4 Mid-west Men Including Dead Gay Couple on Today's P&P List

Deceased Minnesota gay couple investigated for child sexual abuse

A South St. Paul teacher and his husband who were being investigated for sexually abusing a former student were found dead in Washington of an apparent murder-suicide.

SOUTH ST. PAUL, Minn. (KMSP) - South St. Paul police are investigating a grade school teacher and his husband for what appears to be child sexual abuse.

The victim in the case just sixteen years old --- and knew the suspect as his former teacher and trusted mentor.  But, the suspects in the case can't be questioned; they were found dead in another state last Thursday.

The victim says he knew one of the suspects since grade school -- and when the teen told his family he was gay.... That former teacher – 40-year-old Aric Babbitt - agreed to mentor the teen.  But that trust was clearly destroyed when the victim says the abuse began.

Apparently they had different views on the term 'mentoring'.


Deceased South St. Paul teacher, spouse investigated for child sexual abuse

Babbitt has been a teacher in the South St. Paul school district since 2002. He had most recently been teaching 4th grade at Lincoln Center Elementary School. Now, there are allegations that Babbitt and his husband, Matthew Deyo, sexually abused a 16-year-old boy who was a former student of Babbitt's.

The teen took his case to police. But -- one day after South St. Paul police executed a search warrant on the couple's home ---- the two were found dead on Lopez Island, north of Seattle, Wash. It was an apparent murder-suicide – with a note left behind.

All of this has been a lot to take in by neighbors in South St. Paul, who say the couple was very friendly.

“They would be in their backyard playing with their dogs or whatever; I'd be in the backyard grilling. You know I’d wave to them, say hi how you doing and sometimes we'd talk more from that, you know, and ask about each other's families,” Gerren Bond, one of Babbit and Deyo’s neighbors, said.

The search warrant shows the 16-year-old and his parents went to the police station to report the abuse earlier this month and also turned over nude photos the couple took of the teen. The alleged victim reports numerous occasions where Babbitt and Deyo gave him and a friend marijuana and alcohol to the point where they passed out, only to wake up with one or both of them having sex with them.

The South St. Paul school district put Babbitt on paid leave on Aug. 17, when they learned of the allegations.  The district is also conducting its own investigation, while at the same time dealing with the grief.

“We welcomed new staff back, as well as veteran staff as well, and we brought in grief counselors to start that day yesterday, and spent the day here with us. We'll be doing the same as students return the day after Labor Day,” South St. Paul Public Schools superintendent Dave Webb said.

The application for the search warrant shows police were also looking for child pornography. Several computers, tablets and hard drives were confiscated, as well as a clock radio with a hidden camera that was taken from the bathroom of the home.


Despite the fact the couple is deceased, both police and the school district say their investigations into the child sexual abuse will continue. 

    South St Paul, MN

Michigan man sentenced in child sex abuse case

By Aaron Dimick

 JACKSON, Mich. (WLNS) — A man convicted of sexually abusing children learned his fate Wednesday in Jackson County Court.

38-year-old Shane Westbrook of Parma was sentenced to 25-50 years in prison.

Tara Sassenger spoke at the sentencing for Westbrook, saying he ruined her life.

“He ruined my childhood. He ruined my self-worth and my self-respect,” Sassenger said.

She’s one of three victims Westbrook is convicted of sexually abusing when they were young girls between 1999 and 2005.

Sassenger says Westbrook put her through immense torture.

“He would tell me that no one would ever believe me. And when I did try to talk about it, no one would believe a child over an adult,” Sassenger said.

Last year, Westbrook was charged with nine counts of criminal sexual conduct.

“I know I am innocent of what’s been charged against me,” Westbrook said in court.

But a jury didn’t think so and found him guilty last month.

“I am going to sentence you to 25-50 years in prison,” said Judge John McBain.

After coming forward to tell her story, Sassenger spoke with 6 News and says she’s happy with the sentence.

“I’m glad he’s getting what he deserves, and he’s going to spend at least the next 25 years back there,” Sassenger said. “I don’t think he feels anything. I think it was all a show. He had zero remorse for me or anyone else.”

During her victim impact statement, Sassenger repeatedly called Westbrook a monster.

And says she’s still dealing with this trauma as an adult.

“Monster is being nice,” Sassenger said.


As court adjourned, Westbrook’s attorney told the judge that they plan on appealing this sentence.

Iowa man sent to prison in child sex abuse case

CLEAR LAKE | A Clear Lake man was sentenced to up to 10 years in prison Tuesday for a felony conviction of lascivious acts with a child.

Amando Montealvo, 58, originally charged with two counts of second-degree sexual abuse, was accused of abusing two girls under age 12 in Clear Lake 10 to 14 years ago.

One of the counts was reduced to lascivious acts with a child. He agreed to enter an Alford plea to that charge in Cerro Gordo County District Court.

In an Alford plea a defendant doesn’t admit to the crime but acknowledges prosecutors could likely prove the charge.

After he is released from prison, Montealvo will be under the supervision of the Department of Corrections for the rest of his life with the possibility of parole. He also must register as a sex offender.

A $1,000 fine was suspended.

-- Mary Pieper

    Cerro Gordo, Iowa

Four In Custody In Tulsa Child Sexual Abuse Investigation

These people are a very good argument against the theory of evolution

BY: NEWSON6.COM

MUSKOGEE, Oklahoma - Muskogee Police arrested a man wanted on suspicion of sexually abusing children in Tulsa County. Brian Paul Campbell was taken into custody Tuesday night after a tip.

Court records show Campbell is charged with two counts of sexually abusing children under the age of 12. A woman named Christina Renea Mathews was arrested with Campbell, booked on complaints of permitting abuse and abusing another child.

Police said Campbell was dating women to get access to their children, male and female.

Four women in all are charged in the criminal investigation.

Two of the women are in Tulsa County Jail for permitting possible abuse. They are Beverly Ann Vaughan and Dawn Jane Cox. 

Vaughan is being held for permitting child sexual abuse and child neglect, allowing children to live in a home with "extreme filth including horrible odor, cockroaches and nests of cockroaches, piles of clothing and/or piles of trash," court records show.

Cox was arrested on a charge permitting child sexual abuse, records show.

Crystal Lynn Toney, the fourth woman, is also charged with letting Campbell have access to children and letting them live in a filthy home.

Courageous Girl in Owen Labrie High School Rape Case Outs Herself

Meanwhile, parents at St Paul's support rape culture

Chessie Prout is the beautiful, courageous and remarkably

strong girl who was sexually assaulted by Owen Labrie

The victim in the Owen Labrie sex assault case publicly revealed her identity on NBC's "Today" show Tuesday morning and said she hopes that the man who assaulted her gets help.

"I want everyone to know that I am not afraid or ashamed anymore, and I never should have been,'' Chessy Prout, 17, told Savannah Guthrie in an exclusive interview.



Prout was 15 years old when she says she was coerced by the then-18-year-old senior to have sex in a secluded room on St. Paul's School in New Hampshire in May 2014. 

Prout discussed where she stands a year after she took the stand against Labrie.

Owen Labrie was allowed to return to Tunbridge, Vermont, despite having previously violated his curfew. 

"I hope he learns, I hope he gets help," she said. "And that's all I can ever hope for in any sort of process like this. Because if he doesn't learn, he will do it to another young woman."

Labrie, now 20, was convicted in August 2015 on three counts of misdemeanor sexual assault, felony illegal use of computer services and misdemeanor endangering the welfare of a child. He was acquitted on three counts of felony sexual assault.

Prosecutors tied the assault to the "Senior Salute," a competition in which seniors at the school sought to have sex with underclassmen. He was sentenced to a year behind bars and probation.

Labrie was sentenced to one year in county jail, however, was initially free on curfew while an appeal of the verdict was pending. He was taken into custody after he was found violating that curfew, but was freed again on bail and given a GPS monitor. 

He is also registered as a sex offender in New Hampshire during the appeal process.



"It's been two years now since the whole ordeal, and I feel ready to stand up and own what happened to me and make sure other people, other girls and boys, don't need to be ashamed, either,'' Prout said.

She added that the trial could have been avoided with an apology letter and personal responsibility. 

Instead, she said she had to take the stand, testifying for three days. She said the trial helped her move forward with the pursuit of justice.

Though she said she's moving forward, she still feels the impact of the assault.

She said, "A question that was asked on the stand was 'Why were you so hazy during that time period" and I looked at the defense attorney in disbelief and said I was raped. I was just trying to go smoothly and not try to cause any waves."

This phenomenon has occurred before where friendly texts occur between a man and the women he assaulted. It is what got Canadian radio star Jian Ghomeshi off after physically assaulting 3 young women during sex. It seems obvious to me that a girl would be in shock after being raped and certainly not able to think clearly and rationally. I did a story just this morning on NHL player Sheldon Kennedy who was sexually abused by his junior coach. He said he felt like a zombie. 

Prout's parents, Alex and Susan, have filed a civil suit against St. Paul's School for failing to protect their daughter. The school denies the allegations.

Meanwhile, Labrie has filed a motion for a new trial, claiming ineffective counsel.

His attorney, Jaye Rancourt, sat down with necn on Tuesday after the interview, revealing Labrie watched Prout's television debut.

"He didn't have much to say about it," she said.

Rancourt said Labrie is more focused on his motion for a new trial.

"We will be successful. He'll get a new trial and at a new trial, the full truth of what occurred will be revealed at that trial," Rancourt said confidently.

On June 15, 2016, A judge in Concord, New Hampshire denied Labrie's previous motion for a new trial. 

St. Paul's School issued this statement to "Today":

"As was the case when the survivor was a student here and subsequently, the School admires her courage and condemns unkind behavior toward her. We feel deeply for her and her family. We have always placed the safety and well-being of our students first and are confident that the environment and culture of the school have supported that. We categorically deny that there ever existed at the School a culture or tradition of sexual assault. However, there's no denying the survivors experience caused us to look anew at the culture and environment. This fresh look has brought about positive changes at the School."

Prout also told Guthrie she's taking a stand for sexual assault survivors and is participating in the social media campaign #IHaveARightTo.

Parents support rape culture at St Paul's

Lawyers for a New Hampshire prep school sex assault victim say parents and alumni at St. Paul's School helped raise over $100,000 for her alleged attacker's defense team. 

The Boston Globe reports documents filed in a New Hampshire federal court Thursday allege that Joshua Abram, described as a "prominent SPS parent" in the filings, contributed $10,000 and solicited more donations from other parents and alumni. 

Astonishing! Abram and the other jerks who contributed to the fund have virtually declared Chessie the perpetrator and Labrie the victim. Many extraordinary people may have attended that school, but I'm not impressed with any of them.

The money allegedly helped graduate Owen Labrie pay for prominent attorney J.W. Carney, who represented notorious Boston gangster James "Whitey" Bulger. 

Labrie was ultimately sentenced to a year in prison for misdemeanor sexual assault and a felony use of a computer to lure a minor. He allegedly participated in an upperclassmen competition to have sex with female students before graduation. 

Prosecutors said the rape was part of Senior Salute, which Labrie described to detectives as a competition in which graduating seniors tried to have sex with underclassmen and kept score on a wall behind a set of washing machines.

Chessie's interview with Savannah Guthrie can be viewed here.

    St Paul's School, Concord, NH

FBI News - Alleged Child Rapist Captured After 23 Years on the Run

In 1993, Boston-area resident John Hartin was 23 years old

when he befriended two young boys—ages 6 and 9—

and allegedly raped them.

One of the victims eventually told a family member about the abuse, which led to an investigation and Hartin being charged in Massachusetts with five counts of rape of a child. Rather than face the charges, Hartin fled, and was later charged federally with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.

He was at large for more than two decades, and investigators followed numerous leads without success. “But the case never stopped being actively investigated,” said Special Agent Brooks Broadus, a member of the FBI’s Boston Division Child Exploitation Task Force. “We were always looking.”



At the time of his disappearance, Hartin, a lifelong resident of Dorchester, Massachusetts, was working as a security guard. He had also studied graphics and computer arts in college. His first alleged victim was related to an acquaintance of Hartin’s. The young boy’s close friend was Hartin’s second alleged victim.

In 2012, the FBI launched a multi-state media campaign and announced a reward of up to $25,000 for information leading to Hartin’s arrest. The campaign generated thousands of tips—and many tantalizing leads—but no arrest.

More recently, explained Boston Police Department Det. Mike Sullivan, a member of the Child Exploitation Task Force, “we started looking at the case again with fresh eyes and went back to Day One. We sought out Hartin’s family and friends and began to conduct new interviews.”

In the end, Sullivan said, “it was old-fashioned detective work that led to Hartin’s capture.” Sullivan sought the assistance of various law enforcement agencies to assist in the search, including the U.S. Marshals Service and the U.S. Department of State. Through these partnerships, investigators learned that Hartin was using the alias Jay Carter. The fugitive had a driver’s license in Carter’s name, and other fraudulent documents.

Leads were initially sent to the FBI Miami Division, FBI Long Beach Resident Agency and the FBI Greensboro Resident Agency. The fugitive was traced to Walkertown, North Carolina, and the FBI put his residence under surveillance. Intelligence revealed that he had weapons in the house. “We had information that he was armed and potentially dangerous,” Sullivan said. Although Hartin was taken into custody without incident at his home on June 15, 2016, he initially denied his true identify.

“We are still piecing together where he was for all the years he was on the run,” Broadus said. “He lived in Florida for a long period of time before he went to North Carolina. We also had information he may have lived in California. He apparently did freelance computer work to earn money and worked in a bar in Miami.” Broadus added that Hartin had roommates and “significant others who might have helped him financially. They all deny they knew his real identity.”

Hartin, now 46 years old, was on the run for 23 years. He waived extradition, and U.S. Marshals recently returned him to Massachusetts, where he will now have to answer for his actions in court.

Broadus commended the Boston Police Department and federal law enforcement partners for their efforts on the case. After Hartin’s arrest, Sullivan and Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney Alissa Goldhaber contacted the victims to let them know Hartin had finally been captured. After learning the news, one victim said, “This is the best day of my life.”

Former NHL Player Sheldon Kennedy says Sex Abuse Turned Him into 'a Zombie'

Bill Graveland, The Canadian Press


Sheldon Kennedy is a former professional ice hockey player and founder of the Sheldon Kennedy Child Advocacy Centre. He is a guest columnist for the Calgary Herald Christmas Fund 2015. Handout photo Calgary Herald

Former Calgary Flames player Sheldon Kennedy is an advocate for victims of sexual abuse. 

Sheldon Kennedy says being sexually abused for years by his junior hockey coach Graham James turned him from a “goofy, slightly mixed-up kid” who dreamed of the future into little more than “a zombie.”

The former NHL player turned advocate for sexual abuse victims still seems ill at ease when talking about his own experiences, even though he was the first victim to come forward 20 years ago.

His coming forward was an unbelievably courageous act, especially at the time. Another Calgary Flame, Theo Fleury was the second to come out as being abused by James. Theo had a long and very successful career in the NHL, but suffered with addiction problems as Kennedy did.

But talk about them he does. On Monday, he was before an international audience of front-line agencies, policy-makers and researchers from 42 countries sharing ideas on how to protect children from abuse and neglect.

Pacing back and forth on stage at a conference of the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, an emotional Kennedy recounted the circumstances that began when he was playing for the Western Hockey League’s Swift Current Broncos.

“It wasn’t, for me, a one-time thing with Graham James. It was every time I was with him,” he recalled.

“And it wasn’t just about the physical piece of it. It was about the mental manipulation and the confusion and the isolation that comes with their obsession over you.”

James would go to prison for sexually abusing Kennedy and is still serving time for preying on a number of other players. He is currently full parole.

Kennedy’s career in the National Hockey League spanned less than 10 years. He developed alcohol and drug problems as he struggled to come to terms with what had happened.

In 2013, he helped facilitate the opening of the Sheldon Kennedy Child Advocacy Centre in Calgary. It brings together under one roof the services of police, social workers, medical staff, psychologists and prosecutors to try to avoid young victims constantly having to retell and relive their abuse.

Kennedy urged his audience to consider the same kind of co-ordinated approach to reduce the trauma child sexual abuse victims suffer around the world.

“We don’t treat a broken leg differently in Calgary than we do in Toronto, so why do we approach this stuff different around the world? The basics are the same,” he said.

“We talk about mental health, and then we talk about child abuse, and then we talk about addiction. For some reason, child abuse and child health treatment is a social services issue and a justice issue.

“This is a health issue.”

Kenney said almost 70 per cent of the children brought to the centre are between four and 12 years old and have experienced some sort of sexual abuse.

Alberta’s human services minister told delegates they must find better ways to end “needless tragedies.”

“The pervasiveness of these issues that we are discussing is not from a lack of commitment, concern or co-operation from all of those of you who deal with them every day,” said Irfan Sabir.

“It’s saddening to note that 39 years after (the international group) was founded we must still meet to discuss crimes that should have no place in our society.”

It is even more saddening to note that the problem just keeps getting worse and most governments in the world refuse to deal with it. That is probably because most people in the world are still, to a large degree, in the dark on the subject and often choose to remain that way.

Please pray about all these things. Pray for the advocacy centre model to be adopted all over the world. Pray for governments who have no interest in opening that can of worms to wake up and develop a heart. Children suffer brutally everyday because governments do nothing to address the worst atrocity the world has ever seen.

Suspect in 2007 Abduction and Murder of Girl Charged with Child Pornography

Suspect in Cédrika Provencher case

charged with child pornography

CBC News 


Jonathan Bettez, right, wearing glasses, arrives in court on Tuesday to be formally charged. (CBC)

A Trois-Rivières, Quebec man questioned by police at the time of nine-year-old Cédrika Provencher's disappearance has been charged today with six counts related to child pornography.

Jonathan Bettez, 36, was arrested at his place of work just before noon Monday as part of an operation led by the Sûreté du Québec's sexual exploitation of children investigative unit.

Around 20 detectives executed three search warrants during the operation, one at the offices of Emballage Bettez, where Bettez works, and two at private residences.

Bettez was charged with accessing child pornography, possessing child pornography, and distributing child pornography.

The charges span the period between Nov. 4, 2009, and Sept. 30, 2013.

Cédrika Provencher disappeared from a park near her home on July 31, 2007.

Police believe she was approached by an adult who asked for help to find a missing dog.

Her remains were found by a hunter in a wooded area near Trois-Rivières in December 2015.

Bettez was questioned by police around the time of Cédrika's disappearance but has never faced charges in the case.

Cédrika's father, Martin Provencher, appeared at Bettez's arraignment Tuesday.

At the start of the hearing, the judge acknowledged the public interest in the case and asked for respect and calm from those in attendance.

Rape Bill Awaits CA Gov’s Signature as Stanford Rapist Gets Out of Jail Early

A combination booking photos shows former Stanford University student Brock Turner (L) on January 18, 2015 at the time of arrest and after Turner was sentenced to six months in county jail for the sexual assault of an unconscious woman, in Santa Clara County Sheriff's booking photo (R). © Reuters

Brock Turner’s six-month sentence for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman is coming to an end three months early. The ex-Stanford swimmer’s light penalty provoked outrage and inspired California legislation now just one step away from becoming law.

Turner, 20, will likely be released from jail Friday having served only half of his six month sentence. Three months may be a short time to serve for sexual assault, but a lot has changed between when he was convicted and now.

Three months ago, Turner was found guilty of assault with intent to commit rape of an intoxicated woman, sexually penetrating an intoxicated person with a foreign object, and sexually penetrating an unconscious person with a foreign object. On top of his brief jail time, Turner will spend the rest of his life on the sex offender registry and will have to complete a sex offender management program.

Although life on the sex offender registry is no one’s idea of fun, it is a far cry from what the prosecutors were originally seeking, which was a six-year sentence in federal prison.

While California has mandatory minimum sentencing laws for forcible rape, the same is not true for cases where the victim is unconscious or severely intoxicated – which is what allowed Turner to slink out of court with what was seen by many as a slap on the wrist.

But on Monday, state lawmakers passed legislation that would remove a judge’s ability to use discretion during sentencing of such crimes.

"Sexually assaulting an unconscious or intoxicated victim is a terrible crime and our laws need to reflect that," Democratic Assemblyman Bill Dodd, a co-author of the legislation, said in statement.

He went on to say, “This bill is about more than sentencing, it’s about supporting victims and changing the culture on our college campuses to help prevent future crimes.”

The bill now moves to Governor Jerry Brown (D), but he has made no mention of whether or not he will sign it into law.

Turner’s sentence was cut short largely due to the fact that he had no prior run-ins with the law, which was also what inspired Judge Aaron Persky to give him a lean sentence, explaining that anything harsher might have a “severe impact” on Turner.

Persky also received a significant amount of backlash from the sentencing – so much so that he was transferred into civil court.

Marshall Arts Instructor Arrested and Man Sentenced to 218 Years for CSA

Alabama man gets 218 years for child sex abuse

By William Thornton

William Reynolds Jr. 

Calhoun County authorities said the testimony of a child was crucial in the trial of a Jacksonville man who was sentenced this month to 218 years in prison for child sexual abuse.

Assistant District Attorney Jayme Amberson said William Randolph Reynolds, 57, was sentenced to two 99-year sentences for two counts of sodomy and 20 years for sexual abuse, all to run consecutively.

Reynolds was convicted in July. Prosecutors said he performed and received oral sex from a 7-year-old victim between August 2012 and May 2014.

"It's extremely difficult to try cases like this when you have victims this young," Amberson said in a phone interview. "There are a lot of obstacles, because generally the child is the only witness to the crime. And this victim was extremely courageous."

Owner of Washington state martial arts studio accused of child sex abuse

by KOMO Staff

Renton PD serves warrants in connection with the child rape case, including this martial arts business in Renton. KOMO Photo

RENTON, Wash. -- Police have arrested the operator of a martial arts studio for having sexual conduct with underage girls.

Police arrested a 42-year-old Bellevue man who owns Lee's Martial Arts, located at 405 S. Third St. in Renton.

The man waved his right to appear in court Thursday. He is being held without bail, and has not been charged.

Police say a complaint to Child Protective Services began the investigation. Police say a martial arts student told investigators that she was 15 years old when the man began developing a sexual relationship with her. 

Court documents say the man and the girl who was a student at the studio had a sexual relationship that began with an exchange of Snapchat photos. First they were clothed, then naked. The two had sex at the man's home and at his studios in Renton and Maple Valley, court documents say.

Two other students have come forward, saying that the man sent them inappropriate pictures on Snapchat. Investigators are checking to see if there are additional victims.

Renton detectives have served search warrants on his Bellevue home and his Renton martial arts studio.

In an affidavit used to obtain a search warrant for Snapchat records, a King County Sheriff's Office detective writes that in June, deputies went to Dimmitt Middle School in the Renton School District. At the school, two sisters said their older sisters, ages 15 and 17, had been sent inappropriate photos by the man.

Deputies talked to the older sisters at Renton High School. They said they were martial arts students of the man, had visited his home and were friends of his daughters.

They got Snapchat photos from the man. They showed him naked. In one case, his genitals were blacked out. In another, the caption "Did you remember to brush your teeth" was over his genitals.

The older sister quit going to the martial arts studio. She told deputies that she had gone to dinner with the man and he had tried to hold her hand.

She also said in December 2014 she had been at a Christmas party at the man's house. She was downstairs in the house by herself. She was lying on a couch and using her phone when he climbed on top of her, the affidavit says. She pushed him off and he stopped his behavior. In April 2016, he took her to dinner. They went to her home, where he took a shower and emerged wearing only a towel.

He laid next to the girl and said they could cuddle with their clothes on or naked, according to the affidavit. She told him that she was uncomfortable, so he left and got dressed.

Some 9,000 Refugee Children Reported Missing in Germany

© Reuters

Up to 9,000 refugee children and teens had been reported missing as of July 1, according to Germany's federal police. The figure appears to have nearly doubled since the start of the year.

At least 8,991 refugee children under 17 years of age are no longer in contact with authorities according to figures revealed by Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) at the request of German daily "Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung." In January this year only 4,749 were known to be missing. While most of the missing are in their teens, 867 of them are said to be under 13 years old.

A spokeswoman for BKA noted, however, that not all of the missing children are necessarily in danger.

“In many cases, these children’s disappearances are not haphazard, some of them travel to visit their parents, relatives or friends in other German cities or even in other European countries,” the spokeswoman told the newspaper, explaining that after they eventually return, families often do not inform authorities of the fact and the names of the ‘missing’ children remain in the database.

Apart from that, there is the problem of multiple registrations when kids move to a different region, or after losing IDs, with their names often spelled differently, which results in doppelgangers in the system. Thus most disappearances are thought to be harmless. 

"We don’t have evidence that some of the missing minors may have fallen into the hands of criminals,” the spokeswoman stated.

Of course, criminals are not in the habit of leaving evidence around. Are they actually looking for it?

She also defended her heavily-debated policy of welcoming and integrating migrants, and shed light on a set of new measures aimed at curbing their numbers, including some toughening laws aimed at human trafficking. An initiative is also in the works to better integrate refugees that qualify for asylum.

Last year, over 5,800 refugee kids were recorded missing in the country. While authorities failed to explain their disappearance, the head of domestic intelligence warned at the time that Islamist recruiters could be specifically targeting refugee minors.

Germany’s Green party also spoke out, slamming the government for not taking seriously “the dangers of forced prostitution and exploitation.”

This is my biggest concern. Germany's frantic and haphazard rush to accept as many migrants as it could possibly get into the country was an absolute Christmas for criminal gangs who abduct, use and abuse children trafficking them across Europe. 

Please pray for these children, they are quite desperate and the worst thing is, no-one is looking for them.

EU police agency Europol, at the start of the year said that up to 10,000 unaccompanied refugee minors have gone missing after arriving in Europe. Half a year later, they did not issue fresh figures, but recently said the number is now much higher.

Germany is expecting an estimated 300,000 new refugees this year. German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday assured the public that her Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF) is ready to cope with these numbers in an interview with Germany’s ARD Channel.

Yeah, right!

Female Tourists Should Not Wear Skirts in India, says Tourism Minister

Foreign arrivals issued with welcome kit including safety advice for women, after high-profile assaults

The Taj Mahal – a popular tourist spot. UK Foreign Office advice suggests visitors to India ‘respect local dress codes’. Photograph: Cathal Mcnaughton/Reuters

Michael Safi in Delhi, Guardian

India’s tourism minister has said foreign women should not wear skirts or walk alone at night in the country’s small towns and cities “for their own safety”.

Discussing tourist security in the north Indian city of Agra, site of the Taj Mahal, Mahesh Sharma said foreign arrivals to India were issued a welcome kit that included safety advice for women.

“In that kit they are given dos and don'ts,” he said on Sunday. “These are very small things like, they should not venture out alone at night in small places, or wear skirts, and they should click the photo of the vehicle number plate whenever they travel and send it to friends.”

He added: “For their own safety, women foreign tourists should not wear short dresses and skirts ... Indian culture is different from the western.” 

Is the rape of girls considered part of Indian culture?

The welcome kit, geared at female travellers and introduced last year, is one of a suite of measures introduced to address declining rates of female tourism after the high-profile gang-rape and murder of a Delhi medical student in 2012, and a number of subsequent attacks on female tourists.

The kit says: “Some parts of India, particularly the smaller towns and villages, still have traditional styles of dressing. Do find out about local customs and traditions or concerned authorities before visiting such places.”

It mirrors the UK Foreign Office advice to women travelling in India, which suggests they “respect local dress codes and customs and avoid isolated areas, including beaches, when alone at any time of day”.

Sharma clarified his remarks later on Sunday, denying they amounted to a dress code for foreign women. ”We have not given any specific instructions regarding what they should wear or not wear. We are asking them to take precaution while going out at night. We are not trying to change anyone’s preference,” he said.

“It was very stupid, not a fully thought-through statement,” said Ranjana Kumari, the director of the Delhi-based Centre for Social Research, a think-tank focusing on gender equality in India. “The minister doesn’t realise the implications of such irresponsible statements.”

Kumari said the remarks reflected “the syndrome of blaming women” for what they wore and where they were. She said: “But the problem is men and boys in India. They go for all kinds of misogyny and sexual acts, rapes and gang-rapes. It’s important for [Sharma] to have said how to punish the perpetrators of crime and stop the nonsense of ogling women and following them. Why should any girls come to India when it is becoming famous for not being safe to girls?”

India toughened sentences for rape and introduced fast-track courts for sexual assault trials after the fatal 2012 gang-rape focused world attention on violence against women in the country.

National crime statistics show 92 women are raped each day in India, mostly in rural areas, though the figure is widely believed to be an underestimate. Street harassment and violence, sometimes called “eve-teasing”, is even more common, experienced by 79% of Indian women according to a recent survey.

Tourists can be subjected to the same harassment and worse, most recently in July 2016 when an Israeli national was sexually assaulted by a gang of men in the Himalayan resort town of Manali. A Japanese woman was kidnapped and sexually assaulted in 2014 in Bihar and a Russian assaulted by an auto-rickshaw driver in Delhi in 2015, among other cases.

Sharma’s remarks trended on Indian social media on Monday and earned rebukes from political rivals.

Sharma has previously been criticised over his views on nights out for women. “It may be alright elsewhere, but it is not part of Indian culture,” he said last year.

I repeat, is the raping of girls considered part of Indian culture? I trust Minister Sharma's comments were intended to protect women. He understands that Indian men find short skirts, etc., provocative, that Indian men think that women who are out past dark are sluts and whores and deserve to be raped and beaten, and that Indian men have very little self-control, conscience or compassion for the suffering of a girl.

He also understands that this is how life has been in India for hundreds, if not thousands of years and is not likely to change overnight, or even in a decade or two. It will take generations, but it must happen; there must be no tolerance for such evil behaviour.

Archbishop Has Memory Lapses When It Comes to Enabling Pedophile Priest

Royal commission hears how senior Anglican priest within

Newcastle diocese got away with years of sexual abuse

The Archbishop of Perth, Roger Herft, appeared as a witness at the child abuse royal commission at Newcastle court on Monday. Picture: Darren Pateman/AAP

Rohan Smith, news.com.au

BETWEEN 1998 and 2003, the ringleader of a Newcastle-based paedophile priest network preyed on his victims with impunity.

Father Peter Rushton is believed to have raped a number of boys in the Hunter Region, two hours north of Sydney.

See also: Royal Commission Hears Horrifying Evidence of Child Sexual Abuse in Newcastle Anglican Diocese

On one occasion he used a small knife to cut the back of a victim during the assault. The blood, his victim said through tears, was “symbolic of the blood of Christ”.

Rushton was accused of owning child pornography and raping a number of children, including a priest’s son. He died in 2007 having never been convicted of his crimes.

A royal commission investigating years of abuse within the Newcastle diocese heard on Monday how Rushton got away with it for so long.

The commission heard evidence from Roger Herft, who was the bishop of Newcastle for more than 10 years and who oversaw Rushton’s conduct. He is now the Archbishop of Perth.

During questioning, Archbishop Herft said he did not recall important conversations, including conversations with Rushton himself.

I guess he didn't really consider them important or he would have remembered and he would have kept notes.

Counsel assisting asked how that could be possible.

“It sounds like on three separate occasions, you spoke to him about allegations. Why do you have no recollection?” he was asked.

Archbishop Herft said he recalled some conversations but not others. Counsel assisting said that was not good enough.


'Father' Peter Rushton died in 2007 having never been reported to police. Picture: ABC

“In 2003, when you were told (Rushton had) abused a child, weren’t you on high alert?” Archbishop Herft was asked.

“I was on high alert,” he said, despite failing to act on the report.

“Couldn’t you proactively pursue the matter?”

“In hindsight there are a lot of things I could’ve done, including speaking to Peter Rushton about these matters.”

Archbishop Herft was asked why, given the nature of the reports, he did not report the matters to police. He said he was tricked in to believing the priest had turned a corner. He said he wanted to believe Rushton and took his word for it when he denied the allegations.

“I was deeply fooled into believing that this person had suffered (after it was revealed he owned child pornography),” Archbishop Herft told the commission.

“There was compassion. I seriously believed he had changed, (but) that does not preclude the need for me to look seriously at his past record and deal with it.”

Rushton’s record is littered with complaints of sexual assault spanning 40 years. Earlier this month the commission heard Archbishop Herft explain his frustration at not being able to put a stop to the abuse.

“It was insidious in the sense that one couldn’t get to the bottom of what was happening. And I looked back every day to ask myself the question: how did I miss this?”

Asked how he missed it, he replied: “I have no idea, ma’am.

“I have asked myself a number of times: why was I not more alert? Why weren’t the people around me more alert? Why weren’t the other archdeacons outside of the particular group that we have spoken about more alert?

“I struggle to find an answer for that. But I agree with you that, at that particular point of time, I should have acted more effectively and well and I did not.”

Honesty, openness, and the fear of God don't seem to be requirements for the position of Archbishop in the Anglican Church. How sad.

So what are the requirements? It would seem that compassion for pedophiles, a complete lack of compassion for abused children, a considerable degree of incompetence, and a very bad memory are needed for the job. That is certainly what AB Herft has displayed here.

The public hearing will on Tuesday continue inquiries into the experiences of survivors of child sexual abuse perpetrated by clergy associated with the Anglican Diocese of Newcastle.

Anglican Dean ‘Gave Court Reference for Priest Accused of Child Sex Abuse’

A gay, a child sex abuser - why wouldn't he be

Dean of Newcastle’s Anglican cathedral? Good grief!

Is there absolutely no discernment in the church today?

   Defrocked former Anglican dean of Newcastle Graeme Lawrence arrives home with partner
   Greg Goyette at the weekend. Picture: Ryan Osland

The Australian
DAN BOX Crime reporter Sydney, AU

A former dean of Newcastle’s Anglican cathedral wrote a character reference for an alleged pedophile priest at the centre of a new police investigation, a royal commission has heard.

The reference was one of three provided by Graeme Lawrence for the criminal trials of alleged sex offenders within the NSW diocese, according to evidence before the Royal Commission into Instit­utional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Mr Lawrence was himself later defrocked after having group sex with a teenager.

The former cathedral dean prepared the reference in about 2001, although the charges were ultimately “no-billed”, meaning prosecutors decided not to pursue the case.

The Newcastle diocese subsequently released a media statement falsely claiming that the priest, who cannot be named, had been acquitted, the commission has heard.

The priest moved to the Victorian diocese of Ballarat.

Sure, seems like all pedophile priests ended up in Ballarat.

Newcastle’s bishop at the time, Roger Herft, now the Archbishop of Perth, has told the commission he has “no recollection” of contacting the church in Ballarat to warn them the priest was an ­alleged child-sex offender.

“I accept, however, it was entirely within my power” to contact the bishop of Ballarat “about the allegations ... either before or after (the priest’s) trial”, Archbishop Herft said in a statement to the commission. Both Mr Lawrence and Archbishop Herft are expected to face cross-examination ­before the commission, which ­resumes its public inquiry into the Newcastle diocese today.

The Australian revealed in 2014 that police had launched a strike force, codenamed Arinya-2, to investigate alleged abuse of multiple victims within the region’s Anglican Church during the 1970s.

The commission has since heard the priest in question allegedly abused two altar boys over several years between 1971 and 1975. “The abuse took place at least fortnightly and escalated over time,” one of his victims has told the commission. The priest ­“abused me at our local church, the rectory where he lived, in his vehicle during travel, and at other churches in the parish”.

NSW police are now likely to lay fresh charges against the priest, the commission has heard, with lawyers for the state saying they expect he will face a second criminal trial.

As dean of the cathedral, Mr Lawrence worked closely with the priest and also provided character references for two other alleged abusers, Ian Barrack and Allan Kitchingman, the commission heard. Both were subsequently convicted of sexual offences.

Mr Lawrence was also a member of the “Gang of Three” senior church officials who protected another alleged pedophile priest, the commission has heard.

Both Mr Lawrence and former Newcastle archdeacon Bruce Hoare were defrocked, or ­removed from the priesthood, in 2012 after an internal investi­g­ation found they had taken part in a 1984 group sex session with a 19-year-old.

The teenage participant, who also cannot be named, has told the commission the incident was “the outcome of years of sexual grooming and abuse … by Lawrence”.

Evidence before the commission alleges Archbishop Herft was told at least three times that Mr Lawrence was sexually abusive, including of children, although he has told the commission he cannot recall this taking place.

A file note of a conversation last year between the current Newcastle bishop Greg Thompson and one of its former legal ­advisers, Keith Allan, has also been tendered to the commission.

“Allen advised that Graeme Lawrence would be a focus of the police and the royal commission and that Lawrence would ‘bring others down’,” this states.

Questioned about this during the commission, Mr Allen said: “I probably think words to that or similar to that may — would have been said.”

One of the Worst Murderers and Rapists in American History

By Melissa Pandika
THE DAILY DOSE



Carl Panzram — a tattooed, 6-foot-tall giant of a man with cold gray eyes — stowed away on a ship bound for Angola around 1920 to work as a merchant seaman. After arriving in Lobito Bay, he hired a half-dozen local guides for a crocodile-hunting expedition. But Panzram had other prey on his mind. As their canoe wended its way down the river, he shot each crew member dead before feeding their corpses to the hungry crocodiles lurking below.

That was just one of many crimes, including 21 murders and more than 1,000 rapes of young boys and men, Panzram admitted to committing. Unlike charming and cunning serial killers Ted Bundy or Rodney Alcala, Panzram remained brutally honest. “For all of these things, I am not the least bit sorry,” he seethed in his autobiography, penned from his prison cell. “I hate the whole damned human race including myself.”

But could he really be that bad? Yes, at least according to experts who have studied him and found that the roots of his evil could be traced back to his childhood. Born in 1891 to a poor farming family in Minnesota, Panzram’s father abandoned his family when he was about 8 years old. Soon after, Panzram landed in a reform school called Red Wing for a string of burglaries. Red Wing schooled Panzram in sadism, punishing him with beatings and rapes, which led him to a realization: “‘The world is this shithole, and I’m going to go through the world and wreak havoc in it,’” said Harold Schechter, a true-crime writer specializing in serial killers.

After graduating, he spent years sleeping on freight trains. During one ride in a boxcar, he was gang raped by transients — leaving him “a sadder, sicker but wiser boy,” Panzram wrote. In 1915, he traveled through Idaho, California and other states along the Columbia River, burning and burglarizing buildings and raping countless young men and boys. Around the same time, Panzram was sentenced to seven years at the Oregon State Penitentiary for burglary. To punish his unruliness, the wardens hung him from the rafters for hours, turned a hose on him, and kept him in solitary confinement for weeks, leaving him to feed on cockroaches.

According to Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest, conscience is attached to the highest that you know. Panzram's dad, having deserted his family in the most dire conditions, could not have taught Carl much in the way of moral character. Neither could anyone in the reform school, the freight trains, or the prisons he frequented. Consequently, Panzram was completely devoid of conscience.

Add to the lack of conscience a seething anger from all the abuse he suffered and you have the makings of a real psychopath. But, Panzram, it appears was more than that. A 2012 documentary 'Carl Panzram: The Spirit of Hatred and Vengeance' may be more accurately named than even the author knows. Trauma opens one up to spiritual invasion; repeated, brutal trauma almost guarantees a welcoming home for the demonic. 

It was that evil in him that allowed him to murder so many people without the least regret. It was also that evil that caused him to defile roughly 1000 boys, destroying their innocence. Evil hates innocence and cannot touch it without some dreadful event making it possible. Defiling innocence is a demonic act of defiance against God.

Not long after escaping in 1918, Panzram committed his first murders. In New York, he hired sailors to work on a yacht bought with his robbery bounty, lulled them to sleep with alcohol and shot­­­­­ them dead — all 10 of them. Soon after, he set sail for Angola, raping and killing a young boy before the crocodile-hunting expedition. About a year later, he hid aboard a Lisbon-bound ship, only to find that the police there were on the lookout for him, aware of his crimes in Africa. So, soon after, he stowed away on a ship to the U.S.

In 1928, Panzram was arrested for a series of burglaries and jailed in Washington, D.C. After a warden found out that he had tried to escape, the guards handcuffed and suspended him from a beam, beating him unconscious. Feeling sorry for Panzram, 26-year-old prison guard Henry Lesser handed him a dollar to buy food and cigarettes. “No one had ever been kind to him in his life,” said John Borowski, who directed the 2012 documentary Carl Panzram: The Spirit of Hatred and Vengeance. Over time, the two became friends. Each day, Lesser slipped him a pencil and a few sheets of paper, convincing him to write his life story.

Panzram was sentenced to 25 years at United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth in Kansas. There, he crushed laundry foreman Robert Warnke’s skull with an iron bar, landing a spot on death row and refusing human rights groups’ efforts to spare him from the gallows. After years of abuse, “it was his form of suicide,” Borowski said. Panzram got the death he craved in September 1930. “Hurry it up, you Hoosier bastard!” he seethed at the executioner — “rage personified,” as he referred to himself, until the end. “I could kill 10 men while you’re fooling around!”

Lesser kept Panzram’s writings, but publishers weren’t comfortable with the graphic manuscript until 1970, when it was published as Killer: A Journal of Murder. “The guy was really quite an amazing writer,” said Joe Coleman, who painted the cover art for the book, and who was “struck by the intelligence and the things [Panzram] could have been capable of.”

'Killer: A Journal of Murder' - nothing much has changed in 46 years. The rape of 1000 boys is not even mentioned in the title, while he murdered only 21 men. 1000 boys rapes probably means 1000 lives destroyed, and who knows how many in the next generation, and the next. Sexually abused boys often become sexual abusers of children themselves. That one man may have been responsible for creating tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of pedophiles.

Beyond helping criminologists better understand the minds of killers like Panzram, Borowski said the autobiography serves as a lesson — one that still holds relevance amid recent reports of inmate abuse at Rikers Island and other prisons. “He tries to teach our future generations not to create more monsters like him,” he said, adding that Panzram, “above anybody else, should be listened to.”

And what is he teaching us? Is it that bad behaviour cannot be corrected by traumatic punishment? When I was 3, my grandmother corrected my bed-wetting by holding my face down in the puddle of urine until I either fainted or just gave up trying to breathe. It definitely cured my bed-wetting, but I have had precious few good night's sleep without medication in the 65 years since. And, I lived with a spirit of fear for the next 55 years. Trauma is not a teacher; it's a destroyer.

OZY AUTHOR
MELISSA PANDIKA

NGO Raising Awareness of Child Sex Abuse in Malaysia

Raising Public Awareness On Child Sex Abuse

Is Key To Prevention - NGO

The NGO said the public must be educated on the types of child sexual abuse as the knowledge would enable them to detect any signs of a child being abused and report it to the relevant authority.

KUALA LUMPUR: Raising public awareness on child abuse is important to address the problem, said the secretary on a non-government organisation, known as Project Layang-Layang, Petra Gimbad.

She said the public must be educated on the types of child sexual abuse as the knowledge would enable them to detect any signs of a child being abused and report it to the relevant authority.

"Programmes organised by Project Layang-layang are intended to provide such knowledge to participants, so that adults and children know what sexual crime is.

"Most often, parents felt helpless when their children are sexually abused or assaulted. Project Layang-Layang is set up to provide support to such parents and children," she told Bernama during a forum on 'Child sexual Abuse – What Are You Doing To Stop It' here recently.

One of the speakers at the forum, Dr Zahilah Filzah Zulkifli, who heads the Suspected Child Abuse and Neglect (SCAN) team at a government hospital, said for every one reported case of child sexual abuse in the country, nine often went unreported.

She said the sign of a child been violated was hard to prove as any sign of penetration in children resulting in wounds would only take 20 to 40 hours to heal.

"The healing process in children is much faster. Therefore, when a child comes for a check-up to prove if she or he has been sexually violated, it is already too late." she added.

As such, she said, it was imperative for parents to have the knowledge about child sexual abuse as prevention.

To learn more on Projek Layang-Layang, visit their page at www.facebook.com/projeklayang2 or email them at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..">projeklayanglayang@gmail.com.

-Bernama

5 Pathetic Women in 5 Cases of Child and/or Baby Rape

CHELSEA HOFFMAN Inquisitr

A New Jersey woman who filmed sex acts with a child has been sentenced in prison, and the details surrounding her actions are making media headlines. WFLX News reports that 30-year-old Pamela Dziminski was convicted after she admitted to what she had done.

The incidents reportedly took place earlier this year. Authorities in Ewing became aware of the abuse when videos and photos of it were posted on the internet. What resulted in which, (????) was an investigation that led to the arrest of the 30-year-old New Jersey woman. The media that had been uploaded to the internet, appeared to feature the New Jersey woman sexually abusing a four-year-old boy.

Pamela Dziminski admitted that she took the videos and photos with the child, and sold them to three different people on the internet. The Trentonian reports That Dziminski was charged with multiple counts of aggravated sexual assault at the time of her arrest. She was also charged with endangering the welfare of a child.

Authorities discovered that the young child was in the care of the woman, and was a relative. However, the identity of the lad, or his exact relationship to the convicted New Jersey woman, haven’t been clarified.

Women rape babies

This isn’t the first time a woman has been charged or convicted with exploiting a child, sexually, for various reasons. Earlier this year, a daycare worker named Heather Koon (right) pleaded guilty in association with vile sexual behavior against children in her care. Koon admits to raping more than one child under the instruction of her sex offender fiance. The woman reportedly raped as many as four children — some of which just a year old.

Jessica McCain (Left) via Tippecanoe Co. Sheriff's Office

Also this year, an Indiana woman named Jessica McCain was reportedly arrested for sexual abuse of a child. The 23-year-old woman is accused of using a friend’s cellphone to record herself sexually abusing a one-year-old boy.

Also this year, a 42-year-old Washington woman was arrested in association with crimes against children. The woman allegedly lured kids into her home with ice cream and popcorn, before forcing them to perform sexual acts on her. The alleged victims in this case range in age from 12 to 15-years-old, and authorities report that one of the kids even recorded an incident with the 42-year-old woman.

In June, a Cincinnati woman pleaded guilty in association with trafficking her own daughter. Police say that 32-year-old April Corcoran (Right) traded her 11-year-old daughter with her drug dealer in exchange for drugs, allowing the man to have sex with the young girl. Not only did she traffic her own daughter, she allegedly gave the girl heroin as a “reward” for allowing the woman’s drug dealer to have sex with her.

As for the conviction of Pamela Dzminski, the New Jersey woman has been sentenced to approximately 25 years of imprisonment. Meanwhile, the woman’s family has appeared to forgive her for the vile act of child sexual abuse she committed. Her parents have provided statements, in hopes of getting the woman a shorter prison sentence, declaring that the boy “doesn’t remember anything regarding the assault.” The New Jersey woman’s attorney noted that she has no prior criminal history, but agrees with the prison sentence she was given.

Telford - Eclypsing Rotherham as UK's Child Sex Abuse Capital

This is incredibly infuriating! Police know this is going on and do little or nothing to stop it. Girls lives are being destroyed and the people paid to protect them are sitting on their hands. 

Unfortunately, there needs to be a ministry or ombudsman to monitor police and hold their feet to the fire. There seems to be no appetite for cleaning up the streets of these scum.

'ROTHERHAM-STYLE SCANDAL' Telford dubbed ‘child sex abuse capital’ after police accused of sitting on massive 150-page pile of allegations

Local volunteers have been handing evidence of grooming outside underage clubs to police for years

BY NEAL BAKER

A “Rotherham-style” abuse scandal has erupted in Telford, Shrops, after it emerged local police are sitting on a massive pile of child sex accusations.

As many as 150 pages-worth of abuse claims have built up in the town dubbed the “child sex capital of Britain.”


Underage girls have been approached by groups of men outside youth clubs and discos in Telford GETTY IMAGES

Cops have been accused of either ignoring or not taking seriously the extent of the problem in the West Midlands town.

That’s despite the jailing of seven men in the town involved in organised child abuse in 2012.

One victim who was passed around a string of perverts for sex told The Mirror: “The police have betrayed the children of this town for a second time.


Telford Town Centre Shropshire UK England ALAMY
The Shropshire town of Telford has the highest rate of reported child sex crimes in the country

“I dread to think how many victims there have been over the years – it wouldn’t surprise me if the offending was on the same scale as Rotherham.”

Her comments come after the work of local “street pastors” reporting cases of underage girls being approached by older men in the town emerged.

Witnesses have seen men circling underage discos, takeaway shops and other areas popular with youngsters.

Some have even reported seeing men grooming drunk young girls or trying to get into underage clubs.


Street pastors have seen men attempting to groom girls with drugs  GETTY IMAGES

The work of these church volunteers has been going on since 2013, during which piles of evidence was passed to the authorities.

However, officers have admitted flaws in their reporting system, meaning their intelligence gathering has been hampered.

For three years there are flaws in their reporting system. How many more years do you need to fix it? How many young girls are you throwing under the bus because you just don't care?

    Telford, UK Population of greater Telford area about 175,000

India Launches E-box for Online Registration of Child Sexual Abuse Complaints

This is a great idea and I applaud Maneka Ghandi for it. It will certainly rescue some children, but it will also open up possibilities of abuse. But now, Ghandi need to turn her attention to rural children where incestuous child sex abuse is more likely.


Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO)was launched by Gandhi in the presence of MoS Raj and National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) Chairperson Stuti Kacker among others. Express Photo by Prem Nath Pandey.

By Express News Service 

NEW DELHI: Aimed at helping victims of child sexual abuse, the government on Friday launched an E-box for online registering of such complaints.

The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO), E-Box, is an online complaint management system for easy and direct reporting of sexual offences against children and timely action against the offenders under the POCSO Act, 2012.

The E-Box will help to maintain the confidentiality of the complaint.

“The idea of an e-Box came out of a police initiative in which physical complaint boxes were placed in schools,” Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi said adding the E-Box will make it possible to implement it on a large scale throughout the country.

A large number of incidents of abuse are against close relatives and so they get pushed under the carpet, the minister said.

The E-Box is incorporated prominently in the home page of National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) where a user has to simply push a button named POSCO E-Box. This will navigate to a page with a window containing an animation movie. The animation movie reassures the child that whatever has happened is not his or her fault and he or she need not feel guilty.

After the user presses the arrow on this page, it navigates  to another page wherethey have to select at least one picture option-- describing the category of harassment--  and fill the form with details such as mobile number, e-mail and description of the harassment followed by  the ‘submit’ button. Following this, the complaint is then registered and a unique auto-generated complaint number is flashed.

Speaking at the launch event Minister of State Krishna Raj said, “Those children who had no means of complaining will now have a medium to share their feelings through this e-box. Only then will we able to help them….But 70 per cent of children live in rural areas and we must worry about them as well. Don’t know whether this e-box will reach them or not. Our next step should be for those children in rural areas who are victims of sexual abuse but may not have access to modern gadgets.”

According to government data, sexual offences against children are rampant but only a small percentage gets reported. About 53 percent of children surveyed, reported having faced one or the other form of sexual abuse in their lifetime. 

In most cases, the offender is a family member or near relative or an acquaintance. The child victim in such cases generally does not report these offences.

Sexual abuse scars the psyche of the affected child for  entire life. A child who is sexually abused has to face very serious consequences such as cognitive impairment, violent and risk behaviour including depression and anxiety.

The  government enacted POCSO Act, 2012 to protect such children from offences of sexual assault, sexual harassment and pornography. Any human being up to the age of 18 years is recognised as a child under the POCSO Act.

Sexual Abuse of Children in China - A Horror Confronted

China has millions of sexually abused children. It is beginning to acknowledge their suffering

HUANG YANLAI was 74 when he first raped 11-year-old Xiao Yu. He threatened her with a bamboo-harvesting knife while she was out gathering snails in the fields for her grandmother in Nan village, Guangxi province, in China’s south-west. Over the following two years, Xiao Yu (a nickname meaning Light Rain) was raped more than 50 times, her hands tied and a cloth stuffed in her mouth. She was a left-behind child, entrusted to relatives while her parents worked in distant cities. Her father returned home once a year. Told that his daughter was in trouble, he asked her what was wrong but she was too frightened to tell him. So he beat her up.

Her abusers bribed her to keep quiet, giving her about 10 yuan (about $1.50) each time they raped her, threatening that “if this gets out, it will be you who loses face, not us.” They were right. When Xiao Yu finally confided to her grandmother and went to the police, the villagers called her a prostitute and drove her out of town.

Xiao Yu’s story came to national attention after it was reported by state media. At the end of May it formed part of a study released by the Girls’ Protection Foundation, a charity in Beijing founded to increase awareness of child sexual abuse, a crime officials preferred not to discuss openly until recently. The study said there had been 968 cases of sexual abuse of children reported in the media between 2013 and 2015, involving 1,790 victims. Wang Dawei of the People’s Public Security University said that, for every case that was reported, at least seven were not. That would imply China had 12,000 victims of child sexual abuse during that period. “I have never seen this many child sexual-assault cases, ever,” ran one online reaction. “Why is it such things were hardly heard of five years ago,” asked another, “and now seem all over the media?”

China is no exception
The answer is that social attitudes are changing; it is no longer taboo to discuss the problem. In 2015 Fang Xiangming of China Agricultural University, in a report for the World Health Organisation (WHO), estimated, using local studies, that 9.5% of Chinese girls and 8% of boys had suffered some form of sexual abuse by adults, ranging from unwanted contact to rape. For boys the rate is as high as the global norm, for girls it is slightly less so. Because of the country’s size, however, the absolute numbers are staggering. Perhaps 25m people under 18 are victims of abuse.

Chinese pride themselves on the protectiveness of their families. That children suffer even an average level of abuse is a surprise to many. But, as everywhere, children hide their experience. In 2014 Lijia Zhang, a journalist, wrote a first-hand account in the New York Times of sexual abuse at her school in the city of Nanjing in the 1970s. She said it never occurred to her and other victims to report the teacher. “We didn’t even know the term sexual abuse.” Even in Hong Kong, where sex is more openly discussed, a study of university students found that 60% of male victims and 68% of female ones surveyed since 2002 had not told anyone about their abuse. These rates of non-disclosure are considerably higher than in the West. Mr Fang, the author of the study for the WHO, says that if Chinese girls were more open, then the true rate of female sexual abuse might turn out to be as high as elsewhere, just as it is for boys.

In any country, child sexual abuse is hard to measure. China has never conducted a nationwide survey, though it is talking about holding one in the next couple of years. There are many provincial or citywide studies. But as in other countries, researchers use different measures and standards. And there are no studies of abuse over time, so it is hard to detect trends. Even so, there are reasons to believe that children are at growing risk.

First, China has huge numbers of “left-behind” children, like Xiao Yu. According to the All-China Women’s Federation, an official body, and UNICEF, the UN agency for children, 61m people below the age of 17 have been left in rural areas while one or both parents migrate for work. Over 30m boys and girls, some as young as four, live in state boarding schools in villages, far from parents and often away from grandparents or guardians. (A growing number of rural children whose parents are still at home have to board, because of the closure of many small schools in the countryside as village populations shrink.) Another 36m children have migrated with their families to cities, but their parents are often too busy to look after them properly.

Time for new thinking

About 10m left-behind children see their parents only once a year and otherwise rely on the occasional phone call. “Every time my mother called, she would tell me to study hard and listen to my teachers,” said one victim of sexual assault by a mathematics teacher at a school in You county, in the central province of Hunan. “I could not bring myself to tell her over the phone what was happening.”

How much abuse is inflicted on left-behind children is not known. Researchers complain that schools with large numbers of them often refuse to allow sexual-abuse surveys. But given their vulnerability, left-behind children are likely to be victims of such abuse more frequently—possibly much more so—than average.

Another risk factor is a mixture of ignorance, shame and legal uncertainty that makes it very difficult for children to defend themselves. Fei Yunxia works for the Girls’ Protection Foundation, the NGO that released the recent study of abuse cases. She travels to schools, giving sex-education classes. “No one tells these students about their bodies or how to protect themselves from harm,” she told Xinhua, a government news agency. Sex education in China is rare and never touches on abuse. The NGO says that 40% of 4,700 secondary-school pupils polled in 2015, when asked what was meant by their “private parts”, said they did not know. When cases are reported to the authorities, little is done, either because of legal loopholes, or because officials refuse to recognise the problem, or because they cover up for colleagues.

It does not help that China’s statute of limitations is only two years. Wang Yi of Renmin University says this is too short for cases involving child sexual abuse: victims often remain silent for years. There is no national register of sex offenders, though Cixi, a city in Zhejiang province, aroused controversy in June when it said it would publish “personal information” about major sex criminals after their release to let the public monitor them (some commentators worried about an invasion of privacy).

Cixi, you are awesome! Keep it up; set the pace.

The lack of well-developed sex-crime laws means victims are often failed by the justice system. In Liaoning province eight school girls aged between 12 and 17 were kidnapped, stripped, beaten, and forced to watch and wait their turn while men who had paid $270 per visit raped them repeatedly in hotel rooms. The men were charged with having “sex with under-aged prostitutes”, a charge that shamed the victims into silence. The law that allowed child-rape victims to be classified as prostitutes was scrapped in 2015. But a women’s legal-counselling centre in Beijing, which had led a campaign against it, was itself closed earlier this year as part of a crackdown on civil society launched by China’s president, Xi Jinping. No wonder that, as a lawyer in the You county case put it, “silence is the preferred solution.”

A shift in moral assumptions about sex presents another challenge. China is in the middle of a sexual revolution. Sex before marriage is more common. The age of first sexual experience is dropping. Most researchers into child abuse think there may be a link between such changes and sexual violence against children, if only because the revolution in mores seems to go hand in hand with changes to the traditional child-rearing system that, through intense surveillance, may limit abuse.

Ye Haiyan, challenging abuse

When a country confronts the problem of child abuse it typically goes through three stages, argues David Finkelhor of the University of New Hampshire. First the public and media become alert to the problem. This is happening. With the help of social media, and thanks to a greater willingness to speak out on social matters, campaigners have begun to organise. Ye Haiyan (pictured), known online as “Hooligan Sparrow”, helped arouse public awareness with her protests in 2013 against the rape of six girls aged between 11 and 14 by their school principal. In the next stage the government becomes concerned and starts to tighten laws. Then the police, social workers and public prosecutors begin to deal with problems on the ground. China is moving into this third stage.

Make them safer
Since early this decade, prosecutors and police have been spelling out how cases of abuse should be handled, from the collection of evidence to support for victims and procedures for separating a child from his or her parents. At the end of 2015 China adopted its first domestic-violence law. It says that preventing this is the “joint responsibility of the state, society and every family”. All this, says Ron Pouwels, UNICEF’s head of child protection in China, means that “China gets it and is determined to do something about it.”

But much more work is needed. For example, there are very few social workers. The government has set a target of 250,000 properly qualified ones by the end of 2020. But only 30,000 take up such jobs each year. Crucially, Mr Xi needs to reverse his campaign against civil society and his efforts to stifle media debate. Further improving public awareness of the problem will need the help of NGOs and a freer press (free, for example, to point out that abusers are often people in authority—Ms Ye, the activist, was harassed by officials for trying to do so). Over the past 30 years, China has enhanced the life prospects of millions of children by providing them with better education and health care. Now it is time to protect them from sexual violence, too.