Nebraska Supreme Court rejects Rulo cult leader's appeal, India’s child maids face slavery, abuse and sometimes rape

Nebraska Supreme Court rejects Rulo cult leader's appeal, but execution still in limbo
By Paul Hammel and Joe Duggan / World-Herald Bureau Saturday, April 19, 2014
LINCOLN — For the fifth time, convicted cult murderer Michael Ryan has lost an appeal to overturn his death sentence....

Ryan, 65, was the leader of a survivalist religious cult that lived on a farm near Rulo, Neb. He would be among the first in line for an execution once the state resolves its death penalty drug issue.

Ryan was sentenced to death for first-degree murder for ordering the 1985 torture and killing of James Thimm, 25, one of his followers. Ryan also pleaded no contest to second-degree murder in the killing of 5-year-old Luke Stice, the son of another cult member....
http://www.omaha.com/article/20140419/NEWS/140418218


India’s child maids face slavery, abuse and sometimes rape
By Simon Denyer, Published: January 19, 2013

....Every year, hundreds of thousands of girls are trafficked from rural India to work as domestic servants in middle-class homes in India’s fast-growing urban areas. They are expected to work at least 15 hours a day for food, lodging and salaries well below the legal minimum monthly wage of about $125. Many end up cut off from their families, abused and treated like slaves. Some are sexually assaulted.

....“The trafficking of young children, especially girls, under the garb of placement agencies is the biggest organized crime in India today. And the worst part is, it is right there in the open, in our homes, and yet invisible,” said Bhuwan Ribhu of the child rights group Bachpan Bachao Andolan.

....But the law is widely flouted, said Ribhu, who added that on rare occasions police carry out “rescue operations” of underage servants after complaints from parents or activists.

“Almost all of the domestic maids are either minors, or started work as maids before they were 18,” Ribhu said.

There has never been a systematic attempt to determine the scale of the problem. The government says 5 million children are employed in India, but activists say the real number could be 10 times that. A senior official at India’s Home Affairs Ministry, which oversees the police, estimated that as many as 4 million children work in domestic service nationwide and that up to 4,000 placement agencies operate in New Delhi and its suburbs alone.

But the official, who insisted on anonymity to speak candidly, said it was often hard to get his fellow bureaucrats to take the issue seriously because so many of them employ children at home....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/india-turns-blind-eye-to-trafficking-rape-of-child-maids/2013/01/19/3f7ec544-5e73-11e2-9940-6fc488f3fecd_story.html