- ‘This Is Not Our Shame’: Five Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s Abuse on Trauma, Justice, and Sisterhood "She was introduced to the financier Jeffrey Epstein through Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the British media titan Robert Maxwell. (Epstein, charged with sex trafficking girls, some just 14 or 15, reportedly committed suicide in jail over the summer.) Giuffre was 16 at the time, spending her summer as an attendant at the spa at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s resort. According to the deposition, Maxwell told Giuffre she wanted to hire her as a masseuse."
- Members of child abuse WhatsApp group arrested in 11 countries
- Rape and sexual assault
'You grow up hating yourself': why child abuse survivors keep – and break – their silence
The average victim takes 24 years to reveal their secret and disclosure is often the key to recovery
- Rep. Jim Jordan denies he ignored report that Ohio State doctor performed sex act in shower "misconduct by Strauss, who was found by independent investigators to have sexually abused 177 male students over two decades... second person to say he told Jordan directly about sexual misconduct by Strauss "
Members of child abuse WhatsApp group arrested in 11 countries
10 December 2019
Spanish police say 33 people have been arrested globally in connection with a WhatsApp group for images of child sex abuse and other violent content.
The many "extreme" images shared in the group had been "normalised by most of its members", the force said.
Arrests were made in 11 different countries across three continents, but the majority - 17 - were in Spain.
Many of those arrested or being investigated in Spain are themselves under 18, including a 15-year-old boy.
In Uruguay, police arrested two people - one of whom was a mother who abused her daughter and sent images of this to the group.
In another case, a 29-year-old man was arrested for not only downloading the images, but also encouraging other group members to make contact with young girls - particularly migrants who would be unlikely to go to the police.
What did the group share?
In a statement, the police said the group shared "paedophilic content, sometimes of extreme severity, together with other content that was legal but was not suitable for minors because of their extreme nature".
Some group members had even created "stickers" - small digital images that are easily shared, similar to emojis - of children being abused....
‘This Is Not Our Shame’: Five Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein’s Abuse on Trauma, Justice, and Sisterhood
Stories about Epstein’s accusers tend to have their own lexicon, filled with phrases designed to shame and titillate—sex slave, victim, troubled. With the world watching, Virginia Giuffre, Teresa Helm, Rachel Benavidez, Marijke Chartouni, and Sarah Ransome want to reframe the narrative—and reclaim their power.
By Mattie Kahn
December 10, 2019
Giuffre first came forward in 2015 and her account is best known; in a sworn deposition taken in 2016, she said she was introduced to the financier Jeffrey Epstein through Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of the British media titan Robert Maxwell. (Epstein, charged with sex trafficking girls, some just 14 or 15, reportedly committed suicide in jail over the summer.) Giuffre was 16 at the time, spending her summer as an attendant at the spa at Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump’s resort. According to the deposition, Maxwell told Giuffre she wanted to hire her as a masseuse. She promised Giuffre travel and an education. Giuffre accepted the offer. The abuse, she recalls, started soon after, with Epstein demanding sexual services for himself and some of his friends.
Rep. Jim Jordan denies he ignored report that Ohio State doctor performed sex act in shower
Jordan continues to insist he knew nothing about what Dr. Richard Strauss did to the male athletes and others.
Nov. 12, 2019, By Corky Siemaszko
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, has dismissed as "ridiculous" a claim by a professional referee that he told the congressman directly that Dr. Richard Strauss had masturbated in front of him in a shower at Ohio State University.
Jordan addressed the allegation in an interview with his hometown newspaper Monday, just days after NBC News reported that the referee claimed in a lawsuit that the congressman, who was then an assistant wrestling coach, barely blinked when he described his encounter with the sexual predator.
“Yeah, that’s Strauss,” Jordan and the head wrestling coach replied dismissively, according to the lawsuit, which does not name Jordan as a defendant....
NBC News has reached out for the comment to the referee, who is a respected member of Ohio's wrestling community and who has known Jordan for decades.
Identified in the court papers as John Doe 42, his allegation about Jordan’s alleged indifference was part of the lawsuit filed last week by 43 survivors against Ohio State. It charged the university’s “ingrained culture of institutional indifference” enabled Strauss to sexually abuse well over 100 students and athletes from a half-dozen sports over two decades.
The referee is the second person to say he told Jordan directly about sexual misconduct by Strauss, who was found by independent investigators to have sexually abused 177 male students over two decades.
Other former Ohio State wrestlers have said Jordan had to have known about Strauss because he shared a locker room with them and took part in discussions about the doctor, who died in 2005.
Jordan has repeatedly denied knowing anything about what Strauss did to the wrestlers and has called allegations that he turned a blind eye to the abuse politically motivated.
Ohio State spokesman Ben Johnson said last week that the university "has led the effort to investigate and expose the misdeeds of Richard Strauss and the systemic failures to respond, and the university is committed to a fair resolution....
Rape and sexual assault
'You grow up hating yourself': why child abuse survivors keep – and break – their silence
The average victim takes 24 years to reveal their secret and disclosure is often the key to recovery
Earlier this year Erin Delaney revealed on Facebook a secret she’d kept from almost everyone.
As a child she suffered physical and emotional abuse and severe neglect. The neglect had significant consequences, including a fractured skull from falling – which was only picked up when, after she vomited at school the next day, a member of her extended family intervened and took her to hospital.
The emotional abuse included both parents telling her at different times that the other was dead, or that they weren’t her real parents; the physical abuse – the hitting, the kicking – depended on their drug use and moods.
“It was,” the 36-year-old Sydneysider says now, “a challenging journey through life. I never felt safe and I never felt grounded. You grow up hating yourself and thinking you caused it and you deserve it....
Delaney, who suffers from complex post-traumatic stress disorder, says society treats different medical conditions unequally. “One of my old school friends had cancer a few years ago and everyone offered to help, while my emotional injuries are a source of shame and isolation.”....
Dr Cathy Kezelman, president of the Blue Knot foundation, a national organisation helping adults recover from childhood trauma, says Australia’s royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse had found it takes an average of 24 years for people to speak about their abuse. “Some never do,” she says. The Blue Knot helpline has received calls from people disclosing for the first time in their 70s, 80s and 90s.
