Canada 'on track' to resettle 1,200 victims of ISIS genocide, sexual slavery
Government says it will meet its commitment amid calls to increase the quota for next year
By Kathleen Harris, CBC News
Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen recently announced that 800 survivors had been brought to Canada but did not specify at the time how many of them were Yazidi.
'1,200 ... is such a small little number to the size and the measure of the genocide we saw happening to their community.'
- Majed El Shafie, One Free World International
According to new information provided to CBC News by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, 81 per cent are Yazidi. About 38 per cent have come from Iraq, another 36 per cent from Lebanon and 26 per cent from Turkey.
All remaining arrivals are expected to be from Iraq, and the government is "on track" to meet its commitment, said IRCC spokeswoman Nancy Caron.
Calls to up intake in 2018
As the special operation continues, there are already calls for the government to boost the number next year.
"I believe that we can do more, to increase the numbers from 1,200, which is such a small little number to the size and the measure of the genocide we saw happening to their community," said Majed El Shafie, founder of human rights advocacy group One Free World International. "Increasing the number to 3,000 or 4,000 I think is doable; the Canadian government can do that."
One of the people his organization is helping to resettle is Melkeya, whose last name will not be published to protect Yazidi relatives still in Iraq.
She said she is grateful for the support she has received in Canada but is finding it difficult to live on the monthly allowance of $800.
'We feel safe here'
"We feel safe here, but we want them to help to bring more Yazidis to the country," she said in Arabic through a translator. "We are very thankful to the Canadian government, but even the support that we are receiving from them, it's just enough to pay the rent."
Melkeya told CBC News reporter Makda Ghebreslassie about the horrific experience of being rounded up, held captive and sold by ISIS militants to a man older than her father who beat and raped her.
She said she would "prefer to die than live this kind of life." Melkeya managed to escape with the aid of a smuggler her family had paid $12,000 US.
Her sister-in-law, Basema, said she faced a similar fate: sold seven times and raped repeatedly. Her eldest son was captured and held as a child soldier, forced to convert to Islam. And there were other atrocities.
Basema said she was sold seven times and raped repeatedly. She says Hazal was captured and held as a child soldier, and forced to convert to Islam. (Martin Trainor/CBC)
"I witnessed a girl 10 years old, Yazidi girl, who was raped in front of me," she said, sobbing. "I am 30, I can handle it, but she was 10. She couldn't even sit down from the pain after they raped her."
Winnipeg-based Yazidi advocate Hadji Hesso is also urging the government to play a global leadership role by at least doubling this year's intake to 2,400 next year.
No infrastructure
"To survive in the Middle East is very hard since their entire region has been destroyed," he said. "There is no infrastructure or foundation, never mind the people who have been raped and killed and enslaved."
There is no plan to bring in more Yazidis beyond the current federal program.
"At this time, we are focused on fulfilling our commitment to resettle survivors of [ISIS] including Yazidis. We will not speculate on any future commitments at this time," reads a statement from Hussen's office.
'It's a social and cultural shock to be moved away from your own community.'
- Jean-Nicolas Beuze, UN refugee agency
No kidding! Especially if you are moving from the desert to frozen tundra.
On Oct. 25, 2016, MPs unanimously supported an opposition motion sponsored by Conservative MP and immigration critic Michelle Rempel to bring an unspecified number of Yazidi women and girls to Canada within 120 days. In February, Hussen announced that the target would be 1,200 by the end of 2017.
The Yazidis are a religious minority based mainly in northern Iraq, with a culture dating back 6,000 years. ISIS has targeted them in brutal attacks since August 2014.
Massacre, sexual slavery
Last June, a United Nations report declared that the slaughter, sexual slavery, indoctrination and other crimes committed against the 400,000 Yazidi amounted to genocide. Its finding that the militants had been systematically rounding up Yazidis to "erase their identity" meets the definition under the 1948 UN Convention on Genocide.
Jean-Nicolas Beuze, a representative of the UN's refugee agency in Canada, said every effort should be made to support the Yazidis in Iraq, and only the most vulnerable should be resettled.
"A lot of people choose not to resettle because it's a social and cultural shock to be moved away from your own community when you have regained a little bit of normalcy, safety and access to services in northern Iraq," he told CBC News. "We need to keep the resettlement for extremely vulnerable cases, maintain the choice of the person."
Canada modelled its specialized Yazidi refugee program after the first such project, in the German state of Baden-Wurttemberg. Of the 1,000 survivors in the first phase of that project, an estimated 95 per cent are Yazidis and the other five per cent mostly Christian, spokesperson Christoph Neethen told CBC News.
He said some of the women and children are now living nearly independently and some are working in either paid or volunteer positions. Others rely heavily on supports, including the elderly, who are partially illiterate.
Sarah Gotham and Craig Forbes: Pair jailed for livestreaming child abuse to US paedophile
By Philip Whiteside, News Reporter, Skye News
A man and a woman have been jailed for a total of 17 years for sexually assaulting a child and livestreaming the abuse to an American paedophile.
Sarah Gotham, 34, and Craig Forbes, 36, drugged then sexually abused the youngster while streaming their assaults to convicted sex offender Kori Ellis, 42, in the US.
Plymouth Crown Court heard the British pair filmed themselves indecently touching the girl on several occasions so Ellis could view the footage in California over Skype in 2012 and 2013.
Gotham and Forbes had met Ellis, a female paedophile living in the state, via a "chat roulette" site called Omegle by entering the word "paedo" or "paedophile" in the area of shared interest.
Kori Ellis
The pair came to the attention of UK police through the FBI, who arrested a man for the possession of indecent images of children, in Florida. A forensic examination of his computer led to Ellis, who worked as a cocktail waitress in a strip club. She was then arrested by officers from the San Francisco Police Department and the FBI in April 2015.
While being held, Ellis told officers about two people from the UK she was in contact with, saying she had witnessed them abusing the girl via Skype, under the name "Sarah Girls Only".
The investigation revealed that Ellis, Gotham, and Forbes engaged in graphic chats which ran to more than "64 pages of filth and extreme depravity".
Forbes and Gotham were first arrested in May 2015, and Forbes was then jailed for 20 months for possession of indecent images of children found on his devices. Gotham was originally bailed.
After officers travelled to San Francisco, Ellis picked out Gotham in a webcam identification parade as the woman she saw abusing a child.
The pair were then rearrested in 2016 and were sent for trial. Forbes pleaded guilty to four offences but Gotham denied six offences.
Ellis, a former magician's assistant and dominatrix, travelled to the UK for the trial and told the court that she watched Gotham abuse the girl alone and on other occasions with Forbes.
Gotham was convicted by a jury after an eight-week trial. She was jailed for nine years and Forbes for eight years and both were placed on the sex offenders register.
Plymouth Crown Court
Passing sentence, Judge Ian Lawrie QC told Forbes: "It is clear there is little that can stop you when you wish to commit sex offences. I do take the view that you are a dangerous man and you present a constant and persistent danger to women and children."
To Gotham, he said: "You cannot sidestep the fact you played an equal part in the pursuit of Mr Forbes's interests. You fell under the corrupting influence of Mr Forbes. But that does not excuse your responsibility for the offences."
Detective Sergeant Brian Slade, from the Devon and Cornwall Paedophile Online Investigation Unit, said: "We welcome the verdict which has led to these depraved people being put behind bars.
"Gotham and Forbes carried out horrendous acts on a vulnerable child. While Forbes admitted what he had done, Gotham has acted completely without remorse and has always claimed that she had nothing to do with it.
"Ellis... was a compelling witness although her evidence was clearly distasteful, and at times harrowing for the jury to listen to in court."
Howard Phillips, Senior Crown Prosecutor, added: "This case shows that wherever online sexual abuse is uncovered, we can work with international law enforcement agencies to pursue offenders and bring them before the courts."
Humphries case typical of light sentences for
defilement in Ireland
Conor Lally
There is no official research on sentencing trends for the offences of defilement and grooming, under which the former Irish Times sportswriter Tom Humphries was jailed this week for 2½ years. But some information is available.
In October 2015, a 22-year-old man who had sex with a 14-year-old, after contacting her through Facebook, was jailed for three years. He also tried to convince the teenager to bring her 12-year-old sister, so he could “train her”. The older girl refused.
In another case that year a 30-year-old man who had been given a three-year suspended sentence in 2011, after pleading guilty to defiling a 13-year-old girl, had his suspended term upheld by the Court of Appeal.
In February 2014, Andrew Durran, who is now 44, and used to live on Dromheath Avenue in Blanchardstown in Dublin, was jailed for six years, with one suspended, for the sexual defilement of his daughter, who was 15 at the time. He was brought back to Ireland to stand trial after fleeing to Spain in 2009, while the Garda investigated the case.
Many sentences were, like Humphries’s, very short. And only people with serious previous convictions were jailed for substantial periods
In November 2013, Damien Jermyn, a former garda in his early 30s who had oral sex with a 16-year-old boy in HSE care, was sentenced to two years in jail, with the final year suspended. He pleaded guilty to two charges of defilement.
In July 2013, a 19-year-old was given a suspended jail term for four counts of defilement of a 14-year-old girl he had sex with after befriending her on Bebo.
Judges can’t be trusted on sex crimes sentencing - Sinn Féin
Prisoner Tom Humphries: a day in the life on Midlands Prison’s G wing
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That year a 25-year-old man who had sex with a 13-year-old girl he had befriended via the same social-networking site was jailed for 3½ years, 18 months of it suspended.
In June 2012, a 22-year-old man who could not be named for legal reasons was given a two-year suspended sentence after having sex with a 15-year-old girl he befriended on social media.
In 2010, a 20-year-old Kildare man was jailed for three years after having sex with a 13-year-old girl.
In January 2012, James Rossiter of Parkview, Harold’s Cross, who is now in his early 40s, was jailed for six years for having sex with his 12-year-old stepdaughter.
Sentencing study
In 2008, the Courts Service of Ireland began a pilot study of the judges’ sentencing, including in 118 sexual-offence cases. One conviction resulted in community service; 22 led to suspended sentences; two more were dealt with by fines. In 29 other cases judges imposed prison terms of less than two years. A total of 27 people were jailed for between two and five years; 21 were jailed for five to 10 years; and four were imprisoned for more than 10 years. In all, 22 per cent of offenders convicted of sexual offences did not go to prison.
Such cases show the range of sanctions in recent defilement convictions. Many sentences were, like Humphries’s, very short. And only people with serious previous convictions were jailed for substantial periods. The Criminal Law (Sexual Offences) Act 2017, which sets out more recent types of sex crime, and provides for longer sentences, could not be used against Humphries, as his crimes predated it.
Giving only short or medium-length sentences to child sex offenders is a problem for Irish society, according to the head of Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, Noeline Blackwell. She says that sentences in cases such as Humphries’s underline the progress needed to ensure victims are fairly treated.
As there are no long-term ongoing studies of sentencing for sexual offences, and judges do not set out their reasoning, it can be hard to work out the principles they are adhering to – which can cause public anger in high-profile cases such as Humphries’s.
“We should have research so we could frame sentencing guidelines that would be of more help to the judiciary in establishing consistency. And it would also be more help to the general public in understanding sentencing,” says Blackwell, who would like to see the Court Service’s pilot project resumed.
She adds that many callers to Dublin Rape Crisis Centre since Humphries was sentenced have been extremely angry. Short sentences for grooming and sexually abusing young people send a message that the “taking of a childhood” does not merit serious sanction. “If the courts assess that that is the extent of harm done to the victim, then we have a problem.”
Clerical sex abuse disclosures skyrocket in Argentina
By LUIS ANDRES HENAO and ALMUDENA CALATRAVA The Associated Press
In this Oct. 11, 2017 photo, Mailin Gobbo, 29, poses for a photo at San Jose Obrero church where Catholic priest Carlos Jose officiated Mass in Caseros, in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Gobbo says she was abused as a child by the priest, and decided to speak publicly after the birth of her daughter.
CASEROS, Argentina (AP) — Karen Maydana says she was 9 years old when the Rev. Carlos Jose fondled her at a church pew facing the altar. It was her first confession ahead of her first Holy Communion.
She blames the trauma of that moment in 2004 for a teenage suicide attempt. And yet she never spoke about it publicly until this year. After hearing that two women who attended her school in the Argentine town of Caseros were allegedly abused by the same priest, she joined them as complainants in a case that in July led to his arrest for investigation of aggravated sexual abuse.
"Unfortunately, there are many of us. But speaking about it now also gives you strength to carry on," Maydana, 22, said. "I have a 9-year-old niece who's receiving her Communion this year, and this is not going to happen to her."
The allegations are part of a growing trend: While Pope Francis struggles to make good on his "zero tolerance" pledge to fight clerical sex abuse worldwide, victims in his native Argentina are denouncing abuses in unprecedented numbers. An analysis by The Associated Press shows that the number of clerics publicly identified as alleged sexual abusers has increased dramatically in the last two years.
Experts attribute the spike to a cultural shift as victims feel more emboldened to denounce abuse, prosecutors are more inclined to investigate complaints of even decades-old abuse, the media are increasingly aggressive about reporting them and courts are willing to hand down stiff sentences.
"It's a domino effect," said Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of BishopAccountability.org, a U.S.-based group that compiles a clergy abuse database.
In the U.S., confidential files on hundreds of pedophile priests have been released either through civil litigation, settlements or court order. The contents have revealed that top church officials worked behind the scenes to control the sex abuse scandal and keep it from authorities as well as parishioners.
"What is really remarkable here is that the survivors in Argentina don't have the same powerful legal tools that we see in other countries," Barrett Doyle said. "And yet, we're still seeing the significant increase in cases."
The AP compiled a list of 66 priests, nuns and brothers who have been accused since 2001 of abusing dozens of people, most of them children. The figures were gathered from testimonies by victims, judicial and church documents, and local media reports corroborated in conjunction with the BishopAccountability.org database. The number of new reports remained in the single digits each year from 2000 to 2015. But since the start of last year, victims have named 21 more, most accused of decades-old abuse.
"In Argentina, the abuse crisis is just beginning," said San Francisco Bishop Sergio Buenanueva in Cordoba province, who leads a church council on clerical abuse. "I'm sure the Argentine church is going to face increasing numbers of these disclosures."
To deal with the expected increased caseload, he said the church is planning to create its first comprehensive database of clerical abuse. Buenanueva also recently returned from the Vatican, where he met with members of Francis' sex abuse advisory commission to discuss prevention policies for Argentina, including training of clergy to detect potential abusers and victims.
Abuse survivors are taking action too. Maydana, and her schoolmates Mailin Gobbo, 29, and Yasmin Detez, 25, recently visited the church and adjacent school they had attended to describe to journalists what had happened, saying they hoped it would help protect children. Four other women have joined their case since they reported the priest to law enforcement.
"I don't care about exposing myself as long as it leads other people to talk," said Gobbo, who decided to speak publicly after the birth of her daughter.
The priest is accused of abusing Gobbo and Detez at a pool and at their school. "He'd make me sit on his lap and ask me if I had been naughty while he kissed my neck and fondled me," Detez said while Gobbo shed tears next to her.
Jose has told the court he is innocent and said the statute of limitations has expired in any case. He is appealing the arrest order.
Some of the accused remain in the ministry. In several cases, no canonical or judicial investigation was carried out. Some were probed and dismissed. Others, especially in recent years, have led to arrests and convictions.
A court in Entre Rios province this year sentenced a Colombian priest, the Rev. Juan Diego Escobar Gaviria, to 25 years in prison for sexually abusing four boys, one of them 10 years old. It was one of the stiffest sentences handed down to date against a pedophile priest in Argentina.
"I feel satisfied with the sentence," said Alexis Endrizzi, 18, who was molested by Escobar when he was 12. "It sided with the victims."
Two other priests are awaiting trial on pedophilia charges after they were accused this year in the same small province.
In one of the most shocking cases, prosecutors say at least 20 children at the Provolo Institute for deaf and mute children in Mendoza province were abused. Some of the victims say they were molested by an Italian priest, the Rev. Nicola Corradi, who also had been accused by some of the dozens of abuse victims at the Provolo's school in Italy but never faced justice there. Corradi, now elderly, was formally charged by Argentine prosecutors in November and is under house arrest awaiting trial in Argentina. Corradi's attorney declined to comment on his client's plea or any other detail of the case.
Advocates of priestly abuse victims question how Francis could have been unaware of the allegations against Corradi since he was publicly named by the Italian victims starting in 2009 and most recently in 2014.
One of the cases that has festered for years is that of the Rev. Hector Ricardo Gimenez, who had been detained after several abuse complaints in 1985 and 1996, but was freed by the courts.
In 2013, Julieta Anazco led other women in publicly confronting Gimenez as he celebrated Mass at a hospital chapel, accusing him of abusing her and many others as children decades before.
"He'd jump into the shower with the excuse of washing us," said Anazco, who went on to become president of the Survivors' Network of Ecclesiastical Abuse.
The Archbishopric of La Plata Archbishop said in a statement to the AP that the church had found Gimenez guilty of previous abuses and that he had been banned from ministerial duties, a common church sanction for elderly priests accused of abuse.
It also said that Archbishop Hector Aguer had met with Anazco in 2015, heard her complaints and "shared the cruelty of these crimes and the importance that no one guilty of them remains unpunished."
Anazco's criminal complaint initially was dismissed, but was later reopened and remains pending, according to her attorney.
The AP tried to reach Gimenez, who is in his eighties, at the nursing home where he now lives in the city of La Plata but he declined to comment.
No official numbers on clerical abuse have been published by Argentina's church, government or its judicial system, and the issue is still something of a taboo.
But Pope Francis tried to break the stigma by phoning Rufino Varela after he revealed that he had been abused as a child by a priest at a school that Argentine President Mauricio Macri also attended. Other students at the school told the AP that they suffered abuse by the same priest, who has since died.
Francis has pledged "zero tolerance" for abuse, but he has also said he never had to confront the issue as archbishop of Buenos Aires, where he served from 1998 to 2013. Recently, he has acknowledged that the church was "late" in recognizing the scale of abuse and the damage it wreaked on victims, and said the practice of cover-up and moving pedophiles around was to blame.
Many Argentine victims of abuse say they feel abandoned by the church. "You realize the complicity, the cover-up of the church hierarchy that goes all the way up to the Vatican," Anazco said.
———
Associated Press writers Nicole Winfield at the Vatican and Paul Byrne and Victor Caivano in Buenos Aires contributed to this report.
Argentinian 'Josef Fritzl' 'kept daughter as sex slave for 22 years and fathered eight children'
Domingo Bulacio was arrested after daughter took son to health clinic
By Paul Wright
The daughter said she had been sexually abused since the age of 15 Reuters stock image
A man has been accused of fathering eight children with his own daughter after keeping her as a sex slave for more than 20 years.
In a case with chilling similarities to that of Austria's Josef Fritzl, Domingo Bulacio allegedly began his campaign of sexual abuse when his daughter was just 15 years old.
They lived together in a single-roomed house in Argentina where Bulacio would even rape her in front of their children, prosecutors claim.
The horrendous allegations only came to light last year when the daughter took her youngest child, aged five, to a local health clinic in Termas de Rio Hondo after he fell ill.
When asked by the doctor who the dad was, she told them it was her own father.
Bulacio, 56, was then arrested after going on the run for around six weeks.
He was found 30 miles from his hometown at a relative's house in Loreto, Santiago del Estero, northern Argentina.
Josef Fritzl
There are conflicting reports over the status of Bulacio's wife, who is said to have either fled the home due to domestic abuse or to have died.
Her departure saw three of the couple's four children leave the home to stay with relatives.
Bulacio and his daughter, then aged 11, stayed at the small property where it is claimed the girl was subjected to a campaign of sexual abuse and threatened with death by her father.
The case, being held at a court in Santiago del Estero, has been adjourned until next week.
Six of the eight children are now living at the Eva Peron boarding school in Santiago del Estero, local media reported.
The allegations are reminiscent of those carried out by Josef Fritzl, a father who kept his daughter Elisabeth as a sex slave for 24 years in his Austrian home.
Holding her in a hidden soundproof room behind multiple locked doors, he fathered seven children with her after telling his wife she had run off to join a religious cult.
Fritzl is currently serving a life sentence in his home country after being convicted in 2009.
Barrow man, 37, accused of string of child sex offences
Dean Fawcett has been charged with four sexual offences against girls aged 10 and 14
By Amy Fenton
A BARROW man accused of a string of sexual offences against girls aged 10 and 14 has appeared in court.
Dean Richard Fawcett, of Cross Street in Barrow, is accused of three sex offences, all of which are alleged to have happened in the town.
He has been charged with sexually touching a 14-year-old girl and sexually assaulting a woman on April 28 and sexually assaulting a woman on April 29.
In a separate case, the 37-year-old is also accused of sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl on September 16.
Fawcett appeared at Preston Crown Court via video link from Preston Prison on October 20 where the case was adjourned to a new date to allow the two cases to be combined.
He was remanded in custody and will next appear at Preston on November 3.
Seven Men Deny Cruelty And Sexual Abuse
At Coventry Children's Home
Leamington Justice CEntre
Seven men have denied child cruelty and indecent assault offences dating back to the 1980s at a children's home.
The charges relate to allegations of abuse of youngsters at Wisteria Lodge in Coventry between 1981 and 1997.
Philip Barnett, 64, Russell Garner, 58, Pat Duignan, 59, David Saunders, 64 and David Fox, 74, all pleaded not guilty to child cruelty charges at Coventry Magistrates' Court on Thursday.
As well as the child cruelty charges, Ivan McChleery, 76, also denied two counts of indecent assault.
The seventh defendant, Peter Moore, 72, pleaded not guilty to three counts of aiding and abetting an indecent assault on a child.
The home, which used to stand in Earlsdon Avenue South, Coventry, was pulled down in 2009.
All the accused men once worked at the home, with the charges relating to 15 children.
The seven men were granted unconditional bail until a further hearing at Warwick Crown Court on November 23.
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