Child sex abuse scandal rocks Orthodox Jewish community after 85 arrested, Inquest hears of witches, adoption and ‘angel’ note

Child sex abuse scandal rocks Orthodox Jewish community after 85 arrested

117 alleged victims spoke out from tight-knit religious society

By Daily Mail Reporter
12th December 2011

An Orthodox Jewish community has had to face up to claims of child sex abuse after 83 men and two women were arrested.

An initiative was set up to encourage victims to come forward despite pressure from the close-knit religious society to hush up the crimes.

Some 117 male and female victims have approached authorities in Brooklyn, New York since 2006. There were 89 accusers under the age of 17....

Sentences varied from one month to 20 years for crimes including sex abuse, attempted kidnapping and sodomy.

However 24 alleged paedophiles were not jailed. In some instances, the case against them collapsed when victims and their families backed out of giving evidence in court following pressure from the religious community, according to the assistant DA.

Authorities have another 47 cases pending.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2072839/Child-sex-abuse-scandal-rocks-Orthodox-Jewish-community-85-arrested.html


Inquest hears of witches, adoption and ‘angel’ note
DAN PROUDMAN
13 Dec, 2011

IT was about the time Leonie Hutchinson was turning two when her mother’s landlord last remembered seeing the fit and healthy toddler around her Scone home.

But it would be up to 2 years before authorities had any idea the little girl with the blonde hair and blue eyes was missing.

A coronial inquest has heard that Leonie’s mother, Kate Hutchinson, who also goes by the name of ‘‘Rainbow’’, has given ‘‘similar but differing’’ versions of Leonie’s whereabouts to friends, family and investigators in the years since the child’s disappearance a decade ago.

Ms Hutchinson, diagnosed with schizophrenia, has said Leonie was staying with friends on a farm, with people on the Central Coast, on properties outside Byron Bay and Bellingen and in foster homes, Deputy State Coroner Hugh Dillon heard yesterday.

But nothing has led investigators to finding Leonie, pictured, who would be aged 12 if she was still alive.

On the inquest’s opening day, a picture was painted of Ms Hutchinson’s alternative lifestyle, of ‘‘not someone who was deeply embedded in the community’’, of ‘‘satanic’’ matters and involvement in a witches’ coven in the 1990s.

‘‘... It is a sad day when a two-year-old goes missing and cannot be found for years on end,’’ Counsel assisting the coroner, Warwick Hunt, told Muswellbrook Coroners Court.
http://www.theherald.com.au/news/local/news/crime-and-law/inquest-hears-of-witches-adoption-and-angel-note/2390537.aspx