- 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....
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....
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....
