Abuses Found Mexican Institutions for Disabled, Warren Jeffs Texas bigamy case

Abuses Found at Mexican Institutions for Disabled
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD November 30, 2010
MEXICO CITY — Ten years ago, a human rights group released a scathing, groundbreaking report on abusive, decrepit conditions in Mexican institutions for the mentally and physically disabled, moving the country to promise change and to take the lead in writing international agreements to protect the disabled. But in a new report released Tuesday, the group, Disability Rights International, working with a Mexican human rights organization, said a yearlong investigation revealed “atrocious and abusive conditions” that included lobotomies performed without consent, children missing from orphanages, widespread filth and squalor, and a lack of medical care....

At orphanages, the team found that children were unaccounted for and interviewed residents who had said they had grown up in the facilities, though officials had no record of the names they came in with or arrival date.

Human rights officials and unnamed government officials told them there was no registry or tracking system for children placed in public or private institutions, leaving them prey to human traffickers.
“Due to a failure to provide oversight, children have literally disappeared from institutions,” the report said. “Some of these children may have been subject to sex trafficking and forced labor.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/01/world/americas/01mexico.htm

Abandoned & Disappeared: Mexico’s Segregation and Abuse of Children and Adults with Disabilities - A report, by Disability Rights International and the Comisión Méxicana de Defensa y Promoción de los Derechos Humanos, on the state of the Mexican mental health care system.
http://documents.nytimes.com/abuses-found-at-mexican-institutions-for-the-disabled


Warren Jeffs returned to Texas to face bigamy case
By PAUL J. WEBER AP Dec. 1, 2010
SAN ANGELO, Texas — Polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs has been extradited from Utah to Texas to face trial on bigamy and sexual assault charges, the Texas Attorney General's Office said Wednesday. Jeffs, who is being held without bail in Texas, is set to make a court appearance Wednesday morning in San Angelo. Texas authorities have charged the ecclesiastical head of the Fundamentalist church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints with felony bigamy, aggravated sexual assault and assault.

Attorney General's Office spokesman Jerry Strickland said the 54-year-old Jeffs arrived Tuesday night at a West Texas jail, but declined to specify where he is being held. Jeffs' Southern Utah-based church practices polygamy in arranged marriages that have involved underage girls....

Jeffs' Texas charges stem from evidence gathered during a raid on the Yearning for Zion Ranch near Eldorado in April 2008. Jeffs had been held at the Utah State Prison after his arrest, prosecution and conviction on two charges of rape as an accomplice for his role in the 2001 marriage of an underage follower — then 14 — to her 19-year-old cousin. In July, the Utah Supreme overturned the 2007 convictions. Prosecutors there have yet to decide whether they'll retry Jeffs.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/religion/new/7318902.html