Expert on Ritual Murders About the Triple Homicide in the Florida Panhandle, Santeria priest claims sexual assault was part of healing ritual, Child abuse scandal in Pakistan

- We Asked an Expert on Ritual Murders About the Triple Homicide in the Florida
- Santeria priest claims sexual assault was part of healing ritual, police say
- Child abuse scandal shocks Pakistan, families angry at police

We Asked an Expert on Ritual Murders About the Triple Homicide in the Florida Panhandle   August 6, 2015 By Allie Conti  Staff Writer

This week, people across the country have been freaking out about a crime story that sounds like it came straight out of the good season of True Detective. A sheriff in Florida's Panhandle, which is also known as the Redneck Riviera and characterized by conservatism and religiosity, announced at a press conference that a ritualistic triple-murder took place in Pensacola last week....

But is it possible that we should be taking the allegedly ritualistic part of this tragedy more seriously? Dawn Perlmutter, an expert on ritual killings and former director of the Institute for the Research of Organized and Ritual Violence, says her phone has been blowing up since the news of the murders broke. (I managed to catch her 20 minutes before she took the stage at the International Association for Identification Crime Scene Conference, where she was giving a lecture on—you guessed it—ritual murders.) Apparently, these kinds of crimes are more prevalent than people might think. "I've worked on cases in Ohio, and Florida, and New York," Perlmutter said. "They're international, and not specific to either rural places or cities. They can happen everywhere."....

VICE: Hey Dawn. First off, what makes something a ritual murder?
Dawn Perlmutter: What distinguishes a ritualistic killing from a standard homicide is that it goes beyond what's necessary just to kill someone. There's overkill or mutilation. But even more than that, it's usually some kind of symbolic evidence. For example, symbols carved into the body, there can be symbols painted on the floor, it can be the positioning of the body, the staging. These are your pretty standard signs. They tend to be multiple homicides also. And then you get into other types of things, like significance of dates, or significance of holidays specific to different ideologies....

People seem very riled up by this—understandably. But how common is ritual murder?
I've worked on dozens of ritual murders and testified on them. In terms of statistics, I don't think they're as common as bank robberies, but they're certainly more common than serial killing. They occur. They definitely occur. A lot of people don't believe that they happen, but I just testified in two cases in LA, one last month, that was a ritual killing by a couple. And one was by a young Satanist in LA who murdered his mother. In both of those cases, there was severe mutilation and positioning of the bodies, so there was no doubt they were ritual murders.

What's the most interesting case you've worked on?
I don't know if interesting is the right term. One of the cases that was very disturbing to me was one in Toledo, Ohio, that involved a priest who ritually killed a nun in the sacristy of the chapel on Easter Saturday. It was a 25-year-old cold case, so it was nice that we could still solve it, and he was convicted. But that was disturbing because so many victims came out saying that had been done, and it was actually horrifying in a number of ways that it had gone on for so long....

http://www.vice.com/read/we-asked-an-expert-in-ritual-murders-about-the-triple-homicide-in-the-florida-panhandle-806 


Santeria priest claims sexual assault was part of healing ritual, police say
By Veronica Rocha  August 6, 2015

A Santeria priest has been accused of sexually assaulting a girl during what he claimed were healing rituals, Montebello police said Thursday.

Police are trying to find Pablo Pinto Mata, 46 — known as a “Santero,” or priest — who often performed healing rituals at his business, Los Angeles Import, in the 2400 block of Whittier Boulevard in Montebello, police said.

But police said his so-called healing rituals were a ploy used to assault a teenager....

In 2013, Mata performed three healing rituals on a 16-year-old girl, police said. During those incidents, the girl had to disrobe. The third time, Mata forced the girl to disrobe and he sexually assaulted her, police said.

Mata told her the assault was part of a ritual common in Santeria, a faith of the Caribbean.

Police think there may be other victims who were sexually assaulted....
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-santeria-sex-assault-20150806-story.html



Priest of Caribbean Santeria religion 'used HEALING ritual as cover to sexually abuse 16-year-old girl'
    Pablo Pinto Mata, 46, is accused of sex attack against girl in 2013
    Allegedly used three-part ritual to dupe her into undressing for attack
    Mata has business linked to Santeria in Montebello, California
    The faith has roots in Africa and incorporates elements of Catholicism
By Kieran Corcoran For Dailymail.com  7 August 2015
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3189944/Priest-Caribbean-Santeria-religion-used-HEALING-ritual-cover-sexually-abuse-16-year-old-girl.html

describes abuse
Child abuse scandal shocks Pakistan, families angry at police
HUSAIN KHAN WALA, Pakistan By Mehreen Zahra-Malik and Mubasher Bukhari Mon Aug 10, 2015

Parents at the center of a growing child abuse scandal in Pakistan accused police on Monday of failing to do enough to break up a pedophile ring in Punjab province, the prime minister's political heartland.

Villagers in the central Punjabi village of Husain Khan Wala told Reuters that a prominent family there has for years forced children to perform sex acts on video. The footage was sold or used to blackmail their impoverished families.

Rubina Bibi says her 13-year-old son was a victim, but when she tried to file a report at the Ganda Singh Wala police station a month and a half ago, "the police station clerk told me to get lost and I was thrown out".

"My son is in the videos, he is a victim," she said. "Our children were forced into this. They were humiliated. But the police are treating them like criminals."

Another mother, Shakila Bibi, said: "I went to the police station to file a complaint, but instead of registering a (report), they took my son into custody."

Her 15-year-old son is still in jail, she said....

Lawyer Latif Sra, representing some of the victims, said: "I have personally met hundreds of parents who have not yet come forward to file official complaints, either out of fear or shame."

Police have arrested seven suspects, but downplayed the scale of the abuse, suggesting a land dispute may have sparked accusations.

"It's a very murky situation," said Babar. He added that seven cases involving 11 children had been registered.

Activist Mobeen Ghaznavi said he had 130 video clips containing abuse.

"People are afraid. They are being threatened and intimidated," he said.

Suraiya Bibi said the abusers threatened her family when she complained to police....
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/08/10/us-pakistan-child-abuse-idUSKCN0QF0K120150810

Review of Penn State child-abuse probe. Dark net 'used by tens of thousands of paedophiles', Anti-paedophile police fight child porn 'epidemic', Pakistani woman raped, killed and hanged from tree: police, Indian Village Feels Aftershocks of Rape

- Review of Penn State child-abuse probe to be issued on Monday
- Dark net 'used by tens of thousands of paedophiles'
- Paedophile use of dark net increases for child abuse images
- Anti-paedophile police fight child porn 'epidemic'
- Pakistani woman raped, killed and hanged from tree: police
- Indian Village Feels Aftershocks of Rape

Review of Penn State child-abuse probe to be issued on Monday
Reuters  6/20/14
(Reuters) - A long-awaited probe into the investigation of former Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky, who was convicted in 2012 of sexually abusing children, will be released early next week, Pennsylvania authorities said on Friday.

Sandusky, the once-legendary assistant football coach, was convicted in 2012 of abusing 10 boys from 1994 to 2009, some in the Penn State showers, and is serving 30 to 60 years in prison. In 2013, the school agreed to pay $59.7 million to the victims.

The report, prepared by former federal prosecutor H. Geoffrey Moulton Jr. at the request of state Attorney General Kathleen Kane, will be released at a news conference on Monday, the attorney general's office said in a statement....
http://news.yahoo.com/review-penn-state-child-abuse-probe-issued-monday-171146715--spt.html 


Dark net 'used by tens of thousands of paedophiles'
By Angus Crawford BBC News 19 June 2014
Tens of thousands of paedophiles are using the so-called dark net to trade images of sexual abuse, an investigation by BBC News indicates.

One site receives as many as 500 page views per second, its founder says.

Figures from another site suggest Brits are heavily involved in producing and distributing illegal obscene images.

Britain's National Crime Agency warned in its 2014 threat assessment that abusers were turning to anonymous sites and encryption technology.

The dark net is the term used to refer to parts of the internet that are hidden and can be hard to access without special software.

One of the most popular products used to access such areas is called the TorBrowser....
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27885502

Paedophile use of dark net increases for child abuse images
By Barclay Ballard 6/20/14

Tens of thousands of paedophiles are using the dark net to circulate images of sexual abuse, according to a report by the BBC.

The National Crime Agency said that abusers were increasingly turning to encryption software to maintain anonymity. The dark net is a hidden part of the Internet which can only be accessed by special software, one of the most popular of which is the TorBrowser.

This enables people to use Tor, an "onion-routing" system, which bounces encrypted data through several randomly selected servers on the network, making a PC's net address untraceable....

During the BBC investigation, the broadcaster contacted an active paedophile who ran one of the illegal chat rooms, until it closed in May 2014.

"We had over 40,000 user accounts on the site. We used to get sometimes 500 page views per second. My own collection is 12 gigabytes", he said....
http://betanews.com/2014/06/20/paedophile-use-of-dark-net-increases-for-child-abuse-images/


Anti-paedophile police fight child porn 'epidemic'
By Angus Crawford BBC News 18 June 2014
The internet trade in images that show child sex abuse is now "an epidemic", according to the head of the global initiative to combat the problem.

Police officers from around the world serve on the Virtual Global Taskforce.

Its chairman, Ian Quinn, tells the BBC there has been an "explosion" in cases handled by US authorities.

The US alone has 61 Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) units, each made up of state, local police and federal agents....

Online images accumulate

    In 2002 the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children reviewed and confirmed 45,055 examples of obscene images of children found online (some of these were duplicates)
    In 2013 the figure had grown to 23,881,197
    As of May 2014, the centre had reviewed 112 million files containing images of child sexual abuse....

Predator detentions
    In 2003, 339 arrests were made worldwide in connection with Operation Predator
    In 2013, the number had grown to 2,099
    To date, the total number of arrests linked to the operation totals 10,608....
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-27872401


Pakistani woman raped, killed and hanged from tree: police
Reuters  6/20/14

MULTAN Pakistan (Reuters) - A 20-year-old woman has been gang-raped, killed and hanged from a tree in Pakistan in a case with a chilling resemblance to a double rape and murder that caused outrage in neighbouring India last month.

Pakistani police said Muzammil Bibi, 20, was attacked by three men in a field in the impoverished Layyah area of densely populated Punjab province....
http://news.yahoo.com/pakistani-woman-raped-killed-hanged-tree-police-163615646.html

Indian Village Feels Aftershocks of Rape
Politicians Visit Hamlet of Two Girls Killed Last Week as Families Recall 'Best Friends,' Their Final Walk to the Chili Field
By Jesse Pesta and Krishna Pokharel June 1, 2014

KATARA SADATGANJ, India—VIPs swept into this isolated village over the weekend as outrage rippled through India and beyond over the country's latest case of violent sexual abuse.

Two girls were allegedly raped and then hanged from a mango tree here last week. After a photo of the dead girls circled the globe, some of India's most prominent politicians came to this hamlet of mud-and-brick huts, while the murders have reinvigorated calls for India to address the persistent problem of violence against women.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/indian-village-feels-aftershocks-of-rape-1401669669