Human-trafficking gang that smuggled prostitutes to Europe - horrific voodoo rituals to break their will

describes crimes

-  Suspected member of European slavery network arrested in Manchester
-  Human-trafficking gang 'that smuggled prostitutes to Europe made women eat raw chicken during horrific voodoo rituals to break their will'

- Grooming gangs abused more than 700 women and girls around Newcastle after police appeared to punish victims

Suspected member of European slavery network arrested in Manchester
21 February 2018

A woman suspected of being a key member of an organised crime group that trafficked women from Nigeria to Europe and forced them into sex work has been arrested by National Crime Agency officers.

The Spanish national was apprehended on 2 February 2018 on a European Arrest Warrant after NCA investigators tracked her down to a house in Miles Platting, Manchester.

With support from Greater Manchester Police, NCA officers also detained two Nigerian men at the address aged 39 and 34 on suspicion of drugs and immigration offences.

A further 11 suspected members of the criminal network were arrested in the same week in Spain and four victims were safeguarded as part of a multi-agency operation led by the Spanish National Police with support from Europol and Nigeria’s National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficking in Persons (NAPTIP).

Spanish authorities believe the network recruited female victims in Benin, Nigeria, under false promises of a better life, before trafficking them to Spain. Once there, they were forced into prostitution to pay off their ‘debt’.

Investigators believe the victims were coerced using voodoo rituals and controlled this way through fear that if they did not comply, they or their family would be killed. As part of the rituals, they would be forced to eat raw chicken hearts and had their fingernails and pubic hair pulled out.

Liam Vernon from the NCA’s Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking Unit, said: “Through close cooperation with the Spanish authorities and Greater Manchester Police, we have located and arrested a woman believed to be a key member of a network that trafficked and forced vulnerable women into prostitution against their will.

“Criminals involved in modern slavery seek out and exploit vulnerable individuals. They treat their victims as a commodity that can generate income over and over again....

http://www.nationalcrimeagency.gov.uk/index.php/news-media/nca-news/1295-suspected-member-of-european-slavery-network-arrested-in-manchester

Human-trafficking gang 'that smuggled prostitutes to Europe made women eat raw chicken during horrific voodoo rituals to break their will'

Spanish police made 11 arrests while National Crime Agency officers made another one in Manchester

By Gerard Couzens 21 FEB 2018
Twelve people have been arrested in Spain and the UK after police smashed a gang accused of trafficking women to work as prostitutes in Europe using horrific voodoo rituals.

The women were made to eat raw chicken hearts in sickening rituals, while some had their nails yanked off and hair pulled out, detectives said.

Spanish police made 11 arrests in Alicante, Cantabria and Vizcaya and National Crime Agency officers made another one in Manchester.

Detectives say the victims were captured in poor parts of Nigeria and terrorised using voodoo rituals to “break their will”, before being smuggled into Europe to work using fake travel documents.

Most ended up in brothels in Spain after time in Italy....

Claiming the network had a “strong structure” in countries like Nigeria, Spain, the UK and Italy, the spokesman added: “The rituals were used to guarantee the submission of the victims and thanks to them, the organisation achieved their aim of control with a simple telephone call without the need for madams in the same place the exploited women were.

“The victims committed through the rituals to paying the debt they’d built up with their journey to Spain and promised not to report the people exploiting them to police.

“They were warned that if they did raise the alarm, they and their families in Nigeria would come to great harm.”

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/human-trafficking-gang-that-smuggled-12062088

Grooming gangs abused more than 700 women and girls around Newcastle after police appeared to punish victims
'Sexual exploitation is happening in towns and cities across the country,' serious case review warns
Lizzie Dearden Home Affairs Correspondent

Grooming gangs abused more than 700 women and girls around Newcastle with “arrogant persistence” after police appeared to punish victims while letting the perpetrators walk free, a case review has found.

The report into the response by authorities to child sexual exploitation found that before a large-scale police operation was launched in 2014, officers’ actions were sending an “unhelpful” message to perpetrators.

It warned that abusers are still preying on girls across the UK, and called for urgent action from the Government....
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/grooming-gangs-uk-britain-newcastle-serious-case-review-operation-sanctuary-shelter-muslim-asian-a8225106.html

Sexting, Shame and Suicide, Another Teen Sexually Assaulted, From the Streets to the ‘World’s Best Mom’

Sexting, Shame and Suicide
A shocking tale of sexual assault in the Digital Age
By Nina Burleigh
September 17, 2013

....In Nova Scotia, Rehtaeh Parsons, 17, was taken off life support and died this April, three days after her mother discovered her hanging in the bathroom of their Halifax home. According to her mother, the teen got drunk at a party in 2011 and was gang-raped by four boys, who snapped a picture of the scene and posted it online. Her mom said Rehtaeh was mercilessly bullied by classmates for the next two years, even after the family moved to a new town to get her away from the abuse. In early August, Canadian authorities charged two 18-year-old boys with disseminating child pornography.

Diane Rosenfeld, director of the Gender Violence Program at Harvard Law School, says such incidents are far more common than just those that wind up in court or involve suicide. Most, she says, don't make the local news or even reach school administrators because the girls are too embarrassed to do anything. Rosenfeld and her students work with girls, sometimes filing civil suits and encouraging them to graduate. Many are too humiliated to stay in school.

Rape stats may be no higher than in years past, but the numbers are as shocking as ever. Every two minutes, a sexual assault happens in the U.S., and nearly 50 percent of the victims are under the age of 18, according to Katherine Hull, a spokeswoman for the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network: "The demographic of high school- and college-age women is at highest risk for sexual assault." More than half of the incidents go unreported, advocates say. The ability to record and communicate gang-sex assaults has added a new enhancement to an old and ugly crime against women. From Instagram to Snapchat to texting, young people with raging hormones and low impulse control are passing around what amounts to child pornography. And the bodies most frequently watched and passed around are female....

But recent Saratoga High graduate Jessica Hayes describes a school environment where disrespecting girls is neither rare nor effectively addressed. Hayes recalled two ugly incidents with football players that occurred during her own freshman year. A boy from the team unzipped her sweater in the middle of the quad, exposing her bra. When she kneed him, she was disciplined. Months later, a group of four or five boys surrounded her at a football game and tried to intimidate her into going under the bleachers with them. She punched one boy and ran, and then endured "20 to 30 harassing texts a day" for months. During her freshman year, she ate lunch in her mother's car, rather than with the other students.

"If you feel disrespected, the office staff doesn't do much to help you," Hayes says. "If something does happen, the girls feel you have to deal with it on your own. It would have been so hard for Audrie to go back to school. Half the people have seen her naked, half the people think she's a whore, and judge and bully her. Teachers know. They can't not. They hear about it."....

On April 11th, seven months after Audrie's suicide, the Santa Clara County sheriff arrested the three boys on charges of misdemeanor sexual battery, felony possession of child pornography and felony sexual penetration. When they arrested the boys, police seized new phones and other electronic gadgetry their parents had bought to replace what authorities took in the fall. Police found new pictures of other nude teen girls on some of their phones, prompting them to add on new charges in July. Sources close to the case tell Rolling Stone that police discovered one of the boys was trying to make money selling the pictures.

Two of the boys have admitted that the felony charges against them are true, according to sources close to the case, and they are awaiting sentencing – which could range from community service or time in a juvenile-detention center. Their records will be sealed when they turn 18. The third boy may be upgraded to adult court, where the sentence is harsher and a sexual-assault charge would remain on his file for life. California prosecutors are limited by a statute requiring a sexual assault committed by a minor age 14 and over to be "forcible" in order to directly qualify for adult court. A sexual assault on an unconscious victim is not considered forcible....

Writer Laurie Halse Anderson published an influential book in 1999 called Speak, about a high school rape and its effects on a victim. Since then, she has spoken at high schools and middle schools around the U.S., and estimates she has talked to a million kids about rape. "What really strikes me is that, when it comes to recording sexual assaults and wanting to show it off, the young men committing them are not seeing them as crimes, they see them as pranks. And there's no point in pulling a prank unless you share it." Anderson said parents and educators need to talk to younger boys about informed consent. "When I speak to students, I tell boys that if a young woman isn't of age, she isn't capable of giving informed consent, and if she's drunk or high, there's no informed consent. And those cases, if you have sex, you can go to jail. And the jaws drop, because right away, they think of the sex they had at a party last weekend, where everybody was wasted."....
http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/sexting-shame-and-suicide-20130917

Another Teen Sexually Assaulted
http://www.childlaw.us/another-teen-sexually-assaulted

From the Streets to the ‘World’s Best Mom’
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF October 12, 2013

NASHVILLE — WHEN men paid Shelia Faye Simpkins for sex, they presumably thought she was just a happy hooker engaging in a transaction among consenting adults.

It was actually more complicated than that, as it usually is. Simpkins says that her teenage mom, an alcoholic and drug addict, taught her at age 6 how to perform oral sex on men. “Like a lollipop,” she remembers her mom explaining.

Simpkins finally ran away from home at 14 and into the arms of a pimp.

“I thought he was my boyfriend,” Simpkins remembers. “I didn’t realize I was being pimped.”

When her pimp was shot dead, she was recruited by another, Kenny, who ran a “stable” of four women and assigned each of them a daily quota of $1,000. Anyone who didn’t earn that risked a beating.

There’s a common belief that pimps are business partners of prostitutes, but that’s a complete misunderstanding of the classic relationship. Typically, every dollar earned by the women goes to the pimp, who then doles out drugs, alcohol, clothing and food.

“He gets every penny,” Simpkins explains. “If you get caught with money, you get beat.”....

Sex trafficking is one of the most severe human rights violations in America today. In some cases, it amounts to a modern form of slavery....
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/13/opinion/sunday/kristof-from-the-streets-to-worlds-best-mom.html

Sandusky labeled 'likely pedophile' in 1998 report

articles
- Jerry Sandusky Called A 'Likely Pedophile' By Psychologist In 1998
- Sandusky labeled 'likely pedophile' in 1998 report
Psychologist warned university police, but they weren't able to prove abuse of boy
- Spanish police arrest 22 gang members that tattooed bar codes onto prostitutes’ wrists


Jerry Sandusky Called A 'Likely Pedophile' By Psychologist In 1998

The Huffington Post By Melissa Jeltsen 03/24/2012

Penn State police were warned Jerry Sandusky fit the profile of a pedophile in 1998, an internal memo has revealed.

The memo, published by NBC News, was written by Alycia Chambers, who was a psychologist for an 11-year-old boy who knew Sandusky through his charity for troubled boys, Second Mile Program.

The boy is not named in the report, but is now known as Victim 6. He is one of 10 boys allegedly molested by the former Penn State coach over a 15-year period. Sandusky denies the allegations against him.

The boy's mother contacted Chambers after he returned home from a night of weightlifting with Sandusky, the memo says. He had wet hair, and explained to his mother that Sandusky asked him to take a shower with him. When they were naked, he came up behind him and tightly squeezed their bodies together, according to the memo....

Chambers reported the incident to the Pennsylvania child abuse line and wrote a detailed report for the Penn State police. In it, she concludes that Sandusky's actions matched those of a "likely pedophile":

My consultants agree that the incidents meet all of our definitions, based on experience and education, of a likely pedophile's pattern of building trust and gradual introduction of physical touch, within a context of a "loving," "special" relationship. One colleague who has contact with the Second Mile confirms that Mr. Sandusky is reasonably intelligent and thus, could hardly have failed to understand the way his behavior would be interpreted, if known. His position at the Second Mile and his interest in abused boys would suggest that he was likely to have had knowledge with regard to child abuse and might even recognize this behavior as typical pedophile "overture."

But prosecutors decided not to charge Sandusky. The case was closed for 13 years, until last November, when Sandusky was arrested.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/24/jerry-sandusky-psychologist-likely-pedophile_n_1377156.html



Sandusky labeled 'likely pedophile' in 1998 report
Psychologist warned university police, but they weren't able to prove abuse of boy

By Michael Isikoff NBC News 3/24/2012

More than a decade before former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky was charged with more than 50 counts of child sex abuse, a psychologist warned university police that his actions fit that of a “likely pedophile’s pattern.”

The finding by State College, Pa., psychologist Dr. Alycia A. Chambers, the therapist for one of Sandusky’s alleged victims, was contained in the internal Penn State files of a 1998 police investigation of the former coach for showering and bear hugging her client and another young boy in the school’s athletic locker room.

The Sandusky Files: Read the 1998 police report http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/NEWS/redactedpolicereport.pdf


NBC News has obtained the complete file on the investigation – the police report and assessments by two psychologists who interviewed the boys -- which provides new details about Sandusky’s behavior. It also could raise fresh questions about how school and local authorities handled his case.

“There was very little doubt in my mind (Sandusky) … was a male predator, someone that was in the process of grooming a young man for abuse ,” said Chambers, speaking publicly for the first time, with the permission of her client’s family, in an interview with NBC News. “I thought…my report was strong enough to suggest that this was somebody who should be watched.”....

Joe Amendola, Sandusky’s lawyer, said he hasn’t seen Chambers’ report, but that her conclusions will be disputed by other psychologists who will be called by the defense. “I understand that there are some people who could look at this behavior and say it’s a pedophile problem. But there are others who will say, ‘This is somebody who loves kids and loves to be around them’...Sandusky has pleaded not guilty to all charges. http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/46843083/ns/today-today_people


Report of expert who concluded no abuse occurred http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/Seasock_Sandusky_Report_Redacted1.pdf




Spanish police arrest 22 gang members that tattooed bar codes onto prostitutes’ wrists
By Associated Press, March 24, 2012

MADRID — Spanish police arrested 22 suspected pimps who allegedly used violence to force women into prostitution and tattooed them with bar codes as a sign of ownership, officials said Saturday.

Police are calling the gang the “bar code pimps.” Officers freed one 19-year-old woman who had been beaten, held against her will and tattooed with a bar code and an amount of money — €2,000 ($2,650) — which investigators believe was the debt the gang wished to extort before releasing her....

Sex is a multibillion-dollar industry in Spain, with colorfully lit brothels staffed mainly by poor immigrant women from Latin America, Africa and eastern Europe lining highways throughout the country.

Prostitution falls in legal limbo: it is not regulated, although pimping is a crime. The northeastern city of Barcelona plans to introduce regional legislation in coming weeks banning prostitution on urban streets.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/spanish-police-arrest-22-gang-members-that-tattooed-bar-codes-onto-prostitutes-wrists/2012/03/24/gIQAil7AYS_story.html

Casey Anthony case opens eyes on child abuse, Brazilian Sex Tourism, Buck movie

also:
Allegations Link U.S. Companies to Brazilian Sex Tourism
Buck Brannaman Documentary - abusive childhood

Editorial for 7/9: Anthony case opens eyes on child abuse Jul. 8, 2011
The great majority of Americans — including those living in the mid-Hudson Valley — are aghast by a jury's decision to acquit Casey Anthony of killing her 2-year-old daughter, in a case that sparked unyielding media attention.

Anthony will be released soon after being found guilty of lying to police and accounting for the time she already has served in this three-year ordeal that has left so many questioning the judicial system....

Unfortunately, child abuse and neglect often are hidden acts. And those living in this area should be reminded that the state's Central Register of Child Abuse hotline received more than 4,500 calls from Dutchess County in 2010, according to Center for the Prevention of Child Abuse of Dutchess County. What is even more troubling is how many incidents never get reported.

Nevertheless, the center served more than 16,000 at-risk and abused children last year and also provided support to more than 3,000 adults. The center's website is full of useful information, ranging from what types of actions should be reported to coping measures for parents.
http://goo.gl/Ev2lO

http://www.poughkeepsiejournal.com/article/20110709/OPINION01/107090310/Editorial-7-9-Anthony-case-opens-eyes-child-abuse?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|PoughkeepsieJournal.com|s



Allegations Link U.S. Companies to Brazilian Sex Tourism
By BARRY MEIER July 8, 2011

The Justice Department has been conducting a criminal investigation of sports fishing expeditions in the Amazon that may have been used as covers for Americans to have sex with underage girls, according to newly filed court papers.

The investigation and two related actions — a parallel criminal inquiry in Brazil and an unusual lawsuit filed in federal court in Georgia — could provide a rare look at the business operations of the multibillion-dollar international sex tour industry, which has increasingly focused on Brazil.

"Brazil is taking over from Thailand as a premier sex tourism vacation" spot, said Kristen Berg, an official of Equality Now, an advocacy organization in New York that helped bring the lawsuit in Georgia.

That lawsuit was filed last month on behalf of four Brazilian women who claim that they were coerced as minors to serve as prostitutes for Americans on Amazon fishing expeditions operated by an Atlanta-area businessman. One of the women said that she was 12 years old at the time.

Ms. Berg said the lawsuit was the first time that a federal law, the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act of 2000, had been used to seek damages from someone accused of operating sex tours.

On Thursday, the defendant in that case, Richard W. Schair, filed a motion asking that the lawsuit be stayed. The motion cited continuing criminal investigations in the United States and Brazil.

In a brief telephone interview, Mr. Schair, who operates an Atlanta-area real estate business, said that allegations that he was involved in child sex tours were untrue. He declined to discuss specifics of the inquiries....
http://goo.gl/XmHD1

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/09/business/allegations-link-us-companies-to-brazilian-sex-tourism.html

Buck Brannaman Documentary
BUCK, a richly textured and visually stunning film, follows Brannaman from his abusive childhood to his phenomenally successful approach to horses. A real-life “horse-whisperer”, he eschews the violence of his upbringing and teaches people to communicate with their horses through leadership and sensitivity, not punishment.

Buck possesses near magical abilities as he dramatically transforms horses – and people – with his understanding, compassion and respect. In this film, the animal-human relationship becomes a metaphor for facing the daily challenges of life. A truly American story about an unsung hero, BUCK is about an ordinary man who has made an extraordinary life despite tremendous odds. Cedar Creek Productions, LLC
http://goo.gl/IiRRh

http://www.buckthefilm.com/
http://www.buckthefilm.com/content.htm