Everything you missed from Matthew Sandusky’s interview with Oprah Winfrey, UConn to pay $1.3M in sex assault handling lawsuit, Online child abuse reports surge, says US watchdog

Everything you missed from Matthew Sandusky’s interview with Oprah Winfrey  By Soraya Nadia McDonald July 18, 2014

....In an interview aired Thursday night on “Oprah Prime” on Winfrey’s OWN network, Matthew told Winfrey he felt it would have been better for his children and wife if he’d kept everything to himself instead of coming forward. Matthew initially offered grand jury testimony that Sandusky was not a child molester, but recanted during trial. After he told police he had also been abused, Matthew said his family, not just him, became the target of vicious character attacks.

“I can handle it,” Matthew said, even though the abuse drove him to attempt suicide shortly after he moved in with the Sanduskys when he was 16. “I can handle people attacking me. I handled the abuse. I can take it. My wife is an innocent. My children — they’re innocent. For people to attack them — yes, absolutely, the simpler answer would have been for me to keep it, to deal with it on my own.”

Matthew said he came forward about the abuse because he didn’t want to be a “coward.” When he heard the testimony of victim No. 4 during Sandusky’s criminal trial, Matthew said he was astonished at how similar the details were.....

More than 30 boys eventually came forward to say Sandusky molested them. To avoid further litigation, Penn State agreed to a $60 million settlement with 26 victims, including Matthew, and the university disbursed payments of varying sizes. Matthew said he had no knowledge of the settlement when he came forward.

Matthew met Jerry and his wife, Dottie Sandusky, when he was seven years old through Sandusky’s Second Mile charity camp. According to The Washington Post’s Joel Achenbach:

Prosecutors say that the Second Mile became a tool for harvesting children for abuse. Sandusky, they said, was a classic predatory pedophile, a man who befriended the most vulnerable boys, the ones needing a father figure, who became appreciative that someone would bring them to football games and make them feel special.

Matthew told Winfrey how he resigned himself to being molested almost as a tradeoff for being around an otherwise stable and loving family. He came from a broken home, he said, where there was physical abuse and even running water wasn’t something that could be taken for granted. He often lived with his grandparents....

Matthew began to act out when he was a young teenager. He tried to cut Sandusky out of his life altogether, but Matthew told Winfrey the coach would come to his biological mother’s home unannounced. He would pull Matthew out of school. There was no escaping him, and Matthew became a truant. He started doing drugs and stealing, and was eventually arrested.

Matthew had a choice: Move in with the Sanduskys, or go to juvenile detention.

The Sanduskys moved him into their home with five other children, all adopted. Matthew so dreaded Sandusky’s nighttime visits he tried to kill himself. He said after that, the sexual abuse largely stopped. The family legally adopted him when he was 18 and pressured him to take the family name so he would be privy to a tuition break thanks to Sandusky’s employment at Penn State....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/07/18/everything-you-missed-from-matthew-sanduskys-interview-with-oprah-winfrey/  

UConn to pay $1.3M in sex assault handling lawsuit
Jul 18, 2014   By PAT EATON-ROBB  Associated Press

STORRS, Conn. (AP) - The University of Connecticut will pay $1.3 million to settle a lawsuit by five women who alleged the school did not take seriously their claims of sexual assaults on campus.

The bulk of the settlement, $900,000, will go to Silvana Moccia, a former UConn ice hockey player who alleged she was kicked off the team after reporting she had been raped by a male hockey player in August 2011.

The other four women will receive payments ranging from $25,000 to $125,000.

University officials adamantly denied that they have been indifferent to reports of assaults and did not admit any wrongdoing in the settlement. They said the legal fight would be costly and bad for UConn's image.
http://www.knoe.com/story/26052588/apnewsbreak-uconn-settles-sex-assault-lawsuit


Online child abuse reports surge, says US watchdog
By Dave Lee Technology reporter, BBC News 17 July 2014
There has been a dramatic rise in reports of child abuse images posted to commonly used parts of the internet, according to a US watchdog.

They include photos posted to publicly-accessible parts of social networks.

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children received a record number of reports in the first week of July, four times the weekly average.

It comes in a week UK authorities arrested 660 people in connection with online child abuse.

That investigation was believed to have been targeted at those using the so-called "dark net" - parts of the internet that are hidden and can be hard to access without special software.

But the NCMEC stressed there was still a significant and growing challenge for law enforcement agencies to deal with material on the open internet as well as the harder-to-reach areas....
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28359143 

Student Claims Sex Assault In Soccer Hazing Ritual, Survivorship Webinar: The I-MAP to Freedom

Fifth Maine West Student Claims Sex Assault In Soccer Hazing Ritual
August 26, 2013

(STMW) - A fifth Maine West High School athlete has stepped forward to claim in a new lawsuit that he was sexually assaulted in a hazing ritual at the school in the northwest suburbs.

Chicago lawyer Tony Romanucci filed the complaint Monday on behalf of the 16-year-old boy and his parents, none of whom are identified by name. The suit targets Maine Township High School District 207, Principal Audrey Haugan and former soccer coaches Michael Divincenzo and Emilio Rodriguez, the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting.

The boy claims he was sexually assaulted on Sept. 26 at the school in Des Plaines after Divincenzo and Rodriguez ordered the team to do a "campus run."....
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2013/08/26/fifth-maine-west-student-claims-sex-assault-in-soccer-hazing-ritual/


SURVIVORSHIP WEBINAR REMINDER – The I-MAP to Freedom

Saturday, September 7, 2013
12:00 noon Pacific Time
Presenter: Lori Lorenz, MA

“The I-MAP  (Integrative Multi-Phasic Affective Processing)”
Lori Lorenz, MA, has developed The I-MAP to Freedom, a multi-phased, multi-layered visual description of the “Natural Healing Process”.  Through its three dimensional mapping, the I-MAP offers a comprehensive picture of the integrative journey out of trauma.  It lays out what happens when natural healing is interrupted, what is often encountered during the integrative healing process, and what is needed at each stage of the recovery journey.
http://survivorshipwp.wordpress.com/2013/08/29/survivorship-webinar-reminder-the-i-map-to-freedom-saturday-september-7/ 

http://www.survivorship.org/webinars.html

The Ticking Clock on Child Abuse, Roache in court today over 'sex assault on girl aged 11', Former Radio 1 DJ held on suspicion of sexual offences

The Ticking Clock on Child Abuse  May 31, 2013 Law and Justice
Marci Hamilton battles the deadline that cheats victims.
By Rebecca Webber

The Cleveland kidnapping case, the Sandusky scandal at Penn State and the revelations from prestigious private schools like New York’s Horace Mann remind us that child sex abuse can happen anywhere.

"Twenty to 25 percent of children are sexually abused," says Marci Hamilton, a professor at Cardozo School of Law. But it often takes victims years to come to terms with what was done to them. "A survivor needs decades to come forward. They’re trying to deal with so much and they can’t put it all together," she explains. In the meantime, their abusers are typically targeting other children. "Many perpetrators continue abusing into their elderly years," she says.

That's why Hamilton has been on a decade-long crusade to eliminate statute-of-limitation rules on sex abuse crimes. The rules vary by state but typically require the victim to file charges or a lawsuit within a specific time frame, sometimes within as little as one year after the abuse took place or after the victim reaches a certain age  (usually between 18 and 21). These limitations, says Hamilton, keep many victims from outing their abusers. She's working on expanding or eliminating statutes of limitations for these crimes and changing the way they are applied....
http://womenintheworld.org/stories/entry/the-ticking-clock-on-child-abuse
 
Roache in court today over 'sex assault on girl aged 11'

Lancashire Police have charged William Roache with five indecent assaults against four girls aged between 11 or 12 and 16

Three of the offences allegedly took place in 1965 and two in 1968
By Stephen Wright  6 June 2013

Coronation Street actor Bill Roache was last night charged with sexually assaulting another four girls, one as young as 11.

A month after the soap star, 81, was charged with twice raping a schoolgirl in 1967, he was re-arrested and accused of further child sex offences.

The new allegations against Roache, who has played Ken Barlow over six decades, are claimed to have happened in the Manchester area between 1965 and 1968 and involve four girls who were aged between 11 or 12 and 16 at the time.

Roache, who has strenuously denied the previous rape allegations, is due in Preston magistrates’ court over the new charges this morning.

He is one of the best-known stars to be held over child sex allegations in the aftermath of the Jimmy Savile scandal.

His friend Stuart Hall, the disgraced BBC TV presenter, is due to be sentenced later this month after he admitted indecently assaulting 13 girls during the 1960s, 70s and 80s....
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2337020/Roache-court-today-sex-assault-girl-aged-11.html 
 

Former Radio 1 DJ Chris Denning held on suspicion of sexual offences

Former colleague of Jimmy Savile is 72-year-old man arrested earlier this week under Operation Yewtree
Josh Halliday   guardian.co.uk, Thursday 6 June 2013

Chris Denning, a former Radio 1 DJ from the 1960s, can be named as the 72-year-old man arrested earlier this week under Operation Yewtree on suspicion of sexual offences.

Denning, a former colleague of Jimmy Savile and one of the first Radio 1 DJs, was detained by Scotland Yard detectives on Monday but was not initially identified.

He was arrested in east London and questioned by Operation Yewtree officers before being released on bail until a date in July.

Denning is the 13th person arrested under Operation Yewtree, the investigation into sexual offences by Savile and others launched last October....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/06/chris-denning-held-suspicion-sexual-offences

On final day of testimony, Philadelphia monsignor apologizes for priest’s sex assault

On final day of testimony, Philadelphia monsignor apologizes for priest’s sex assault

By Associated Press Tuesday, May 29, 2012

PHILADELPHIA — A Roman Catholic church official apologized to a priest sex-abuse victim on the final day of testimony in his groundbreaking child-endangerment trial....

Lynn, 61, who served as the Philadelphia archdiocese secretary for clergy from 1992 to 2004, is the first U.S. church official charged over his handling of priest-abuse complaints. He and the Rev. James Brennan have been on trial for 10 weeks.

Brennan has pleaded not guilty to sexually assaulting a teen in 1996. Defrocked priest Edward Avery pleaded guilty to a 1999 sexual assault days before trial and is in prison.

Lynn testified that he tried to get accused priests out of parishes and into treatment, but said his power was limited because Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua had the final say....

Lynn said that Bevilacqua would not permanently remove a priest unless he was a diagnosed pedophile. That was rare among the dozens of priests accused of raping or molesting children in Philadelphia.

Defense lawyers call the mild-mannered Lynn a scapegoat for the alleged failings of the archdiocese.http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/on-final-day-of-testimony-philadelphia-monsignor-apologizes-for-priests-sex-assault/2012/05/29/gJQAHsmL0U_story.html