Bill Cosby charged with felony sexual assault in Pennsylvania
NORRISTOWN, Pa. By Daniel Kelley Wed Dec 30, 2015
Bill Cosby was charged on Wednesday with sexually assaulting a woman after plying her with drugs and alcohol in 2004, marking the only criminal case against the once-beloved performer whose father-figure persona has been tainted by dozens of misconduct accusations.
Cosby, 78, walking with a cane and accompanied by two lawyers, appeared for his arraignment hours later at a courthouse in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, just outside Philadelphia, where he posted a $1 million bond, turned over his passport and was ordered to avoid any contact with his accuser.
Smiling and politely thanking District Court Judge Elizabeth McHugh at the end of the brief proceeding, Cosby left the courthouse and was driven to a nearby police precinct to be finger-printed and booked.
He emerged from the police station 10 minutes later and was whisked away in the same black sport utility vehicle that had delivered him to the courthouse. He made no statements as a throng of reporters shouted questions at him.
He is due to return to court on Jan. 14 for a preliminary hearing.
The case against Cosby was filed just before the statute of limitations deadline for criminal prosecution was due to lapse in January. The charge stems from allegations leveled by Andrea Constand, who settled a civil case against Cosby for an undisclosed sum in 2006.
"Today, after examination of all the evidence, we are able to seek justice on behalf of the victim," Kevin Steele, the newly elected district attorney for Montgomery County, told an earlier news conference. Steele made a campaign issue of his intent to prosecute Cosby.
Constand, a former basketball team manager at Temple University in Philadelphia, Cosby's alma mater, is one of more than 50 women who have publicly accused the star of sexually assaulting them in incidents dating back decades.
Cosby has not entered a plea in Wednesday's case. But he and his lawyers, while acknowledging marital infidelity on his part, have consistently denied any allegations of sexual misconduct....
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-people-cosby-idUSKBN0UD1CW20151230
South Korea, Japan reach agreement on 'comfort women'
By Holly Yan, KJ Kwon, Junko Ogura and Tiffany Ap, CNN
Tue December 29, 2015
(CNN) Japan and South Korea have reached an agreement over the long-standing issue of "comfort women," a term that describes sex slaves used by the Japanese military during World War II.
Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida said his government will give 1 billion yen ($8.3 million) to a fund to help those who suffered.
South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se said that as long as Tokyo sticks to its side of the deal, Seoul will consider the issue "irreversibly" resolved.
In addition, the two governments "will refrain from criticizing and blaming each other in the international society, including the United Nations," Yun said at a joint news conference Monday.
Kishida said Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe "expresses anew his most sincere apologies and remorse to all the women who underwent immeasurable and painful experiences and suffered incurable physical and psychological wounds as comfort women."
Abe later stated himself: "I think we did our duty for the current generation by reaching this final and irreversible resolution before the end of the 70th year since the war."....
But an advocacy group for former comfort women said the deal announced Monday is "a diplomatic humiliation."
"Although the Japanese government announced that it 'feels (its) responsibilities,' the statement lacks the acknowledgment of the fact that the colonial government and its military had committed a systematic crime," said the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery. "The government had not just been simply involved but actively initiated the activities which were criminal and illegal."
The group took issue that it did not address the issue of Japanese history textbooks glossing over the scope of the war crimes.....
China's foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said the forced recruitment of the "comfort women" was a grave crime against humanity.
"The Chinese side always maintains that the Japanese side should face up to and reflect upon its history of aggression and properly deal with the relevant issue with a sense of responsibility."
China, which was also occupied by Japan prior to and during the World War II has long been critical of its neighbor's role in the war and its apparent lack of remorse for war crimes following defeat in 1945....
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/28/asia/south-korea-japan-comfort-women/
Wednesday, December 30, 2015
Monday, December 28, 2015
New trial ordered for Msgr. Lynn, chief defendant in Phila. clergy abuse case
New trial ordered for Msgr. Lynn, chief defendant in Phila. clergy abuse case
Jeremy Roebuck, Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 23, 2015
A Pennsylvania appellate court on Tuesday ordered a new trial for Msgr. William J. Lynn, overturning for a second time a landmark verdict that was the first conviction nationwide of a Catholic Church official for covering up child sex abuse by priests.
A three-judge Superior Court panel found that Lynn's 2012 conviction had been tainted by prosecutors' presentation of nearly two dozen examples of the Philadelphia Archdiocese's failure to handle pedophilia within its ranks. Lynn, however, was only charged in connection with his supervision of two priests.
Such evidence, said Judge Emeritus John T. Bender, writing for the majority, was "unfairly prejudicial" and effectively turned Lynn into a scapegoat for the wider sins of the church. Some of those crimes predated by decades Lynn's tenure as the archdiocesan official in charge of handling sex-abuse complaints.
The court's decision again threw into doubt what District Attorney Seth Williams has touted as a historic prosecution, and raised questions about the 64-year-old cleric's future, two years into his three- to six-year sentence on child endangerment charges.
His lawyer, Thomas A. Bergstrom, said he intends once again to seek Lynn's release from prison....
Lynn was convicted after a 13-week trial and 12 days of deliberations of allowing the Rev. Edward V. Avery, who had a history of sexually abusing children, to live in a rectory of St. Jerome Catholic Church in Northeast Philadelphia, where he later assaulted a 10-year-old altar boy. Avery pleaded guilty in the 1999 attack and was sentenced to five years in prison. He is currently at the state prison in Laurel Highlands, Somerset County....
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20151223_New_trial_ordered_for_Msgr__Lynn__chief_deft__in_Phila_clergy_abuse_case.html
Philadelphia prosecutors seek rehearing in Catholic church official's clergy abuse case
Published December 28, 2015 Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA – Philadelphia's district attorney wants an appeals court to take another look at the case of a Roman Catholic church official whose conviction over his handling of sex-abuse cases was overturned last week.
Monsignor William Lynn has been imprisoned intermittently since his 2012 trial.
District Attorney Seth Williams says in a statement he has filed an application for a re-argument of Lynn's case before the full state Superior Court. He says the filing is in response to a decision by a three-judge panel on Tuesday to award a new trial to Lynn....
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/12/28/philadelphia-prosecutors-seek-rehearing-in-catholic-church-official-clergy.html
Jeremy Roebuck, Staff Writer
Wednesday, December 23, 2015
A Pennsylvania appellate court on Tuesday ordered a new trial for Msgr. William J. Lynn, overturning for a second time a landmark verdict that was the first conviction nationwide of a Catholic Church official for covering up child sex abuse by priests.
A three-judge Superior Court panel found that Lynn's 2012 conviction had been tainted by prosecutors' presentation of nearly two dozen examples of the Philadelphia Archdiocese's failure to handle pedophilia within its ranks. Lynn, however, was only charged in connection with his supervision of two priests.
Such evidence, said Judge Emeritus John T. Bender, writing for the majority, was "unfairly prejudicial" and effectively turned Lynn into a scapegoat for the wider sins of the church. Some of those crimes predated by decades Lynn's tenure as the archdiocesan official in charge of handling sex-abuse complaints.
The court's decision again threw into doubt what District Attorney Seth Williams has touted as a historic prosecution, and raised questions about the 64-year-old cleric's future, two years into his three- to six-year sentence on child endangerment charges.
His lawyer, Thomas A. Bergstrom, said he intends once again to seek Lynn's release from prison....
Lynn was convicted after a 13-week trial and 12 days of deliberations of allowing the Rev. Edward V. Avery, who had a history of sexually abusing children, to live in a rectory of St. Jerome Catholic Church in Northeast Philadelphia, where he later assaulted a 10-year-old altar boy. Avery pleaded guilty in the 1999 attack and was sentenced to five years in prison. He is currently at the state prison in Laurel Highlands, Somerset County....
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20151223_New_trial_ordered_for_Msgr__Lynn__chief_deft__in_Phila_clergy_abuse_case.html
Philadelphia prosecutors seek rehearing in Catholic church official's clergy abuse case
Published December 28, 2015 Associated Press
PHILADELPHIA – Philadelphia's district attorney wants an appeals court to take another look at the case of a Roman Catholic church official whose conviction over his handling of sex-abuse cases was overturned last week.
Monsignor William Lynn has been imprisoned intermittently since his 2012 trial.
District Attorney Seth Williams says in a statement he has filed an application for a re-argument of Lynn's case before the full state Superior Court. He says the filing is in response to a decision by a three-judge panel on Tuesday to award a new trial to Lynn....
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/12/28/philadelphia-prosecutors-seek-rehearing-in-catholic-church-official-clergy.html
Wednesday, December 23, 2015
White Witch in a Black Robe by Wendy Hoffman - a memoir about secret high-level mind control
White Witch in a Black Robe by Wendy Hoffman is a memoir about how secret high-level mind control is performed throughout victims’ lives and the ways heads of governments and religious organizations participate in this, as well as the healing process and how the mind becomes whole again.
The memoir begins with the author’s childhood in a multi-generational cult family, her ordinary life in the normal world and her simultaneous secret tortuous world. She describes her world travels as a satanic cult queen and prophet, encountering well-known and influential people. The final section portrays the process of weaving the pieces of her mind back together with the help of a therapist, and adjusting to life with a whole mind.
This is an important book for survivors of mind control and ritual abuse, their therapists, and the general public, revealing one of the world’s best-kept and grimmest secrets. As the author says in her introduction, ‘This book is not for the delicate or for those who are convinced the world is fine just the way it is.’
Wendy Hoffman is a survivor of organized criminal abuse and has been a psychotherapist for over two decades working in general practice and the field of recovering dissociated memories. She has a Master of Social Work and two Masters of Fine Arts. Her first memoir The Enslaved Queen, about electricity and mind control, was published by Karnac Books in 2014, and her book of poetry, Forceps, is forthcoming. Now that she has brought together the separated parts of her mind, taken her life back, and achieved freedom, she wants to help other survivors also become free of mind control. ISBN 13 : 9781782203667 ISBN 10 : 1782203664 http://us.karnacbooks.com/product/white-witch-in-a-black-robe-a-true-story-about-criminal-mind-control/37567/
The memoir begins with the author’s childhood in a multi-generational cult family, her ordinary life in the normal world and her simultaneous secret tortuous world. She describes her world travels as a satanic cult queen and prophet, encountering well-known and influential people. The final section portrays the process of weaving the pieces of her mind back together with the help of a therapist, and adjusting to life with a whole mind.
This is an important book for survivors of mind control and ritual abuse, their therapists, and the general public, revealing one of the world’s best-kept and grimmest secrets. As the author says in her introduction, ‘This book is not for the delicate or for those who are convinced the world is fine just the way it is.’
Wendy Hoffman is a survivor of organized criminal abuse and has been a psychotherapist for over two decades working in general practice and the field of recovering dissociated memories. She has a Master of Social Work and two Masters of Fine Arts. Her first memoir The Enslaved Queen, about electricity and mind control, was published by Karnac Books in 2014, and her book of poetry, Forceps, is forthcoming. Now that she has brought together the separated parts of her mind, taken her life back, and achieved freedom, she wants to help other survivors also become free of mind control. ISBN 13 : 9781782203667 ISBN 10 : 1782203664 http://us.karnacbooks.com/product/white-witch-in-a-black-robe-a-true-story-about-criminal-mind-control/37567/
Tuesday, December 22, 2015
Lord Janner sex abuse case may still go on despite his death in 'trial of facts', radiographer jailed for possessing more than a million child abuse images and videos
Lord Janner sex abuse case may still go on DESPITE his death in 'trial of facts'
Labour peer denied accusations he abused boys between 1960s and 1980s
He was ruled unfit for trial then died before 'trial of facts' could be held
Former head of the CPS has said a trial without a defendant could go ahead
CPS will consider how to deal with the case at a hearing next year
By Richard Spillett for MailOnline 21 December 2015
A trial of the facts in the case against Lord Janner could still go ahead despite his death, a former Director of Public Prosecutions has said.
Janner, a one-time Labour MP for Leicester West, had been accused of 22 counts of historical sex offences against boys but died at the weekend.
His victims have complained they have been 'robbed of justice' by his passing, which is likely to prompt the scrapping of a 'trial of facts', which had been planned for April.
But Ken Macdonald, a former head of the CPS, the body which decides whether prosecutions a should go ahead, has said there is no reason the Old Bailey case could not still be heard despite Janner's death.
He told Radio 4's Today programme: 'The whole point of a trial of the facts is that it does not exist to determine the guilt or innocence of anyone....
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3368918/Janner-trial-facts-ahead-says-ex-DPP.html
Warped radiographer jailed for possessing more than a MILLION child abuse images and videos
22 Dec 2015 By Mathew Di Salvo
Christopher Daldorph, 45, spent 14 years amassing the vile collection by trawling the 'dark web' - a hidden layer of the internet used by paedophiles and drug dealers
A hospital radiographer has been jailed for possessing more than a MILLION child abuse images and videos - the biggest haul ever seen by the National Crime Agency.
Sick Christopher Daldorph, 45, spent 14 years amassing the vile collection by trawling the 'dark web' - a hidden layer of the internet used by paedophiles and drug dealers.
The married pervert was arrested in April 2015 after officers searched his home and found a number of devices containing images - featuring children as young as two.
One of the hard drives which Daldorph had concealed was found to contain 1.8 terabytes of footage data - the equivalent of 3,000 full-length feature films.
He faced charges today relating to 141,539 pictures and videos, but officers are still trawling through his computers, and reckon he stored more than ONE MILLION....
The vile material included thousands of Category A abuse images and videos - the most extreme kind.
When officers searched his house he admitted his guilt, and gave them the passwords to access the numerous laptops, hard drives and USBs containing the images....
Christian Hall, who led the investigation for the NCA, said: "Daldorph was responsible for amassing hundreds of thousands of indecent images, some of them the most extreme possible involving very young children.
"Each of those involved a child being abused in some of the worst ways imaginable.
"While we have no evidence to show he committed any contact offences himself, what he has done has perpetuated demand for products that can only be produced through the abuse of children."....
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/warped-radiographer-jailed-possessing-more-7058133
Labour peer denied accusations he abused boys between 1960s and 1980s
He was ruled unfit for trial then died before 'trial of facts' could be held
Former head of the CPS has said a trial without a defendant could go ahead
CPS will consider how to deal with the case at a hearing next year
By Richard Spillett for MailOnline 21 December 2015
A trial of the facts in the case against Lord Janner could still go ahead despite his death, a former Director of Public Prosecutions has said.
Janner, a one-time Labour MP for Leicester West, had been accused of 22 counts of historical sex offences against boys but died at the weekend.
His victims have complained they have been 'robbed of justice' by his passing, which is likely to prompt the scrapping of a 'trial of facts', which had been planned for April.
But Ken Macdonald, a former head of the CPS, the body which decides whether prosecutions a should go ahead, has said there is no reason the Old Bailey case could not still be heard despite Janner's death.
He told Radio 4's Today programme: 'The whole point of a trial of the facts is that it does not exist to determine the guilt or innocence of anyone....
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3368918/Janner-trial-facts-ahead-says-ex-DPP.html
Warped radiographer jailed for possessing more than a MILLION child abuse images and videos
22 Dec 2015 By Mathew Di Salvo
Christopher Daldorph, 45, spent 14 years amassing the vile collection by trawling the 'dark web' - a hidden layer of the internet used by paedophiles and drug dealers
A hospital radiographer has been jailed for possessing more than a MILLION child abuse images and videos - the biggest haul ever seen by the National Crime Agency.
Sick Christopher Daldorph, 45, spent 14 years amassing the vile collection by trawling the 'dark web' - a hidden layer of the internet used by paedophiles and drug dealers.
The married pervert was arrested in April 2015 after officers searched his home and found a number of devices containing images - featuring children as young as two.
One of the hard drives which Daldorph had concealed was found to contain 1.8 terabytes of footage data - the equivalent of 3,000 full-length feature films.
He faced charges today relating to 141,539 pictures and videos, but officers are still trawling through his computers, and reckon he stored more than ONE MILLION....
The vile material included thousands of Category A abuse images and videos - the most extreme kind.
When officers searched his house he admitted his guilt, and gave them the passwords to access the numerous laptops, hard drives and USBs containing the images....
Christian Hall, who led the investigation for the NCA, said: "Daldorph was responsible for amassing hundreds of thousands of indecent images, some of them the most extreme possible involving very young children.
"Each of those involved a child being abused in some of the worst ways imaginable.
"While we have no evidence to show he committed any contact offences himself, what he has done has perpetuated demand for products that can only be produced through the abuse of children."....
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/warped-radiographer-jailed-possessing-more-7058133
Wednesday, December 16, 2015
Rotherham victim's sex abuse claims 'dismissed by police officer', Rotherham sex abuse trial: Arshid Hussain 'had sex with child 100 times'
Rotherham victim's sex abuse claims 'dismissed by police officer'
Court hears that complainant, then aged 12, was accused of lying after telling officer about the abuse
Lisa O'Carroll Tuesday 15 December 2015
A police officer in Rotherham dismissed claims of child sexual abuse by a 12-year-old girl and told her she was lying, Sheffield crown court heard.
The complainant, who is now 31, reported the abuse she suffered to an officer after telling a staff member at the care home where she lived about being assaulted.
In an interview taped by police ahead of the trial and shown to the jury, she said the officer took her out of the home in a car to discuss the matter. He drove her down a country lane and told her she was making up the stories. The complainant said: “He ripped loads of paperwork up and said I was lying.”
He did not take a statement from her and she did not hear from any other police officers afterwards, the court heard. She said she did not know the officer’s name, but he was known by girls at the home as “Kimble the thimble”.
A second complainant in the trial said she had a baby after being raped by two of the defendants at a pub. The woman, now 36, claimed she started being abused, aged 11, at the hands of “Mad Ash”, a man the prosecution say is defendant Arshid Hussain....
Hussain denies having met the woman in person. The 39-year-old, of no fixed abode, denies one rape, five indecent assaults, one count of procuring a girl under 21 to have unlawful sexual intercourse with another, false imprisonment, three counts of indecency with a child, one count of procuring a woman under 21 to become a common prostitute, two assaults occasioning actual bodily harm, and one count of making threats to kill.
All seven defendants in the case deny all 52 counts including rape, indecent assault, conspiracy to rape, false imprisonment and procuring a woman for prostitution or sex with another....
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/dec/15/rotherham-victims-sex-abuse-claims-dismissed-police-officer
Rotherham sex abuse trial: Arshid Hussain 'had sex with child 100 times'
From the section Sheffield & South Yorkshire Wednesday 16 December 2015
An alleged victim of child sexual exploitation has said she was forced to have sex with Asian men against her will in houses, a park and churchyard.
The woman, who cannot be named, told Sheffield Crown Court she was given heroin in exchange for sex and beaten up when she tried to leave a house.
The woman said Arshid Hussain, one of seven defendants, had sex with her about 100 times from the age of 11.
All seven defendants deny the range of charges they face in court.
The woman said she was introduced by Mr Hussain to 10 or 11 other men for her to have sex with.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-35115874
Court hears that complainant, then aged 12, was accused of lying after telling officer about the abuse
Lisa O'Carroll Tuesday 15 December 2015
A police officer in Rotherham dismissed claims of child sexual abuse by a 12-year-old girl and told her she was lying, Sheffield crown court heard.
The complainant, who is now 31, reported the abuse she suffered to an officer after telling a staff member at the care home where she lived about being assaulted.
In an interview taped by police ahead of the trial and shown to the jury, she said the officer took her out of the home in a car to discuss the matter. He drove her down a country lane and told her she was making up the stories. The complainant said: “He ripped loads of paperwork up and said I was lying.”
He did not take a statement from her and she did not hear from any other police officers afterwards, the court heard. She said she did not know the officer’s name, but he was known by girls at the home as “Kimble the thimble”.
A second complainant in the trial said she had a baby after being raped by two of the defendants at a pub. The woman, now 36, claimed she started being abused, aged 11, at the hands of “Mad Ash”, a man the prosecution say is defendant Arshid Hussain....
Hussain denies having met the woman in person. The 39-year-old, of no fixed abode, denies one rape, five indecent assaults, one count of procuring a girl under 21 to have unlawful sexual intercourse with another, false imprisonment, three counts of indecency with a child, one count of procuring a woman under 21 to become a common prostitute, two assaults occasioning actual bodily harm, and one count of making threats to kill.
All seven defendants in the case deny all 52 counts including rape, indecent assault, conspiracy to rape, false imprisonment and procuring a woman for prostitution or sex with another....
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/dec/15/rotherham-victims-sex-abuse-claims-dismissed-police-officer
Rotherham sex abuse trial: Arshid Hussain 'had sex with child 100 times'
From the section Sheffield & South Yorkshire Wednesday 16 December 2015
An alleged victim of child sexual exploitation has said she was forced to have sex with Asian men against her will in houses, a park and churchyard.
The woman, who cannot be named, told Sheffield Crown Court she was given heroin in exchange for sex and beaten up when she tried to leave a house.
The woman said Arshid Hussain, one of seven defendants, had sex with her about 100 times from the age of 11.
All seven defendants deny the range of charges they face in court.
The woman said she was introduced by Mr Hussain to 10 or 11 other men for her to have sex with.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-35115874
Tuesday, December 15, 2015
Cosby sues 7 accusers for defamation, Cardinal Pell told to attend child abuse inquiry after video link request denied
Cosby sues 7 accusers for defamation, seeks damages and retractions
By Ralph Ellis, CNN Mon December 14, 2015
Bill Cosby has struck back against some of the dozens of women who've accused him of sexual assault.
The world-famous comedian countersued seven women who'd sued him for defamation, saying they actually defamed him.
By saying he sexually assaulted them, the women hurt his reputation so much that plans for a new family comedy on NBC were derailed, the counterclaim said.
The women made "malicious, opportunistic, and false and defamatory accusations of sexual misconduct against" Cosby, his lawyer Monique Pressley said in a statement. They made the accusations to hurt Cosby's reputation and to obtain financial gain, Pressley said.
Cosby is seeking unspecified damages and public retractions from the seven women: Tamara Green, Therese Serignese, Linda Traitz, Louisa Moritz, Barbara Bowman, Joan Tarshis and Angela Leslie.
The lawyer for the seven women, Joseph Cammarata, issued a statement on Monday saying his clients want their day in court and "expect that their good name and reputation will be restored."
"If anyone is surprised by Cosby's actions today, they shouldn't be," Cammarata said. "He's taken a page out of the defense attorney's playbook in an effort to shift the focus of this legitimate inquiry. It is curious that he has filed a claim only against these seven women, when there are scores of other women who have made similar allegations of sexual abuse and assault against Mr. Cosby."
Cosby also denied he had sexually assaulted any of the seven women. He has not been charged with any crime. More than 40 women have come forward to publicly accuse Cosby, 78, of assaulting them over four decades, often saying he supplied them with drugs. Cosby's lawyers or representative denied the accusations in the media....
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/14/us/bill-cosby-sues-accusers/index.html
Cardinal Pell told to attend child abuse inquiry after video link request denied
Request from Australia’s highest-ranking cleric to appear by video link because of health reasons has been refused by chair of royal commission Melissa Davey Thursday 10 December 2015
The chair of the royal commission into institutional responses to child sex abuse has refused to allow Cardinal George Pell to appear by video link, instead deferring the hearing until February to ensure Pell can appear in person.
A lawyer representing Pell, Allan Myers, made an application for Pell to give evidence next week via video link from Rome rather than appear in person, citing health reasons....
Stephen Woods – who was abused by the notorious paedophile priest Gerald Francis Ridsdale and the convicted paedophile brother Robert Charles Best while a student at St Alipius primary school – told Guardian Australia that he was deeply angered that Pell would not be appearing next week....
Pell, Australia’s highest-ranking cleric, was due to give evidence about child sexual abuse that occurred in institutions run by Catholic church authorities in and around Ballarat, and evidence about measures taken by the archdiocese of Melbourne to investigate child sexual abuse, known within the church as “the Melbourne Response”, before Melbourne’s county court....
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/dec/11/cardinal-george-pell-to-appear-in-person-at-child-sex-abuse-inquiry
By Ralph Ellis, CNN Mon December 14, 2015
Bill Cosby has struck back against some of the dozens of women who've accused him of sexual assault.
The world-famous comedian countersued seven women who'd sued him for defamation, saying they actually defamed him.
By saying he sexually assaulted them, the women hurt his reputation so much that plans for a new family comedy on NBC were derailed, the counterclaim said.
The women made "malicious, opportunistic, and false and defamatory accusations of sexual misconduct against" Cosby, his lawyer Monique Pressley said in a statement. They made the accusations to hurt Cosby's reputation and to obtain financial gain, Pressley said.
Cosby is seeking unspecified damages and public retractions from the seven women: Tamara Green, Therese Serignese, Linda Traitz, Louisa Moritz, Barbara Bowman, Joan Tarshis and Angela Leslie.
The lawyer for the seven women, Joseph Cammarata, issued a statement on Monday saying his clients want their day in court and "expect that their good name and reputation will be restored."
"If anyone is surprised by Cosby's actions today, they shouldn't be," Cammarata said. "He's taken a page out of the defense attorney's playbook in an effort to shift the focus of this legitimate inquiry. It is curious that he has filed a claim only against these seven women, when there are scores of other women who have made similar allegations of sexual abuse and assault against Mr. Cosby."
Cosby also denied he had sexually assaulted any of the seven women. He has not been charged with any crime. More than 40 women have come forward to publicly accuse Cosby, 78, of assaulting them over four decades, often saying he supplied them with drugs. Cosby's lawyers or representative denied the accusations in the media....
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/14/us/bill-cosby-sues-accusers/index.html
Cardinal Pell told to attend child abuse inquiry after video link request denied
Request from Australia’s highest-ranking cleric to appear by video link because of health reasons has been refused by chair of royal commission Melissa Davey Thursday 10 December 2015
The chair of the royal commission into institutional responses to child sex abuse has refused to allow Cardinal George Pell to appear by video link, instead deferring the hearing until February to ensure Pell can appear in person.
A lawyer representing Pell, Allan Myers, made an application for Pell to give evidence next week via video link from Rome rather than appear in person, citing health reasons....
Stephen Woods – who was abused by the notorious paedophile priest Gerald Francis Ridsdale and the convicted paedophile brother Robert Charles Best while a student at St Alipius primary school – told Guardian Australia that he was deeply angered that Pell would not be appearing next week....
Pell, Australia’s highest-ranking cleric, was due to give evidence about child sexual abuse that occurred in institutions run by Catholic church authorities in and around Ballarat, and evidence about measures taken by the archdiocese of Melbourne to investigate child sexual abuse, known within the church as “the Melbourne Response”, before Melbourne’s county court....
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/dec/11/cardinal-george-pell-to-appear-in-person-at-child-sex-abuse-inquiry
Thursday, December 10, 2015
Teachers and medical staff among 682 child abuse suspects arrested
Teachers and medical staff among 682 child abuse suspects arrested
More than a hundred people in positions of trust among those arrested since March, newly released figures reveal
Jamie Grierson Thursday 10 December 2015
A senior police chief has expressed fears that child abuse in Britain is on the rise as new data revealed teachers and medical staff were among hundreds of potential sex offenders arrested in the last nine months.
Chief constable Simon Bailey, the national policing lead for child protection, said it was his professional opinion that higher figures reflected more abuse being perpetrated rather than an increase in the number of victims coming forward....
Some 104 people in positions of trust were among 682 potential sex offenders arrested since March, according to figures from the National Crime Agency and police.
Among these figures are 32 working in education, 23 working in medicine and care, 15 working in law enforcement, criminal justice, armed forces and government. There were no MPs or lords arrested.
Of those arrested, 93% were not previously known to law enforcement in relation to child abuse and 147 have been charged.
In addition, in the six months to September this year, 187 British victims of abuse have been identified in seized indecent images – already higher than the 177 identified in the previous 12 months.
A total of 399 children have been safeguarded as a result of the operation....
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/dec/10/teachers-and-medical-staff-among-682-child-abuse-suspects-arrested
More than a hundred people in positions of trust among those arrested since March, newly released figures reveal
Jamie Grierson Thursday 10 December 2015
A senior police chief has expressed fears that child abuse in Britain is on the rise as new data revealed teachers and medical staff were among hundreds of potential sex offenders arrested in the last nine months.
Chief constable Simon Bailey, the national policing lead for child protection, said it was his professional opinion that higher figures reflected more abuse being perpetrated rather than an increase in the number of victims coming forward....
Some 104 people in positions of trust were among 682 potential sex offenders arrested since March, according to figures from the National Crime Agency and police.
Among these figures are 32 working in education, 23 working in medicine and care, 15 working in law enforcement, criminal justice, armed forces and government. There were no MPs or lords arrested.
Of those arrested, 93% were not previously known to law enforcement in relation to child abuse and 147 have been charged.
In addition, in the six months to September this year, 187 British victims of abuse have been identified in seized indecent images – already higher than the 177 identified in the previous 12 months.
A total of 399 children have been safeguarded as a result of the operation....
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/dec/10/teachers-and-medical-staff-among-682-child-abuse-suspects-arrested
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
Convicted child abuser Peter Dundas Walbran arrested teaching at Thai school, Attempted murder recounted by giggling teens
Convicted child abuser Peter Dundas Walbran arrested teaching at Thai school
December 9, 2015 Lindsay Murdoch South-East Asia correspondent for Fairfax Media
Ubon Ratchathani, Thailand: Police have detained a Sydney man jailed in 2012 over the rape and molestation of Indonesian boys as young as eight who was found teaching at a school in north-eastern Thailand.
Fairfax Media witnessed police confronting Peter Dundas Walbran, a former head of the Australian International School in Jakarta, with a warrant to search his apartment on suspicion of possessing child pornography as he was leaving to go to school on Wednesday....
That Walbran came to be teaching children in Asia again, after being deported from Indonesia to Australia last year, raises questions about the effectiveness of Australia's National Child Offender Register.
Melbourne investigator Glen Hulley tracked 59-year-old Walbran to an international school in Ubon Ratchathani, 630 kilometres from Bangkok, where he has been teaching children aged 12 to 17 for eight months....
Walbran was sentenced to three years' jail on the Indonesian island of Lombok in 2012 for offences that shocked investigators, including the repeated rape and abuse of children over a period of nine years....
Indonesian authorities alleged that Walbran befriended children on beaches and paid them as little as the equivalent of $3 after committing acts on them that distressed investigators....
http://www.smh.com.au/world/convicted-child-abuser-peter-dundas-walbran-arrested-teaching-at-thai-school-20151206-glgply.html
Crime Read: Attempted murder recounted by giggling teens
December 3, 2015
Kate Kyriacou The Courier-Mail
THE two girls sat just off the sandy path of the Tanglewood track, waiting for their prey.
They’d talked about robbing someone but Sarah had been hacking into a tree trunk with the knife she’d brought. And she’d been talking for years about killing someone. Hopefully several someones.
When the woman with the bum bag appeared on the shady Noosa walking trail – a cooler alternative on hot days to the blinding white sand of the beach – they decided she was a good fit.
She was alone, for a start. Older, too. And maybe the bum bag clipped around her waist had a hidden stash of money....
They followed her for 20 minutes. Twenty minutes of Sarah steeling herself, getting ready for this thing she’d dreamed about, fantasised over, for so long.
This had nothing to do with the devil, with her obsession for the occult. This was her. This was what she wanted.
Sarah pulled the knife from under her shirt and ran forward, lunging at the unsuspecting bushwalker.
She crushed her hand over the woman’s mouth to stifle her screams and started hacking at her throat.
Aleaha chased with a pair of wooden nunchakus in hand. As Sarah stabbed and slashed, pushing the knife into the terrified woman’s side, Aleaha drew back her arm and brought the nunckakus down on their victim’s head....
They were still in Year 10 when they began to dabble in Satanism. They used the computers in the school library to download material from the internet. Sarah didn’t have the internet at home.
They used the internet to order a copy of the Satanic bible and began reading it obsessively. They kept journals and diaries on their new religion.
For Sarah’s parents, it was as though she had changed overnight. Their gentle, animal-loving daughter had been very immature for her age but she’d also been creative and bright. She wrote imaginative stories and poems. She was obsessively neat and clean. She took great care with her appearance.
She’d gone to a party with friends one night. The next day, everything was different.
“It was like throwing a switch,” her mother would explain in an interview in 1999.
“Sarah had always been very aware of her appearance. She liked her hair to be perfect. And then suddenly I had to force her to wash her hair … to make herself look decent.
“Her whole personality seemed to change overnight.”
Their only child was soon spending days on end locked away in her bedroom listening to death metal....
The girls had not given up on their infatuation with Satanism.
Sarah was “Cargulin” the Antichrist and number two on the satanic totem pole. Aleaha was “Satiryn”, the Angel of Sorrows – ranked number three.
Sarah had made her a certificate. Aleaha was her “satanic, sadistic ritual sex partner”.
“Am I really Satan’s, am I that worthy?” Aleaha had written.
They’d sacrificed animals as part of their obsession. They’d shared blood.
But Sarah wanted more. She fantasised about killing people.
“Spill the blood of all!” she wrote on a blood splattered journal page.
“Slaughter their innocent souls!! Cast their worthless prayers!! Leach the light away!! Bring evil to this land!! PURE MASSACRE!!”....
“About three years ago it (the dream) started. It’s not much to do with the occult thing. My parents call me a Satanist … really Satanism doesn’t have anything to do with killing people … (it’s) just a side interest. My interest is killing people.”....
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/crime-and-justice/crime-read-attempted-murder-recounted-by-giggling-teens/news-story/43f8756495bc1158f1a5e9a477b348f7
Monday, December 7, 2015
Catholic Church saves $62 million on sexual abuse claims, Priest warned police officer to drop investigation or lose job, child abuse hearing told, Lord Janner: Judge rules dementia sufferer is unfit to plead in child sex abuse trial
Catholic Church saves $62 million on sexual abuse claims
The Catholic Church avoided paying up to $62 million in compensation to sexual abuse victims by creating the controversial Melbourne Response program, which capped payments at $50,000 for each victim.
Internal documents also show church leaders ordered written records about sex abuse be "kept to a minimum" to avoid losing lawsuits, and hired one of the country's best spin doctors in a bid to prepare for the scandal in the early 1990s....
In August 1996, Archbishop Pell discussed the idea of creating a special trust to "avoid an open-ended call on funding for counselling fees" for abuse victims, to only days later canvass suggestions of how the church could financially support three paedophile priests set to be released from prison.
Meetings also describe plans for multimillion-dollar property deals and commissioning a new painting of the archbishop, while senior leaders were also expressing concern about "being seen to apply the maximum penalty" against paedophile priests, the protection of church assets and their own exposure to liability in sexual abuse lawsuits.... http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/catholic-church-saves-62-million-on-sexual-abuse-claims-20151205-glgavf.html
Priest warned police officer to drop investigation or lose job, child abuse hearing told
Father Peter Taffe ‘told officer Denis Ryan he would be out of a job’ if he pursued an investigation into the Mildura parish priest Monsignor John Day
Australian Associated Press Sunday 6 December 2015
A Victorian priest warned a police officer to drop his investigation into a colleague over child abuse allegations, an inquiry has heard.
Father Peter Taffe told the police officer he would be out of a job if he pursued an investigation into the Mildura parish priest Monsignor John Day, the child abuse royal commission was told.
Senior counsel assisting the commission, Gail Furness SC, said 140 people had made child sex abuse claims against priests and others in religious orders in the diocese of Ballarat since 1980. Ninety per cent of the claims were against seven priests, including 78 against Gerald Francis Ridsdale and 15 against Day.
Furness said a man had told Mildura assistant priest Taffe in January 1972 his son had been abused by Day. She said Taffe’s first words had been: “I thought he was over all this.”
A former Mildura police officer, Denis Ryan, had already been investigating complaints against Day, she said, and would tell the commission Taffe had warned him in December 1971: “Drop the inquiry into Monsignor Day or you’ll be out of a job.”
Ryan wrote to then Ballarat bishop Ronald Mulkearns setting out allegations from seven complainants. The inquiry was told Mulkearns had said he had been assured police were satisfied there was no substance to the charges, and it was impossible to move Day out of Mildura.
“Any such move would be tantamount to a public declaration that I consider him guilty,” he said....
Furness said Mulkearns had told another Mortlake victim’s mother: “How am I to take the word of a child over one of my priests?” http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/dec/07/priest-warned-police-officer-to-drop-investigation-or-lose-job-child-abuse-hearing-told
Lord Janner: Judge rules dementia sufferer is unfit to plead in child sex abuse trial
Court hearing on 87-year-old peer's mental health is told former Labour grandee is suffering from 'advanced and disabling' dementia
By David Barrett, Home Affairs Correspondent
07 Dec 2015
Lord Janner has been declared unfit to plead in a criminal trial over a range of sex abuse charges dating back 50 years, a senior judge has ruled.
In a hearing at the Old Bailey on the 87-year-old's mental health, Mr Justice Openshaw said the peer was suffering from "advanced and disabling" dementia.
He detailed reports from four leading psychiatrists and psychologists which had been commissioned by both prosecution and defence - all of which agreed the peer's mental health was very poor. Janner did not attend the latest court hearing....
Janner is accused of 15 counts of indecent assault and seven counts of a separate sexual offence against a total of nine alleged victims in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
Twenty-one of the offences relate to complainants who were aged 16 or under at the time.... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/12036837/Lord-Janner-Judge-rules-dementia-sufferer-is-unfit-to-plead-in-child-sex-abuse-trial.html
The Catholic Church avoided paying up to $62 million in compensation to sexual abuse victims by creating the controversial Melbourne Response program, which capped payments at $50,000 for each victim.
Internal documents also show church leaders ordered written records about sex abuse be "kept to a minimum" to avoid losing lawsuits, and hired one of the country's best spin doctors in a bid to prepare for the scandal in the early 1990s....
In August 1996, Archbishop Pell discussed the idea of creating a special trust to "avoid an open-ended call on funding for counselling fees" for abuse victims, to only days later canvass suggestions of how the church could financially support three paedophile priests set to be released from prison.
Meetings also describe plans for multimillion-dollar property deals and commissioning a new painting of the archbishop, while senior leaders were also expressing concern about "being seen to apply the maximum penalty" against paedophile priests, the protection of church assets and their own exposure to liability in sexual abuse lawsuits.... http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/catholic-church-saves-62-million-on-sexual-abuse-claims-20151205-glgavf.html
Priest warned police officer to drop investigation or lose job, child abuse hearing told
Father Peter Taffe ‘told officer Denis Ryan he would be out of a job’ if he pursued an investigation into the Mildura parish priest Monsignor John Day
Australian Associated Press Sunday 6 December 2015
A Victorian priest warned a police officer to drop his investigation into a colleague over child abuse allegations, an inquiry has heard.
Father Peter Taffe told the police officer he would be out of a job if he pursued an investigation into the Mildura parish priest Monsignor John Day, the child abuse royal commission was told.
Senior counsel assisting the commission, Gail Furness SC, said 140 people had made child sex abuse claims against priests and others in religious orders in the diocese of Ballarat since 1980. Ninety per cent of the claims were against seven priests, including 78 against Gerald Francis Ridsdale and 15 against Day.
Furness said a man had told Mildura assistant priest Taffe in January 1972 his son had been abused by Day. She said Taffe’s first words had been: “I thought he was over all this.”
A former Mildura police officer, Denis Ryan, had already been investigating complaints against Day, she said, and would tell the commission Taffe had warned him in December 1971: “Drop the inquiry into Monsignor Day or you’ll be out of a job.”
Ryan wrote to then Ballarat bishop Ronald Mulkearns setting out allegations from seven complainants. The inquiry was told Mulkearns had said he had been assured police were satisfied there was no substance to the charges, and it was impossible to move Day out of Mildura.
“Any such move would be tantamount to a public declaration that I consider him guilty,” he said....
Furness said Mulkearns had told another Mortlake victim’s mother: “How am I to take the word of a child over one of my priests?” http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/dec/07/priest-warned-police-officer-to-drop-investigation-or-lose-job-child-abuse-hearing-told
Lord Janner: Judge rules dementia sufferer is unfit to plead in child sex abuse trial
Court hearing on 87-year-old peer's mental health is told former Labour grandee is suffering from 'advanced and disabling' dementia
By David Barrett, Home Affairs Correspondent
07 Dec 2015
Lord Janner has been declared unfit to plead in a criminal trial over a range of sex abuse charges dating back 50 years, a senior judge has ruled.
In a hearing at the Old Bailey on the 87-year-old's mental health, Mr Justice Openshaw said the peer was suffering from "advanced and disabling" dementia.
He detailed reports from four leading psychiatrists and psychologists which had been commissioned by both prosecution and defence - all of which agreed the peer's mental health was very poor. Janner did not attend the latest court hearing....
Janner is accused of 15 counts of indecent assault and seven counts of a separate sexual offence against a total of nine alleged victims in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
Twenty-one of the offences relate to complainants who were aged 16 or under at the time.... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/12036837/Lord-Janner-Judge-rules-dementia-sufferer-is-unfit-to-plead-in-child-sex-abuse-trial.html
Thursday, December 3, 2015
UK police 2,228 child abuse suspects, Catholic church knew it had abuse 'time bombs', child sex abuse inquiry hears
Operation Hydrant: UK police identify 2,228 child abuse suspects
1 December 2015
More than 2,200 suspects are being investigated by UK police probing historical child sex abuse allegations. Figures from Operation Hydrant - which was set up by the National Police Chiefs' Council - show the total has risen by almost 800 since May. It includes 302 people of "public prominence", including 99 politicians and 147 from television, film or radio. Some 761 different institutions are now on the Hydrant database, including 288 schools and 204 children's homes.
Operation Hydrant was set up last summer to oversee the investigation of allegations of "non-recent" child sex abuse within institutions or by people of public prominence. It does not conduct any investigations itself, but gathers information from other inquiries carried out by police forces in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Of the 2,228 suspects currently under investigation:
Some 286 are now dead, while 554 are classified as unknown or unidentified
Among those of public prominence, 39 come from the music industry and 17 from the world of sport
A total of 1,217 are alleged offenders who operated within institutions, including 86 religious institutions, 39 medical establishments and 25 prisons or young offenders institutes
Other institutions named include 22 sports venues, 10 community institutions, such as youth clubs, and 81 other institutions, such as guest houses....
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-34977255
Catholic church knew it had abuse 'time bombs', child sex abuse inquiry hears
‘The big time bomb was ticking away’ in Ballarat diocese, former Melbourne archdiocese vicar-general Bishop Peter Connors tells royal commission
Australian Associated Press Thursday 3 December 2015
The Catholic church knew it had child abuse “time bombs” ticking away in a number of Australian dioceses, an inquiry has heard.
A special issues committee meeting at the Australian Catholic Bishops conference in 1992 noted: “It was agreed that there are serious time bombs ticking away in a number of dioceses at the present time.”
That was the case in a number of dioceses, former Melbourne archdiocese vicar-general Bishop Peter Connors, who chaired the committee, told the child abuse royal commission.
It also included Melbourne’s Doveton parish, where a succession of paedophile priests were sent.
“There would certainly be other dioceses where that problem, of time bombs ticking away, existed,” Bishop Connors said.
“That would certainly be the case, I think particularly, in the diocese of Ballarat, the big time bomb was ticking away there.”
The meeting of special issues groups, set up to deal with allegations against priests, noted it was important the alleged offender be treated fairly.
Bishop Connors agreed with Gail Furness SC, senior counsel assisting the commission, who said there was little, if any, concern about the victims.
The commission heard there was a culture in the Catholic church of keeping abuse allegations secret.
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/dec/03/catholic-church-knew-it-had-abuse-time-bombs-child-sex-abuse-inquiry-hears
1 December 2015
More than 2,200 suspects are being investigated by UK police probing historical child sex abuse allegations. Figures from Operation Hydrant - which was set up by the National Police Chiefs' Council - show the total has risen by almost 800 since May. It includes 302 people of "public prominence", including 99 politicians and 147 from television, film or radio. Some 761 different institutions are now on the Hydrant database, including 288 schools and 204 children's homes.
Operation Hydrant was set up last summer to oversee the investigation of allegations of "non-recent" child sex abuse within institutions or by people of public prominence. It does not conduct any investigations itself, but gathers information from other inquiries carried out by police forces in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Of the 2,228 suspects currently under investigation:
Some 286 are now dead, while 554 are classified as unknown or unidentified
Among those of public prominence, 39 come from the music industry and 17 from the world of sport
A total of 1,217 are alleged offenders who operated within institutions, including 86 religious institutions, 39 medical establishments and 25 prisons or young offenders institutes
Other institutions named include 22 sports venues, 10 community institutions, such as youth clubs, and 81 other institutions, such as guest houses....
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-34977255
Catholic church knew it had abuse 'time bombs', child sex abuse inquiry hears
‘The big time bomb was ticking away’ in Ballarat diocese, former Melbourne archdiocese vicar-general Bishop Peter Connors tells royal commission
Australian Associated Press Thursday 3 December 2015
The Catholic church knew it had child abuse “time bombs” ticking away in a number of Australian dioceses, an inquiry has heard.
A special issues committee meeting at the Australian Catholic Bishops conference in 1992 noted: “It was agreed that there are serious time bombs ticking away in a number of dioceses at the present time.”
That was the case in a number of dioceses, former Melbourne archdiocese vicar-general Bishop Peter Connors, who chaired the committee, told the child abuse royal commission.
It also included Melbourne’s Doveton parish, where a succession of paedophile priests were sent.
“There would certainly be other dioceses where that problem, of time bombs ticking away, existed,” Bishop Connors said.
“That would certainly be the case, I think particularly, in the diocese of Ballarat, the big time bomb was ticking away there.”
The meeting of special issues groups, set up to deal with allegations against priests, noted it was important the alleged offender be treated fairly.
Bishop Connors agreed with Gail Furness SC, senior counsel assisting the commission, who said there was little, if any, concern about the victims.
The commission heard there was a culture in the Catholic church of keeping abuse allegations secret.
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/dec/03/catholic-church-knew-it-had-abuse-time-bombs-child-sex-abuse-inquiry-hears
Wednesday, December 2, 2015
Bill Cosby Lawyers Seek to Reseal Court Records, Jehovah's Witnesses 'fostered distrust' of secular authority
"Since 1950 the church has received 1,066 allegations against its members and did not report any of them to police. Stewart’s recommendations arise out of a public hearing into the Jehovah’s Witnesses and its oversight body, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Australia, in July."
Bill Cosby Lawyers Seek to Reseal Court Records
By GRAHAM BOWLEY DEC. 2, 2015
Lawyers for Bill Cosby argued in a court filing on Wednesday that a federal judge in Philadelphia had violated Mr. Cosby’s rights and set a dangerous precedent for other public figures by unsealing court records from a 2005 lawsuit against the entertainer.
In the filing, the lawyers argued that the judge had been wrong in July to release the documents, which included an acknowledgment, under questioning, by Mr. Cosby that in the 1970s he obtained quaaludes to give them to young women with whom he wanted to have sex. Mr. Cosby’s team is seeking to have the documents resealed.
Mr. Cosby’s lawyers had fought the release of the court records after The Associated Press requested that they be unsealed....
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/03/business/media/cosby-lawyers-seek-to-reseal-court-records.html
Jehovah's Witnesses 'fostered distrust' of secular authority – royal commission counsel
Church’s response to child sexual abuse fell short of best practice, says Angus Stewart QC in his damning submission, published on Tuesday
Australian Associated Press Tuesday 1 December 2015
A damning submission to the royal commission on child sexual abuse has recommended 77 adverse findings against the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Australia.
It was open to the commission to find the church fostered distrust of secular authorities and its response to child sexual abuse fell short of best practice, counsel to the commission Angus Stewart QC found in his submission, published on Tuesday.
Since 1950 the church has received 1,066 allegations against its members and did not report any of them to police.
Stewart’s recommendations arise out of a public hearing into the Jehovah’s Witnesses and its oversight body, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Australia, in July.
He said the Witnesses received about three or four reports of allegations of child abuse a month.
The Jehovah’s Witness organisation presented its members with “conflicting and ambiguous teachings regarding their relationship with secular authorities, thereby fostering a distrust of such authorities”, Stewart said....
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/dec/01/jehovahs-witnesses-fostered-distrust-of-secular-authority-royal-commission-counsel
Bill Cosby Lawyers Seek to Reseal Court Records
By GRAHAM BOWLEY DEC. 2, 2015
Lawyers for Bill Cosby argued in a court filing on Wednesday that a federal judge in Philadelphia had violated Mr. Cosby’s rights and set a dangerous precedent for other public figures by unsealing court records from a 2005 lawsuit against the entertainer.
In the filing, the lawyers argued that the judge had been wrong in July to release the documents, which included an acknowledgment, under questioning, by Mr. Cosby that in the 1970s he obtained quaaludes to give them to young women with whom he wanted to have sex. Mr. Cosby’s team is seeking to have the documents resealed.
Mr. Cosby’s lawyers had fought the release of the court records after The Associated Press requested that they be unsealed....
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/03/business/media/cosby-lawyers-seek-to-reseal-court-records.html
Jehovah's Witnesses 'fostered distrust' of secular authority – royal commission counsel
Church’s response to child sexual abuse fell short of best practice, says Angus Stewart QC in his damning submission, published on Tuesday
Australian Associated Press Tuesday 1 December 2015
A damning submission to the royal commission on child sexual abuse has recommended 77 adverse findings against the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Australia.
It was open to the commission to find the church fostered distrust of secular authorities and its response to child sexual abuse fell short of best practice, counsel to the commission Angus Stewart QC found in his submission, published on Tuesday.
Since 1950 the church has received 1,066 allegations against its members and did not report any of them to police.
Stewart’s recommendations arise out of a public hearing into the Jehovah’s Witnesses and its oversight body, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of Australia, in July.
He said the Witnesses received about three or four reports of allegations of child abuse a month.
The Jehovah’s Witness organisation presented its members with “conflicting and ambiguous teachings regarding their relationship with secular authorities, thereby fostering a distrust of such authorities”, Stewart said....
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/dec/01/jehovahs-witnesses-fostered-distrust-of-secular-authority-royal-commission-counsel
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
One in five Peace Corps volunteers sexually assaulted blamed, punished for reporting sexual assault?, Fraternity president testifies against brothers in pledge's death
Peace Corps volunteers blamed, punished for reporting sexual assault?
CBS News November 30, 2015
Nearly 7,000 Peace Corps currently serve in about 65 countries. Roughly one in five of them is sexually assaulted during that service, according to the results of a recent anonymous Peace Corps safety questionnaire, obtained exclusively by CBS News.
The report also shows that nearly half don't report the assaults.
Pressure to change a culture of victim-blaming goes back years, but some survivors still claim they are blamed or punished. One volunteer wrote that in reporting an assault, "I made myself a target."
"My thought was they're going to rape me. These men are going to rape me," said Danae Smith, who volunteered in the remote Dominican Republic town of Los Mosquitos for eight months.
In April, two men with machetes forced the 23-year-old off the village's main road. Smith got away and reported the assault to the Peace Corps and within a week, the agency told her she was going home.
"They also told me that my attack had occurred because I had been walking in my site and that as a volunteer, it was my job to have been more proactive to prevent it from happening," Smith said.
More than 500 volunteers have reported experiencing a sexual assault in a little over two years. CBS News spoke with nearly a dozen who questioned how their recent cases were handled. They told us they felt criticized and were threatened they would be fired....
Inspector General reports show multiple cases of Peace Corps personnel - accused in sexual assaults - resigning ahead of administrative action, then being allowed to re-apply to the agency.
A 2014 Inspector General report warned the Peace Corps' screening process for re-hiring was not detecting past misconduct.
One volunteer who admitted to violating the agency's sexual assault policy was later hired to work at the agency's headquarters in Washington, D.C.
"That person is no longer employed by Peace Corps. But I will also say that we are putting in place systems, mechanisms that will make sure that that does not happen again in the future," said Peace Corps director Carrie Hessler-Radelet. "This is unacceptable to us and we are trying to change the culture."....
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cbs-news-finds-peace-corps-volunteers-blamed-fired-after-reporting-sexual-assault/
Fraternity president testifies against brothers in pledge's death
November 30, 2015
STROUDSBURG, Pa. -- A Pennsylvania college fraternity president says he and four others charged in a pledge's death during a hazing ritual in the Poconos tried to "cover it all up" when they met weeks later.
Daniel Li is cooperating against four Baruch College fraternity brothers charged with third-degree murder in the beating death of 18-year-old Chun Michael Deng.
Li says the Pi Delta Psi brothers gathered in New York afterward to decide what to tell police and their attorneys.
Defense lawyer Steven Brill, who represents co-defendant Sheldon Wong, says no one initially thought the injuries to Deng were life-threatening.
Brill calls the 2013 death accidental. Other defendants are Charles Lai, Kenny Kwan and Raymond Lam.
Police say fraternity members blindfolded Deng, forcing him to wear a heavy backpack, and then repeatedly tackled him during the hazing ritual, known as glass ceiling.
Deng fell unconscious and was carried inside the house while fraternity members changed his clothes and did an Internet search of his symptoms, waiting an hour before taking him to the hospital, according to court documents. Deng, who suffered a brain injury, died a day later....
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/fraternity-president-testifies-against-brothers-in-pledges-death
Monday, November 30, 2015
Penn State has paid more than $92M as a result of Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal: report , At Worcester hearing, depositions in Bill Cosby defamation case ordered next August
Penn State has paid more than $92M as a result of Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal: report
BY Andy Clayton NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Thursday, November 26, 2015
The Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal has already cost Penn State University more than $92 million.
The shocking dollar figure - up from the original $60 million - was made public at the same time it was revealed Penn State could still face claims from six or more alleged victims, NBC News is reporting.
Sandusky, 71, is spending 30 to 60 years behind bars after he was found guilty in October 2012 of abusing 10 boys over the course of 15 years. The long-time defensive coordinator for legendary Nittany Lions football coach Joe Paterno used his "Second Mile" charity for troubled kids to find and identify his victims. Many of the assaults took place at Penn State athletic department facilities.
The convicted pedophile claims he is innocent of all charges and is seeking a new trial. He admitted to showering with boys, but said he never molested them.... http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/college/penn-state-paid-92m-result-jerry-sandusky-scandal-article-1.2447621
At Worcester hearing, depositions in Bill Cosby defamation case ordered next August
By Brad Petrishen Telegram & Gazette Staff Nov. 30, 2015
WORCESTER – A federal magistrate judge Monday signaled opposition to efforts by lawyers for Bill Cosby to shield court documents in his defamation case from public view and, contrary to several defense requests, ordered depositions to be completed by next summer.
“It was a good day,” said Joseph Cammarata, the Washington, D.C., lawyer for a recently expanded contingent of women who allege the famous comedian defamed them by denying their accusations of sexual assault.
Four women added their names to the lawsuit earlier in November, making a total of seven women from five states. The assaults allegedly occurred between 1969 and 1990, with Mr. Cosby allegedly making the defamatory statements to the media between 2005 and 2014.
Mr. Cosby – who has been accused of drugging and raping dozens of women over several decades – has not been charged with a crime. As most of the allegations have emerged within the past year, they fall outside the statute of limitations for criminal conduct.... http://www.telegram.com/article/20151130/NEWS/151139944
Tuesday, November 24, 2015
India's Marital Rape Crisis, The litany of child abuse by Catholic priests, Police failed to investigate abuse - Melbourne archdiocese
Rape within marriage remains legal in several countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, including Singapore, China, Egypt, Lebanon and Morocco. And even in countries where spousal rape is technically a crime, strong legislation and adequate punishment is often severely lacking. In several states in the U.S., including Ohio, Oklahoma and Connecticut, marital rape is “semi-legal,” according to a June report by The Daily Beast. Sexual violence within marriage is also an “infrequently prosecuted” crime in America.
The litany of child abuse by Catholic priests
Priest after priest in the Melbourne archdiocese of the Catholic church was caught abusing children. And for decades bishop after bishop ignored these crimes. In Melbourne over the past 35 years, 454 people made claims or substantiated complaints about child sexual abuse by priests, religious employees or volunteers.
Detective told child abuse victim she must have been 'asking for it', inquiry hears Royal commission hearings into Melbourne archdiocese hears police failed to investigate abuse, despite questions about conduct of priest involved
India's Marital Rape Crisis Reaches 'Tragic Proportions'
One-third of men in India, where spousal rape is legal, admit to having forced a sexual act on their wives.
Dominique Mosbergen Senior Writer, The Huffington Post 11/24/2015
....By 2013, new legislation was passed that strengthened punishments for sex crimes. Violations such as stalking and voyeurism were added to the penal code, and police officers were made criminally accountable for failing to record sexual offenses. Last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government pledged “zero tolerance” for violence against women and vowed to strengthen the criminal justice system to crack down on these crimes.
But despite these promises, and though some laws pertaining to sexual assault by strangers have indeed been beefed up, the archaic law that permits a husband to rape his wife still exists.
“Sexual intercourse or sexual acts by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under 15 years of age, is not rape,” states a 2013 amendment to the Indian Penal Code of 1860.
With such a law in place, registering a case of sexual assault against a husband in India can be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible.
This has resulted in a marital rape crisis of “tragic proportions” in the country, with men assaulting their wives with impunity and women enduring the abuse under a shroud of silence, according to activists including Mihira Sood, a Delhi-based attorney who specializes in women’s rights.
“Marital rape is an extremely widespread problem,” Sood told HuffPost. “[It’s] compounded by the fact that it is not recognized as an offense, either by the law as well as by much of society that is conditioned to see it as an inevitable part of marriage.”
Since marital rape is not a crime, exact statistics are hard to come by. The limited data that is available, however, provides a horrifying glimpse into the enormity of the problem.
Last year, the United Nations Population Fund and the International Center for Research on Women surveyed more than 9,200 men across seven Indian states. One-third of them admitted to having forced a sexual act on their wives, while 60 percent said they’d used some form of violence to assert dominance over their partners.
Another 2014 report, by researcher Aashish Gupta of the Rice Institute, found that women are 40 times more likely to be sexually assaulted by their husband than a stranger. Gupta concluded that fewer than 1 percent of sexual assaults within marriage are reported to police....
Rape within marriage remains legal in several countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, including Singapore, China, Egypt, Lebanon and Morocco. And even in countries where spousal rape is technically a crime, strong legislation and adequate punishment is often severely lacking.
In several states in the U.S., including Ohio, Oklahoma and Connecticut, marital rape is “semi-legal,” according to a June report by The Daily Beast. Sexual violence within marriage is also an “infrequently prosecuted” crime in America....
In 2013, a panel of lawmakers told parliament that the move “has the potential of destroying the institution of marriage.” Home Affairs Minister Haribhai Chaudhary said in April that “the concept of marital rape, as understood internationally, cannot be suitably applied in the Indian context due to various factors,” including illiteracy, poverty, social custom, religion and the widespread perception that "marriages are sacrosanct." The Indian government, he said, would not be considering any amendment to its laws regarding marital rape despite a United Nations recommendation to do....
Dismantling a deeply entrenched system of patriarchy in the country is a major challenge women’s rights activists face in their fight against marital rape, said Priya Nanda, a director at the International Center for Research on Women.
“From the girl who has to stop doing homework to make tea for her father or is pulled out of school to marry, to the girl who is not given rightful access to her inheritance, or men in institutions of power, you see male privilege everywhere,” Nanda said over Skype from her New Delhi office. “At every level, we encounter the forces of patriarchy. It is deeply internalized, by men and women alike, and extremely difficult to challenge.”....
Women largely shared similar views on these matters, the report found. About 65 percent of female respondents agreed that “there are times when a woman deserves to be beaten,” while 9 out of 10 women surveyed said wives should “obey” their husbands....
This view that wives are duty-bound to have sex with their husbands is, in fact, codified in law.
The Hindu Marriage Act of 1955 states that a married person can take his or her spouse to court to demand the “restitution of conjugal rights” if the partner refuses to have sex with them....
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/india-marital-rape_564d8c21e4b00b7997f9469e
The litany of child abuse by Catholic priests that no longer shocks the world
Once the evidence revealed at the royal commission in Melbourne would have made headlines everywhere. Now it merely fits into a devastating pattern
David Marr Tuesday 24 November 2015
Priest after priest in the Melbourne archdiocese of the Catholic church was caught abusing children. And for decades bishop after bishop ignored these crimes.
The priests were caught abusing as soon as they left the seminary. They kept abusing despite “treatment” and despite being shifted from parish to parish. The church knew what was going on and for a very long time no one called the police.
But Melbourne fits the now familiar pattern of the Catholic world. Gail Furness SC, piling up the numbers in her dry opening address to the 35th case study of the royal commission, might have been talking of Chicago, Brussels or Caracas.
In Melbourne over the past 35 years, 454 people made claims or substantiated complaints about child sexual abuse by priests, religious employees or volunteers. Of those, 335 made claims against priests. Seven accused priests accounted for 54% of all claims.
What sets the city apart from cities in Europe and America is how little the church has had to pay. Furness puts the bill for damages plus legal and medical costs at not quite $18m....
Absent but everywhere was George Pell. Though other bishops living and dead will have their reputations raked over by the commission, the hearings over the next month will essentially assess the record of the man who now sits in Rome as the treasurer of the Catholic church.
The cardinal has broken with the church’s legal team and its gentle determination not to cross-examine victims. After turning all his career for help to the top end of town, Pell has engaged the Melbourne mega-advocate Allan Myers to test his accusers....
But now they are looking at the years in between: at his first, crucial post in Melbourne from the mid 1980s as an auxiliary bishop under archbishop Frank Little.
Early in that time Little sent Pell to deal with crazed Father Peter Searson who was terrifying children in the poor parish of Doveton with guns, knives, perpetual confession, hanging around their toilets and much other weird behaviour.
That he did nothing effective to deal with Searson in those years hangs over Pell’s reputation today. Parents, parishioners and teachers all wanted the priest gone. Complaints about the priest went back a decade. But beyond dressing Searson down once or twice, Pell appears to have done little....
Pell will also be answering to the commission for his dealings with paedophile priests Billy Baker of North Richmond, Kevin O’Donnell of Oakleigh, and Ronald Pickering, who fled Gardenvale for London where Pell sent him each month the stipend of a retired priest....
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/24/the-litany-of-child-abuse-by-catholic-priests-that-no-longer-shocks-the-world
Detective told child abuse victim she must have been 'asking for it', inquiry hears
Royal commission hearings into Melbourne archdiocese hears police failed to investigate abuse, despite questions about conduct of priest involved
Melissa Davey Tuesday 24 November 2015
A detective told a teenager who was repeatedly the victim of sexual abuse she must have been wearing a “neon sign” above her head “asking for it”, and that there was not enough evidence to investigate her case.
Julie Stewart, now 40, gave evidence before the royal commission into institutional responses into child sexual abuse on Wednesday that she was sexually abused by a family member between the age of five and eight.
She was then sexually abused by the parish priest at the Holy Family church in Doveton, Victoria, Peter Searson, from when she was in year three, the commission heard....
On Tuesday, the commission heard complaints had been made about Searson from his time as a parish priest at Our Lady of Mount Carmel parish in Sunbury in 1977, to the decade when he was a parish priest at Holy Family parish in Doveton. In 1997 he was charged with unlawful assault of an altar boy, and was released on a good behaviour bond without conviction after pleading guilty....
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/25/detective-told-child-abuse-victim-she-must-have-been-asking-for-it-inquiry-hears
The litany of child abuse by Catholic priests
Priest after priest in the Melbourne archdiocese of the Catholic church was caught abusing children. And for decades bishop after bishop ignored these crimes. In Melbourne over the past 35 years, 454 people made claims or substantiated complaints about child sexual abuse by priests, religious employees or volunteers.
Detective told child abuse victim she must have been 'asking for it', inquiry hears Royal commission hearings into Melbourne archdiocese hears police failed to investigate abuse, despite questions about conduct of priest involved
India's Marital Rape Crisis Reaches 'Tragic Proportions'
One-third of men in India, where spousal rape is legal, admit to having forced a sexual act on their wives.
Dominique Mosbergen Senior Writer, The Huffington Post 11/24/2015
....By 2013, new legislation was passed that strengthened punishments for sex crimes. Violations such as stalking and voyeurism were added to the penal code, and police officers were made criminally accountable for failing to record sexual offenses. Last year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government pledged “zero tolerance” for violence against women and vowed to strengthen the criminal justice system to crack down on these crimes.
But despite these promises, and though some laws pertaining to sexual assault by strangers have indeed been beefed up, the archaic law that permits a husband to rape his wife still exists.
“Sexual intercourse or sexual acts by a man with his own wife, the wife not being under 15 years of age, is not rape,” states a 2013 amendment to the Indian Penal Code of 1860.
With such a law in place, registering a case of sexual assault against a husband in India can be exceedingly difficult, if not impossible.
This has resulted in a marital rape crisis of “tragic proportions” in the country, with men assaulting their wives with impunity and women enduring the abuse under a shroud of silence, according to activists including Mihira Sood, a Delhi-based attorney who specializes in women’s rights.
“Marital rape is an extremely widespread problem,” Sood told HuffPost. “[It’s] compounded by the fact that it is not recognized as an offense, either by the law as well as by much of society that is conditioned to see it as an inevitable part of marriage.”
Since marital rape is not a crime, exact statistics are hard to come by. The limited data that is available, however, provides a horrifying glimpse into the enormity of the problem.
Last year, the United Nations Population Fund and the International Center for Research on Women surveyed more than 9,200 men across seven Indian states. One-third of them admitted to having forced a sexual act on their wives, while 60 percent said they’d used some form of violence to assert dominance over their partners.
Another 2014 report, by researcher Aashish Gupta of the Rice Institute, found that women are 40 times more likely to be sexually assaulted by their husband than a stranger. Gupta concluded that fewer than 1 percent of sexual assaults within marriage are reported to police....
Rape within marriage remains legal in several countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, including Singapore, China, Egypt, Lebanon and Morocco. And even in countries where spousal rape is technically a crime, strong legislation and adequate punishment is often severely lacking.
In several states in the U.S., including Ohio, Oklahoma and Connecticut, marital rape is “semi-legal,” according to a June report by The Daily Beast. Sexual violence within marriage is also an “infrequently prosecuted” crime in America....
In 2013, a panel of lawmakers told parliament that the move “has the potential of destroying the institution of marriage.” Home Affairs Minister Haribhai Chaudhary said in April that “the concept of marital rape, as understood internationally, cannot be suitably applied in the Indian context due to various factors,” including illiteracy, poverty, social custom, religion and the widespread perception that "marriages are sacrosanct." The Indian government, he said, would not be considering any amendment to its laws regarding marital rape despite a United Nations recommendation to do....
Dismantling a deeply entrenched system of patriarchy in the country is a major challenge women’s rights activists face in their fight against marital rape, said Priya Nanda, a director at the International Center for Research on Women.
“From the girl who has to stop doing homework to make tea for her father or is pulled out of school to marry, to the girl who is not given rightful access to her inheritance, or men in institutions of power, you see male privilege everywhere,” Nanda said over Skype from her New Delhi office. “At every level, we encounter the forces of patriarchy. It is deeply internalized, by men and women alike, and extremely difficult to challenge.”....
Women largely shared similar views on these matters, the report found. About 65 percent of female respondents agreed that “there are times when a woman deserves to be beaten,” while 9 out of 10 women surveyed said wives should “obey” their husbands....
This view that wives are duty-bound to have sex with their husbands is, in fact, codified in law.
The Hindu Marriage Act of 1955 states that a married person can take his or her spouse to court to demand the “restitution of conjugal rights” if the partner refuses to have sex with them....
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/india-marital-rape_564d8c21e4b00b7997f9469e
The litany of child abuse by Catholic priests that no longer shocks the world
Once the evidence revealed at the royal commission in Melbourne would have made headlines everywhere. Now it merely fits into a devastating pattern
David Marr Tuesday 24 November 2015
Priest after priest in the Melbourne archdiocese of the Catholic church was caught abusing children. And for decades bishop after bishop ignored these crimes.
The priests were caught abusing as soon as they left the seminary. They kept abusing despite “treatment” and despite being shifted from parish to parish. The church knew what was going on and for a very long time no one called the police.
But Melbourne fits the now familiar pattern of the Catholic world. Gail Furness SC, piling up the numbers in her dry opening address to the 35th case study of the royal commission, might have been talking of Chicago, Brussels or Caracas.
In Melbourne over the past 35 years, 454 people made claims or substantiated complaints about child sexual abuse by priests, religious employees or volunteers. Of those, 335 made claims against priests. Seven accused priests accounted for 54% of all claims.
What sets the city apart from cities in Europe and America is how little the church has had to pay. Furness puts the bill for damages plus legal and medical costs at not quite $18m....
Absent but everywhere was George Pell. Though other bishops living and dead will have their reputations raked over by the commission, the hearings over the next month will essentially assess the record of the man who now sits in Rome as the treasurer of the Catholic church.
The cardinal has broken with the church’s legal team and its gentle determination not to cross-examine victims. After turning all his career for help to the top end of town, Pell has engaged the Melbourne mega-advocate Allan Myers to test his accusers....
But now they are looking at the years in between: at his first, crucial post in Melbourne from the mid 1980s as an auxiliary bishop under archbishop Frank Little.
Early in that time Little sent Pell to deal with crazed Father Peter Searson who was terrifying children in the poor parish of Doveton with guns, knives, perpetual confession, hanging around their toilets and much other weird behaviour.
That he did nothing effective to deal with Searson in those years hangs over Pell’s reputation today. Parents, parishioners and teachers all wanted the priest gone. Complaints about the priest went back a decade. But beyond dressing Searson down once or twice, Pell appears to have done little....
Pell will also be answering to the commission for his dealings with paedophile priests Billy Baker of North Richmond, Kevin O’Donnell of Oakleigh, and Ronald Pickering, who fled Gardenvale for London where Pell sent him each month the stipend of a retired priest....
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/24/the-litany-of-child-abuse-by-catholic-priests-that-no-longer-shocks-the-world
Detective told child abuse victim she must have been 'asking for it', inquiry hears
Royal commission hearings into Melbourne archdiocese hears police failed to investigate abuse, despite questions about conduct of priest involved
Melissa Davey Tuesday 24 November 2015
A detective told a teenager who was repeatedly the victim of sexual abuse she must have been wearing a “neon sign” above her head “asking for it”, and that there was not enough evidence to investigate her case.
Julie Stewart, now 40, gave evidence before the royal commission into institutional responses into child sexual abuse on Wednesday that she was sexually abused by a family member between the age of five and eight.
She was then sexually abused by the parish priest at the Holy Family church in Doveton, Victoria, Peter Searson, from when she was in year three, the commission heard....
On Tuesday, the commission heard complaints had been made about Searson from his time as a parish priest at Our Lady of Mount Carmel parish in Sunbury in 1977, to the decade when he was a parish priest at Holy Family parish in Doveton. In 1997 he was charged with unlawful assault of an altar boy, and was released on a good behaviour bond without conviction after pleading guilty....
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/25/detective-told-child-abuse-victim-she-must-have-been-asking-for-it-inquiry-hears
Monday, November 23, 2015
Up to 85% of child abuse in England undetected study says, Paedophile ring used boys home
"An ''organised ring'' of paedophiles believed to include Anglican and Catholic clergy used a Sunday afternoon ''children's Christian program'' in the 1970s to sexually abuse boys at a church-run Wallsend boys home."
Up to 85% of child abuse in England remains undetected, study says
Ben Quinn Monday 23 November 2015
Urgent action is needed to identify and prevent child abuse according to a major new study that suggests only one in eight victims in England comes to the attention of authorities.
About 50,000 cases of sexual abuse were recorded by police and local authorities in the two years to March 2014 but the findings indicate that official figures vastly underestimate the true scale of child sexual abuse. The actual number of children abused in that period is thought to be as many as 450,000.
The report, by the Office of the Children’s Commissioner (OCC), found that about 85% of sexually abused young people are not receiving help and treatment.
The majority of victims remain unidentified because the services that should protect them, including police and social services, rely on children to speak out, says the report. Two-thirds of cases, both known and unknown to the authorities, are believed to be victims of abuse in the family.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/nov/24/85-percent-child-abuse-england-remains-undetected-study
Paedophile ring used boys home
September 23, 2013 Joanne McCarthy
An ''organised ring'' of paedophiles believed to include Anglican and Catholic clergy used a Sunday afternoon ''children's Christian program'' in the 1970s to sexually abuse boys at a church-run Wallsend boys home.
''These men just came, got the boys, used them, and put them back,'' said a Hunter woman whose husband has told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse he was sexually assaulted by multiple offenders at Woodlands Boys Home.
The United Protestant Association has issued an unreserved apology for the ''tragedy'' of what occurred to child sex victims at Woodlands, where some of the smallest and youngest boys were targeted by the Sunday group.
''From what the victims have told us, these men changed from week to week, suggesting a larger, organised ring,'' UPA general manager Steve Walkerden and after-care support worker Graham Hercus said on Friday.
''We are aware of a group of men who did come to the home in the 1970s for a number of years on a Sunday afternoon, ostensibly to conduct a children's Christian program, but who routinely took smaller boys into downstairs rooms in the building and abused them.''
Anglican priest Peter Rushton - acknowledged by the church in 2010 as a sexual abuser of children - and ''volunteer carer'' and convicted child sex offender Robert Holland, are believed to have taken boys from the home, or to have had links with Woodlands.
A third ''volunteer carer'' at Woodlands was quietly convicted of child sex offences more than a decade ago....
''If the boys reported what happened, they were flogged. My husband can still hear it today, the screaming of the boys when they were taken downstairs and flogged for saying what had been done to them.''....
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/paedophile-ring-used-boys-home-20130922-2u7w6.html
Up to 85% of child abuse in England remains undetected, study says
Ben Quinn Monday 23 November 2015
Urgent action is needed to identify and prevent child abuse according to a major new study that suggests only one in eight victims in England comes to the attention of authorities.
About 50,000 cases of sexual abuse were recorded by police and local authorities in the two years to March 2014 but the findings indicate that official figures vastly underestimate the true scale of child sexual abuse. The actual number of children abused in that period is thought to be as many as 450,000.
The report, by the Office of the Children’s Commissioner (OCC), found that about 85% of sexually abused young people are not receiving help and treatment.
The majority of victims remain unidentified because the services that should protect them, including police and social services, rely on children to speak out, says the report. Two-thirds of cases, both known and unknown to the authorities, are believed to be victims of abuse in the family.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/nov/24/85-percent-child-abuse-england-remains-undetected-study
Paedophile ring used boys home
September 23, 2013 Joanne McCarthy
An ''organised ring'' of paedophiles believed to include Anglican and Catholic clergy used a Sunday afternoon ''children's Christian program'' in the 1970s to sexually abuse boys at a church-run Wallsend boys home.
''These men just came, got the boys, used them, and put them back,'' said a Hunter woman whose husband has told the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse he was sexually assaulted by multiple offenders at Woodlands Boys Home.
The United Protestant Association has issued an unreserved apology for the ''tragedy'' of what occurred to child sex victims at Woodlands, where some of the smallest and youngest boys were targeted by the Sunday group.
''From what the victims have told us, these men changed from week to week, suggesting a larger, organised ring,'' UPA general manager Steve Walkerden and after-care support worker Graham Hercus said on Friday.
''We are aware of a group of men who did come to the home in the 1970s for a number of years on a Sunday afternoon, ostensibly to conduct a children's Christian program, but who routinely took smaller boys into downstairs rooms in the building and abused them.''
Anglican priest Peter Rushton - acknowledged by the church in 2010 as a sexual abuser of children - and ''volunteer carer'' and convicted child sex offender Robert Holland, are believed to have taken boys from the home, or to have had links with Woodlands.
A third ''volunteer carer'' at Woodlands was quietly convicted of child sex offences more than a decade ago....
''If the boys reported what happened, they were flogged. My husband can still hear it today, the screaming of the boys when they were taken downstairs and flogged for saying what had been done to them.''....
http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/paedophile-ring-used-boys-home-20130922-2u7w6.html
Thursday, November 19, 2015
Jared Fogle, ex-Subway spokesman, gets 15 years in prison for child porn and sex crimes, Ritual killings
Jared Fogle, ex-Subway spokesman, gets 15 years in prison for child porn, sex crimes
By Sarah Larimer November 19
Former Subway spokesman Jared Fogle was sentenced Thursday to more than 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to federal charges related to child pornography and sexual conduct involving minors.
Fogle faced two counts: traveling to engage in illicit sexual conduct with a minor, and distribution and receipt of child pornography.
“How do you plead to the charges?” U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Walton Pratt asked Fogle on Thursday at the federal courthouse in Indianapolis, according to the Indianapolis Star.
“Guilty,” Fogle replied.
Pratt sentenced him to 15 years and eight months behind bars, according to the Associated Press.
The news service reported that prosecutors had recommended a 12½-year sentence.
“The level of perversion and lawlessness exhibited by Mr. Fogle is extreme,” the judge said, according to the Star....
Court documents released earlier this year detailed the allegations against Fogle. The documents claimed that he had used Web sites to solicit commercial sex and that he had traveled to engage in sexual acts with minors. Authorities also believe that Fogle received images and videos of nude children from the former executive director of his charity foundation.
That man, Russell Taylor, has agreed to plead guilty to child exploitation and child pornography charges.
Before his sentencing, Fogle delivered a statement in which he apologized for his actions, the Star reported....
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/11/19/jared-fogle-ex-subway-spokesman-pleads-guilty-to-child-porn-sex-crimes-against-minors/
describes violence
Liberia president says ritual killings on the rise
Source: Reuters - Thu, 19 Nov 2015
MONROVIA, Nov 19 (Reuters) - Liberia's President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf on Thursday vowed to crack down on those responsible for a rise in ritual killings in the West African country as it seeks to emerge from the shadow of an Ebola epidemic.
In some areas of central Africa, body parts are prized for their supernatural powers and are used in black magic ceremonies. Local media have reported at least 10 related murders in Liberia since the summer.
"We are witnessing the rise in what appears to be ritualistic killings and armed robbery in the country, thus threatening our security," Johnson Sirleaf said in a speech on Thursday.
"I am instructing the security forces to rigorously enforce the law to the letter and bring this ugly situation under immediate control," she added.
It is not yet clear why ritual killings are rising and Johnson Sirleaf offered no explanation. But some residents have speculated that presidential hopefuls seeking to replace Johnson Sirleaf when her final term expires 2017 are using black magic to boost their chances.... http://www.trust.org/item/20151119225408-8l0u8
By Sarah Larimer November 19
Former Subway spokesman Jared Fogle was sentenced Thursday to more than 15 years in prison after pleading guilty to federal charges related to child pornography and sexual conduct involving minors.
Fogle faced two counts: traveling to engage in illicit sexual conduct with a minor, and distribution and receipt of child pornography.
“How do you plead to the charges?” U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Walton Pratt asked Fogle on Thursday at the federal courthouse in Indianapolis, according to the Indianapolis Star.
“Guilty,” Fogle replied.
Pratt sentenced him to 15 years and eight months behind bars, according to the Associated Press.
The news service reported that prosecutors had recommended a 12½-year sentence.
“The level of perversion and lawlessness exhibited by Mr. Fogle is extreme,” the judge said, according to the Star....
Court documents released earlier this year detailed the allegations against Fogle. The documents claimed that he had used Web sites to solicit commercial sex and that he had traveled to engage in sexual acts with minors. Authorities also believe that Fogle received images and videos of nude children from the former executive director of his charity foundation.
That man, Russell Taylor, has agreed to plead guilty to child exploitation and child pornography charges.
Before his sentencing, Fogle delivered a statement in which he apologized for his actions, the Star reported....
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/11/19/jared-fogle-ex-subway-spokesman-pleads-guilty-to-child-porn-sex-crimes-against-minors/
describes violence
Liberia president says ritual killings on the rise
Source: Reuters - Thu, 19 Nov 2015
MONROVIA, Nov 19 (Reuters) - Liberia's President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf on Thursday vowed to crack down on those responsible for a rise in ritual killings in the West African country as it seeks to emerge from the shadow of an Ebola epidemic.
In some areas of central Africa, body parts are prized for their supernatural powers and are used in black magic ceremonies. Local media have reported at least 10 related murders in Liberia since the summer.
"We are witnessing the rise in what appears to be ritualistic killings and armed robbery in the country, thus threatening our security," Johnson Sirleaf said in a speech on Thursday.
"I am instructing the security forces to rigorously enforce the law to the letter and bring this ugly situation under immediate control," she added.
It is not yet clear why ritual killings are rising and Johnson Sirleaf offered no explanation. But some residents have speculated that presidential hopefuls seeking to replace Johnson Sirleaf when her final term expires 2017 are using black magic to boost their chances.... http://www.trust.org/item/20151119225408-8l0u8
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
17 Former Connecticut Boy Scouts Allege Sexual Abuse
17 Former Connecticut Boy Scouts Allege Sexual Abuse
The plaintiffs' lawyer said that one child was molested more than 1,000 times by now-deceased scoutmaster Donald Dennis. Dave Altimari
Seventeen former Boy Scouts have filed a lawsuit charging that their scoutmaster in Ridgefield sexually abused them from 1963 to 1975.
The plaintiffs' lawyer said that it was the largest single lawsuit filed against the Boy Scouts of America and that one child was molested more than 1,000 times. In addition to listing the 17 former Scouts, the lawsuit lists two girls allegedly sexually assaulted by the scoutmaster, Donald Dennis, who died two years ago.
The 850-page lawsuit alleges that the two girls were forced to watch Dennis sexually abuse some of the scouts in his home. Most of the victims were 11 to 14 years old, although some were as old as 17, according to attorney Brooke Goff, who is representing all 19 plaintiffs.
"We were only made aware of these allegations last month and had never before received any reports or accusations against this individual by youth members, parents or adult volunteer leaders,'' the Boy Scouts of America said in a statement released Tuesday afternoon. "This individual has not been registered in our programs for many years and is now deceased."....
Goff said that Dennis was an assistant scoutmaster from 1963 through 1968 and became scoutmaster until he moved out of Connecticut in 1975. Dennis was a local businessman in Ridgefield and also was an auxiliary state trooper during the same time period, Goff said....
The lawsuit claims that the national and local Boy Scout groups deliberately ignored signs that the organization was a haven for pedophiles.
In 2012, it was revealed during a lawsuit in Oregon that the national Boy Scout organization kept secret records of potential pedophiles who were called "ineligible volunteers." Dennis is not listed, but Goff said that is because he had not been sued.
The lawsuit alleges that the local Boy Scout organization allowed Dennis to be alone with groups of boys for hours at a time at Camp Mauwehu with no supervision, failed to put in safeguards to protect the children and failed to do background checks on Scout leaders.
The lawsuit also claims that many of the accusers had repressed memories of the attacks that resurfaced when the records of the pedophiles became public in 2012....
Last December, a Waterbury jury awarded an unidentified accuser $7 million in a lawsuit against the Boy Scouts of America. Court records show that the jury found the national organization negligent and reckless in its failure to take steps to protect the plaintiff from repeated abuse at the hands of his scoutmaster. That verdict has been appealed by the national group.
The jury found that the local chapter of the Boy Scouts of America and the Connecticut Yankee Council were not liable.
http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-boy-scout-sexual-abuse-lawsuit-20151117-story.html
The plaintiffs' lawyer said that one child was molested more than 1,000 times by now-deceased scoutmaster Donald Dennis. Dave Altimari
Seventeen former Boy Scouts have filed a lawsuit charging that their scoutmaster in Ridgefield sexually abused them from 1963 to 1975.
The plaintiffs' lawyer said that it was the largest single lawsuit filed against the Boy Scouts of America and that one child was molested more than 1,000 times. In addition to listing the 17 former Scouts, the lawsuit lists two girls allegedly sexually assaulted by the scoutmaster, Donald Dennis, who died two years ago.
The 850-page lawsuit alleges that the two girls were forced to watch Dennis sexually abuse some of the scouts in his home. Most of the victims were 11 to 14 years old, although some were as old as 17, according to attorney Brooke Goff, who is representing all 19 plaintiffs.
"We were only made aware of these allegations last month and had never before received any reports or accusations against this individual by youth members, parents or adult volunteer leaders,'' the Boy Scouts of America said in a statement released Tuesday afternoon. "This individual has not been registered in our programs for many years and is now deceased."....
Goff said that Dennis was an assistant scoutmaster from 1963 through 1968 and became scoutmaster until he moved out of Connecticut in 1975. Dennis was a local businessman in Ridgefield and also was an auxiliary state trooper during the same time period, Goff said....
The lawsuit claims that the national and local Boy Scout groups deliberately ignored signs that the organization was a haven for pedophiles.
In 2012, it was revealed during a lawsuit in Oregon that the national Boy Scout organization kept secret records of potential pedophiles who were called "ineligible volunteers." Dennis is not listed, but Goff said that is because he had not been sued.
The lawsuit alleges that the local Boy Scout organization allowed Dennis to be alone with groups of boys for hours at a time at Camp Mauwehu with no supervision, failed to put in safeguards to protect the children and failed to do background checks on Scout leaders.
The lawsuit also claims that many of the accusers had repressed memories of the attacks that resurfaced when the records of the pedophiles became public in 2012....
Last December, a Waterbury jury awarded an unidentified accuser $7 million in a lawsuit against the Boy Scouts of America. Court records show that the jury found the national organization negligent and reckless in its failure to take steps to protect the plaintiff from repeated abuse at the hands of his scoutmaster. That verdict has been appealed by the national group.
The jury found that the local chapter of the Boy Scouts of America and the Connecticut Yankee Council were not liable.
http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-boy-scout-sexual-abuse-lawsuit-20151117-story.html
Monday, November 16, 2015
Tom Petty rock icon haunted by father who beat the living s out of him
EXCLUSIVE: Tom Petty went from hillbilly to rock icon in a 'fiery' relationship with Stevie Nicks to a heroin addict haunted by father who 'beat the living s***' out of him
Tom Petty, 65, escaped his dysfunctional home life by watching television and dreaming of going to Hollywood
'I was used to living in hell,' reveals the rock legend in new book
'He beat me so bad that I was covered in raised welts, from my head to my toes. I was f***ing five'
There was a chemistry with Stevie Nicks who called 'intense, fiery'
Petty opens up about his volatile first marriage, his relationship with Stevie Nicks and the woman who 'saved him' - wife of 14 years, Dana York
The rock star, now 65, became addicted to heroin in his 50's and reveals a therapist told him 'people with your level of depression don't live'
By Caroline Howe For Dailymail.com
12 November 2015
'He was a man with kids he couldn't help. A man with tremendous wreckage in his personal life, a man divorcing his longtime wife, a woman who was struggling with delusional thoughts and a mind that was turning on her.
'He was still a man playing at the edge of death', writes the author. Zanes, and even his close friend, singer Stevie Nicks, didn't realize that Petty had slipped into heroin addiction.
Hometown hit: In 1966, Petty formed a band in Gainesville, Florida that was popular locally but received little notice from the mainstream audience
It took years for Petty, now 65, to get past feeling that his father, Earl, a salesman of 'really crappy plastic toys' or insurance was anything less than an 'a**hole' for the physical and mental abuse that colored his entire life.
When Tom nailed the fin of a '55 Cadillac with a slingshot, his father 'beat the living s**t of me' with a belt.
'He beat me so bad that I was covered in raised welts, from my head to my toes. Five years old. I was f***ing five.'
Realizing that he wasn't going to get an education in that household, he escaped into television.
'And I think it was television that saved my life, that raised and educated me.'
None of the families on television were like his. He and his younger brother, Bruce, were basically on their own. Nothing like Ozzie and Harriet's warm and fuzzy life existed in their world.
But he did see that everything great was coming from California – television city, Hollywood.
'Television city? Man, that's where I need to be,' he thought.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3313819/Tom-Petty-went-hillbilly-rock-icon-fiery-relationship-Stevie-Nicks-heroin-addict-haunted-father-beat-living-s-him.html
Tom Petty, 65, escaped his dysfunctional home life by watching television and dreaming of going to Hollywood
'I was used to living in hell,' reveals the rock legend in new book
'He beat me so bad that I was covered in raised welts, from my head to my toes. I was f***ing five'
There was a chemistry with Stevie Nicks who called 'intense, fiery'
Petty opens up about his volatile first marriage, his relationship with Stevie Nicks and the woman who 'saved him' - wife of 14 years, Dana York
The rock star, now 65, became addicted to heroin in his 50's and reveals a therapist told him 'people with your level of depression don't live'
By Caroline Howe For Dailymail.com
12 November 2015
'He was a man with kids he couldn't help. A man with tremendous wreckage in his personal life, a man divorcing his longtime wife, a woman who was struggling with delusional thoughts and a mind that was turning on her.
'He was still a man playing at the edge of death', writes the author. Zanes, and even his close friend, singer Stevie Nicks, didn't realize that Petty had slipped into heroin addiction.
Hometown hit: In 1966, Petty formed a band in Gainesville, Florida that was popular locally but received little notice from the mainstream audience
It took years for Petty, now 65, to get past feeling that his father, Earl, a salesman of 'really crappy plastic toys' or insurance was anything less than an 'a**hole' for the physical and mental abuse that colored his entire life.
When Tom nailed the fin of a '55 Cadillac with a slingshot, his father 'beat the living s**t of me' with a belt.
'He beat me so bad that I was covered in raised welts, from my head to my toes. Five years old. I was f***ing five.'
Realizing that he wasn't going to get an education in that household, he escaped into television.
'And I think it was television that saved my life, that raised and educated me.'
None of the families on television were like his. He and his younger brother, Bruce, were basically on their own. Nothing like Ozzie and Harriet's warm and fuzzy life existed in their world.
But he did see that everything great was coming from California – television city, Hollywood.
'Television city? Man, that's where I need to be,' he thought.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3313819/Tom-Petty-went-hillbilly-rock-icon-fiery-relationship-Stevie-Nicks-heroin-addict-haunted-father-beat-living-s-him.html
Thursday, November 12, 2015
Military Deployment Tied to Greater Odds of Child Abuse, Neglect, Drexel, Bryant U. rescind honorary degrees for Bill Cosby
Military Deployment Tied to Greater Odds of Child Abuse, Neglect
Periods during and just after deployment are highest risk, study finds
By Tara Haelle
HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, Nov. 12, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Young children of U.S. Army soldiers may have a higher risk of abuse or neglect during and just after a parent is deployed abroad, a new study finds.
"The findings are not that surprising because a family experiences enormous stress when a soldier goes off on a deployment," said Dr. Bob Sege, a pediatrician specializing in child abuse and vice president of Health Resources in Action, in Boston.
"The men and women who go off to fight for us are doing very admirable work, and it's not a surprise that it's stressful for their families," Sege said.
Other kinds of stress, such as extreme poverty, partner abuse and postpartum depression, are already known to increase the risk of child abuse, said Sege, who wasn't involved in this research.
"This study confirms the family stress theory of what causes child maltreatment," Sege said. "That's important because I think many people feel that people who maltreat their children are morally deficient. But, those of us in the field know that often, they're just really stressed out beyond their capacity to deal with their situation."
It's important to note that the study's design only shows a link between deployment and child abuse, it cannot prove a cause-and-effect relationship.
Findings from the study were published online Nov. 12 in the American Journal of Public Health....
The study focused on children under age 2 because they are at the highest risk for abuse or neglect, the authors said.
The rates of maltreatment hovered around 0.5 percent among children of soldiers who had been deployed once or twice. However, the rates were higher during and just after deployment compared to the six months before deployment.
In families of soldiers deployed once, nearly four episodes of abuse or neglect occurred per 10,000 children per month during deployment. That compared to three episodes in the six months before deployment. And, in the six months after deployment, the rate was almost 4.5 episodes per 10,000 children, the study found.
In families of soldiers deployed twice, the highest rate of abuse and neglect occurred during the second deployment, at a rate of nearly five episodes per 10,000 children per month, the research revealed....
http://consumer.healthday.com/public-health-information-30/family-health-news-749/military-deployment-ups-odds-of-child-abuse-neglect-705209.html
Drexel, Bryant U. rescind honorary degrees for Bill Cosby
PHILADELPHIA — Drexel and Bryant universities have joined a number of schools in rescinding honorary degrees awarded to Bill Cosby, citing accusations of sexual assault.
Drexel President John Fry says the misconduct that came to light in a deposition Cosby gave "stands in clear opposition" to the Philadelphia school's values.
He said in a letter Thursday to the Drexel community that universities are "critical arenas" in addressing sexual violence and Drexel takes that responsibility seriously.
Rhode Island-based Bryant said on its website Thursday that Cosby's "egregious conduct" is "inconsistent with the character, values and behavior" it expects of the holder of an honorary degree.
It said that by revoking Cosby's degree, it upholds the values, character and mission of the Smithfield school.
The comedian has never been charged with a crime and has denied allegations that he drugged and sexually assaulted women.
http://www.wral.com/drexel-university-rescinds-honorary-degree-for-bill-cosby/15104137/
Periods during and just after deployment are highest risk, study finds
By Tara Haelle
HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, Nov. 12, 2015 (HealthDay News) -- Young children of U.S. Army soldiers may have a higher risk of abuse or neglect during and just after a parent is deployed abroad, a new study finds.
"The findings are not that surprising because a family experiences enormous stress when a soldier goes off on a deployment," said Dr. Bob Sege, a pediatrician specializing in child abuse and vice president of Health Resources in Action, in Boston.
"The men and women who go off to fight for us are doing very admirable work, and it's not a surprise that it's stressful for their families," Sege said.
Other kinds of stress, such as extreme poverty, partner abuse and postpartum depression, are already known to increase the risk of child abuse, said Sege, who wasn't involved in this research.
"This study confirms the family stress theory of what causes child maltreatment," Sege said. "That's important because I think many people feel that people who maltreat their children are morally deficient. But, those of us in the field know that often, they're just really stressed out beyond their capacity to deal with their situation."
It's important to note that the study's design only shows a link between deployment and child abuse, it cannot prove a cause-and-effect relationship.
Findings from the study were published online Nov. 12 in the American Journal of Public Health....
The study focused on children under age 2 because they are at the highest risk for abuse or neglect, the authors said.
The rates of maltreatment hovered around 0.5 percent among children of soldiers who had been deployed once or twice. However, the rates were higher during and just after deployment compared to the six months before deployment.
In families of soldiers deployed once, nearly four episodes of abuse or neglect occurred per 10,000 children per month during deployment. That compared to three episodes in the six months before deployment. And, in the six months after deployment, the rate was almost 4.5 episodes per 10,000 children, the study found.
In families of soldiers deployed twice, the highest rate of abuse and neglect occurred during the second deployment, at a rate of nearly five episodes per 10,000 children per month, the research revealed....
http://consumer.healthday.com/public-health-information-30/family-health-news-749/military-deployment-ups-odds-of-child-abuse-neglect-705209.html
Drexel, Bryant U. rescind honorary degrees for Bill Cosby
PHILADELPHIA — Drexel and Bryant universities have joined a number of schools in rescinding honorary degrees awarded to Bill Cosby, citing accusations of sexual assault.
Drexel President John Fry says the misconduct that came to light in a deposition Cosby gave "stands in clear opposition" to the Philadelphia school's values.
He said in a letter Thursday to the Drexel community that universities are "critical arenas" in addressing sexual violence and Drexel takes that responsibility seriously.
Rhode Island-based Bryant said on its website Thursday that Cosby's "egregious conduct" is "inconsistent with the character, values and behavior" it expects of the holder of an honorary degree.
It said that by revoking Cosby's degree, it upholds the values, character and mission of the Smithfield school.
The comedian has never been charged with a crime and has denied allegations that he drugged and sexually assaulted women.
http://www.wral.com/drexel-university-rescinds-honorary-degree-for-bill-cosby/15104137/
Wednesday, November 11, 2015
Headteacher 'may have targeted more than 100 boys over 25 years,' Bill Cosby to be deposed by model Janice Dickinson's attorney
Headteacher who killed himself when confronted with child abuse claim 'may have targeted more than 100 boys over 25 years'
Jon Styler killed himself in 2007 after arrest over historic sex abuse claims
Solicitor for alleged victims now claims head may have abused '100 boys'
He said: 'I believe we've only scratched the surface, there may be 100 plus'
Alleged victim claims to have logged abuse allegation with Gwent Police two years prior to Styler's arrest but said it wasn't 'taken into account'
By Emma Glanfield for MailOnline
10 November 2015
A headteacher who killed himself when confronted with an allegation of child abuse may have targeted more than 100 young boys over a 25-year period, new claims suggest.
Jon Styler, a former headteacher at the Church in Wales primary school in Malpas near Newport, Wales, is alleged to have abused '100 plus victims' during his teaching career....
However, an investigation by the BBC show has now discovered that police investigating the allegations failed to take into account claims against Styler that were logged two years earlier.
A man, who cannot be named but who spoke to the programme, claims he went to Gwent Police in 2005 claiming he and his brother - a former police officer - were targeted by Styler in the headteacher's office.
But the man decided at the time not to pursue the matter as a formal complaint because of concerns about the impact a police probe might have on his brother's career and family.
Despite this, his brother - a police officer at the time - said this information should have been kept on file as a matter of course for intelligence....
Gwent Police has now launched an internal review as a result of the programme's investigation, which will look into why these allegations did not come to light at the time of Styler's arrest in 2007.
Newport City Council social services department should also have a log that Gwent Police contacted the authority in 2005 and 2007 but it told the BBC programme that no such record can be found....
Lyndon Millinship, a former deputy headteacher at the school in Malpas, has spoken publicly for the first time about the historic abuse allegations against Styler.
He said he raised concerns with Gwent County Council and governors at the school about Styler's behaviour in the late 1970s - but Styler was allowed to continue teaching.
Mr Millinship said he was disappointed that no one in authority spoke to the children back then....
Solicitor Mr Collingbourne also told the programme that the alleged victims did not complain at the time because they did not think their stories would be believed.
But today they are determined to get answers, he said....
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3311853/Headteacher-killed-confronted-child-abuse-claim-targeted-100-boys-25-years.html
Bill Cosby to be deposed by model Janice Dickinson's attorney
By Richard Winton November 11, 2015
Bill Cosby is scheduled to be deposed by model Janice Dickinson's attorney in her defamation lawsuit against the comedian for denying he raped her.
Lisa Bloom, Dickinson's attorney, confirmed Wednesday that she will depose Cosby on Nov. 23. She also is slated to depose Cosby's former attorney Martin Singer on Nov. 19.
Earlier this month, Judge Debre Katz Weintraub ruled that Bloom could depose Cosby and Singer before Nov. 25.
But the judge limited the deposition to evidence showing the denial of the lawsuit's main allegation — that Cosby raped the model in Lake Tahoe in 1982 — was made maliciously. The limitation essentially prevents extensive questioning of Cosby about the 50 other women who have accused him of sexual assault or abuse....
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-bill-cosby-depose-set-20151111-story.html
Jon Styler killed himself in 2007 after arrest over historic sex abuse claims
Solicitor for alleged victims now claims head may have abused '100 boys'
He said: 'I believe we've only scratched the surface, there may be 100 plus'
Alleged victim claims to have logged abuse allegation with Gwent Police two years prior to Styler's arrest but said it wasn't 'taken into account'
By Emma Glanfield for MailOnline
10 November 2015
A headteacher who killed himself when confronted with an allegation of child abuse may have targeted more than 100 young boys over a 25-year period, new claims suggest.
Jon Styler, a former headteacher at the Church in Wales primary school in Malpas near Newport, Wales, is alleged to have abused '100 plus victims' during his teaching career....
However, an investigation by the BBC show has now discovered that police investigating the allegations failed to take into account claims against Styler that were logged two years earlier.
A man, who cannot be named but who spoke to the programme, claims he went to Gwent Police in 2005 claiming he and his brother - a former police officer - were targeted by Styler in the headteacher's office.
But the man decided at the time not to pursue the matter as a formal complaint because of concerns about the impact a police probe might have on his brother's career and family.
Despite this, his brother - a police officer at the time - said this information should have been kept on file as a matter of course for intelligence....
Gwent Police has now launched an internal review as a result of the programme's investigation, which will look into why these allegations did not come to light at the time of Styler's arrest in 2007.
Newport City Council social services department should also have a log that Gwent Police contacted the authority in 2005 and 2007 but it told the BBC programme that no such record can be found....
Lyndon Millinship, a former deputy headteacher at the school in Malpas, has spoken publicly for the first time about the historic abuse allegations against Styler.
He said he raised concerns with Gwent County Council and governors at the school about Styler's behaviour in the late 1970s - but Styler was allowed to continue teaching.
Mr Millinship said he was disappointed that no one in authority spoke to the children back then....
Solicitor Mr Collingbourne also told the programme that the alleged victims did not complain at the time because they did not think their stories would be believed.
But today they are determined to get answers, he said....
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3311853/Headteacher-killed-confronted-child-abuse-claim-targeted-100-boys-25-years.html
Bill Cosby to be deposed by model Janice Dickinson's attorney
By Richard Winton November 11, 2015
Bill Cosby is scheduled to be deposed by model Janice Dickinson's attorney in her defamation lawsuit against the comedian for denying he raped her.
Lisa Bloom, Dickinson's attorney, confirmed Wednesday that she will depose Cosby on Nov. 23. She also is slated to depose Cosby's former attorney Martin Singer on Nov. 19.
Earlier this month, Judge Debre Katz Weintraub ruled that Bloom could depose Cosby and Singer before Nov. 25.
But the judge limited the deposition to evidence showing the denial of the lawsuit's main allegation — that Cosby raped the model in Lake Tahoe in 1982 — was made maliciously. The limitation essentially prevents extensive questioning of Cosby about the 50 other women who have accused him of sexual assault or abuse....
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-bill-cosby-depose-set-20151111-story.html
Monday, November 9, 2015
Leah Remini on Her Challenging Childhood in Scientology
People Exclusive
Leah Remini on Her Challenging Childhood in Scientology: I Was Cleaning Hotel Rooms at Age 13
By Mike Miller and Johnny Dodd
11/04/2015
Leah Remini is now one of the most high-profile and outspoken critics of the Church of Scientology, but when she was first introduced to the religion, she found comfort in both the structure and the freedom the church brought to her childhood.
What began as a "normal" middle-class upbringing in Bensonhurst, New York, changed for Remini at young age when her parents divorced. When her mother started dating a Scientologist, the new religion "was introduced to our household pretty quickly," the actress tells PEOPLE in this week’s cover story.
While she jokes that initially she couldn't even pronounce the name of her new faith, she soon found herself benefiting from some of the religion's tenets. "Almost immediately my mother became a little more open and less the mother who was always yelling at you. She told my sister [Nicole, then 10], and me that we were spiritual beings and we were going to start learning to communicate and not attack each other. As a kid, it's very empowering," Remini explains.
At only 13, Remini and Nicole were invited to move into the church's special Sea Org headquarters in Clearwater, Florida – home to Scientology's most dedicated members. The pair were separated from their pregnant mother and signed a "billion-year" contract of allegiance to the Sea Org, Remini says....
Remini claims she and her sister lived in a roach-infested motel room with six other girls. The star dropped out of school in eighth grade and was assigned manual labor for 12 hours a day, including cleaning hotel rooms.
"We were being used as laborers," she tells PEOPLE. (Scientology, which in a statement has called Remini's entire book "revisionist history," says that "allegation is false" and maintains that the facility was in good standing with the local health department.)....
The Reminis moved to L.A. But despite escaping the rigidity of Sea Org life, Remini says, the family was still "scraping to get by, living on a friend's floor, trying to get our own apartment and paying for Scientology [courses]."
http://www.people.com/article/leah-remini-childhood-scientology-troublemaker-book
Leah Remini Opens up to PEOPLE About Leaving Scientology: 'It's Like a Rebirth'
by Patrick Gomez and Johnny Dodd
11/03/2015 Leah Remini is opening up about her three decades in Scientology and why she decided to leave....
When Leah Remini made the momentous decision to leave the Church of Scientology in 2013, she knew it wasn’t going to be easy.
The former King of Queens actress, 45, had been introduced to the religion by her mother at the age of 8, and had been a member for 35 years. As a teen, she even spent a year living – and doing manual labor, including cleaning hotel rooms – at the church’s Sea Org headquarters in Clearwater, Florida, which is reserved for Scientology’s most dedicated members....
Remini also began educating herself about the criticisms faced by the church (all of which are refuted by church officials) and made the difficult decision to leave despite the fear she could lose any relationship with her family, including her mom, Vicki Marshall, and her husband, Angelo Pagán.
But that didn't happen. Her family followed her lead and left with her....
The Church of Scientology denies nearly all of Remini's claims....
http://www.people.com/article/leah-remini-people-interview-scientology
Leah Remini on Her Challenging Childhood in Scientology: I Was Cleaning Hotel Rooms at Age 13
By Mike Miller and Johnny Dodd
11/04/2015
Leah Remini is now one of the most high-profile and outspoken critics of the Church of Scientology, but when she was first introduced to the religion, she found comfort in both the structure and the freedom the church brought to her childhood.
What began as a "normal" middle-class upbringing in Bensonhurst, New York, changed for Remini at young age when her parents divorced. When her mother started dating a Scientologist, the new religion "was introduced to our household pretty quickly," the actress tells PEOPLE in this week’s cover story.
While she jokes that initially she couldn't even pronounce the name of her new faith, she soon found herself benefiting from some of the religion's tenets. "Almost immediately my mother became a little more open and less the mother who was always yelling at you. She told my sister [Nicole, then 10], and me that we were spiritual beings and we were going to start learning to communicate and not attack each other. As a kid, it's very empowering," Remini explains.
At only 13, Remini and Nicole were invited to move into the church's special Sea Org headquarters in Clearwater, Florida – home to Scientology's most dedicated members. The pair were separated from their pregnant mother and signed a "billion-year" contract of allegiance to the Sea Org, Remini says....
Remini claims she and her sister lived in a roach-infested motel room with six other girls. The star dropped out of school in eighth grade and was assigned manual labor for 12 hours a day, including cleaning hotel rooms.
"We were being used as laborers," she tells PEOPLE. (Scientology, which in a statement has called Remini's entire book "revisionist history," says that "allegation is false" and maintains that the facility was in good standing with the local health department.)....
The Reminis moved to L.A. But despite escaping the rigidity of Sea Org life, Remini says, the family was still "scraping to get by, living on a friend's floor, trying to get our own apartment and paying for Scientology [courses]."
http://www.people.com/article/leah-remini-childhood-scientology-troublemaker-book
Leah Remini Opens up to PEOPLE About Leaving Scientology: 'It's Like a Rebirth'
by Patrick Gomez and Johnny Dodd
11/03/2015 Leah Remini is opening up about her three decades in Scientology and why she decided to leave....
When Leah Remini made the momentous decision to leave the Church of Scientology in 2013, she knew it wasn’t going to be easy.
The former King of Queens actress, 45, had been introduced to the religion by her mother at the age of 8, and had been a member for 35 years. As a teen, she even spent a year living – and doing manual labor, including cleaning hotel rooms – at the church’s Sea Org headquarters in Clearwater, Florida, which is reserved for Scientology’s most dedicated members....
Remini also began educating herself about the criticisms faced by the church (all of which are refuted by church officials) and made the difficult decision to leave despite the fear she could lose any relationship with her family, including her mom, Vicki Marshall, and her husband, Angelo Pagán.
But that didn't happen. Her family followed her lead and left with her....
The Church of Scientology denies nearly all of Remini's claims....
http://www.people.com/article/leah-remini-people-interview-scientology
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
Bill Cosby May Face First Sex Assault Charges From Newly Elected Prosecutor, Brisbane Grammar counsellor ritually abused students, royal commission told
describes violence
Royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse
Brisbane Grammar counsellor ritually abused students, royal commission told
Kevin Lynch, who committed suicide when he was exposed, operated in a soundproof room which acted as a ‘sick conveyor belt’ for his victims
Joshua Robertson Tuesday 3 November 2015
A counsellor at a prestigious Queensland private school ritually hypnotised students before masturbating them, slapping them in the face and putting acupuncture needles in one child’s genitals, the royal commission into institutional responses to child sex abuse has heard.
The scores of alleged victims of Kevin Lynch at Brisbane Grammar school included a boy who was sexually abused in a grief counselling session given after learning his father had committed suicide.
The commission hearing in Brisbane is examining the response to abuse claims against Lynch from the 1970s to the 1990s at Grammar and later St Paul’s Anglican school, and another former St Paul’s teacher, Gregory Robert Knight in the 1980s.
Also to come under scrutiny is former South Australian education minister Don Hopgood, who was a member of the same musical group in Adelaide as Knight when he gave him a glowing personal reference on parliamentary letterhead despite allegedly knowing a departmental inquiry found Knight engaged in “disgraceful” conduct with school students.
The royal commission also heard that Hopgood ordered that the South Australian education department rescind its dismissal of Knight and accept his resignation, which enabled him to get jobs in Queensland schools. Knight lost his job at St Paul’s over abuse allegations but then taught in the Northern Territory, where he was eventually jailed over indecent dealing with a student.
One alleged victim of Lynch, known only as BQK, told the commission that the counsellor’s “treatment [was] built around his convincing me that I could harness the power of my orgasms to gain an edge” in studies and sport.
“He would regularly masturbate me to the point of ejaculation and sometimes would make me ingest my own semen,” he said.
Lynch also slapped the boy in the face to “psyche me up about winning a metaphorical race”.
“Other times he would use acupuncture needles and put them into my testicles or stick his thumb in my anus,” BQK said.
BQK told the commission he “assumed this was a normal treatment method” and did not appreciate he had been seriously abused until “well into my adult life”.
He said he could not understand why Grammar staff had not questioned why Lynch operated out of a room that had two heavy, soundproof doors, red and green light signals controlling student access, and had significant stocks of tissues and towels, which he used to wipe up semen....
“I was badly let down by this culture of turning a blind eye and protecting the brand and it is hard not to see it is a deliberate cover up,” he said.
Counsel assisting the commission, David Lloyd, said that Lynch abused “significant numbers” of students at Grammar from 1973 to 1988 and then at St Paul’s Anglican school from 1989 to 1997.
The commission was in contact with 80 former students of both schools claiming abuse, Lloyd said.
Lynch committed suicide in 1997 a day after he was charged with sex offences against a St Paul’s student who had secretly recorded a confession.
The scale of Lynch’s abuse only came into public view following media revelations that Nigel Parodi, who shot three police then himself in 2000, was among his victims at Grammar....
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/04/brisbane-grammar-counsellor-ritually-abused-students-royal-commission-told
Royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse
Former Brisbane Grammar headmaster says 'unlikely' he dismissed abuse claim
Raymond Cross, former junior school head, tells royal commission it was ‘most unlikely’ he rejected a student’s allegations against counsellor Kevin Lynch
Joshua Robertson in Brisbane Wednesday 4 November 2015
A former Brisbane Grammar junior school headmaster accused of dismissing a student’s complaint about suspected serial paedophile Kevin Lynch says he considered seeking the counsellor’s advice about his own son years later.
Raymond Cross, who the royal commission has heard told an alleged victim in 1977 that he should “not make up stories and that Lynch was a well respected man”, told the inquiry he could not rule out the conversation happening but that it was “most unlikely”.
Cross told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse in Brisbane on Wednesday that when his second son had “settling issues” at Grammar in 1992, he “considered consulting [Lynch] about my son” even though Lynch had since moved to St Paul’s Anglican school.
The commission’s nine-day hearing is probing responses to Lynch’s suspected ritual sexual abuse of more than 60 students under the guise of “relaxation therapy” for more than two decades at both Grammar and St Paul’s.
Cross said while he found the green and red lighting system signalling student access to Lynch’s locked office “quite odd”, he was unaware of any formal record keeping or oversight of Lynch’s contact with students.
He said he felt shocked, disgusted and extreme disappointment in his own blindness to widespread allegations against Lynch which he only learned of through media reports after the counsellor’s suicide following his being charged with indecent dealing with a St Paul’s student in 1997....
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/05/former-brisbane-grammar-headmaster-says-unlikely-he-dismissed-abuse-claim
Bill Cosby May Face First Sex Assault Charges From Newly Elected Prosecutor
The statute of limitations runs out in January, so the clock is ticking.
Reuters By Laila Kearney 11/04/2015
A newly elected suburban Pennsylvania prosecutor could be positioned to bring the first criminal charges of sex assault against comedian Bill Cosby, though the clock is ticking, legal experts said on Wednesday.
Kevin Steele, a Democrat, on Tuesday defeated opponent Bruce Castor, a Republican, in the race for district attorney in Montgomery County, where Cosby's first named accuser filed a 2005 complaint against the actor.
The statute of limitations runs out in January on that case, in which the woman claimed Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her in his mansion in 2004....
In the years since the complaint by Andrea Constand, Cosby has been bombarded with accusations of sexual assault by more than 50 women, many of whom contend the actor slipped them sedatives before assaulting them....
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bill-cosby-andrea-constand-charges_563a943ae4b0b24aee48e821
Royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse
Brisbane Grammar counsellor ritually abused students, royal commission told
Kevin Lynch, who committed suicide when he was exposed, operated in a soundproof room which acted as a ‘sick conveyor belt’ for his victims
Joshua Robertson Tuesday 3 November 2015
A counsellor at a prestigious Queensland private school ritually hypnotised students before masturbating them, slapping them in the face and putting acupuncture needles in one child’s genitals, the royal commission into institutional responses to child sex abuse has heard.
The scores of alleged victims of Kevin Lynch at Brisbane Grammar school included a boy who was sexually abused in a grief counselling session given after learning his father had committed suicide.
The commission hearing in Brisbane is examining the response to abuse claims against Lynch from the 1970s to the 1990s at Grammar and later St Paul’s Anglican school, and another former St Paul’s teacher, Gregory Robert Knight in the 1980s.
Also to come under scrutiny is former South Australian education minister Don Hopgood, who was a member of the same musical group in Adelaide as Knight when he gave him a glowing personal reference on parliamentary letterhead despite allegedly knowing a departmental inquiry found Knight engaged in “disgraceful” conduct with school students.
The royal commission also heard that Hopgood ordered that the South Australian education department rescind its dismissal of Knight and accept his resignation, which enabled him to get jobs in Queensland schools. Knight lost his job at St Paul’s over abuse allegations but then taught in the Northern Territory, where he was eventually jailed over indecent dealing with a student.
One alleged victim of Lynch, known only as BQK, told the commission that the counsellor’s “treatment [was] built around his convincing me that I could harness the power of my orgasms to gain an edge” in studies and sport.
“He would regularly masturbate me to the point of ejaculation and sometimes would make me ingest my own semen,” he said.
Lynch also slapped the boy in the face to “psyche me up about winning a metaphorical race”.
“Other times he would use acupuncture needles and put them into my testicles or stick his thumb in my anus,” BQK said.
BQK told the commission he “assumed this was a normal treatment method” and did not appreciate he had been seriously abused until “well into my adult life”.
He said he could not understand why Grammar staff had not questioned why Lynch operated out of a room that had two heavy, soundproof doors, red and green light signals controlling student access, and had significant stocks of tissues and towels, which he used to wipe up semen....
“I was badly let down by this culture of turning a blind eye and protecting the brand and it is hard not to see it is a deliberate cover up,” he said.
Counsel assisting the commission, David Lloyd, said that Lynch abused “significant numbers” of students at Grammar from 1973 to 1988 and then at St Paul’s Anglican school from 1989 to 1997.
The commission was in contact with 80 former students of both schools claiming abuse, Lloyd said.
Lynch committed suicide in 1997 a day after he was charged with sex offences against a St Paul’s student who had secretly recorded a confession.
The scale of Lynch’s abuse only came into public view following media revelations that Nigel Parodi, who shot three police then himself in 2000, was among his victims at Grammar....
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/04/brisbane-grammar-counsellor-ritually-abused-students-royal-commission-told
Royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse
Former Brisbane Grammar headmaster says 'unlikely' he dismissed abuse claim
Raymond Cross, former junior school head, tells royal commission it was ‘most unlikely’ he rejected a student’s allegations against counsellor Kevin Lynch
Joshua Robertson in Brisbane Wednesday 4 November 2015
A former Brisbane Grammar junior school headmaster accused of dismissing a student’s complaint about suspected serial paedophile Kevin Lynch says he considered seeking the counsellor’s advice about his own son years later.
Raymond Cross, who the royal commission has heard told an alleged victim in 1977 that he should “not make up stories and that Lynch was a well respected man”, told the inquiry he could not rule out the conversation happening but that it was “most unlikely”.
Cross told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse in Brisbane on Wednesday that when his second son had “settling issues” at Grammar in 1992, he “considered consulting [Lynch] about my son” even though Lynch had since moved to St Paul’s Anglican school.
The commission’s nine-day hearing is probing responses to Lynch’s suspected ritual sexual abuse of more than 60 students under the guise of “relaxation therapy” for more than two decades at both Grammar and St Paul’s.
Cross said while he found the green and red lighting system signalling student access to Lynch’s locked office “quite odd”, he was unaware of any formal record keeping or oversight of Lynch’s contact with students.
He said he felt shocked, disgusted and extreme disappointment in his own blindness to widespread allegations against Lynch which he only learned of through media reports after the counsellor’s suicide following his being charged with indecent dealing with a St Paul’s student in 1997....
http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/05/former-brisbane-grammar-headmaster-says-unlikely-he-dismissed-abuse-claim
Bill Cosby May Face First Sex Assault Charges From Newly Elected Prosecutor
The statute of limitations runs out in January, so the clock is ticking.
Reuters By Laila Kearney 11/04/2015
A newly elected suburban Pennsylvania prosecutor could be positioned to bring the first criminal charges of sex assault against comedian Bill Cosby, though the clock is ticking, legal experts said on Wednesday.
Kevin Steele, a Democrat, on Tuesday defeated opponent Bruce Castor, a Republican, in the race for district attorney in Montgomery County, where Cosby's first named accuser filed a 2005 complaint against the actor.
The statute of limitations runs out in January on that case, in which the woman claimed Cosby drugged and sexually assaulted her in his mansion in 2004....
In the years since the complaint by Andrea Constand, Cosby has been bombarded with accusations of sexual assault by more than 50 women, many of whom contend the actor slipped them sedatives before assaulting them....
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bill-cosby-andrea-constand-charges_563a943ae4b0b24aee48e821
Tuesday, November 3, 2015
Court orders Bill Cosby deposition in Dickinson case, Bill Cosby 'accused of attacking his own children's nanny', as he continues to deny sexual assault allegations
Court orders Bill Cosby deposition in Dickinson case
3 November 2015
Bill Cosby and his former lawyer have been ordered to give a sworn out-of-court testimony in the defamation case brought by Janice Dickinson.
The ex-supermodel alleged that they falsely called her a liar after she claimed the comedian sexually assaulted her three decades ago.
Los Angeles County Superior Court ruled Cosby and his former lawyer Martin Singer must give sworn depositions before 25 November.
Cosby's lawyers said they would appeal....
More than 50 women have accused the comedian of sexual assault. He has never been charged for any of the alleged crimes. In most cases, the alleged incidents date back decades, meaning they fall outside the time limit for legal action.
Reuters said it is the second time in two months that Cosby will be required to testify under oath in response to a complaint of sexual misconduct against him.
Mr Singer, an LA lawyer, represented Cosby until he was replaced last month with a new legal team.
Last year, Dickinson had claimed Cosby drugged and raped her in a hotel in Lake Tahoe in 1982.
Speaking at the time, Mr Singer labelled Dickinson's allegations as "false and outlandish".
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-34709828
Bill Cosby 'accused of attacking his own children's nanny', as he continues to deny sexual assault allegations
3 Nov 2015 By Rebecca Pocklington
The comedian has been accused of assaulting several women, but has so far denied all the allegations put against him
Bill Cosby was accused of assaulting his children's former nanny, it has been claimed.
The comedian, 78, has strenuously denied allegations of rape and sexual assault brought against him by a number of women, and now a new report claims his own children's nanny made shock allegations against him too.
According to Radar Online, Cosby's daughter Ensa revealed the allegations to a friend, claiming the incident occurred in 1997.
“Ensa said it was an unwanted sexual advance, and [the nanny] was hysterical,” a source - who is claimed to have passed a polygraph test - told the site....
http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/bill-cosby-accused-attacking-childrens-6760617
3 November 2015
Bill Cosby and his former lawyer have been ordered to give a sworn out-of-court testimony in the defamation case brought by Janice Dickinson.
The ex-supermodel alleged that they falsely called her a liar after she claimed the comedian sexually assaulted her three decades ago.
Los Angeles County Superior Court ruled Cosby and his former lawyer Martin Singer must give sworn depositions before 25 November.
Cosby's lawyers said they would appeal....
More than 50 women have accused the comedian of sexual assault. He has never been charged for any of the alleged crimes. In most cases, the alleged incidents date back decades, meaning they fall outside the time limit for legal action.
Reuters said it is the second time in two months that Cosby will be required to testify under oath in response to a complaint of sexual misconduct against him.
Mr Singer, an LA lawyer, represented Cosby until he was replaced last month with a new legal team.
Last year, Dickinson had claimed Cosby drugged and raped her in a hotel in Lake Tahoe in 1982.
Speaking at the time, Mr Singer labelled Dickinson's allegations as "false and outlandish".
http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-34709828
Bill Cosby 'accused of attacking his own children's nanny', as he continues to deny sexual assault allegations
3 Nov 2015 By Rebecca Pocklington
The comedian has been accused of assaulting several women, but has so far denied all the allegations put against him
Bill Cosby was accused of assaulting his children's former nanny, it has been claimed.
The comedian, 78, has strenuously denied allegations of rape and sexual assault brought against him by a number of women, and now a new report claims his own children's nanny made shock allegations against him too.
According to Radar Online, Cosby's daughter Ensa revealed the allegations to a friend, claiming the incident occurred in 1997.
“Ensa said it was an unwanted sexual advance, and [the nanny] was hysterical,” a source - who is claimed to have passed a polygraph test - told the site....
http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/bill-cosby-accused-attacking-childrens-6760617
Monday, November 2, 2015
Indigenous children removed from homes in the 1960s begin to heal
Indigenous children removed from homes in the 1960s begin to heal
For three decades across Canada, thousands of aboriginal children were taken from their homes and adopted.
by Lauren Pelley Mon Nov 02 2015
KEMPTVILLE ....one by one, the 40 or so attendees of this Indigenous Adoptee Gathering introduce themselves to the group. Some are from Ontario, others from Manitoba or the Yukon. Some are Cree, others Métis or Ojibway.
Most are members of a stolen generation.
Beginning in the mid-1960s — and for several decades after — thousands of indigenous children across Canada were removed from their homes and typically placed with white middle-class families in Canada and abroad.
Patrick Johnston, author of the 1983 report Native Children and the Child Welfare System, dubbed it the Sixties Scoop.
Those children are now adults, sharing their stories of emotional, physical and sexual abuse, mental illness and a sense of isolation from being torn between Euro-Canadian and indigenous culture....
The Sixties Scoop wasn’t a government policy, but rather a noticeable trend once mandatory residential school education was phased out in the 1950s and 1960s....
Child welfare services were expanded to indigenous communities across Canada through the late 1960s, which “left a profound and negative impact on these communities,” notes the report.
“There was no publicity for years and years about the brutalization of our families and children by the larger Canadian society,” one member of the indigenous community told the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry launched in 1988 by Manitoba’s provincial government.
“Kidnapping was called placement in foster homes. Exporting aboriginal children to the U.S. was called preparing Indian children for the future. Parents who were heartbroken by the destruction of their families were written off as incompetent people.”
Manitoba’s government established a review committee on “Indian and Métis Adoptions and Placements” in the 1980s, headed by Associate Chief Family Court Judge Edwin Kimelman, and imposed a halt on out-of-province placements of indigenous children.
After reviewing the files of every indigenous Manitoban child adopted by an out-of-province family, Kimelman wrote in a 1984 report that “cultural genocide” had been taking place in a “systematic, routine manner.”
While not every placement of an indigenous child in the Canadian adoption system was a result of the Sixties Scoop, the number of children removed and placed into foster care or adoptive families likely numbered in the tens of thousands....
In June, Manitoba became the first province to offer a formal apology to thousands of victims with Premier Greg Selinger promising the topic will be included in the provincial school curriculum. But what should be done throughout the rest of Canada? A few organizations offered their viewpoints of how the federal and provincial governments should be handling the aftermath of the Sixties Scoop....
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/11/02/indigenous-children-removed-from-homes-in-the-1960s-just-now-beginning-to-heal.html
For three decades across Canada, thousands of aboriginal children were taken from their homes and adopted.
by Lauren Pelley Mon Nov 02 2015
KEMPTVILLE ....one by one, the 40 or so attendees of this Indigenous Adoptee Gathering introduce themselves to the group. Some are from Ontario, others from Manitoba or the Yukon. Some are Cree, others Métis or Ojibway.
Most are members of a stolen generation.
Beginning in the mid-1960s — and for several decades after — thousands of indigenous children across Canada were removed from their homes and typically placed with white middle-class families in Canada and abroad.
Patrick Johnston, author of the 1983 report Native Children and the Child Welfare System, dubbed it the Sixties Scoop.
Those children are now adults, sharing their stories of emotional, physical and sexual abuse, mental illness and a sense of isolation from being torn between Euro-Canadian and indigenous culture....
The Sixties Scoop wasn’t a government policy, but rather a noticeable trend once mandatory residential school education was phased out in the 1950s and 1960s....
Child welfare services were expanded to indigenous communities across Canada through the late 1960s, which “left a profound and negative impact on these communities,” notes the report.
“There was no publicity for years and years about the brutalization of our families and children by the larger Canadian society,” one member of the indigenous community told the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry launched in 1988 by Manitoba’s provincial government.
“Kidnapping was called placement in foster homes. Exporting aboriginal children to the U.S. was called preparing Indian children for the future. Parents who were heartbroken by the destruction of their families were written off as incompetent people.”
Manitoba’s government established a review committee on “Indian and Métis Adoptions and Placements” in the 1980s, headed by Associate Chief Family Court Judge Edwin Kimelman, and imposed a halt on out-of-province placements of indigenous children.
After reviewing the files of every indigenous Manitoban child adopted by an out-of-province family, Kimelman wrote in a 1984 report that “cultural genocide” had been taking place in a “systematic, routine manner.”
While not every placement of an indigenous child in the Canadian adoption system was a result of the Sixties Scoop, the number of children removed and placed into foster care or adoptive families likely numbered in the tens of thousands....
In June, Manitoba became the first province to offer a formal apology to thousands of victims with Premier Greg Selinger promising the topic will be included in the provincial school curriculum. But what should be done throughout the rest of Canada? A few organizations offered their viewpoints of how the federal and provincial governments should be handling the aftermath of the Sixties Scoop....
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/11/02/indigenous-children-removed-from-homes-in-the-1960s-just-now-beginning-to-heal.html
Thursday, October 29, 2015
Spotlight Official Trailer #1 (2015) - Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton Movie HD, 7 life sentences handed to 2 mass murderers in KZN what appears to have been a witchcraft ritual
Spotlight Official Trailer #1 (2015) - Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton Movie HD
The true story of how the Boston Globe uncovered the massive scandal of child molestation and cover-up within the local Catholic Archdiocese, shaking the entire Catholic Church to its core.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56jw6tasomc
describes crimes
7 life sentences handed to 2 mass murderers in KZN
The pair hacked their family members to death in what appears to have been a witchcraft ritual.
Mia Lindeque October 30, 2015
JOHANNESBURG - Two people have been handed seven life sentences for killing eight family members in KwaZulu-Natal.
Last week, Thulani and Sibonelo Mncwabe killed their family members, including two young children and an elderly man, in a crime believed to involve witchcraft in Mabaleni on the south coast.
The two suspects pleaded guilty to all eight charges and were also given an additional 20 years each.
Hawks spokesperson Hangwani Mulaudzi say the accused, aged 26 and 28, hacked their family members to death in what appears to have been a witchcraft ritual.
He says the sentences will send out a strong message to other criminals practising witchcraft....
http://ewn.co.za/2015/10/29/Two-men-handed-7-life-sentences-for-hacking-KZN-family-to-death
The true story of how the Boston Globe uncovered the massive scandal of child molestation and cover-up within the local Catholic Archdiocese, shaking the entire Catholic Church to its core.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56jw6tasomc
describes crimes
7 life sentences handed to 2 mass murderers in KZN
The pair hacked their family members to death in what appears to have been a witchcraft ritual.
Mia Lindeque October 30, 2015
JOHANNESBURG - Two people have been handed seven life sentences for killing eight family members in KwaZulu-Natal.
Last week, Thulani and Sibonelo Mncwabe killed their family members, including two young children and an elderly man, in a crime believed to involve witchcraft in Mabaleni on the south coast.
The two suspects pleaded guilty to all eight charges and were also given an additional 20 years each.
Hawks spokesperson Hangwani Mulaudzi say the accused, aged 26 and 28, hacked their family members to death in what appears to have been a witchcraft ritual.
He says the sentences will send out a strong message to other criminals practising witchcraft....
http://ewn.co.za/2015/10/29/Two-men-handed-7-life-sentences-for-hacking-KZN-family-to-death
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