12 more men in charged in connection with sexual exploitation of girls in Rotherham
By Richard Wheatstone
Another 12 men have been charged as part of a huge investigation into child sex exploitation in Rotherham.
The men, aged between 33 and 38 and mostly from Rotherham, are accused of offences including rape and indecent assault and bring the number charged under Operation Stovewood.
The National Crime Agency said the most recent charges relate to eight girls under the age of 16, over a five year period from 1998 to 2003.
The NCA set up Operation Stovewood after it was invited by South Yorkshire Police to look into allegations of widespread child sex exploitation and abuse in the South Yorkshire town between 1997 and 2013.
Senior investigating officer, Paul Williamson, said: "We have now charged 21 men with over 94 child sexual abuse offences and expect this number to increase as more victims come forward.
"Officers are investigating more than 80 suspects and with the support of partner agencies, are currently engaging with 235 victims.
"Our focus is to bring lasting and worthwhile benefits for victims, helping to build better futures. We will listen to their accounts and investigate allegations made to identify and bring offenders to justice."
"This focus has not wavered and we, along with our partners will persist in our efforts to make Rotherham a hostile environment for child sex offenders."
Amjal Rafiq, 38, of Warwick Street, has been charged with false imprisonment and indecent assault.
Nabeel Kurshid, 34, also of Warwick Street, and Iqlak Yousaf, 33, of Tooker Road, each face two allegations of rape and one of indecent assault.
Mohammed Imran Ali Akhtar, 36, from East Road, Tanweer Ali, 36, from Godstone Road, Aftab Hussain, 38, from York Road, and Abid Saddiq, 36, from Walter Street, each face a string of accusations including indecent assault.
Sharaz Hussain, 33, from Fitzwilliam Road, is charged with one count of indecent assault.
Salah Ahmed El-Hakam, 38, from Tudor Close, Sheffield faces one count of rape.
All 12 men will appear at Sheffield Magistrates Court on October 24.
12 more Muslims! Are you beginning to see the pattern?
Sending naked photos to dates now a
‘hallmark of our society,’ judge says
Sending naked pictures to prospective partners is now a “hallmark of society,” a judge has said, as he jailed a man for blackmailing three young women with revenge porn.
Daniel Stainton, 26, of Cheltenham pleaded guilty to disclosing private sexual photos with intent to cause distress, and was jailed for five years and three months. He had blackmailed three women who sent him naked pictures of themselves after meeting him on social media.
Sentencing at Gloucester Crown Court, Judge Jamie Tabor QC said: “It is a hallmark of our society now that young women and sometimes young men – sometimes mature people – exchange such photographs. All well and good.
“But what people do not appear to appreciate is that these images are not gone in a moment - they can hang around, as we can see in this case, for years.
“There came a time in your life when you were hard up for money and decided to embark on this campaign of blackmail. The effect on the women was dramatic and horrible. You had no regard at all for your victims,” he said, according to the Telegraph.
Richard Posner, prosecuting, said the victims were left feeling “degraded, humiliated and traumatised.”
Victim A was a 26-year-old shop worker from Cheltenham, who met Stainton in 2012 and thought he was a “nice guy, a shoulder to cry on” when her marriage broke down, Posner said.
“From March 2013 they became close. She sent him two photos of herself naked via WhatsApp. She then decided to leave her husband for the defendant – but he immediately sent her husband a text telling him that she had been cheating on him."
“She says this broke her heart and she lost all contact with the defendant.”
Then in 2016 he contacted her on Instagram with a different name, asking to be her friend. When she accepted, he sent her four photographs of women, one of them the intimate shot of herself.
“She said she would call the police and the Instagram account he had used was deleted. She never gave in to his demands and lost no money.”
Victim B, a 21-year-old sales assistant from Scotland, sent Stainton a topless photo in 2016 via Snapchat. Unknown to her, the defendant took screenshots of the images before they disappeared.
“Last December he contacted her and demanded money or he would post the pictures online if she didn’t pay him. For two months he extorted money from her. He said he would send the pictures to her family and friends if she did not pay.”
She ended up paying him almost £1,000 not to go public with the intimate pictures of her. When he continued to ask for money, she reported him to the police, and he posted an intimate picture of her naked on her timeline on Facebook.
She had suicidal thoughts which forced her to take time off work.
“I was left broken. He just didn’t seem to care. He was just wanting money. I felt worthless,” she said in a victim statement to the court.
Victim C, now in her 20s, chatted with Stainton online for many months before he asked for a naked picture of her. When she sent a topless photograph, he demanded she leave £300 in cash under a bin in a park or he would upload the topless image.
William Rose, defending, said: “These ladies became victims because of his greed. It was all down to money and his desperation to try to retain his accommodation. He had arrears of rent and was facing eviction.”
Court rules Aussie paedophile liable to be extradited
WESTERN CAPE / ANA REPORTER
Cape Town, South Africa - Australian paedophile, Anthony Peter Freedendal, was found liable to be extradited to his home country to face a string of child sex charges, the Wynberg Magistrate’s Court found on Wednesday.
The court ordered that Freedendal be committed to Pollsmoor Prison until Minister of Justice Michael Masutha makes a final decision on the extradition.
Freedendal has 15 court days to appeal the decision in the Western Cape High Court. Defence attorney William Booth told African News Agency he has not yet taken instructions from his client regarding an appeal.
However, he said he intends to make submissions to the minister to request that Freedendal's age and ill health be taken into account. Freedendal is 76 years old and has cancer and tuberculosis, diabetes and high blood pressure.
Booth said he also intended to request that the minister consider that Freedendal was serving a sentence in Cape Town for similar offences committed locally.
In her judgment on Wednesday, Magistrate Xoliswa Ndoyana found that the extradition application satisfied the principle of double criminality. This principle requires that a crime for which an extradition is sought, should be a crime in both the requested and requesting states. In other words, the offences Freedendal is accused of in Australia, should also be offences in South Africa.
Magistrate Ndoyana added that she was also satisfied that affidavits Australian authorities supplied to South Africa set out that there was sufficient evidence to warrant Freedendal’s prosecution abroad.
She referred to several arguments Booth had raised in this regard, but said that it was merely her duty to find that Freedendal was liable to be extradited and that a final extradition decision rested with the minister.
The arguments could be presented to the minister or raised at a later trial, she said.
Magistrate Ndoyana also referred to Booth’s argument that the charges his client stands accused of in Australia may have prescribed. However, she said he did not lay any basis for such an argument and that she could therefore not take that issue any further.
Freedendal was arrested in connection with the child sex charges in Port Lincoln, Australia in July 2011 and was released on bail. According to papers before the court, the Australian charges were allegedly committed from June 1999 to January 2003 and the alleged victims were girls and boys, aged 7 to 11. Among them was a nine-year-old intellectually disabled girl.
Freedendal was later given permission to visit South Africa, but with a condition that he return by November 21 that year. However, he never returned. Instead, he ended up being arrested and charged with the sexual abuse of eight children in Cape Town.
He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to five years, but only 10 months had to be served directly in prison and the rest under correctional supervision.
10 months for the sexual abuse of 8 children??? Seriously? Child sex abuse is, apparently, not a crime in South Africa!
By the time he was due for release on parole, Australian authorities requested his extradition.
Freedendal’s wife, Jo, was present in the public gallery for the judgment. She greeted him as warders led him down to the court's holding cells.
Maple Leaf Gardens pervert stands trial on new charges related to child sex abuse
by: Canadian Press
TORONTO — A man who says he was sexually assaulted as a child by the man at the heart of the Maple Leaf Gardens sex abuse scandal testified Wednesday that he repressed memories of the trauma for decades.
The man, whose identity is under a publication ban, told a Toronto court that seeing Gordon Stuckless a few years ago triggered his memory and pushed him to attempt suicide shortly afterward.
Now, taking the stand at Stuckless's latest trial related to the alleged sexual abuse of young boys, he described first meeting the former Maple Leaf Gardens employee while trying to sneak into the famed Toronto arena with friends in the late 1970s.
WARNING: Graphic details follow.
Stuckless befriended the boy, who was 12 or 13 at the time, taking him and the others inside the arena, sometimes close enough to get players' autographs, the man testified.
But he would also take the boys to a sauna room, a camera room and even the manager's office, where he would fondle them, perform fellatio on them and at times penetrate them anally, the man told the court.
"He said it was a natural thing to do, that everyone did it," he said. The man said he didn't talk about what happened with anyone, not even the other boys, who have since passed away.
Stuckless, 67, is accused of sexually assaulting three boys between 1978 and 1984. He is charged with three counts of sexual assault, four counts of buggery, four counts of indecent assault, six counts of gross indecency, and two counts of threatening death.
He has pleaded not guilty at the judge-alone trial, though his lawyer said the charges for buggery — a charge that no longer exists and refers to sodomy — are the sticking point.
The trial that began Wednesday is the latest legal proceeding for Stuckless.
He pleaded guilty in 2014 to more than 100 charges for the crimes he committed against 18 young boys between 1965 and 1985.
He was also convicted of two additional charges of gross indecency linked to two of the victims but cleared on two counts of buggery. The trial judge said that while Stuckless had "probably" committed buggery, that was not enough to convict him on those charges.
He was sentenced last year to 6.5 years in prison, but was given credit of six months for time served under house arrest. Prosecutors are appealing the sentence.
I should hope so. 6.5 years is a joke, and Stuckless' countless victims are not laughing.
The former assistant teacher and volunteer coach had also previously pleaded guilty in 1997 for sex assaults on 24 boys while he worked as an equipment manager at the Maple Leaf Gardens between 1969 and 1988.
He was sentenced to two years less a day in that case, but that was later increased to six years, less a year for pre-trial custody. He was paroled in 2001 after serving two-thirds of his sentence.
He was convicted on three other occasions of sex offences against a total of nine underage boys, according to court records.
It seems to me that there comes a point when the death penalty is appropriate. I think, for Stuckless, we are long past that point, yet judges keep treating him like a misbehaving school boy.
Kiwi MP calls Australian Catholic Church 'disgusting' for backing 'No' campaign
Newshub staff
Labour MP Louisa Wall has slammed the Australian Catholic Church for endorsing the 'No' campaign during Australia's nationwide postal vote on same-sex marriage.
"The process they're leading is affecting all the LGBT young people. It's just disgusting," she told BuzzFeed's Is It On? podcast.
Ms Wall proposed New Zealand's same-sex marriage bill, passed by a conscience vote in Parliament in 2013.
Australia's Malcolm Turnbull-led government has initiated a nationwide non-binding postal vote on whether same-sex marriage should be legalised, which is currently underway.
Ms Wall told BuzzFeed Australians should stand up to the Catholic Church.
"I wish you'd talk about it and say to them, 'If you want to be a moral crusader, why don't you eliminate child sexual abuse? And be a leader in that'."
In 2012, the New Zealand Catholic Church said marriage should be between a man and a woman.
New Zealand's Catholic Bishops Conference has been approached for comment.
Good luck with that! This is one of the many consequences of the spectacular moral lapse of the Catholic Church with regard to child sex abuse, the enabling of it by moving pedophile priests around when they are complained about, and by their reluctance, if not indifference, to see the suffering of those whose lives were trashed.
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