Charles Mozdir Killed In NYC Shootout That Started With Child Abuse Allegations, Britain’s Crime of Complicity With the Savile Sex Abuse Scandal, DNA changes linked to health effects of childhood abuse

- Charles Mozdir Killed In NYC Shootout That Started With Child Abuse Allegations
- Britain’s Crime of Complicity With the Savile Sex Abuse Scandal
- DNA changes linked to health effects of childhood abuse
- Associations Between Early Life Stress and Gene Methylation in Children

Charles Mozdir Killed In NYC Shootout That Started With Child Abuse Allegations
AP By JAKE PEARSON and TOM HAYS 07/29/2014

NEW YORK (AP) — A California man who skipped town after being accused of molesting a boy was killed and three law enforcement officers trying to arrest him were wounded in a daytime shootout inside a small smoke shop in one of New York's most bustling neighborhoods, officials said.

The man, Charles Richard Mozdir, was recently featured on a CNN show about fugitives. He was wanted in a San Diego case and was charged with lewd acts upon a child younger than 14, a criminal complaint said.

The shootout Monday between Mozdir and members of the New York/New Jersey Regional Fugitive Task Force happened just after 1 p.m. in Greenwich Village not far from New York University in a highly trafficked tourist area bounded by jazz clubs, restaurants, a subway station and a basketball court.

Mozdir's handgun was recovered at the scene, and 20 extra rounds of ammunition were found in his pocket, Police Commissioner William Bratton said....

A $1 million bench warrant was issued for Mozdir's arrest in June 2012 after he skipped an arraignment in San Diego Superior Court on child sexual assault charges, a spokesman for the San Diego County district attorney said.

Mozdir, a wedding photographer, also had been charged with attempting to dissuade a witness from prosecution, the criminal complaint said. He had posted $250,000 bail.

Mozdir's case had recently been featured on CNN's "The Hunt with John Walsh." Mozdir was accused of abusing the boy while babysitting him, and authorities later found evidence of child pornography and bestiality on his cellphone and computers, according to the show's website, quoting federal authorities.

Authorities had searched for him in Coronado, Georgia, California and Mexico, the show said....
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/29/abuse-suspect-dead-2-mars_n_5629699.html


Britain’s Crime of Complicity With the Savile Sex Abuse Scandal
By LAURIE PENNY JULY 30, 2014
LONDON .... The Westminster inquiry will investigate not just the rape and assault of children at group homes going back decades but also accusations that child abuse by politicians and other public figures was deliberately covered up or even facilitated by members of the elite. The same Parliament has, it seems, spent 30 years failing to catch the pedophiles in its own house. Before the inquiry was even announced, it emerged that 114 files concerning allegations of abuse against children involving senior political figures had mysteriously disappeared. ....

In Britain in 2014, it is no longer a shock to see the face of a once beloved celebrity or well-known politician on the news in connection with pedophilia. During the past two years, the press has been peppered with reports of allegations and prosecutions of all manner of public figures, from politicians and pop stars to television hosts and senior staff members at exclusive private schools....

Worse, it became clear that a large number of people in show business knew about this abuse and did nothing because of Mr. Savile’s power and prestige. The entertainer, who was a friend of Margaret Thatcher, used his status to gain access to vulnerable young people in schools and even hospitals.

The posthumous disgrace of Jimmy Savile was just the beginning. A series of other public figures have now been accused or convicted of sexual offenses involving children. Among them was a once respected Liberal member of Parliament who died in 2010, Cyril Smith, who abused boys in a children’s home in his constituency. Those boys grew up into traumatized men who told the police about the “fat man” they were forced to sexually service before they were 10 years old.

What links all these convicted or alleged predators of children is not background or upbringing. Mr. Smith started out as a clerk in a tax office, while Mr. Savile first worked as a miner. Paul Gadd, previously convicted but now facing fresh charges, found fame as the singer Gary Glitter, but was brought up by an unmarried mother who worked as a cleaner. Rolf Harris, recently jailed, was an Australian animator who became a successful performer in Britain. What united them was power and access — and a sense of entitlement, acquired from Britain’s traditional elite, that came from the knowledge that their reputations were too great for them to be held accountable....

In many cases, investigation by the authorities was deliberately deflected. Nowhere is this truer than at Britain’s top “public schools,” as the private secondary, usually boarding, schools are known. In these, a culture of bullying and sexualized violence has been understood for more than a century as part of the process of training young men to be leaders. Teachers at 130 of these schools have been implicated; several schools are under criminal investigation by the police....
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/31/opinion/Britains-Crime-of-Complicity-With-the-Savile-Sex-Abuse-Scandal.html 

DNA changes linked to health effects of childhood abuse
By Krystnell Storr NEW YORK Thu Jul 31, 2014

(Reuters Health) - Trauma has lasting effects on mental and physical health that may stem from changes to DNA which undermine a person’s ability to rebound from stress, according to new research.

The small study of abused children adds to a growing body of evidence suggesting that experiences can alter gene activity, explaining how mental anguish can translate to lingering physical effects, and possibly opening new avenues for treatment, study authors say.

“This could explain why children with stressful childhood experiences have a different range of problems like not doing well in school, having academic problems, or problems with judgment and decision making,” said senior study author Seth Pollak, a psychologist and child development researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

For example, one of the affected DNA sites Pollak’s team focused on is involved in responding to a nerve-cell growth factor that “is what allows the brain to grow and heal during childhood and to develop,” he told Reuters Health.

The findings, Pollak said, support research showing that “genes aren’t fixed and stable” as was once thought. Scientists have long known that a person’s genes interact with their environment, but this kind of finding helps to illustrate how that actually works, he notes.

The study looked at the blood cells of children who had been abused to examine changes in methylation - a chemical code along the DNA strand that helps control when genes are activated. More or less methylation can silence a gene or boost its activity....

After adjusting for differences associated with socioeconomic status, the researchers found that children who had been abused had extra methylation at three sites along the DNA and had less than the other kids at a fourth site. The changes suggest the GR gene might be silenced when it should normally be active and might be over-active in certain other circumstances....

“If this gene isn’t turned on and you are not able to actually use (cortisol), then you experience emotions like any other individual - you get upset, you get angry, you get aroused but you can’t shut down,” Pollak said.

“It would lead to high levels of stress, arousal, anger, irritation but kind of an inability to regulate and come back to a calmer state,” he said.

“These are the kind of behavioral problems that have been associated with child abuse for a very long time.....
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/31/us-dna-stress-child-abuse-idUSKBN0G02AJ20140731

Associations Between Early Life Stress and Gene Methylation in Children.
Romens SE, McDonald J, Svaren J, Pollak SD.
Child Dev. 2014 Jul 24. doi: 10.1111/cdev.12270

Children exposed to extreme stress are at heightened risk for developing mental and physical disorders. However, little is known about mechanisms underlying these associations in humans. An emerging insight is that children's social environments change gene expression, which contributes to biological vulnerabilities for behavioral problems. Epigenetic changes in the glucocorticoid receptor gene, a critical component of stress regulation, were examined in whole blood from 56 children aged 11-14 years. Children exposed to physical maltreatment had greater methylation within exon 1F in the NR3C1 promoter region of the gene compared to nonmaltreated children, including the putative NGFI-A (nerve growth factor) binding site. These results highlight molecular mechanisms linking childhood stress with biological changes that may lead to mental and physical disorders.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25056599