Frances Andrade death: Charity calls for review in child abuse trials, IIreland sent girls, women to Catholic workhouses until 1996, report finds

Frances Andrade death: Charity calls for review in child abuse trials
Frances Andrade Violin teacher Frances Andrade was found dead after giving evidence
9 February 2013

A charity for adults who were abused in childhood has said the way prosecutions are brought must change after a victim took her own life during a trial.
Frances Andrade was found dead less than a week after she faced Michael Brewer at Manchester Crown Court.
Following Brewer's conviction for indecently assaulting her, her family said "the court system let her down".
The National Association for People Abused in Childhood's Pete Saunders said the "legal system has to change".
He said a conclusion such as the one in Mrs Andrade's case was "not as uncommon as it should be".

'Ashamed of themselves'
"She is another victim not only of the people who abused her, but the British legal system too," he said.
"The people who put her through the trauma of the court case should be ashamed of themselves.
"Child abuse is a unique crime and it should be dealt with very sensitively. Instead, it is dealt with as if it were any other sort of crime."....
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-21395749 



Ireland sent girls, women to Catholic workhouses until 1996, report finds
By Ian Johnston, Staff Writer, NBC News

Ireland’s government was directly involved in sending girls and women to work for nothing in laundries run by Catholic orders, a landmark report published Tuesday concluded.
The report by Irish Senator Martin McAleese found that orphans and abused, neglected or unruly children were among more than 10,000 sent to the Magdalen Laundries from 1922 to 1996.
Some had committed minor crimes, others were simply homeless or poor. Women with mental or physical disabilities and some people with psychiatric illness also found themselves in the laundries.
Their average age, the report found, was 23, but the youngest child was just nine and the oldest known entrant was 89.
Activists called on the government to issue a formal apology and pay compensation, with one group saying those affected had been "treated like slaves."
Their plight came to greater public attention when it was the subject of a 2002 film called The Magdalene Sisters, which used a different spelling.
And in June 2011, the United Nations’ Committee on Torture highlighted allegations of "physical, emotional abuses and other ill-treatment" and said it was "gravely concerned" at Ireland’s failure to "protect girls and women who were involuntarily confined."....
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/02/05/16854772-ireland-sent-girls-women-to-catholic-workhouses-until-1996-report-finds

Barack Obama orders review of Guatemala STD study

Barack Obama orders review of Guatemala STD study

24 Nov 2010 President Barack Obama has asked a bioethical committee to review federal guidelines for protecting humans during medical testing after a US study revealed that Guatemalans were intentionally infected with sexually transmitted diseases from 1946-1948.

Mr Obama sent a letter to Amy Gutmann, director of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, asking her to convene a panel in January to determine "if federal regulations and international standards adequately guard the health and wellbeing of participants in scientific studies supported by the federal government."....
The commission should wrap up its work in nine months and then deliver a report to him, he said.

The Guatemalan study, which was never published, came to light this year after Wellesley College professor Susan Reverby stumbled upon archived documents outlining the 1940s experiment led by controversial US public health doctor John Cutler.
Cutler and his fellow researchers enrolled people in Guatemala, including mental patients, for the study, which aimed to find out if penicillin, relatively new in the 1940s, could be used to prevent sexually transmitted diseases.

Cutler, was also involved in a highly controversial study known as the Tuskegee Experiment in which hundreds of African American men with late-stage syphilis were observed but given no treatment for 40 years, between 1932 and 1972.

Initially, the researchers infected female Guatemalan commercial sex workers with gonorrhoea or syphilis, and then allowed them to have unprotected sex with soldiers or prison inmates.

A total of some 1,500 people took part in the study.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/8158524/Barack-Obama-orders-review-of-Guatemala-STD-study.html