Six Million Children Maltreated in 2009?, US experiments on the disabled

also: America's shocking secret: Pictures that show how U.S. experimented on its own disabled citizens and prison inmates

Six Million Children Maltreated in 2009?
http://www.childlaw.us/2011/02/six-million-children-maltreate.html
By James R. Marsh February 3, 2011
In 2009, an estimated 3.3 million referrals involving the alleged maltreatment of approximately 6.0 million children were received by CPS agencies nationwide. Of these, CPS determined that at least one child was a unique victim of abuse and neglect in 702,000 cases. The rest were unsubstantiated or closed with no finding.

These and other data appear in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Child Maltreatment 2009, the 20th in a series of reports designed to provide national statistics on child abuse and neglect.

Most states recognize four major types of maltreatment: neglect, physical abuse, psychological maltreatment, and sexual abuse. Although any of the forms of child maltreatment may be found separately, they also can occur in combination....

More than 75 percent (78.3%) suffered neglect;
More than 15 percent (17.8%) suffered physical abuse;
Less than 10 percent (9.5%) suffered sexual abuse; and
Less than 10 percent (7.6%) suffered from psychological maltreatment....

For the analyses included in this report, a perpetrator is the person who is responsible for the abuse or neglect of a child. Forty-nine States reported case-level data about perpetrators using unique identifiers. In these States, the total duplicate count of perpetrators was 894,951 and the total unique count of perpetrators was 512,790.

For 2009:
Four-fifths (80.9%) of duplicate perpetrators of child maltreatment were parents, and another 6.3 percent were other relatives of the victim;
Of the duplicate perpetrators who were parents, four-fifths (84.7%) were the biological parents of the victim;
Women comprised a larger percentage of all unique perpetrators than men, 53.8 percent compared to 44.4 percent; and
Four-fifths (83.2%) of all unique perpetrators were between the ages of 20 and 49 years.

The full report is available on the Children's Bureau website:
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/pubs/cm09/cm09.pdf


America's shocking secret: Pictures that show how U.S. experimented on its own disabled citizens and prison inmates By Daily Mail Reporter

28th February 2011 Pictures have emerged providing the shocking proof that U.S. government doctors once experimented on disabled American citizens and prison inmates.

Such experiments included giving hepatitis to mental patients in Connecticut, squirting a pandemic flu virus up the noses of prisoners in Maryland, and injecting cancer cells into chronically ill people at a New York hospital. Much of this horrific history is 40 to 80 years old, but it is the backdrop for a meeting in Washington this week by a presidential bioethics commission.

The meeting was triggered by the government's apology last year for federal doctors infecting prisoners and mental patients in Guatemala with syphilis 65 years ago.
U.S. officials also acknowledged there had been dozens of similar experiments in America - studies that often involved making healthy people sick.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1361275/Americas-shocking-secret-US-experimented-disabled-citizens-prison-inmates.html

Abuses Found Mexican Institutions for Disabled, Warren Jeffs Texas bigamy case

Abuses Found at Mexican Institutions for Disabled
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD November 30, 2010
MEXICO CITY — Ten years ago, a human rights group released a scathing, groundbreaking report on abusive, decrepit conditions in Mexican institutions for the mentally and physically disabled, moving the country to promise change and to take the lead in writing international agreements to protect the disabled. But in a new report released Tuesday, the group, Disability Rights International, working with a Mexican human rights organization, said a yearlong investigation revealed “atrocious and abusive conditions” that included lobotomies performed without consent, children missing from orphanages, widespread filth and squalor, and a lack of medical care....

At orphanages, the team found that children were unaccounted for and interviewed residents who had said they had grown up in the facilities, though officials had no record of the names they came in with or arrival date.

Human rights officials and unnamed government officials told them there was no registry or tracking system for children placed in public or private institutions, leaving them prey to human traffickers.
“Due to a failure to provide oversight, children have literally disappeared from institutions,” the report said. “Some of these children may have been subject to sex trafficking and forced labor.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/01/world/americas/01mexico.htm

Abandoned & Disappeared: Mexico’s Segregation and Abuse of Children and Adults with Disabilities - A report, by Disability Rights International and the Comisión Méxicana de Defensa y Promoción de los Derechos Humanos, on the state of the Mexican mental health care system.
http://documents.nytimes.com/abuses-found-at-mexican-institutions-for-the-disabled


Warren Jeffs returned to Texas to face bigamy case
By PAUL J. WEBER AP Dec. 1, 2010
SAN ANGELO, Texas — Polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs has been extradited from Utah to Texas to face trial on bigamy and sexual assault charges, the Texas Attorney General's Office said Wednesday. Jeffs, who is being held without bail in Texas, is set to make a court appearance Wednesday morning in San Angelo. Texas authorities have charged the ecclesiastical head of the Fundamentalist church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints with felony bigamy, aggravated sexual assault and assault.

Attorney General's Office spokesman Jerry Strickland said the 54-year-old Jeffs arrived Tuesday night at a West Texas jail, but declined to specify where he is being held. Jeffs' Southern Utah-based church practices polygamy in arranged marriages that have involved underage girls....

Jeffs' Texas charges stem from evidence gathered during a raid on the Yearning for Zion Ranch near Eldorado in April 2008. Jeffs had been held at the Utah State Prison after his arrest, prosecution and conviction on two charges of rape as an accomplice for his role in the 2001 marriage of an underage follower — then 14 — to her 19-year-old cousin. In July, the Utah Supreme overturned the 2007 convictions. Prosecutors there have yet to decide whether they'll retry Jeffs.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/life/religion/new/7318902.html

Vatican's New Rules, Supreme court rejected petition, Bangladesh child abuse

Vatican's New Rules Against Child Sex Abusers to Maintain Status Quo 7/7/10
The Vatican is expected to slightly enhance its rules for punishing clergy who sexually abuse children, but the new policies, likely to be announced within days, will still fall short of what victim advocates say is necessary to protect minors.
Moreover, the changes are seen as fairly minor concessions in a decades-long battle to push Rome to act forcefully against abusers.

In addition, the new policy, which has reportedly been signed by Pope Benedict XVI, still has no provision for dealing with bishops who cover up for molesting priests and it is unlikely to clarify whether or how bishops should report abusers to civil authorities.
The new rules, which Vatican observers say could go into effect within days, will gather norms that have been in place since 2001 to make it easier for the church to defrock or suspend priests accused of abuse. The policies were slightly modified in 2003, after another wave of sexual abuse revelations broke in the United States.
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2010/07/07/vaticans-new-rules-against-child-sex-abusers-to-maintain-status/


The Belgians Make Washington Look Bad July 7, 2010 Marci Hamilton - Professor, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law ....The U.S. Solicitor General and the State Department, led by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, urged the Supreme Court to vacate a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision that permitted a single victim to sue the Holy See for abuse by Fr. Andrew Ronan. The priest admitted repeatedly to victimizing children in Ireland, Chicago, and then Portland. Nevertheless, the legal strategy employed by our government was to grossly distort Oregon law so as to favor the Vatican.

But last week, the Supreme Court, with six Catholics on the bench, took the high road and rejected the Solicitor General's and the State Department's politicization of the case and denied the Holy See's petition. As a result, John V. Doe will be permitted to pursue his case, first through discovery and then at trial. That is a testimony to the rule of law.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marci-hamilton/the-belgians-make-washing_b_637575.html

Bangladesh disabled children sexually abused - study
6 July 2010 Half of all the disabled children in Bangladesh are sexually abused, mostly by close relatives, according to a new study. Most of the offenders are male, the study says. Of the victims, 52% are girls and 48% boys, aged between seven and 18 years. Those with mental disabilities are at even greater risk, the study says. According to the 2001 census, Bangladesh has nearly 12m disabled people. The study was conducted jointly by the Bangladesh Protibondhi Foundation (BPF) and Save the Children Sweden-Denmark.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/10522001.stm