Serial Sex attacker in London; Olympic Gold gymnast accuses another Olympic Gold gymnast of rape; Children of priests coming out; Thailand passes Philippines for online child porn production lead; Man sentenced for historic CSA; Man commits suicide just before trial for CSA; Man charged with child porn in my home town
Police hunt serial sex attacker who assaulted children as young as 11 in southeast London
© Met Police
Nine women and children have been sexually assaulted in southeast London during the past three months, police have said. The authorities have released CCTV images of the latest attack in a bid to find the perpetrator.
© Met Police
The man is believed to have sexually assaulted two women between the ages of 25 and 27, as well as seven children aged 11-13, in the areas of Greenwich and Lewisham.
Police said all of the attacks were perpetrated in broad daylight before the assailant fled on foot. They have now released CCTV images of the latest assault, which took place in Honor Oak Road on Monday.
The attacker is believed to be in his 40s, and has short white or blonde hair.
The spate of sexual assaults took place between June 30 and October 16, with three attacks occurring in the span of just 30 minutes on October 5.
Superintendent Lee Hill of Greenwich Police, who is leading the investigation, said: “These incidents were very frightening for the victims. I am appealing to the public to help identify and locate this man as quickly as possible.
“Although none of the victims have suffered physical injury, the effects of becoming a victim of sexual assault can be lasting and traumatic.”
He also raised concerns that the suspect may have assaulted more people, but those victims have held back from reporting the assault to police. He urged anyone targeted to come forward.
There are now more police patrols in the area, and officers are working with schools to advise and reassure parents and pupils, added the Superintendent.
Soviet double-Olympic champion gymnast accuses ‘monster’ former teammate of rape
FILE PHOTO: Gymnast Tatiana Gutsu performing at World Stars-92 international artistic gymnastics tournament. © Vladimir Rodionov / Sputnik
Former Soviet gymnast Tatiana Gutsu has accused her ex-teammate Vitaly Scherbo of raping her during a competition in Stuttgart in 1991 when she was 15.
Barcelona 1992 gold medalist Gutsu, now 41, gave details of the alleged assault in a Facebook post in which she labeled fellow gold medalist Scherbo, who would have been 19 at the time, a “monster” who had kept her in a “prison.”
Ukrainian Gutsu also claimed that other Soviet teammates were aware of Scherbo’s alleged crimes, but failed to “protect” her and instead covered for him.
“This is me being brave after 27 years,” Gutsu, who won team and all-around gold in Barcelona, said in the post, written in broken English.
“Tatyana Toropova who I thought was my friend and a teammate in the National team of USSR thank you for not being brave for me when I need it [sic] you the most to stand, stand up for me and fight for the women rights in such a horrific act, no means no.
“You were there you heard everything you never stand stand up to protect me... Rustam Sharipov [1996 Olympic gold medalist] thank you for being a great body for your friend and not protecting me as a little girl at 15.
“Who rape me in Stuttgart Germany DTB 1991. Vitaly Scherbo. Monster who kept me in my own prison to be afraid for so many years.
“I know you will try to [defend] yourself. But my details are much stronger than your words. I'm strong now [than] ever. You can't [break] me down anymore. This my Cinderella story.
“I survive you and I will supports anyone out there who is afraid to speak out I will try to gain my confidence and straight in myself to help others.”
All around individual gymnast gold medalist Vitaly Scherbo from Unified team (Belarus), shows his gold medal to the public, Barcelona, 31 July 1992. © Creutzmann / AFP
Gutsu and Scherbo represented the Unified Team, comprised of former Soviet athletes after the collapse of the USSR, at the 1992 Games, at which both gymnasts claimed team and all-around titles.
Scherbo, who currently owns a gymnastics school in Las Vegas, went on to add four more golds to his Barcelona medal haul by dominating in the men’s pommel horse, rings, vault and parallel bars finals.
Gutsu made the allegations as part of the #MeToo campaign, launched by actress Alyssa Milano, by which women from around the world speak up to share personal experiences of sexual assault.
The campaign began in reaction to the recent scandal involving Harvey Weinstein, in which dozens of Hollywood actresses accused the film producer of sexual harassment.
It has since become a global phenomenon, gaining 65,000 replies to Milano’s original tweet, more than 12 million Facebook posts with the hashtag and over 500,000 subsequent tweets.
NZ priest's secret children to come out of hiding
Phil Pennington, Reporter
radionz.co.nz
The secret children of a Catholic priest in New Zealand are about to reveal their identity to their local bishop, and a New Zealander who personally briefed the Pope on the topic says the Vatican has recognised the right to know one's parents
Bread and wine are used to celebrate the Eucharist during Roman Catholic masses.
Here, a priest holds a wedding ceremony mass. Photo: 123RF
The adult siblings are among thousands internationally who have contacted the Coping International website, which offers support to the children of clergy.
The site's founder Vincent Doyle - an Irish man who himself is the son of a priest - said he expected many more New Zealanders who are priests' children, or their mothers, to come forward as they gained courage to speak up.
"We've been contacted from a number of people in New Zealand - one family where there's more than one child to the same priest, to the same woman - but they're going to be making moves in the coming future to the respective diocese and they'll be contacting the bishop concerned."
The family had contacted his website in the last three months, and granted him permission to speak a little about their situation, such as how many children there were and where they had grown up.
Vincent Doyle meets Archbishop Bernardito Cleopas Auza, the Permanent Representative of the Holy See to the United Nations, in mid-October to talk about the children of clergy.Vincent Doyle meets Archbishop Bernardito Cleopas Auza, the Permanent Representative of the Holy See to the United Nations, in mid-October to talk about the children of clergy. Photo: Supplied
They were among 13,500 people worldwide who had been in touch with Mr Doyle since he started the website in late 2014.
His site gained international prominence in August this year when featured in a new series by the Boston Globe's Spotlight unit, which is famous for exposing clerical sex abuse of children.
The response to the website has forced the Vatican to acknowledge the issue, and last month it began working on guidelines for how to respond.
"The expectation would be that the [priest] should go and be a father to his child," said Bill Kilgallon, an Aucklander who personally briefed the Pope last month on the issue as part of the Pontifical Commission to help protect children.
Mr Kilgallon said the Catholic Church had no idea yet how many children have been conceived by priests.
The search phrase "I am pregnant and the father is a Catholic priest" featured in about 1500 of 96,000 hits on Coping International's website, which its founder pointed out would be mostly from English speakers with Internet access.
"How many don't fall into that category?" Mr Doyle said.
A psychotherapist in his 30s, he found out six years ago that his godfather, Father John Doyle, was also his biological father.
He made the realisation when he came across some poetry the priest had written, and had since taken his father's name.
The church hierarchy had mostly responded well when children had come forward, Mr Doyle said, although some priests had been shocked or resistant.
The youngest child they had been alerted to was just three years old, and the oldest an 80-year-old woman. In one case, they knew of a priest who had six children by different women, while one priest who worked in the United States had a family in the Philippines.
Mr Doyle insisted the clerical response was not the priority for his organisation, but rather the goal was to help children whose mental health had suffered without knowledge of their father, or having to keep that knowledge secret as with the New Zealand family.
"There have been efforts to kind of stifle their wellbeing, and to keep them quiet and enforce secrecy," Mr Doyle said.
"This secrecy more than often comes from family or relatives or friends: the community around you. Not the Pope, the Vatican, the bishop, especially in today's society in a country like New Zealand.
"They must, must get this right. This is the first time in history the church has really done this ... they can't just put out some guidelines... If they mess this up they will traumatise thousands of people."
Mr Kilgallon acknowledged there might be complications, such as a priest's financial obligations to a child, or the need for DNA paternity testing, but these were purely secondary to the primary responsibility of the priest.
"We've acknowledged ... children have rights and one of the rights is to know their parents."
"The difficulty is when children are born in a situation where the father is a priest who's not supposed to be in a relationship and fathering children. This can often lead to the relationship being kept secret, the identity of the father being denied to the child."
Thailand: Online Child-Sex Abuse Spreads at
‘Phenomenal’ Rate, UN Official Says
Wilawan Watcharasakwet, AP
Bangkok Airport
Child-sex abuse has been spreading at a phenomenal rate as pedophiles now stream their sexually exploitative materials through an overlay of online networks that cannot be easily accessed, a U.N. official told BenarNews.
More than 6,000 websites with child-related obscene content have recently been tracked down, but authorities believe there still are “a phenomenal amount” of inaccessible sites operated by pedophiles who use the so-called dark net, according to Neil Walsh, chief of the global program on cybercrime for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
The dark net is a computer network that can be accessed only with specific software that re-routes connections through layers of servers, allowing users to remain anonymous. Websites on the dark web are not indexed, meaning that online surfers will not see them through a Google search.
“Pedophiles sit in somewhere in the dark net and access the Internet to release materials. The more we work harder to remove the contents, the more they make it harder to find it,” Walsh said. “Still, there is phenomenal amount out there.”
Walsh spoke to BenarNews while attending a conference in Bangkok titled “Effective Responses to Online Child Sexual Exploitation in Asia.”
During the three-day event that started Tuesday, Walsh said the rising use of the Internet in Thailand had made the country the “webcam center for child pornography,” stripping the Philippines of that notorious title.
The proliferation of smart phones in Thailand allows users easy access to illicit websites even from rural areas that have 4G signals, he said.
About 50 percent of Southeast Asia has Internet access, but the figure spikes to 58 percent in the Philippines, a hub for online sex abuse, while the number is growing in Thailand at about 67 percent, according to Reuters news service, which cited a recent study.
Thailand clamps down on pedophilia
UNODC, in a report released in August, noted the growing demand for livestreaming of child sex abuse in the Mekong region. It also underscored the shift in child-sex webcam centers from the Philippines to Thailand.
But a Thai police officer, who analyzes Internet crimes against minors, said online pedophiles could not hide in Thailand.
“After Thai government passed the law to fight child sexual abuse, we seriously enforced the rule of law, and those pedophiles escaped Thailand,” said police Col. Santipatn Prommajul, chief digital intelligence analyst for the Thai Internet Crime Against Children Task Force.
“We deported many pedophiles from Thailand,” he told BenarNews.
He blamed advances in technology, among other issues, for the growing cybercrimes.
At least 25 suspects have been prosecuted through the nation’s amended Computer-Related Crime Act, which was adopted by the junta-appointed legislature in December 2016, Santipatn said. He said 18 of the cases involved child pornography.
He said Thai police has been working closely with the FBI, the U.S. Homeland Security Investigations and the Virginia-based National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which provides the Thai police with possible violations to the computer-crimes law.
Concerns on social media misuse
In a seven-day check on Bangkok, more than 3,600 individual Internet addresses had been identified sharing child exploitation material, Jon Rouse, a member of Taskforce Argos, an Australian police unit that targets online child sex abuse networks, told Reuters.
Rouse was also in Thailand to attend the conference in Bangkok.
Walsh told BenarNews that the UNODC had expressed its concerns about the misuse of online technology to sexually exploit children.
“The whole dynamic of online webcam has changed, where in the past we needed a camera to plug in to do this thing,” he said. “But now, it’s just a phone, laptop, tablet and that’s how many webcams in your home.”
Man jailed for historic child sex abuse against
two young girls dating back 25 years
Richard Prendergast from Heckmondwike targeted young girls
"unable to defend themselves"
Susie Beever
A CHILD sex abuser who forced his victims to give evidence in court is behind bars - for nine years.
Richard Prendergast, of Heckmondwike, denied 11 counts of historic abuse against two girls.
A jury found the 45-year-old guilty on all counts at Leeds Crown Court last month.
Today (Weds) Prendergast, of Westfield Road, was sentenced to nine years in prison and will also sign the sex offender’s register for life.
The offences dated back 25 years and involved two girls who were “too young to defend themselves”.
The girls, now adults, were forced to give evidence in court and were praised for their bravery in coming forward.
Det Cons Paul Greatorex, of the Kirklees Safeguarding Unit, said: “Prendergast’s victims were young and innocent and were unable to defend themselves. He subjected them to terrible ordeals and then refused to admit his guilt, putting them through the ordeal of a court trial. He is now rightly serving a prison sentence for what he has done.
“I would like to take this opportunity to praise Prendergast’s victims who not only had the bravery to come forward but also the confidence in the police that what they said to officers would be listened to.
“Some of his offending went back two decades but despite the passage of time we investigated his crimes and took action. I would like to make a promise to all victims of sexual offences, no matter how long the passage of time, that if you come forward and tell police what happened you will be listened to.”
Man accused in child sex abuse case
commits suicide in Jakarta cell
By Karen Noronha
Suhaimi Rinaldi, 40, was detained at the penitentiary for a month after being charged for molesting a child - Representational image REUTERS/Stephen Lam
A man accused in a child sex abuse case is said to have allegedly committed suicide inside his cell at Depok Penitentiary, West Java in Jakarta, Indonesia on Tuesday (17 October).
Suhaimi Rinaldi, 40, was found hanging on a clothesline by an officer who had come to pick him up to take him to his trial, Depok Penitentiary Head Warden Sohibur Rachman said.
Suhaimi was detained at the penitentiary for a month after being charged for molesting a child. According to his cellmate Susanto, Suhaimi had tried to commit suicide several times before.
Sukmajaya Police Precinct Chief Commissioner I Gusti Ngurah Bronet Ranapati said investigators are currently treating the incident as a suicide.
"No traces of violence were found on the victim's body. He likely hanged himself when his roommate was not aware," Bronet said, according to The Jakarta Post news website. According to the police, Susanto, 23, is currently being questioned by investigators.
Suhaimi's body has been taken to the National Police Hospital in Kramat Jati, East Jakarta to undergo an autopsy.
The number of prison suicides across the world has been on the rise over the past few years. In England and Wales alone, figures showed that the suicide rates in prisons have doubled since 2013.
UK's Ministry of Justice statistics, released on 27 April, 2017, revealed that around 113 prisoners, including 10 women, killed themselves in the year ending March 2017 – an increase by 11 when compared to the previous year.
The rate of prison suicides has gone up since 2013, from 0.6 to 1.3 per 1,000 prisoners, while among female prisoners, it has increased from 1 to 2.6 per 1,000.
The UK government has attributed some of the rise in violence to the availability of dangerous psychoactive drugs in prisons.
Collection of child sex abuse images found
at B.C. home
CTV Vancouver
A 38-year-old man from British Columbia's Fraser Valley has been charged after police allegedly found a large collection of child sex abuse images at his home.
Officers executed a warrant at an Abbotsford home in early September and seized numerous computers and storage devices. While examining the electronics, police said they found thousands of images and videos depicting the sexual abuse of children.
Travis Butler was been arrested and charged with two counts of making child pornography available and one count of child pornography possession.
Butler has since been released from custody on a number of court-ordered conditions, including that he not contact anyone who appears to be underage outside of a service industry setting, and stay away from public parks, schools, pools, playgrounds and anywhere you might expect to find children and underage teenagers.
He is also barred from owning or using any device capable of accessing the internet, or communicating with anyone known to be involved in the sexual exploitation of children.
Anyone who sees Butler breaching his conditions can contact police.
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