Kevin Spacey Faces Felony Charge - accusation of sexual assault, Harvey Weinstein judge declines to dismiss charges in rape case, Paedophile ring "conspire to abuse babies, toddlers and young children"

 

describes abuse

 

Kevin Spacey Faces Felony Charge in Misconduct Case

By Sopan Deb Dec. 24, 2018

 

Kevin Spacey will be charged with a felony following an accusation of sexual assault made public last year, the authorities in Nantucket said on Monday.

The charge, first reported by The Boston Globe, is in connection with an accusation of misconduct that was made by a former television anchor, Heather Unruh, who said that Mr. Spacey sexually assaulted her 18-year-old son in July 2016 at a bar in Nantucket.

 

Michael O’Keefe, the Cape and Islands district attorney in Massachusetts, said in a statement that Mr. Spacey would be arraigned on Jan. 7 for one charge of indecent assault and battery, the first criminal charge levied against him as a result of sexual misconduct allegations. The statement also said there was a public show cause hearing in Nantucket District Court last Thursday, after which Clerk Magistrate Brian Kearney issued the criminal complaint.

 

A representative for Mr. Spacey did not respond to a request for comment. But the actor has apologized for one incident and denied at least one other accusation of wrongdoing....
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/24/movies/kevin-spacey-criminal-charges.html

 

 

Kevin Spacey scandal: A complete list of the 15 accusers
Maria Puente, USA TODAY Nov. 7, 2017
The first accusation of sexual misconduct against Oscar-winning actor Kevin Spacey landed on Oct. 29, and a little more than a week later more than a dozen men — including five who said they were teens at the time — have come forward to allege he sexually harassed, assaulted or attempted to rape them.

Here is a list of accusers, some of them named, some of them anonymous....
https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/2017/11/07/kevin-spacey-scandal-complete-list-13-accusers/835739001/

 

 

Harvey Weinstein judge declines to dismiss charges in rape case, sets pretrial hearing for March
By Eric Levenson and Elizabeth Joseph, CNN Thu December 20, 2018

 

New York (CNN)Harvey Weinstein, the disgraced movie mogul whose downfall helped launch the #MeToo movement, is due back in New York court on March 7 after a judge Thursday morning ordered a pretrial hearing in the rape case.
The proceedings lasted just 10 minutes, a remarkably quick resolution to a highly anticipated and pivotal appearance that the defense had hoped would end with the charges against Weinstein getting dropped.

"We are obviously disappointed that the court did not dismiss the indictment, but Judge (James) Burke has ruled, and we intend to continue to vigorously defend this case to the best of our ability," Weinstein's attorney, Ben Brafman, said outside the Manhattan courthouse.

Weinstein, 66, has pleaded not guilty to five felony charges, including predatory sexual assault and rape, in connection with two women in separate incidents. Thursday's hearing came in response to a motion filed by Brafman to dismiss the remaining counts or to hold evidentiary hearings on whether certain witnesses can testify.

The judge denied both requests, saying the defendant can explore witness credibility issues at trial, court documents show....

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/20/us/harvey-weinstein-court-charges/index.html

 

 

Eighth member of paedophile ring - including Hull man David Harsley - jailed for plotting to rape baby

David Harsley and six other members of the gang were jailed in 2015

By Sophie Corcoran 29 NOV 2018

 

The eighth member of a sickening paedophile ring who plotted to rape a seven-month old baby has been jailed today.

Matthew Law, 50, worked alongside seven others, including Hull man David Harsley, to conspire to abuse babies, toddlers and young children.

 

The gang used encrypted communication and the dark web to evade detection, and were branded 'monsters in disguise' after grooming mothers to gain their trust so they could have access to their children unsupervised.

Harsley, 55, a hospital worker, befriended a "vulnerable" pregnant and single woman at a social club. He was looking after the boy and committed a sex act in front of the child while fellow gang members John Denham and Matthew Lisk watched over Skype....

 

Hollyson admitted filming himself raping a three-month-old baby in what the judge at the time called one of the most horrific abuse cases on record.

The seven men were jailed for a total of 78 years after Adam Tom's confession sparked an investigation into the gang, who have now been revealed to have drugged babies and toddlers.

The gang would groom mothers – some while they were still pregnant – to gain unsupervised access to their children....

 

One baby was raped and sexually abused by three of the gang members over a period of months. The others watched on live internet feeds....
https://www.hulldailymail.co.uk/news/hull-east-yorkshire-news/eighth-member-paedophile-ring-including-2275623

 

 

Catholic Church failed to disclose abuse accusations against 500 priests and clergy, CIA’s illegal MKUltra mind-control experiments, Girl dies after female genital mutilation

- Illinois AG says Catholic Church failed to disclose abuse accusations against 500 priests and clergy

-  Truth about CIA’s illegal MKUltra mind-control experiments – using drugs, hypnosis and electronic devices- revealed in sensational new documents officials hid for decades

-  Girl, 10, dies after female genital mutilation in Sierra Leone

 

 

Illinois AG says Catholic Church failed to disclose abuse accusations against 500 priests and clergy
By Daniel Burke, CNN Religion Editor Thu December 20, 2018

(CNN) In yet another blow to the Catholic Church in the United States, Illinois' attorney general says the state's six dioceses have failed to disclose accusations of sexual abuse against at least 500 priests and clergy members.
Illinois' dioceses have released lists publicly identifying 185 clergy members who had been credibly accused of child sex abuse. But state Attorney General Lisa Madigan said preliminary findings in her investigation reveal that the church failed to disclose sexual abuse allegations against at least 500 additional priests and clergy members.

In many cases, the accusations have "not been adequately investigated by the dioceses or not investigated at all," Madigan's office said in a statement Wednesday. What's more, the statement added, the church often failed to notify law enforcement authorities or the state's Department of Children and Family Services about the allegations.

"By choosing not to thoroughly investigate allegations, the Catholic Church has failed in its moral obligation to provide survivors, parishioners and the public a complete and accurate accounting of all sexually inappropriate behavior involving priests in Illinois," Madigan said in the statement.

 

"The failure to investigate also means that the Catholic Church has never made an effort to determine whether the conduct of the accused priests was ignored or covered up by superiors."

Madigan began her investigation in August, after a Pennsylvania grand jury released a damning report detailing horrific abuses by 300 Catholic clergy against more than 1,000 victims since the 1950s. In the aftermath, 36 dioceses have publicized self-reported lists of clergy "credibly accused" of abusing minors. (There are 197 dioceses in the United States.)....

 

Based on her review of the Illinois dioceses' internal files, the attorney general says the dioceses have received sex-abuse-related allegations against approximately 690 clergy. But they publicly reported just 185 of the allegations.
Nearly 75% of the allegations were either not investigated or were investigated but not substantiated, according to the report....

 

"The dioceses also often found reasons to discredit survivors' stories of abuse by focusing on the survivors' personal lives," the report says....

 

In December, the Society of Jesus, popularly known as the Jesuits, released lists from four American provinces of more than 230 priests who had been credibly accused of abusing minors....

https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/19/us/illinois-catholic-church-abuse-allegations/index.html

 

 

Girl, 10, dies after female genital mutilation in Sierra Leone
Renewed calls for country to end practice after girl bleeds to death following mass initiation into secret society

 

 

Kate Hodal  Thu 20 Dec 2018
Living in fear of FGM in Sierra Leone: ‘I’m not safe in this community’

A 10-year-old girl has died after undergoing female genital mutilation during a mass initiation into a secret society in Sierra Leone.

 

The girl, one of 68 involved in the rite, bled to death on Tuesday following complications from the FGM procedure.

 

Activists said the ceremony took place in the “bondo bush” – secluded forest – in the northern province of Tonkolili district, roughly 150 miles east of the capital, Freetown.

 

A number of women, as well as cutters, known as soweis, are now on the run, among them the deceased girl’s mother, said Rugiatu Turay, a former government minister who founded the Amazonian Initiative Movement, a grassroots group dedicated to ending FGM.

 

The girl, who has been named as Marie Kamera, had just sat her year-five exams when she was rushed off to the initiation, said Turay.

“As soon as she dropped the pen, she was taken away,” she said. “This is the second time that a girl has died in that family: one of the sisters died of excessive bleeding after being initiated two years ago, and the father was against it this time, but the mother is the breadwinner in the family and she wanted it....

 

FGM is a common practice in Sierra Leone, where nine in 10 girls are cut, often with crude instruments such as penknives, broken glass and razor blades, according to the World Health Organization. The ritual involves the partial or full removal of the female genitalia and can cause serious health injuries.

 

Although it has been technically banned since emergency health measures were introduced after the 2014 Ebola outbreak, FGM has a strong government lobby. As a result, the government is one of only a few globally that has failed to outlaw the practice, said Turay....

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/dec/20/girl-10-dies-after-female-genital-mutilation-in-sierra-leone

 

 

Truth about CIA’s illegal MKUltra mind-control experiments – using drugs, hypnosis and electronic devices- revealed in sensational new documents officials hid for decades

 

The records “rewrite the history” of the CIA’s covert and illegal MKUltra project, according to researcher John Greenewald Jr who spent almost 20 years trying to obtain the documents

By Emma Parry, Digital US Correspondent 7th December 2018

 

DISTURBING details of secret mind-control experiments carried out by the CIA have been revealed in newly released documents - that officials have been trying to hide for decades.

 

The new documents, released under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal how the CIA experimented on both humans and animals using drugs, hypnosis and electronic devices as part of the top secret - and illegal - mind control project MKUltra.

 

Shockingly the swathes of information still missing or redacted in the records could mean the CIA is STILL carrying out the experiments to this day, according to experts.

 

One document details how the CIA planned to drug “criminals awaiting trial held in a prison hospital ward” in a bid to develop “improved techniques in drug interrogation”.

 

Another document details the CIA’s interest in developing ways to cause amnesia in humans using experiments “no matter how weird, inconclusive or unusual”.

 

It goes on to detail how they were looking to find ways of developing hypnotic speaking techniques which would control the minds of “large audiences” and “heighten group susceptibility”.

 

Experiments which were “too dangerous, too shocking, too unusual for routine testing would be of interest to us,” the memo from 1956 reads.

The records also detail mind control experiments on dogs, cats and mice with a cocktail of drugs and by implanting electronic devices - most likely as a precursor to human experiments....

 

The records were obtained by researcher John Greenewald Jr, who published them last week on his website The Black Vault....

John said: “Are the CIA still trying to cover up projects that took place in the 50s and 60s? In my opinion yes.

 

“They are trying to cover it up and that is evidenced not just by what I went through to get the documents but the documents themselves.

“So you'll see through these records they were doing a lot of different types of research with drugs on cats and dogs and other animals.

 

“They were implanting electronic devices into animals to see whether electronic impulses can essentially control the brain....

 

MKUltra was the code name for a top secret and illegal programme of human experiments which the CIA carried out in the early 50s until it was official halted in 1973.

 

The aim of the project was to identify and develop mind-control drugs and procedures to be used in interrogations and torture in a bid to force confessions and control behaviour.

 

Although the CIA admitted to running the covert operation during congressional hearings in the 70s, they claimed that all records relating to it had been destroyed.

 

John’s battle for information started in 1999, when he requested the only documents relating to MKUltra that the CIA said had not been destroyed - 30,000 pages of financial records....

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7920010/cia-mkultra-mind-control-drugs-hypnosis-electric-documents/

 

 

Woody Allen's Secret Teen Lover Speaks, 18 Chicago-area Jesuit priests, 300 Pennsylvania priests who were found to have sexually abused children

Woody Allen's Secret Teen Lover Speaks: Sex, Power and a Conflicted Muse Who Inspired 'Manhattan' by Gary Baum December 17, 2018

 

In 1976, 16-year-old model Babi Christina Engelhardt embarked on a hidden eight-year affair with the 41–year-old filmmaker that mirrors one of his most famous movies. Now, amid the #MeToo reckoning and Allen’s personal scandals, she looks back with mixed emotions on their relationship and its unequal dynamic.

 

Sixteen, emerald-eyed, blond, an aspiring model with a confident streak and a painful past: Babi Christina Engelhardt had just caught Woody Allen's gaze at legendary New York City power restaurant Elaine's. It was October 1976, and when Engelhardt returned from the ladies' room, she dropped a note on his table with her phone number. It brazenly read: "Since you've signed enough autographs, here's mine!"

 

Soon, Allen rang, inviting her to his Fifth Avenue penthouse. The already-famous 41-year-old director, still hot off Sleeper and who'd release Annie Hall the following spring, never asked her age. But she told him she was still in high school, living with her family in rural New Jersey as she pursued her modeling ambitions in Manhattan. Within weeks, they'd become physically intimate at his place. She wouldn't turn 17, legal in New York, until that December....

 

Englehardt now works for legendary producer Bob Evans; previously she was an assistant to (later disgraced) financier Jeffrey Epstein and, before that, a member of Federico Fellini’s creative circle....
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/features/woody-allens-secret-teen-lover-manhattan-muse-speaks-1169782

 

 

18 Chicago-area Jesuit priests named in new list alleging sexual abuse

Morgan Greene Chicago Tribune December 18, 2018

 

Eighteen Jesuit priests with ties to Chicago-area institutions were named on a list released Monday alleging instances of sexual abuse dating back more than six decades, including one defrocked priest who was convicted of sex crimes in federal court.

 

The Midwest Province Jesuits, part of a Catholic religious order known for its focus on education, released a list of dozens of priests with credible allegations of sexual abuse to their names since 1955.

 

In a Monday evening phone interview, the Rev. Brian Paulson, provincial of the Midwest Province, said the list was a response to the scandals that have rocked the Catholic Church for the past two decades — from the 2002 abuse crisis exposed by the Boston Globe to the more than 300 Pennsylvania priests who were found to have sexually abused children, according to an August grand jury report.

 

“I think in the past, church leaders tried to avoid scandal,” Paulson said. “But I think now we realize the greater scandal is keeping this information in our drawer.”....

 

More than 50 priests were named as perpetrators in cases where there was “reasonable certainty that the sexual abuse of a minor occurred.” Several worked at Loyola Academy in Wilmette, Holy Family Parish and St. Ignatius College Prep on the Near West Side, and Loyola University Chicago, among other institutions....

 

Donald McGuire, a prominent priest and retreat director who traveled frequently, was among those on the list. The Tribune reported that the convicted sex offender abused dozens of children around the globe, according to internal church records released in 2013, and was associated with what was, at the time, the largest settlement amount per individual paid in the history of the U.S. Catholic sexual abuse crisis.

 

The Midwest Province list accused McGuire of multiple instances of abuse across five Chicago-area institutions: at Loyola Academy from 1954-57 and again from 1965-70, Loyola University Chicago in 1976, Bellarmine Jesuit Retreat House in Barrington from 1981-84 and from 1985-88, Canisius House in Evanston from 1988-2002 and the Chicago Jesuit Community from 2002-05....

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-jesuits-sex-abuse-list-20181217-story.html

Sex Offender Jeffrey Epstein Settles Defamation Suit, Silencing Women's Testimony, Hundreds of sex abuse allegations found in fundamental Baptist churches across U.S.

 

Sex Offender Jeffrey Epstein Settles Defamation Suit, Silencing Women's Testimony

December 4, 2018 Vanessa Romo

 

Jeffrey Epstein, a multimillionaire hedge fund manager accused of sexually abusing dozens of underage girls, reached a last-minute settlement on Tuesday in a case that had been expected to allow a handful of his alleged victims to tell their stories in court for the first time.

 

Epstein settled a suit filed by lawyer Bradley Edwards, who said Epstein had damaged his reputation. In court on Tuesday, Epstein apologized to Edwards for alleging that Edwards had made up false charges against him, WPTV reported.

 

In a separate lawsuit, Edwards represents a number of women who allege that Epstein abused them when they were minors, some as young as 13.

Jack Scarola, Edwards' lawyer, announced that a financial settlement for unspecified damages had been reached just as jury selection was set to begin.

 

"This was a case that focused on [Edwards'] personal vindication," Scarola told reporters outside the Palm Beach courthouse. "The case that focuses on the vindication of victims is the Crime Victims Rights Act case and you can be absolutely sure that we're not abandoning that effort."...

 

In 2005 Epstein was under investigation by the Palm Beach Police Department — and then in 2006 by the FBI — for "assembling a large, cult-like network of underage girls — with the help of young female recruiters — to coerce into having sex acts behind the walls of his opulent waterfront mansion as often as three times a day," the Miami Herald reported last week in a sweeping investigative story about the accusations against the 65-year-old.

 

But in 2008, with the help of then-U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, Epstein struck a deal to plead guilty to two counts of solicitation of prostitution — one with a minor under the age of 18. Epstein was sentenced to 18 months in jail, though he was allowed to leave for work five days a week and was released five months early. He was also required to register as a sex offender.

 

Epstein's high-profile legal representation included Harvard professor Alan Dershowitz, who was accused by one of the alleged victims of having sex with another girl at Epstein's home, an accusation that is denied by Dershowitz.

To avoid prosecution, Epstein's legal team negotiated a deal with Acosta, who is now the U.S. secretary of labor. (The post oversees the country's labor laws, including human trafficking.) In exchange for Epstein's admission of guilt, Acosta's office agreed to shut down the FBI's ongoing investigation into Epstein, granting him and four unnamed accomplices immunity from all criminal charges, the Herald reported....

 

Over the years, several women have entered into undisclosed financial settlements with Epstein, but they have never had a day in court.

The decision to keep the women — who are now in their 20s and 30s — in the dark is at the center of a pending lawsuit filed by Edwards in federal court on behalf of some of Epstein's alleged victims. They argue Acosta and Epstein violated their rights under the Crime Victims Rights Act.

 

That law entitles crime victims to "the right to reasonable, accurate, and timely notice of any public court proceeding, or any parole proceeding, involving the crime or of any release or escape of the accused."...

https://www.npr.org/2018/12/04/673320224/sex-offender-jeffrey-epstein-settles-defamation-suit-silencing-womens-testimony

 

Hundreds of sex abuse allegations found in fundamental Baptist churches across U.S. BY SARAH SMITH Dec. 9, 2018

 

Joy Evans Ryder was 15 years old when she says her church youth director pinned her to his office floor and raped her....

The youth director, Dave Hyles, was the son of the charismatic pastor of First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana, considered at the time the flagship for thousands of loosely affiliated independent fundamental Baptist churches and universities.

 

At least three other teen girls would accuse Hyles of sexual misconduct, but he never faced charges or even sat for a police interview related to the accusations. When he got in trouble, Hyles was able to simply move on, from one church assignment to the next.

 

Hyles’ flight to safety has become a well-worn path for ministers in the independent fundamental Baptist movement.

 

For decades, women and children have faced rampant sexual abuse while worshiping at independent fundamental Baptist churches around the country. The network of churches and schools has often covered up the crimes and helped relocate the offenders, an eight-month Star-Telegram investigation has found.

 

More than 200 people — current or former church members, across generations — shared their stories of rape, assault, humiliation and fear in churches where male leadership cannot be questioned....

The Star-Telegram discovered at least 412 allegations of sexual misconduct in 187 independent fundamental Baptist churches and their affiliated institutions, spanning 40 states and Canada....

 

Other ex-members said they believed that if they disobeyed the pastor or left the church, God would kill them or their loved ones.

 

The authority of the men of God extends far beyond the church. Pastors often have a heavy hand in who church members can date. Pastors are asked by members for their advice on where to vacation or whether to take a new job. When one congregant wanted to buy a new house, he had the pastor drive by first and approve it.

 

Independent fundamental Baptist churches preach separation: Stay separate from the world, separate from non-believers and separate from Christians who do not believe as they do. That includes Southern Baptists, who are deemed by the strict sect as too liberal.

 

Members instinctively go to the pastor first with problems, including those of a criminal nature.

 

“Any issues, even legal issues, go to the pastor first, not the police. Especially about another member of the church,” said Josh Elliott, a former member of Vineyard’s Oklahoma City church. “The person should go to the pastor, and the pastor will talk to the offender. You don’t report to police because the pastor is the ultimate authority, not the government.”....

https://www.star-telegram.com/living/religion/article222576310.html

 

 

Mind Control in China Has a Very Long History

Mind Control in China Has a Very Long History
By James Leibold
Mr. Leibold is an expert on ethnic issues in modern China.
Nov. 28, 2018

 

MELBOURNE, Australia — China has built a vast network of extrajudicial internment camps in the western region of Xinjiang, where Uighurs and other Muslim minorities are made to renounce their culture and religion, and are forcibly subjected to political indoctrination. After long denying the camps’ existence, the government now calls them benign training centers that teach law, Mandarin and vocational skills — a claim that has been exposed as a disingenuous euphemism and an attempt to deflect criticism for gross human rights abuses.

 

But the camps, especially their ambition to rewire people, reveal a familiar logic that has long defined the Chinese state’s relationship with its public: a paternalistic approach that pathologizes deviant thought and behavior, and then tries to forcefully transform them. The scale and pace of the government’s campaign in Xinjiang today may be extraordinary, but the practice and its methods are not.

 

As far back as the third century BCE, the philosopher Xunzi argued that humanity was like “crooked timber” and that an individual’s character flaws needed to be scraped away or straightened out in the pursuit of social harmony. Mencius, a rival thinker, believed for his part in the innate goodness of human beings, but he too stressed the importance of self-improvement.

 

In stark contrast to Western liberalism, Confucianism — and Chinese political culture more broadly — hinges not on individual rights, but on the acceptance of social hierarchy and the belief that humans are perfectible. In Chinese thought, humans are not equally endowed; they vary in suzhi, or quality. A poor Uighur farmer in southern Xinjiang, for example, sits at the bottom of the evolutionary ladder; an official from the ethnic Han majority is toward the top....

 

When applied in Xinjiang, Tibet or other borderlands, ganhua seems to amount to a “civilizing project,” as the anthropologist Stevan Harrell has said, which aims to create a uniform populace under the banner of a single “Chinese nation.” But it is more than that. In the 1960s, the psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton called Chinese-style thought control — with its dogmatic belief in absolute truth and compulsion to mend the incorrigible — “ideological totalism.” 

 

As Lifton noted, ideological totalism in China is not a continuous process, but a cyclical phenomenon. It elicits a mix of emotions. Some subjects comply, others withdraw; a few may even be enthusiastic at first. But over time the suffocating nature of repression also tends to breed resentment and resistance, and those in turn can bring about even more repressive methods of control....

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/28/opinion/china-reeducation-mind-control-xinjiang.html