went to the Lancaster sheriff's station to report that their wives were missing, he said.
The husbands said they believe their wives had joined a cult-like group that broke off from an unidentified Palmdale church, he said.
One of them said he had been told by the leader, Reyna Marisol Chicas, 32, to pray over a purse that was in a Palmdale residence.
After several hours, the man became curious and opened the purse. Inside, he found five cell phones, cash, beads, titles to vehicles and property, identification cards and numerous letters written in Spanish and English.
Parker stressed there was no indication of a crime, but that authorities "do believe vulnerable people have been led to an unknown area in the Antelope Valley,'' and that based on the letters, they are ``possibly awaiting the Rapture or some catastrophic event.''
http://www.sandiego6.com/news/local/story/Eight-Children-Four-Adults-Missing-with-Palmdale/9Xef5KdsEUaf_mfwxtFGlg.cspx
Authorities search for missing members of cult-like Palmdale group
Five adults and at least eight children are sought in what a CHP alert describes as a potential suicide plot. A sheriff's captain points out, however, that documents left behind don't mention suicide and the group has no history of harming themselves.
By Patrick J. McDonnell, Richard Winton and Robert Faturechi
September 19, 2010
http://www.latimes.com/la-me-0919-suicide-20100919,0,7901802.story
describes crimes
Violence spirals out of control in east Congo By MICHELLE FAUL (AP) 9/18/10 WALIKALE, Congo — First the rebel soldiers told residents of the villages in the mineral-rich eastern Congo not to worry. They were just there for a rest and would do no harm. But as dusk fell, the fighters encircled five villages simultaneously, and the gang rapes began. Six or seven men lined up to take their turn. The victims ranged from a month-old baby boy to a 110-year-old great-great-grandmother. They forced husbands and children to watch as they gang-raped the villagers for four days....News of the most brutal gang rapes in eastern Congo came in August, bringing international outrage. The U.N. said more than 500 women were raped in that period, and Buna Altunbas, a regional director for Doctors Without Borders, said some Congolese women have been raped repeatedly. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iYkMnixep9EBya04kIxKO2bqet9QD9I9TT300
Tracy Mcveigh guardian.co.uk 18 September 2010 Day three of Pope Benedict XVI's visit to Britain and it was a day for protests and anti-papists under bright blue skies in central London. Around 10,000 people took to the capital's streets for a Protest the Pope rally and march against what the organisers called "papal intolerance" and to condemn the state funding of the visit.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/18/pope-benedict-xvi-protest
Abuse victims call pope's apology 'PR, not penitence' - Faith & Reason Sep 18, 2010
http://content.usatoday.com/communities/Religion/post/2010/09/pope-sexual-abuse-scandal-apology/1
Victim's message to pope: Our souls were 'murdered'
Americans travel to U.K. to demonstrate against abuse 'cover-up' Video By Ian Johnston msnbc.com 9/16/2010 Barbara Dorris, outreach director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) victims' group, told msnbc.com that they wanted to see a publicly accessible, worldwide register of priests who were "credibly accused predators," so parents could find out if their children were at risk. They also want the pope to hand over internal church documents about sex-abuse accusations to local police for investigation and bishops who were complicit in the "cover-up" of sexual abuse to be disciplined.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39207699/ns/world_news-europe
Eight Children & Four Adults Missing with Palmdale Cult Leader
9/18/2010
Reyna Marisol Chicas (LACSD)
PALMDALE - Five adults and eight children from Palmdale, including one whom authorities described as a "cult-like leader,'' are missing under "questionable circumstances,'' but there's no evidence they are planning to commit group suicide, a Los Angeles sheriff's captain said.
However, an all-out search was in progress Saturday night in the Antelope Valley area to check on their welfare, said sheriff's Capt. Mike Parker.
All are El Salvadoran immigrants, and left behind evidence they are waiting for the Rapture, or end of the world, he said.
The situation began at 1:45 p.m. when two husbands went to the Lancaster sheriff's station to report that their wives were missing, he said.
The husbands said they believe their wives had joined a cult-like group that broke off from an unidentified Palmdale church, he said.
One of them said he had been told by the leader, Reyna Marisol Chicas, 32, to pray over a purse that was in a Palmdale residence.
After several hours, the man became curious and opened the purse. Inside, he found five cell phones, cash, beads, titles to vehicles and property, identification cards and numerous letters written in Spanish and English.
Parker stressed there was no indication of a crime, but that authorities "do believe vulnerable people have been led to an unknown area in the Antelope Valley,'' and that based on the letters, they are ``possibly awaiting the Rapture or some catastrophic event.''
http://www.sandiego6.com/news/local/story/Eight-Children-Four-Adults-Missing-with-Palmdale/9Xef5KdsEUaf_mfwxtFGlg.cspx
Authorities search for missing members of cult-like Palmdale group
Five adults and at least eight children are sought in what a CHP alert describes as a potential suicide plot. A sheriff's captain points out, however, that documents left behind don't mention suicide and the group has no history of harming themselves.
By Patrick J. McDonnell, Richard Winton and Robert Faturechi
September 19, 2010
http://www.latimes.com/la-me-0919-suicide-20100919,0,7901802.story
describes crimes
Violence spirals out of control in east Congo By MICHELLE FAUL (AP) 9/18/10 WALIKALE, Congo — First the rebel soldiers told residents of the villages in the mineral-rich eastern Congo not to worry. They were just there for a rest and would do no harm. But as dusk fell, the fighters encircled five villages simultaneously, and the gang rapes began. Six or seven men lined up to take their turn. The victims ranged from a month-old baby boy to a 110-year-old great-great-grandmother. They forced husbands and children to watch as they gang-raped the villagers for four days....News of the most brutal gang rapes in eastern Congo came in August, bringing international outrage. The U.N. said more than 500 women were raped in that period, and Buna Altunbas, a regional director for Doctors Without Borders, said some Congolese women have been raped repeatedly. http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iYkMnixep9EBya04kIxKO2bqet9QD9I9TT300
Friday, September 17, 2010
Congress Holds Hearing on Child Sex Trafficking, H.R.3244
also: H.R.3244 -- Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000
Congress Holds Hearing on Child Sex Trafficking
By James R. Marsh on September 17, 2010
On Wednesday, the House Committee on the Judiciary held a hearing on DOMESTIC child sex trafficking.
At the hearing, former Congresswoman Linda Smith testified that more than 100,000 children are exploited in the sex trade in the United States every year:
"Domestic minor sex trafficking is the name we have given to the sexual exploitation of U.S. citizen children through prostitution, pornography and sexual entertainment," she said. "The name reflects the fact that this exploitation is human trafficking as defined in the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. The crime therefore is a federal crime of trafficking and the victims should receive the full range of protections, services and rights outlined in the TVPA."
http://www.childlaw.us/2010/09/congress-holds-hearing-on-chil.html
H.R.3244 -- Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 (Enrolled Bill [Final as Passed Both House and Senate] - ENR) http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c106:H.R.3244.ENR:
Congress Holds Hearing on Child Sex Trafficking
By James R. Marsh on September 17, 2010
On Wednesday, the House Committee on the Judiciary held a hearing on DOMESTIC child sex trafficking.
At the hearing, former Congresswoman Linda Smith testified that more than 100,000 children are exploited in the sex trade in the United States every year:
"Domestic minor sex trafficking is the name we have given to the sexual exploitation of U.S. citizen children through prostitution, pornography and sexual entertainment," she said. "The name reflects the fact that this exploitation is human trafficking as defined in the federal Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000. The crime therefore is a federal crime of trafficking and the victims should receive the full range of protections, services and rights outlined in the TVPA."
http://www.childlaw.us/2010/09/congress-holds-hearing-on-chil.html
H.R.3244 -- Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000 (Enrolled Bill [Final as Passed Both House and Senate] - ENR) http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c106:H.R.3244.ENR:
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Catholic school 'ritual' child abuse, Pope's visit- abuse survivors want justice
also:
German Jesuits offer abuse victims compensation
Nixon plot against newspaper columnist detailed - New book provides details of campaign to discredit — or even kill — Jack Anderson
Wikipedia problems
--
Revealed, six decades of 'ritual' child abuse: Catholic schools and orphanages damned in report By Tom Kelly 21st May 2009
* Abuse was 'endemic' in childrens' institutions
* Safety of children in general was not a consideration
* No abusers will be prosecuted
* Victims banned from launch of shocking report
Church leaders and government watchdogs covered up 'endemic' and 'ritualised' abuse of thousands of children in Roman Catholic schools and orphanages in the Irish Republic, a shocking report revealed yesterday.
For six decades, priests and nuns terrorised boys and girls in the workhouse-style schools with sexual, physical and mental abuse.
But officials in Ireland's Catholic Church shielded paedophile staff from arrest to protect their own reputations despite knowing they were serial attackers, according to the 2,600-page report, which took nine years to complete.
Irish government inspectors also failed to stop the chronic beatings, rape and humiliation, it found.
About 35,000 children and teenagers who were orphans, petty thieves, truants, unmarried mothers or from dysfunctional families were sent to Ireland's network of 250 Church-run industrial schools, reformatories, orphanages and hostels from the 1930s up until the early 1990s.
The report by Ireland's Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse found 'a climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys'.
It added: 'Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from.'
Judge Sean Ryan, who chaired the commission, said that when confronted with evidence of sex abuse, religious authorities responded by moving the sex offenders to another location, where in many instances they were free to abuse again.
'There was evidence that such men took up teaching positions sometimes within days of receiving dispensations because of serious allegations or admissions of sexual abuse,' the report said. 'The safety of children in general was not a consideration.'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1184828/Revealed-decades-ritual-child-abuse-Catholic-schools-orphanages-damned-report.html
Pope's visit: Catholic abuse survivors demand justice
Pope must hand over to authorities all information on abusive clergy, say survivor groups before Benedict's arrival in UK
Sam Jones guardian.co.uk, 15 September 2010 Survivors of abuse within the Roman Catholic church repeated their demand that the pope hand over all information on abusive clergy, in advance of his arrival in the UK tomorrow on a controversial state visit.
They told a press conference in central London today that repeated apologies meant nothing and they wanted "truth, justice and accountability."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/15/pope-visit-catholic-abuse-justice
German Jesuits offer abuse victims compensation
(AP) – 9/16/10 BERLIN — A spokesman for Germany's Jesuits says they plan to pay the victims of sexual abuse in the order's schools a "symbolic compensation" of at least euro5,000 ($6,500).
Jesuit spokesman Thomas Busch said Thursday the order has not yet made a final decision on the amount that will be offered to about 200 victims who were abused decades ago.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hNOfSa1jBGKk_KjTBCQ6rTFoqJ7AD9I90ERO0
Nixon plot against newspaper columnist detailed
New book provides details of campaign to discredit — or even kill — Jack Anderson By Michael Isikoff National investigative correspondent NBC News 9/13/2010 ....The White House obsession with Anderson — whose "Washington Merry Go-Round" column was the WikiLeaks of its day — is detailed in a new book being published this month, “Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson and the Rise of Washington’s Scandal Culture,” by journalism professor Mark Feldstein. The book relies in part on newly unearthed tapes from the National Archives that document how Nixon’s aides plotted to destroy Anderson by planting forged evidence with him and spreading false rumors about his sex life and that of one of his associates.
Feldstein also has uncovered new evidence that documents one of the more outrageous schemes of the Nixon presidency: a plot to assassinate Anderson by either putting poison in his medicine cabinet or exposing him to a “massive dose” of LSD by smearing it on the steering wheel of his car. While the aborted scheme to murder Anderson has been reported — and disputed — before, Feldstein found new corroboration: A confession before his death by ex-White House “plumber” Howard Hunt.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39157420/
Wikipedia has a long history of problems with accuracy, bias and allegations of connections to pedophilia and pornography.
1) The Bomis Connection
2) Pedophilia Allegations
3) Wikipedia Accuracy Problems
4) Summary of the problems with Wikipedia
5) Bias in child abuse articles – banning websites with information on child abuse crimes http://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/articles/wikipedia-has-a-long-history-of-problems/
German Jesuits offer abuse victims compensation
Nixon plot against newspaper columnist detailed - New book provides details of campaign to discredit — or even kill — Jack Anderson
Wikipedia problems
--
Revealed, six decades of 'ritual' child abuse: Catholic schools and orphanages damned in report By Tom Kelly 21st May 2009
* Abuse was 'endemic' in childrens' institutions
* Safety of children in general was not a consideration
* No abusers will be prosecuted
* Victims banned from launch of shocking report
Church leaders and government watchdogs covered up 'endemic' and 'ritualised' abuse of thousands of children in Roman Catholic schools and orphanages in the Irish Republic, a shocking report revealed yesterday.
For six decades, priests and nuns terrorised boys and girls in the workhouse-style schools with sexual, physical and mental abuse.
But officials in Ireland's Catholic Church shielded paedophile staff from arrest to protect their own reputations despite knowing they were serial attackers, according to the 2,600-page report, which took nine years to complete.
Irish government inspectors also failed to stop the chronic beatings, rape and humiliation, it found.
About 35,000 children and teenagers who were orphans, petty thieves, truants, unmarried mothers or from dysfunctional families were sent to Ireland's network of 250 Church-run industrial schools, reformatories, orphanages and hostels from the 1930s up until the early 1990s.
The report by Ireland's Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse found 'a climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys'.
It added: 'Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from.'
Judge Sean Ryan, who chaired the commission, said that when confronted with evidence of sex abuse, religious authorities responded by moving the sex offenders to another location, where in many instances they were free to abuse again.
'There was evidence that such men took up teaching positions sometimes within days of receiving dispensations because of serious allegations or admissions of sexual abuse,' the report said. 'The safety of children in general was not a consideration.'
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1184828/Revealed-decades-ritual-child-abuse-Catholic-schools-orphanages-damned-report.html
Pope's visit: Catholic abuse survivors demand justice
Pope must hand over to authorities all information on abusive clergy, say survivor groups before Benedict's arrival in UK
Sam Jones guardian.co.uk, 15 September 2010 Survivors of abuse within the Roman Catholic church repeated their demand that the pope hand over all information on abusive clergy, in advance of his arrival in the UK tomorrow on a controversial state visit.
They told a press conference in central London today that repeated apologies meant nothing and they wanted "truth, justice and accountability."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/15/pope-visit-catholic-abuse-justice
German Jesuits offer abuse victims compensation
(AP) – 9/16/10 BERLIN — A spokesman for Germany's Jesuits says they plan to pay the victims of sexual abuse in the order's schools a "symbolic compensation" of at least euro5,000 ($6,500).
Jesuit spokesman Thomas Busch said Thursday the order has not yet made a final decision on the amount that will be offered to about 200 victims who were abused decades ago.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hNOfSa1jBGKk_KjTBCQ6rTFoqJ7AD9I90ERO0
Nixon plot against newspaper columnist detailed
New book provides details of campaign to discredit — or even kill — Jack Anderson By Michael Isikoff National investigative correspondent NBC News 9/13/2010 ....The White House obsession with Anderson — whose "Washington Merry Go-Round" column was the WikiLeaks of its day — is detailed in a new book being published this month, “Poisoning the Press: Richard Nixon, Jack Anderson and the Rise of Washington’s Scandal Culture,” by journalism professor Mark Feldstein. The book relies in part on newly unearthed tapes from the National Archives that document how Nixon’s aides plotted to destroy Anderson by planting forged evidence with him and spreading false rumors about his sex life and that of one of his associates.
Feldstein also has uncovered new evidence that documents one of the more outrageous schemes of the Nixon presidency: a plot to assassinate Anderson by either putting poison in his medicine cabinet or exposing him to a “massive dose” of LSD by smearing it on the steering wheel of his car. While the aborted scheme to murder Anderson has been reported — and disputed — before, Feldstein found new corroboration: A confession before his death by ex-White House “plumber” Howard Hunt.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39157420/
Wikipedia has a long history of problems with accuracy, bias and allegations of connections to pedophilia and pornography.
1) The Bomis Connection
2) Pedophilia Allegations
3) Wikipedia Accuracy Problems
4) Summary of the problems with Wikipedia
5) Bias in child abuse articles – banning websites with information on child abuse crimes http://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/articles/wikipedia-has-a-long-history-of-problems/
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Pentagon to investigate hundreds of suspected child pornography fans
also : Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking Deterrence and Victims Support Act of 2010
Pentagon to investigate hundreds of suspected child pornography fans in its ranks By John Cook Sep 15, 2010
In a reversal, the Pentagon says it will reopen hundreds of cases of alleged purchases of child pornography by Department of Defense employees that Pentagon officials previously declined to investigate, The Upshot has learned.
Earlier this month, The Upshot reported exclusively that in 2007, investigators for the Defense Criminal Investigative Service obtained a list of 264 military service members, civilian employees and contractors for the Department of Defense who had used credit cards or PayPal to purchase access to a child pornography website. But the DCIS, citing scarce resources, pursued only 52 of the names before closing the project -- known as Project Flicker -- in 2008. Since no further public information on the cases was made available, it appears that the other people on the list of suspected child-pornography patrons were able to continue their careers without any interruption that stemmed from the investigation.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20100915/ts_yblog_upshot/pentagon-to-investigate-hundreds-of-suspected-child-pornography-fans-in-its-ranks
Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking Deterrence and Victims Support Act of 2010 (111th Congress (2009 - 2010) H.R.5575) - Expresses the sense of Congress that: (1) the Attorney General should implement changes to the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) to identify endangered juveniles; (2) funds awarded under the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program should be used to provide education, training, deterrence, and prevention programs relating to sex trafficking of minors; (3) states should treat minor victims of sex trafficking as crime victims rather than as criminal defendants or juvenile delinquents and adopt and amend laws to protect and provide compensation to such victims; and (4) demand for commercial sex with sex trafficking victims must be deterred through consistent law enforcement.
Authorizes the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Justice Programs to award one-year block grants to up to six state or local governments in different regions of the United States that have significant sex trafficking to combat such trafficking. Requires grant funds to be used to provide shelter and services to minor victims of sex trafficking and for training for service providers.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:HR05575:@@@L&summ2=m&
Pentagon to investigate hundreds of suspected child pornography fans in its ranks By John Cook Sep 15, 2010
In a reversal, the Pentagon says it will reopen hundreds of cases of alleged purchases of child pornography by Department of Defense employees that Pentagon officials previously declined to investigate, The Upshot has learned.
Earlier this month, The Upshot reported exclusively that in 2007, investigators for the Defense Criminal Investigative Service obtained a list of 264 military service members, civilian employees and contractors for the Department of Defense who had used credit cards or PayPal to purchase access to a child pornography website. But the DCIS, citing scarce resources, pursued only 52 of the names before closing the project -- known as Project Flicker -- in 2008. Since no further public information on the cases was made available, it appears that the other people on the list of suspected child-pornography patrons were able to continue their careers without any interruption that stemmed from the investigation.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20100915/ts_yblog_upshot/pentagon-to-investigate-hundreds-of-suspected-child-pornography-fans-in-its-ranks
Domestic Minor Sex Trafficking Deterrence and Victims Support Act of 2010 (111th Congress (2009 - 2010) H.R.5575) - Expresses the sense of Congress that: (1) the Attorney General should implement changes to the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) to identify endangered juveniles; (2) funds awarded under the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program should be used to provide education, training, deterrence, and prevention programs relating to sex trafficking of minors; (3) states should treat minor victims of sex trafficking as crime victims rather than as criminal defendants or juvenile delinquents and adopt and amend laws to protect and provide compensation to such victims; and (4) demand for commercial sex with sex trafficking victims must be deterred through consistent law enforcement.
Authorizes the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Justice Programs to award one-year block grants to up to six state or local governments in different regions of the United States that have significant sex trafficking to combat such trafficking. Requires grant funds to be used to provide shelter and services to minor victims of sex trafficking and for training for service providers.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:HR05575:@@@L&summ2=m&
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Paedophile priests still play active church role - England and Wales
Shanley clergy abuse recovered memory case
http://ritualabuse.us/research/memory-fms/shanley-recovered-memory-case/
- Channel 4 News report finds many of the Catholic clergy jailed in England and Wales remain in the priesthood - Riazat Butt The Guardian, 15 September 2010 More than half of the Catholic clergy jailed for paedophile activity in England and Wales remain in the priesthood – with several receiving financial support from church authorities, raising serious questions about depth of church commitment to child protection and overshadowing the start of the papal visit. There are also claims the church has breached guidelines it agreed to in 2001 by not punishing offenders appropriately and that it has even relaxed some of the rules on how to treat them....at least 14 of the 22 priests who have served a year or more behind bars are still members of the clergy and 10 of these appear in the most recent edition of the Catholic Directory, the official yearbook of the church. Only eight of the 22 men have been dismissed from their positions.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/15/paedophile-priests-active-church-role
http://ritualabuse.us/research/memory-fms/shanley-recovered-memory-case/
- Channel 4 News report finds many of the Catholic clergy jailed in England and Wales remain in the priesthood - Riazat Butt The Guardian, 15 September 2010 More than half of the Catholic clergy jailed for paedophile activity in England and Wales remain in the priesthood – with several receiving financial support from church authorities, raising serious questions about depth of church commitment to child protection and overshadowing the start of the papal visit. There are also claims the church has breached guidelines it agreed to in 2001 by not punishing offenders appropriately and that it has even relaxed some of the rules on how to treat them....at least 14 of the 22 priests who have served a year or more behind bars are still members of the clergy and 10 of these appear in the most recent edition of the Catholic Directory, the official yearbook of the church. Only eight of the 22 men have been dismissed from their positions.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/15/paedophile-priests-active-church-role
Monday, September 13, 2010
The Unspoken Crime (incest), Should the Pope face charges
The Unspoken Crime By Cara Tabachnick September 13th, 2010
The U.S. justice system is failing victims of incest, a Crime Report investigation shows.... It is hard to find a more serious crime than the rape of a child; yet when a family member is the perpetrator, justice is sometimes hard to achieve. Child welfare advocates say that the safeguards in place to protect the child usually fail. Research suggests they are right....
according to a 1990 study by University of South Florida criminologist Lorie Fridell, prosecutors tend to defer or divert complex incest cases to child protective services who can provide for an alternative, non-court resolution, such as therapy or community service, in an effort to keep the family together.
Other research has drawn a similar conclusion. A 1993 report of the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law, found that more than 90 percent of all child abuse cases do not go forward to prosecution. Moreover, the study showed many suspects are released without further intervention by law enforcement or the justice system....
“If a kid is raped by a neighbor, people call police, but if the same person rapes their own child they call social services. What kind of justice is that?” said Grier Weeks, Executive Director of the National Association to Protect Children (PROTECT), a national organization based in Tennessee that works on lobbying for child abuse legislation
If a child accuses a caretaker of abuse, CPS has to be involved, but law enforcement does not. So, if a child is raped by his or her parent and goes to the police, CPS has to be notified in all states. But if CPS is notified, they are not required to tell law enforcement. And herein lies one of the largest conundrums of bringing these cases to justice: too often, experts say, social workers don’t have the training to investigate a sexual abuse allegation. http://thecrimereport.org/2010/09/13/the-unspoken-crime/
Should the Pope face charges? A renowned lawyer makes the case that the Pope should have his day in court for harbouring pedophiles by Brian Bethune September 11, 2010
British lawyer Geoffrey Robertson concedes in The Case of the Pope: Vatican Accountability for Human Rights Abuse, a book set to appear just one week before Benedict XVI makes the first-ever papal state visit to Britain. But, Robertson argues, the once unthinkable idea that Benedict or a successor could be charged with obstructing justice or for “harbouring pedophile priests” is now very thinkable, and—given evolving trends in international human rights law—may soon be practical....
So many cases emerged that the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference commissioned an expert study, which concluded in 2004 that, since 1950, 10,667 individuals had made plausible allegations against 4,392 priests, 4.3 per cent of the entire body of clergy in that period. The total bill in settlements with victims is spiralling toward $2 billion and won’t stop, Forbes predicts, this side of $5 billion. Depressingly similar stories from other First World countries, including Canada, soon emerged; the situation in Latin America and Africa, where no investigations have ever been made, can only be imagined....in 1952 Gerald Fitzgerald, the American founder of the Paraclete order, which treats erring priests of all sorts, brought a specific warning to Rome. “Leaving pedophile priests on duty or wandering from diocese to diocese,” he said, was a moral evil and a scandal waiting to break. http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/09/11/should-the-pope-face-charges/
The U.S. justice system is failing victims of incest, a Crime Report investigation shows.... It is hard to find a more serious crime than the rape of a child; yet when a family member is the perpetrator, justice is sometimes hard to achieve. Child welfare advocates say that the safeguards in place to protect the child usually fail. Research suggests they are right....
according to a 1990 study by University of South Florida criminologist Lorie Fridell, prosecutors tend to defer or divert complex incest cases to child protective services who can provide for an alternative, non-court resolution, such as therapy or community service, in an effort to keep the family together.
Other research has drawn a similar conclusion. A 1993 report of the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law, found that more than 90 percent of all child abuse cases do not go forward to prosecution. Moreover, the study showed many suspects are released without further intervention by law enforcement or the justice system....
“If a kid is raped by a neighbor, people call police, but if the same person rapes their own child they call social services. What kind of justice is that?” said Grier Weeks, Executive Director of the National Association to Protect Children (PROTECT), a national organization based in Tennessee that works on lobbying for child abuse legislation
If a child accuses a caretaker of abuse, CPS has to be involved, but law enforcement does not. So, if a child is raped by his or her parent and goes to the police, CPS has to be notified in all states. But if CPS is notified, they are not required to tell law enforcement. And herein lies one of the largest conundrums of bringing these cases to justice: too often, experts say, social workers don’t have the training to investigate a sexual abuse allegation. http://thecrimereport.org/2010/09/13/the-unspoken-crime/
Should the Pope face charges? A renowned lawyer makes the case that the Pope should have his day in court for harbouring pedophiles by Brian Bethune September 11, 2010
British lawyer Geoffrey Robertson concedes in The Case of the Pope: Vatican Accountability for Human Rights Abuse, a book set to appear just one week before Benedict XVI makes the first-ever papal state visit to Britain. But, Robertson argues, the once unthinkable idea that Benedict or a successor could be charged with obstructing justice or for “harbouring pedophile priests” is now very thinkable, and—given evolving trends in international human rights law—may soon be practical....
So many cases emerged that the U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference commissioned an expert study, which concluded in 2004 that, since 1950, 10,667 individuals had made plausible allegations against 4,392 priests, 4.3 per cent of the entire body of clergy in that period. The total bill in settlements with victims is spiralling toward $2 billion and won’t stop, Forbes predicts, this side of $5 billion. Depressingly similar stories from other First World countries, including Canada, soon emerged; the situation in Latin America and Africa, where no investigations have ever been made, can only be imagined....in 1952 Gerald Fitzgerald, the American founder of the Paraclete order, which treats erring priests of all sorts, brought a specific warning to Rome. “Leaving pedophile priests on duty or wandering from diocese to diocese,” he said, was a moral evil and a scandal waiting to break. http://www2.macleans.ca/2010/09/11/should-the-pope-face-charges/
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Wikipedia has a long history of problems
Wikipedia has a long history of problems with accuracy, bias and allegations of connections to pedophilia and pornography.
1) The Bomis Connection
2) Pedophilia Allegations
3) Wikipedia Accuracy Problems
4) Summary of the problems with Wikipedia
5) Bias in child abuse articles – banning websites with information on child abuse crimes
The Bomis Connection
Wikipedia was financially supported by Bomis a dot-com company that was founded in 1996. It was founded by Jimmy Wales (one of the founders of Wikipedia) and Tim Shell. Bomis ran a website called Bomis Premium at premium.bomis.com until 2005, offering customers access to premium, X-rated pornographic content.
Until mid-2005, Bomis featured the Bomis Babe Report publishing news and reviews about celebrities, models, and the adult entertainment industry. The Babe Report linked to Bomis Premium and often posted updates about new models joining Bomis. Bomis has operated nekkid.info, a free repository of selected erotic photographs. Bomis continues to host The Babe Engine, which indexes photos ranging from glamour photography to pornography. (from Wikipedia)
also see :
Congress Reacts to Wikipedia Firestorm By James R. Marsh on April 29, 2010 http://www.childlaw.us/2010/04/congress-reacts-to-wikipedia-f.html
Pedophilia Allegations
FOX News ran an expose on the connections of child pornography, Wikimedia and Wikipedia.
Wikipedia Distributing Child Porn, Co-Founder Tells FBI By Jana Winter FOXNews.com April 27, 2010
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/04/27/wikipedia-child-porn-larry-sanger-fbi/
“The parent company of Wikipedia is knowingly distributing child pornography, the co-founder of the online encyclopedia says, and he’s imploring the FBI to investigate.
Larry Sanger, who left Wikipedia in 2002, said Wikimedia Commons (the parent company of Wiki products including Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikinews and Wikiquote) is rife with renderings of children performing sexual acts. Sanger sent a letter to the FBI earlier this month outlining his concerns and identifying two specific Wikimedia Commons categories he believes violate federal obscenity law. The first category, entitled “Pedophilia,” contains 25-30 explicit and detailed drawings of children performing sexual acts. The category was created three years ago. The second, “Lolicon,” provides cartoons similar in detail and depiction. One of the more egregious cartoons shows a rendering of a young child about to perform oral sex on a much older man.” Wikimedia Foundation posted an online response stating that The Wikimedia Foundation obeys the law and had not been contacted by the FBI or any other law-enforcement agency about allegedly illegal content. They stated that they delete illegal material when they are told about it.
Wikipedophilia By James R. Marsh on April 20, 2010
http://www.childlaw.us/2010/04/wikipedophilia.html
“About two years ago, rumors started floating around about Wikipedia’s involvement with child pornography and the pedophile agenda. First there was a row about this image on Wikipedia depicting child nudity. Then there was the long-standing allegation by Perverted Justice that:
Pedophiles have long sought to use Wikipedia to justify and promote their agenda. They organize together in order to create Wikipedia accounts and then seek to use Wikipedia’s all-inclusiveness to promote their point of view. When pointed out, Wikipedians themselves often don’t believe that there is an organized campaign to subvert the user-edited encyclopedia in order to promote the pedophile agenda.
http://www.wikisposure.com/Wikipedia_Campaign
Well now these allegations have risen to a new level. Last week, Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger reported the site’s parent organization to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, saying he believes the Wikimedia Commons “may be knowingly distributing child pornography.”
EXCLUSIVE: Shakeup at Wikipedia in Wake of Porn Purge By Jana Winter – FOXNews.com 5/14/10 updated on May 17, 2010
On May 7, FoxNews.com reported exclusively that Wales had personally deleted many of the images from Wikimedia’s servers, and that he’d ordered that thousands more be purged. Now many of those images have been restored to their original web pages….
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/05/14/exclusive-shake-wikipedia-porn-pressure/
see http://ritualabuse.us/2010/06/issue-93-july-2010/
for more information on the Wikipedia – Pedophilia allegations
Wikipedia Accuracy Problems
There have been a variety of newspaper articles and studies over the years showing accuracy problems with Wikipedia.
Comparison of Wikipedia and other encyclopedias for accuracy, breadth, and depth in historical articles
Findings – The study did reveal inaccuracies in eight of the nine entries and exposed major flaws in at least two of the nine Wikipedia articles. Overall, Wikipedia’s accuracy rate was 80 percent compared with 95-96 percent accuracy within the other sources. This study does support the claim that Wikipedia is less reliable than other reference resources. Furthermore, the research found at least five unattributed direct quotations and verbatim text from other sources with no citations.
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/Insight/viewContentItem.do;jsessionid=B5971624ED12D3D4BFBFFC762150B834?contentType=Article&contentId=1674221
Scope, Completeness, and Accuracy of Drug Information in Wikipedia. Ann Pharmacother. 2008;42(12):1814-1821
RESULTS: Wikipedia was able to answer significantly fewer drug information questions (40.0%) compared with Medscape Drug Reference (MDR) (82.5%; p < n =" 48)" n =" 14)." p =" 0.024).
CONCLUSIONS: Wikipedia has a more narrow scope, is less complete, and has more errors of omission than the comparator database. Wikipedia may be a useful point of engagement for consumers, but is not authoritative and should only be a supplemental source of drug information.
http://www.theannals.com/cgi/content/abstract/42/12/1814
Wikipedia itself makes no guarantee of validity at its General Disclaimer page.
quotes:
WIKIPEDIA MAKES NO GUARANTEE OF VALIDITY
“Please be advised that nothing found here has necessarily been reviewed by people with the expertise required to provide you with complete, accurate or reliable information.”
“However, Wikipedia cannot guarantee the validity of the information found here. The content of any given article may recently have been changed, vandalized or altered by someone whose opinion does not correspond with the state of knowledge in the relevant fields.”
“Wikipedia is not uniformly peer reviewed; while readers may correct errors or engage in casual peer review, they have no legal duty to do so and thus all information read here is without any implied warranty of fitness for any purpose or use whatsoever.”
Wikipedia ‘shows CIA page edits’
An online tool that claims to reveal the identity of organisations that edit Wikipedia pages has revealed that the CIA was involved in editing entries.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6947532.stm
See Who’s Editing Wikipedia - Diebold, the CIA, a Campaign
By John Borland Email 08.14.07 The result: A database of 34.4 million edits, performed by 2.6 million organizations or individuals ranging from the CIA to Microsoft to Congressional offices, now linked to the edits they or someone at their organization’s net address has made. Some of this appears to be transparently self-interested, either adding positive, press release-like material to entries, or deleting whole swaths of critical material.
http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/08/wiki_tracker
Jimbo Wales ends death by Wikipedia
Kennedy murder shames online cult
By Cade Metz in San Francisco
On Tuesday afternoon, following a Washington luncheon celebrating the inauguration of President Barack Obama, longtime US Senators Ted Kennedy and Robert Byrd kicked the proverbial bucket. At least, that’s what happened in Wikiland. In our world, they’re still among the living.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/22/wikipedia_vandalism_crackdown/
Wikipedia black helicopters circle Utah’s Traverse Mountain
By Cade Metz in San Francisco 6th December 2007
Wikipedia is not a democracy. But the totalitarian attitudes of the site’s ruling clique go much further than Jimbo cares to acknowledge. In early September, the Wikipedia inner circle banned edits from 1,000 homes and one massive online retailer in an attempt to suppress the voice of one man.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/06/wikipedia_and_overstock/
The word on Wikipedia: Trust but verify
Popular online encyclopedia, plagued by errors, troubles educators By Lisa Daniels and Alex Johnson msnbc.com and NBC News
March. 29, 2007 “I was looking at a stack of final examinations,” said Waters, a professor of Japanese studies at Middlebury College in Vermont, “and I found several instances of misinformation that [were] identical from one student to another.” All of those students in Waters’ Japanese history class late last year had been steered wrong by the same source — Wikipedia, the sprawling online encyclopedia that has revolutionized how ordinary people find information.
….The department banned students from using it as a source in their papers, although they are allowed to consult it for background material, a move that was quickly mimicked by professors at other schools, including UCLA and the University of Pennsylvania. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17740041/
10 Questions: Jimmy Wales 3/21/07
How can I persuade my teachers to allow me to use Wikipedia as a legitimate research source?—Kaitlyn Grigsby, Medina, Ohio
I would agree with your teachers that that isn’t the right way to use Wikipedia. The site is a wonderful starting point for research. But it’s only a starting point because there’s always a chance that there’s something wrong, and you should check your sources if you are writing a paper.
http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1601491,00.html
One great source — if you can trust it
By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff July 12, 2004
So of course Wikipedia is popular. Maybe too popular. For it lacks one vital feature of the traditional encyclopedia: accountability. Old-school reference books hire expert scholars to write their articles, and employ skilled editors to check and double-check their work. Wikipedia’s articles are written by anyone who fancies himself an expert….
Ross admits to reading and enjoying Wikipedia, and has even gotten ideas there for future Britannica articles. But the absence of traditional editorial controls makes Wikipedia unsuited to serious research. “How do they know it’s accurate?” Ross asks. “People can put down anything.”
http://web.archive.org/web/20060621181459/http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2004/07/12/one_great_source____if_you_can_trust_it/
Wikipedia and Beyond – Jimmy Wales’ sprawling vision -
Katherine Mangu-Ward from the June 2007 issue
Wales moved to Chicago and became a futures and options trader. After six years of betting on interest rates and currency fluctuations, he made enough money to pay the mortgage for the rest of his life. In 1998 he moved to San Diego and started a Web portal, Bomis, which featured, among other things, a “guy-oriented search engine” and pictures of scantily clad women. The en déshabillé ladies have since caused trouble for Wales, who regularly fields questions about his former life as a “porn king.” In a typically blunt move, Wales often responds to criticism of his Bomis days by sending reporters links to Yahoo’s midget porn category page. If he was a porn king, he suggests, so is the head of the biggest Web portal in the world….
Wikipedia does fail sometimes. The most famous controversy over its accuracy boiled over when John Seigenthaler Sr., a former assistant to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, wrote about his own Wikipedia entry in a November 2005 USA Today op-ed. The entry on Seigenthaler included a claim that he had been involved in both Kennedy assassinations. “We live in a universe of new media,” wrote Seigenthaler, “with phenomenal opportunities for worldwide communications and research-but populated by volunteer vandals with poison-pen intellects.”….
Wikipedia’s other major scandal hasn’t been quite as easy for Wales to laugh off, because he was the culprit. In 2005 he was caught with his hand on the edit button, taking advantage of Wikipedia’s open editing policy to remove Larry Sanger from the encyclopedia’s official history of itself. There has been an ongoing controversy about Wales’ attempts to edit his own Wikipedia entry, which is permitted but considered extremely bad form. After a round of negative publicity when the edits were discovered, Wales stopped editing his own profile. But in the site’s discussion pages, using the handle “Jimbo Wales,” he can be found trying to persuade others to make changes on this and other topics.
http://reason.com/archives/2007/05/30/wikipedia-and-beyond
A Little Sleuthing Unmasks Writer of Wikipedia Prank By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE December 11, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/business/media/11web.html
Wikipedia’s Accountability Problem By Daniel Brandt
Saturday, January 21, 2006
There is a problem with the structure of Wikipedia. The basic problem is that no one, neither the Trustees of Wikimedia Foundation, nor the volunteers who are connected with Wikipedia, consider themselves responsible for the content. If you don’t believe me, then carefully read Wikipedia’s disclaimer. At the same time that no one claims responsibility, there are two unique characteristics of Wikipedia that can be very damaging to a person, corporation, or group. The first is that anyone can edit an article, and there is no guarantee that any article you read has not been edited maliciously, and remains uncorrected in that state, at the precise time that you access that article.
The second unique characteristic is that Wikipedia articles, and in some cases even the free-for-all “talk” discussions behind the articles, rank very highly in the major search engines. This means that Wikipedia’s potential for inflicting damage is amplified by several orders of magnitude.
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/brandt01212006/
Wikipedia Watch – This site examines the phenomenon of Wikipedia. We are interested in them because they have a massive, unearned influence on what passes for reliable information.
http://www.wikipedia-watch.org/
Wikipedia to Limit Changes to Articles on People By NOAM COHEN
August 24, 2009 Although Wikipedia has prevented anonymous users from creating new articles for several years now, the new flagging system crosses a psychological Rubicon. It will divide Wikipedia’s contributors into two classes — experienced, trusted editors, and everyone else — altering Wikipedia’s implicit notion that everyone has an equal right to edit entries….Under the current system, it is not difficult to insert false information into a Wikipedia entry, at least for a short time. In March, for example, a 22-year-old Irish student planted a false quotation attributed to the French composer Maurice Jarre shortly after Mr. Jarre’s death. It was promptly included in obituaries about Mr. Jarre in several newspapers, including The Guardian and The Independent in Britain. And on Jan. 20, vandals changed the entries for two ailing senators, Edward M. Kennedy and Robert C. Byrd, to report falsely that they had died.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/technology/internet/25wikipedia.html
The 15 Biggest Wikipedia Blunders JR Raphael, PC World
Aug 26, 2009 Here are 15 of the biggest Wikipedia blunders the new editing system might have prevented. These false facts, according to widely published accounts, all appeared on the Wikipedia site at some point.
http://www.pcworld.com/article/170874/the_15_biggest_wikipedia_blunders.html
Summary of the problems with Wikipedia
1) There is no guarantee its information is correct.
2) Its editors are anonymous and may be biased about the topic they are writing about and may be unqualified to write encyclopedia articles.
3) There is inconsistent or no fact checking, depending on the article.
4) The rules of Wikipedia at times are used to control article content and delete other content from strong sources.
5) Experts working on certain topics in Wikipedia may be derided and discouraged from contributing to certain articles.
Therefore, one is probably better off reading a real encyclopedia or journal article, due to the high potential for reading inaccurate information and a slanted or biased article.
Bias in child abuse articles – banning websites with information on child abuse crimes
Editors and Administrators have worked hard to maintain a strong bias from the perspective of the alleged or convicted perpetrators in a variety of child abuse articles, including the ones connected to ritual abuse topics. Even when presented with information directly from court cases, this information has been deleted from articles. Several administrators watch these articles, to make sure that balancing information is not allowed in these articles. Even when the perpetrators discussed in these articles were convicted of a child abuse or ritual abuse crime and lost every appeal, many Wikipedia articles will still lean toward the perspective that the conviction was unjust and not allow information from the victim’s perspective of the crimes.
Editors attempting to make these articles balanced have been harassed and even banned from Wikipedia. Several web pages with legal case, scientific journal articles and mainstream newspaper articles have been banned by Wikipedia.
Wikipedia has blacklisted four websites that describe ritual child abuse and extreme child abuse crimes in detail. These sites are: http://extreme-abuse-survey.net , http://ritualabuse.us , http://www.endritualabuse.org and http://abusearticles.wordpress.com
These sites contain journal articles and news accounts of these crimes. These websites are perfectly fine websites with accurate legal information with a variety of scientific studies and news articles. It appears that no pages in Wikipedia will be allowed to have any links to these sites.
blacklisting and deleting important information from Wikipedia
http://abusearticles.wordpress.com
The following information from four articles at Wikipedia was deleted due to it being from the newly blacklisted wordpress site http://abusearticles.wordpress.com . This site provided information from mainstream newspapers and court documents showing evidence that abuse had occurred in these cases.
These included information deleted from the Fells Acres Case article, the McMartin Preschool Trial case article, from the from Day Care Sex abuse cases and from the Wenatchee sex ring article.
Other articles have also had balancing information deleted from them.
http://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/articles/ritualabuse-us-blacklisted-by-wikipedia/
Wikipedia “Satanic Ritual Abuse” article critique
November 8, 2008
Intimidation, bullying, sarcasm: such are the tactics used by the current editors of Wikipedia’s “Satanic Ritual Abuse” article (and other related articles): (1) discounting the existence of sexual crimes against children associated with true or staged satanic worship; and (2) undoing references in Wikipedia articles by editors who present findings from research and legal cases that support the existence of ritual/sexual crimes against children by organized groups of pedophiles.
http://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/articles/press-release-wikipedia-satanic-ritual-abuse-article-critique/
The Truth about Satanic Ritual Abuse
A Rebuttal to Wikipedia’s Portrayal of Satanic Ritual Abuse
November 2, 2008 By Wanda Karriker, PhD
Satanic Ritual Abuse (SRA) is NOT a moral panic.
SRA is a subset of Ritual Abuse (RA).
(The article cites several studies proving the exstence of ritual abuse as a phenomenon.)
http://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/articles/the-truth-about-satanic-ritual-abuse/
There are many sources on the Internet proving the existence of ritual abuse crimes.
These include:
http://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/
http://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/studies/satanic-ritual-abuse-evidence-with-information-on-the-mcmartin-preschool-case/
http://childabusewiki.org/index.php?title=Ritual_Abuse
Wikipedia problems, Poland pedophile ring, Human Trafficking in America
Wikipedia has a long history of problems with accuracy, bias and allegations of connections to pedophilia and pornography.
1) The Bomis Connection
2) Pedophilia Allegations
3) Wikipedia Accuracy Problems
4) Summary of the problems with Wikipedia
5) Bias in child abuse articles – banning websites with information on child abuse crimes http://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/articles/wikipedia-has-a-long-history-of-problems/
Police in Poland smash paedophile ring with over 100 arrests
Sep 10, 2010 by Gemma Fox Warsaw - A massive criminal investigation in Poland has resulted in the arrests of more than 100 people as police smash a huge paedophile ring. In an operation called "Regina", criminal investigators in Poland have arrested 102 men. The operation took two years and was supervised by the Human Trafficking Department at Police HQ in Warsaw....
The 102 men arrested are accused of possession and distribution of pornographic photos and videos of children in the internet. Four of the men have already been charged and police believe that as investigations continue they will make more arrests. Raids that took place as part of the investigation led police to confiscate 133 computers, hard drives and laptops. They also confiscated 3,500 DVD's and CD's which contained images and video of child pornography. http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/297331
A conference to help survivors of severe child abuse (ritual abuse) and torture will be held on August 5 - 7, 2011, between 8 - 5 PM Saturday and Sunday at the DoubleTree Hotel near Bradley International Airport, 16 Ella Grasso Turnpike, Windsor Locks, CT 06096 (between Hartford, CT and Springfield, MA). This conference will help educate survivors of this abuse and their helpers. Pre-registration is preferred. For information write S.M.A.R.T., P. O Box 1295, Easthampton, MA 01027-1295 E-mail: smartnews@aol.com, conference information is at: http://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/
A new slavery - Human Trafficking in America
For six months Kansas City Star reporters traveled the world, from Guatemalan migrant shelters to the deadly streets of Tijuana, investigating America's war against human trafficking.
They found that America is losing the battle — even in its own backyard. In fact, Kansas City is an emerging hub of human trafficking activity.
http://www.kansascity.com/trafficking/
1) The Bomis Connection
2) Pedophilia Allegations
3) Wikipedia Accuracy Problems
4) Summary of the problems with Wikipedia
5) Bias in child abuse articles – banning websites with information on child abuse crimes http://ritualabuse.us/ritualabuse/articles/wikipedia-has-a-long-history-of-problems/
Police in Poland smash paedophile ring with over 100 arrests
Sep 10, 2010 by Gemma Fox Warsaw - A massive criminal investigation in Poland has resulted in the arrests of more than 100 people as police smash a huge paedophile ring. In an operation called "Regina", criminal investigators in Poland have arrested 102 men. The operation took two years and was supervised by the Human Trafficking Department at Police HQ in Warsaw....
The 102 men arrested are accused of possession and distribution of pornographic photos and videos of children in the internet. Four of the men have already been charged and police believe that as investigations continue they will make more arrests. Raids that took place as part of the investigation led police to confiscate 133 computers, hard drives and laptops. They also confiscated 3,500 DVD's and CD's which contained images and video of child pornography. http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/297331
A conference to help survivors of severe child abuse (ritual abuse) and torture will be held on August 5 - 7, 2011, between 8 - 5 PM Saturday and Sunday at the DoubleTree Hotel near Bradley International Airport, 16 Ella Grasso Turnpike, Windsor Locks, CT 06096 (between Hartford, CT and Springfield, MA). This conference will help educate survivors of this abuse and their helpers. Pre-registration is preferred. For information write S.M.A.R.T., P. O Box 1295, Easthampton, MA 01027-1295 E-mail: smartnews@aol.com, conference information is at: http://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/
A new slavery - Human Trafficking in America
For six months Kansas City Star reporters traveled the world, from Guatemalan migrant shelters to the deadly streets of Tijuana, investigating America's war against human trafficking.
They found that America is losing the battle — even in its own backyard. In fact, Kansas City is an emerging hub of human trafficking activity.
http://www.kansascity.com/trafficking/
Saturday, September 11, 2010
2011 Ritual Abuse Conference, Vatican Accountability for Human Rights Abuses
articles:
Church sex abuse victims call on Pope to take action
The Case of the Pope: Vatican Accountability for Human Rights Abuses
Ex-bishop in Belgian abuse scandal goes to hiding
http://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/
A conference to help survivors of severe child abuse (ritual abuse) and torture will be held on August 5 - 7, 2011, between 8 - 5 PM Saturday and Sunday at the DoubleTree Hotel near Bradley International Airport, 16 Ella Grasso Turnpike, Windsor Locks, CT 06096 (between Hartford, CT and Springfield, MA). This conference will help educate survivors of this abuse and their helpers. Pre-registration is preferred. For information write S.M.A.R.T., P. O Box 1295, Easthampton, MA 01027-1295 E-mail: smartnews@aol.com, conference information is at: http://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/
Church sex abuse victims call on Pope to take action 11 September 2010 Abuse survivors want to pass their testimonies to the Pope Campaigners who say they were sexually abused by Catholic priests as children have demanded "action not words" from the Pope. They plan to compile messages to the Pope in a book to give to him during his visit to Scotland and England. The campaigners want a statutory inquiry into clergy sex abuse, pastoral care and funding to support victims. The Catholic Bishops' Conference said the church in England and Wales has put in place measures to protect children. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11267301
The Case of the Pope: Vatican Accountability for Human Rights Abuses by Geoffrey Robertson Terry Eagleton welcomes a coolly devastating inquiry into the Vatican's handling of child abuse Terry Eagleton The Guardian, Saturday 11 September 2010 The first child sex scandal in the Catholic church took place in AD153, long before there was a "gay culture" or Jewish journalists for bishops to blame it on. By the 1960s, the problem had become so dire that a cleric responsible for the care of "erring" priests wrote to the Vatican suggesting that it acquire a Caribbean island to put them on. What has made a bad situation worse, as the eminent QC Geoffrey Robertson argues in this coolly devastating inquiry, is canon law – the church's own arcane, highly secretive legal system, which deals with alleged child abusers in a dismayingly mild manner rather than handing them over to the police. Its "penalties" for raping children include such draconian measures as warnings, rebukes, extra prayers, counselling and a few months on retreat. It is even possible to interpret canon law as claiming that a valid defence for paedophile offences is paedophilia. Since child abusers are supposedly incapable of controlling their sexual urges, this can be used in their defence. It is rather like pleading not guilty to stealing from Tesco's on the grounds that one is a shoplifter. One blindingly simple reason for the huge amount of child abuse in the Catholic church (on one estimate, up to 9% of clerics are implicated) is that the perpetrators know they will almost certainly get away with it. For almost a quarter of a century, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the man who is now Pope, was in supreme command of this parallel system of justice – a system deliberately hidden from the public, police and parliaments and run, so Robertson maintains, in defiance of international law.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/sep/11/pope-vatican-abuse-geoffrey-robertson
Ex-bishop in Belgian abuse scandal goes to hiding By RAF CASERT Associated Press Writer Sep 11, 2010 BRUSSELS (AP) -- The former Belgian bishop who resigned in April after admitting he sexually abused a nephew for years said Friday he would go into hiding to assess his future, despite calls for him to leave the church immediately. Roger Vangheluwe said in a statement he would immediately leave an abbey in his bishopry of Bruges, where he has been staying since his April 23 resignation. His bishopry has urged him to seek another place to live, and several victims of sexual abuse by clergy as well as a prominent senator have called on him to leave the church as an institution. http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CHURCH_ABUSE_BELGIUM?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2010-09-11-08-29-55
Friday, September 10, 2010
Pope faces protests on visit to Britain, Belgian Catholic clergy abuse report
Shanley clergy abuse recovered memory case
http://ritualabuse.us/research/memory-fms/shanley-recovered-memory-case/
Pope faces protests and apathy on visit to Britain - Survey reveals that 77% of people questioned felt taxpayer should not contribute to cost of pontiff's trip - Sam Jones, Riazat Butt, Stephen Bates and Kaamil Ahmed 10 September 2010 When Benedict XVI lands at Edinburgh airport on Thursday, he is unlikely to get the rapturous reception that greeted John Paul II on his visit to Britain in 1982.
Over the coming days, the pope will be faced with protesters demanding action on clerical sexual abuse of children and voicing anger at the £20m cost of the state visit, and must also contend with public apathy.
A recent survey revealed 77% of people questioned felt the taxpayer should not contribute to the cost of the visit, with 79% saying they had "no personal interest" in the pontifical trip.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/10/pope-faces-protests-british-visits
Church abuse in Belgium detailed by Adriaenssens report Harrowing details of alleged sexual abuse of minors by Roman Catholic clergy in Belgium have been released by an official Church investigator.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11260290
Belgian child abuse report exposes Catholic clergy - Paedophilia expert unveils harrowing testimony and documents cases in almost every diocese Ian Traynor in Brussels guardian.co.uk, Friday 10 September 2010 Some of the most damning evidence of systematic child abuse by the Roman Catholic clergy to come to light was unveiled today by Belgium's leading authority on paedophilia, who published hundreds of pages of harrowing victim testimony detailing their traumas and suffering.
The explosive report by Peter Adriaenssens in the town of Louvain, east of Brussels, lists evidence of 476 instances of child abuse by priests and bishops going back 50 years.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/10/belgium-child-abuse-catholic-church
describes abuse
Priest sex abuse linked to 13 suicides in Belgium Virginia Mayo / AP File Friday, Sept. 10, 2010 BRUSSELS — Hundreds of sex abuse victims have come forward in Belgium with harrowing accounts of molestation by Catholic clergy that reportedly led to at least 13 suicides and affected children as young as two, a special commission said Friday....Adriaenssens, a child psychiatrist who has worked with trauma victims for 23 years, said nothing had prepared him for the stories of abuse that blighted the lives of victims.
"We don't just talk about touching. We are talking about oral and anal abuse, forced masturbation and mutual masturbation. We talk about people who have gone through serious abuse," Adriaenssens said. Most of the abuse happened during the 1960s and 1970s, he said.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39093978
http://ritualabuse.us/research/memory-fms/shanley-recovered-memory-case/
Pope faces protests and apathy on visit to Britain - Survey reveals that 77% of people questioned felt taxpayer should not contribute to cost of pontiff's trip - Sam Jones, Riazat Butt, Stephen Bates and Kaamil Ahmed 10 September 2010 When Benedict XVI lands at Edinburgh airport on Thursday, he is unlikely to get the rapturous reception that greeted John Paul II on his visit to Britain in 1982.
Over the coming days, the pope will be faced with protesters demanding action on clerical sexual abuse of children and voicing anger at the £20m cost of the state visit, and must also contend with public apathy.
A recent survey revealed 77% of people questioned felt the taxpayer should not contribute to the cost of the visit, with 79% saying they had "no personal interest" in the pontifical trip.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/10/pope-faces-protests-british-visits
Church abuse in Belgium detailed by Adriaenssens report Harrowing details of alleged sexual abuse of minors by Roman Catholic clergy in Belgium have been released by an official Church investigator.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11260290
Belgian child abuse report exposes Catholic clergy - Paedophilia expert unveils harrowing testimony and documents cases in almost every diocese Ian Traynor in Brussels guardian.co.uk, Friday 10 September 2010 Some of the most damning evidence of systematic child abuse by the Roman Catholic clergy to come to light was unveiled today by Belgium's leading authority on paedophilia, who published hundreds of pages of harrowing victim testimony detailing their traumas and suffering.
The explosive report by Peter Adriaenssens in the town of Louvain, east of Brussels, lists evidence of 476 instances of child abuse by priests and bishops going back 50 years.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/sep/10/belgium-child-abuse-catholic-church
describes abuse
Priest sex abuse linked to 13 suicides in Belgium Virginia Mayo / AP File Friday, Sept. 10, 2010 BRUSSELS — Hundreds of sex abuse victims have come forward in Belgium with harrowing accounts of molestation by Catholic clergy that reportedly led to at least 13 suicides and affected children as young as two, a special commission said Friday....Adriaenssens, a child psychiatrist who has worked with trauma victims for 23 years, said nothing had prepared him for the stories of abuse that blighted the lives of victims.
"We don't just talk about touching. We are talking about oral and anal abuse, forced masturbation and mutual masturbation. We talk about people who have gone through serious abuse," Adriaenssens said. Most of the abuse happened during the 1960s and 1970s, he said.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39093978
Thursday, September 9, 2010
Craigslist faces new wave of political attacks, Vatican as a rogue state
Craigslist faces new wave of political attacks by Declan McCullagh September 9, 2010 A year ago, Craigslist founder Craig Newmark was busy touting e-government, promoting neighborhood social networks, and blogging about squirrel-proofing his bird feeder. But now the 57-year-old entrepreneur is spending his days in more nerve-wracking pursuits: responding to attacks from ambitious attorneys general, legal threats from antiprostitution advocacy groups that sometimes seem to be actually anti-Craigslist, and critical articles written by journalists employed by the same newspapers that his company is helping to slowly eviscerate. And now, two sources have told CNET, a congressional committee has asked Newmark to testify at a hearing in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday afternoon on the topic of "domestic minor sex trafficking."....
Liability and the law
Then there's the option of persuading Congress to rewrite Section 230 of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which says: "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider." Translated, that means Craigslist isn't generally liable for what its users do.
But the law that immunizes Craigslist from lawsuit also protects Facebook, Blogspot, Flickr, and innumerable other Web sites. It lets news organizations, including CNET publisher CBS Interactive, permit readers to post comments without prior approval by an editor. It's probably no exaggeration to say that one sentence--inserted as part of negotiations over antiporn legislation--gave birth to Web 2.0 and modern social networks.
"Any attempt to reopen section 230 will inevitably invite a flurry of other proposals of how to deputize online intermediaries to handle any concern or pet grievance," says Berin Szoka, a senior fellow at the free-market Progress and Freedom Foundation. "Just limiting it to adult services or prostitution is naive." Andrea Powell, executive director of the FAIR Fund, is also weighing a class action lawsuit against Craigslist. "There are enough victims," Powell said. "We were thinking about this one day and reached out and it turns out other groups were pondering it. I had a conversation with one woman who was victimized by Craigslist. By our records, our financial records, they owe her $60,000." http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20015916-38.html
Call to treat Vatican as a rogue state September 9, 2010 THE Vatican should be treated as a kind of ''rogue state'' by the rest of the world until it stops using statehood - and the ancient rules of the canon law - to protect paedophile priests.
So says Geoffrey Robertson, QC, the veteran human rights lawyer and United Nations judge, arguing that the Catholic Church is the only religion permitted under international law to claim the privileges of statehood and its leaders immunity from civil or criminal action.
In his new book, The Case of the Pope: Vatican Accountability for Human Rights Abuse published as a Penguin special in Britain - and in Australia at the weekend - Mr Robertson urges the world to press the Catholic Church into abandoning canon law, the ancient set of ecclesiastical rules that also define disciplinary provisions for offences ranging from sex crimes to ordaining women.
However, these punishments, sometimes meted out under mediaeval written procedures run by fellow priests, allow ''neither cross-examination and medical examination, nor DNA testing'' and ''no punishment worthy of that name'', he says. ''The worst that can happen, other than an order to do penance, is 'laicisation'; that is, defrocking, which permits the paedophile to leave the church and get a job in a state school or care home, without anyone knowing of this conviction. Canon law has no sex offenders registry. ''While there can be no objection to an organisation disciplining members for a breach of arcane rules, there is every objection when those breaches amount to serious crimes and the organisation claims the right to deal with them internally without reporting them to the police. ''And that is precisely what the Vatican has been doing: instead of reporting to law enforcement authorities those priests it knows to be guilty of raping children, and to be likely to rape more children in the future, it has been dealing with them under canon law, which demands utmost pontifical secrecy, moving them to other parishes and letting them off with admonitions and unenforceable penances … usually to say prayers for their victims.' http://www.smh.com.au/world/call-to-treat-vatican-as-a-rogue-state-20100908-151cg.html
Belgian court bins church paedophile raids evidence Sep 9, 2010 BRUSSELS (AFP) – Belgian judges ruled invalid on Thursday truckloads of evidence seized by police in summer raids probing paedophile scandals within the country's Roman Catholic Church.
An appeals court deemed the raids, on the church headquarters in Brussels and at the home of its former top cardinal, disproportionate, and ordered that the material -- on hundreds of individual investigations conducted by an internal church commission -- be returned with prosecutors unable to use it. http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20100909/wl_afp/belgiumreligionchildabuse
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
The Dissociation & Trauma Clinical Discussions (DissTCD) list
The Dissociation & Trauma Clinical Discussions (DissTCD) list has been created to allow for clinical discussions for all licensed mental health counselors and retired licensed mental health counselors around the world. If you have a related license or degree, please write us for more information at DissTCD-owner@yahoogroups.com .
All topics related to clinical issues will be allowed, including public issues that relate to licensed professionals clinical practices.
The list will have archives that will be available to all members, but not the general public. The only requirement for membership is to send one's full name, state (or country if outside the US), license name and number to join.
To join, write:
DissTCD-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
and send your full name, state (or country if outside the US), license name and number to
DissTCD-owner@yahoogroups.com
List web page
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/DissTCD
Monday, September 6, 2010
The New United States Truth and Reconciliation Coalition (US TRC)
August 24, 2010
We are pleased to announce our new human rights organization, the United States Truth and Reconciliation Coalition (US TRC).
Using the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission as our model, we will focus on increasing public awareness of historical and present-day extreme abuse and human rights violations including human experimentation, human trafficking, organized ritual crime, and other forms of torture committed in the US and/or by representatives of the US government.
At this time, the US TRC consists of three volunteer groups:
Our coalition currently consists of sixteen members who contribute a rich blend of experience, knowledge, determination, and inspiration. They have backgrounds in advocacy, mediation, psychology, social work, and the raising of children.
Our large discussion group provides the coalition with practical support, ideas, feedback, and news.
Our update group distributes coalition news to advocacy and human rights organizations and coalitions and to other concerned groups and citizens through email, websites, media announcements, and social networking.
To learn more about the US TRC, to join one of our volunteer groups, or to learn of other ways that you can support our efforts, please Email us at ustrc@comcast.net.
Thank you.
http://unitedstatestrc.com/
We are pleased to announce our new human rights organization, the United States Truth and Reconciliation Coalition (US TRC).
Using the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission as our model, we will focus on increasing public awareness of historical and present-day extreme abuse and human rights violations including human experimentation, human trafficking, organized ritual crime, and other forms of torture committed in the US and/or by representatives of the US government.
At this time, the US TRC consists of three volunteer groups:
Our coalition currently consists of sixteen members who contribute a rich blend of experience, knowledge, determination, and inspiration. They have backgrounds in advocacy, mediation, psychology, social work, and the raising of children.
Our large discussion group provides the coalition with practical support, ideas, feedback, and news.
Our update group distributes coalition news to advocacy and human rights organizations and coalitions and to other concerned groups and citizens through email, websites, media announcements, and social networking.
To learn more about the US TRC, to join one of our volunteer groups, or to learn of other ways that you can support our efforts, please Email us at ustrc@comcast.net.
Thank you.
http://unitedstatestrc.com/
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Adult services censored on Craigslist, Children among 100s raped in Congo, U.N. says
Adult services censored on Craigslist By the CNN Wire Staff
September 4, 2010 (CNN) -- Embattled online classified service Craigslist apparently made a change to its website early Saturday, censoring its adult services section. The section that usually reads "adult services" was replaced by the word "censored." It was not immediately clear whether Craigslist removed the adult services and replaced them with the "censored" section that had a link that was not active. But for users who accessed the account outside the U.S., the erotic services link was still active. Craigslist representatives were not immediately available for comment. The website has been under fire for allegations that it promotes prostitution. Last week, attorneys general in 17 states banded together to urge Craigslist to discontinue its adult services. "The increasingly sharp public criticism of Craigslist's Adult Services section reflects a growing recognition that ads for prostitution -- including ads trafficking children -- are rampant on it," the attorneys general said in a Tuesday letter to Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster and Founder Craig Newmark.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/09/04/craigslist.censored/index.html?iref=NS1
Children among hundreds raped in Congo, U.N. says By the CNN Wire Staff September 4, 2010 (CNN) -- More than two dozen children were among the hundreds raped by armed rebels in the war-torn eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the United Nations said.
Twenty-seven minors, including one boy, were among the victims, the U.N. said Friday. One attempted rape was also reported.
The children were among 240 people raped by Rwandan and Congolese rebels who raided villages in North Kivu province between July 30 and August 3, aid groups said. Attackers blocked roads and prevented villagers from reaching outside communications. Many homes were also looted.
Many of the victims were raped by two to six men, according to the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO).
MONUSCO, the United Nations peacekeeping force in the country, raised the number of victims after earlier reports put it at 156.
Since the rapes were first publicly reported on August 22, more victims have come forward, the force said.
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa/09/04/congo.rape.children/index.html
September 4, 2010 (CNN) -- Embattled online classified service Craigslist apparently made a change to its website early Saturday, censoring its adult services section. The section that usually reads "adult services" was replaced by the word "censored." It was not immediately clear whether Craigslist removed the adult services and replaced them with the "censored" section that had a link that was not active. But for users who accessed the account outside the U.S., the erotic services link was still active. Craigslist representatives were not immediately available for comment. The website has been under fire for allegations that it promotes prostitution. Last week, attorneys general in 17 states banded together to urge Craigslist to discontinue its adult services. "The increasingly sharp public criticism of Craigslist's Adult Services section reflects a growing recognition that ads for prostitution -- including ads trafficking children -- are rampant on it," the attorneys general said in a Tuesday letter to Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster and Founder Craig Newmark.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/09/04/craigslist.censored/index.html?iref=NS1
Children among hundreds raped in Congo, U.N. says By the CNN Wire Staff September 4, 2010 (CNN) -- More than two dozen children were among the hundreds raped by armed rebels in the war-torn eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the United Nations said.
Twenty-seven minors, including one boy, were among the victims, the U.N. said Friday. One attempted rape was also reported.
The children were among 240 people raped by Rwandan and Congolese rebels who raided villages in North Kivu province between July 30 and August 3, aid groups said. Attackers blocked roads and prevented villagers from reaching outside communications. Many homes were also looted.
Many of the victims were raped by two to six men, according to the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO).
MONUSCO, the United Nations peacekeeping force in the country, raised the number of victims after earlier reports put it at 156.
Since the rapes were first publicly reported on August 22, more victims have come forward, the force said.
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/africa/09/04/congo.rape.children/index.html
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