Friday, April 5, 2013

Behind the Cover Story: Emily Bazelon on Porn_graphy and Punishment, Boy, 6, escapes ritual murder

Behind the Cover Story: Emily Bazelon on Pornography and Punishment
By James R. Marsh on April 5, 2013
Emily Bazelon discusses her New York Times Magazine cover story, The Price of a Stolen Childhood, about the Marsh Law Firm's groundbreaking work representing victims of child pornography.

"It's a common refrain in child pornography cases to say that it is a victimless crime. The person who downloaded the image was quote unquote just looking. Restitution helps force them to see that they are part of a market that depends on hurting real children."

http://www.childlaw.us/2013/04/emily-bazelon-discusses-her-ne.html

Behind the Cover Story: Emily Bazelon on Pornography and Punishment
By RACHEL NOLAN January 28, 2013

Emily Bazelon wrote this week’s cover article about the legal efforts by abuse victims who have appeared in child pornography to gain restitution from people convicted of looking at images of them. Bazelon, a staff writer at Slate and fellow at Yale Law School, last wrote for the magazine about an anti-abortion activist named Charmaine Yoest. Bazelon’s book on bullying, “Sticks and Stones,” will come out this February.

Without revealing any details of their identities, how did you first hear about or get in touch with these two women, whom you refer to as Amy and Nicole?

I was reading a blog by Douglas Berman, a law professor who is obsessed with sentencing issues in a really useful way. He linked to a short news article about restitution cases. I knew Paul G. Cassell, the lawyer who was arguing the case, a little bit, so I called him. And that’s how I started reporting this story. He put me in touch with James Marsh and Carol Hepburn, who are the main lawyers bringing these restitution suits. There are a couple of other cases under way, but the story really rose and fell on whether Amy and Nicole felt like they wanted to talk. The whole point would be to tell the story from their perspective. At first, through her lawyer, Amy said yes. Nicole wasn’t sure how she felt about it. The tricky part for her, I think, was telling the story without becoming retraumatized. Eventually she decided she was in a place where she could tell her story, and wanted to, and we all hope it won’t set her back....

http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/28/behind-the-cover-story-emily-bazelon-on-pornography-and-punishment/


The Price of a Stolen Childhood

When Nicole was a child, her father took pornographic pictures of her that still circulate on the internet.  by EMILY BAZELON   January 24, 2013

The detective spread out the photographs on the kitchen table, in front of Nicole, on a December morning in 2006. She was 17, but in the pictures, she saw the face of her 10-year-old self, a half-grown girl wearing make-up. The bodies in the images were broken up by pixelation, but Nicole could see the outline of her father, forcing himself on her. Her mother, sitting next to her, burst into sobs.

The detective spoke gently, but he had brutal news: the pictures had been downloaded onto thousands of computers via file-sharing services around the world. They were among the most widely circulated child pornography on the Internet. Also online were video clips, similarly notorious, in which Nicole spoke words her father had scripted for her, sometimes at the behest of other men. For years, investigators in the United States, Canada and Europe had been trying to identify the girl in the images....

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/magazine/how-much-can-restitution-help-victims-of-child-pornography.html

Marsh Law Firm is one of the nation's premier law firms representing sexually abused victims of child pornography. We are among the few law firms in the country using innovative federal law approaches to help abused and exploited child crime victims obtain civil justice.

The intersection of criminal law, federal civil statutory remedies, copyright and criminal restitution makes this a challenging and unique area of the law requiring skilled litigators and creative thinkers. The lawyers at Marsh Law Firm have the experience and skills necessary to help victims of child sex abuse, child pornography, and online child exploitation rebuild their lives with dignity and respect.http://www.marshlaw.us/

Pierced ears save Gulu girls from ritual sacrifice
by MOSES AKENA Tuesday, April 2  2013

Rose Ongom tells a tale of how her two daughters were kidnapped for ritual sacrifice in a period of five months.

You could say death has knocked on Rose Ongom’s door, twice. And twice, she has been lucky. Last Saturday, Ongom’s daughter survived being sacrificed, after she was snatched from among her friends as they were collecting water in a nearby well in Gulu Municipality.

It was at 11am that the six-year-old, Lilly Adong was kidnapped. After she heard that her child was missing, Ongom was prompted to send boda boda cyclists as far as Pabbo Sub-county in Amuru District in search of the missing child. The journey is 25 kilometres.

It was only at 6pm that the minor was returned, terrified and crying, to the very spot where she was snatched by a young woman. According to her parents, Adong said she was taken to a house where she saw another young boy, and later to a forest. They believe she was brought back because she had pierced ears....

However, the two kidnappers reportedly started disagreeing when they realised that she had pierced ears. She escaped in the confusion but recounted seeing three headless bodies of children where she was taken. There has been an outcry from the residents about these cases....

The deputy officer in-charge of Aywee Police Post, Mr George Willy Rachkara, confirmed the prevalence of the cases, but blames some wrong elements in Lira District, whom he says use people in Gulu to carry out the act. 

http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/Pierced-ears-save-Gulu-girls-from-ritual-sacrifice/-/688334/1736456/-/gqibl2/-/index.html

Boy, 6, escapes ritual murder  Sunday, 31 March 2013

Police in Eastern region are holding a man for attempting to have his six-year-old nephew murdered for ritual purposes.

The suspect, 35-year old Kofi Tawiah of Akyem Sedimase, allegedly offered the boy to a Nigerien Fetish priest at Asiakwa for human sacrifice as part a set of rituals needed to be performed to make him rich.

The fetish Priest had earlier given the suspect the options of either sacrificing an animal, in which case he will do dry fasting for a week or sacrificing a human being in place of the animal and to also make up for the seven-day dry fasting.

The Fetish Priest however reported Kofi Tawiah to the Kyebi Police after the suspect had returned to him with news that he intended sacrificing one of his sister’s children for the ritual....
http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=269559  

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