ICAC team makes 62 child sexual abuse arrests
in Louisiana in 2018
in Louisiana in 2018
More than 60 child sexual predators have been arrested this year as part of “Operation Broken Heart,” a two-month long national investigative and prevention effort by federal, state and local authorities.
Joined by members of the Louisiana Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) Task Force, Chief Deputy Attorney General Bill Stiles announced the Louisiana Department of Justice (LADOJ) made 32 arrests between the months of April and May on a range of crimes associated with production, distribution, and possession of child sexual abuse images and videos.
“The LADOJ is committed to finding and arresting child predators throughout our State; and I am grateful to our agents, examiners, and investigators who work tirelessly to keep Louisiana’s children safe,” said state Attorney General Jeff Landry. “Operation Broken Heart is a reminder of how dangerous the Internet can be and how important it is for parents and guardians to be aware of what your children are doing and with whom they are communicating.”
As a whole, the ICAC Team made 62 arrests throughout Louisiana during the 2018 Operation Broken Heart.
“The sexual abuse and exploitation of children is one of the most vile and disgusting acts of human behavior in any society,” said United States Attorney for the Middle District of Louisiana Brandon Fremin. “I am extremely proud of the work of our partners here in the Middle District of Louisiana and across the nation in these efforts. This is just another example of the profound impact law enforcement and prosecutors can have when we focus the resources provided by local, state and federal law enforcement.”
FBI Special Agent in Charge Eric Rommal of the New Orleans Field Office said the FBI would continue to investigate claims of child sexual abuse.
“Child sexual abuse inflicts life-long mental and physical scars on its victims and stopping those who do harm to innocent children is one of this agency’s top priorities,” said Special Agent in Charge Jere T. Miles of Homeland Security Investigations in New Orleans.
NY state Senate GOP pulls football from Charlie Brown again - Statute of Limitations stands
Kenneth Lovett
Gary Greenberg, a child sex abuse survivor who has campaigned for victim rights, will use his PAC to try to unseat state Legislature Republicans. (Robert Sabo/New York Daily News)
Upset that the state Senate Republicans this year again failed to pass legislation to help child sex abuse survivors seek justice as adults, a “bewildered” Gary Greenberg is using his political action committee to try to help the Democrats win control of the chamber in November.
Greenberg, an upstate investor and child sex abuse survivor who several years ago created the political action committee to push for passage of the Child Victims Act, had previously backed Democrats but this year began working with the Senate Republicans in hopes of getting them to finally act on a bill.
He helped craft legislation with Sen. Catharine Young (R-Cattaraugus County) and even spent money to hire a Republican lobbyist to gain traction within the GOP conference.
But Republican leadership blocked Young’s bill, which was opposed by the Democrats and many advocates, from coming to the floor for a vote. Greenberg had hoped a vote would help spur negotiations.
“It’s quite obvious to me that (Senate Majority Leader John) Flanagan doesn’t want to do anything,” Greenberg said. “He refused to take any action to help victims, and that’s sad.”
As a result, Greenberg said his PAC is endorsing Democrats Anna Kaplan, who is running against GOP Sen. Elaine Phillips in Nassau County, and Assemblyman James Skoufis, a Democrat seeking the Senate seat being vacated by longtime Republican Sen. William Larkin in Orange County. Skoufis is facing Republican Tom Basile.
“If they don’t want to change the law, the Senate Republicans have to be removed as the majority and we have to put in a majority that will bring change and provide justice and make the lives of victims better,” he said.
Skoufis said that if elected to the Senate, he will support “the strongest legislation possible that holds child sex abusers accountable while delivering justice for all survivors.”
Slime in a pin-stripe suit
Kaplan said “the fact that the Child Victims Act remains in limbo in Albany is inexcusable.”
“It’s quite obvious to me that Flanagan doesn’t want to do anything,” Greenberg said of state Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan (center), seen with Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie (left) and Controller Thomas DiNapoli in January. (Hans Pennink/AP)
Phillips was a co-sponsor on Young’s bill, but Greenberg said it wasn’t enough since she was unable to get it to the floor for a vote.
Basile could not be reached for comment.
State Senate GOP spokeswoman Candice Giove said “any act of sexual abuse against a child is horrific, which is why year after year, the Senate Republican majority proactively takes steps to protect children from predators and these measures simply die in the Assembly.” Giove blamed the Assembly for a lack of a deal, saying they refused to discuss Young’s bill or “collaborate or work in any meaningful way to move this issue across the finish line.”
But advocates point the finger squarely at the Republicans for bottling up the issue for years.
The Democratic-controlled Assembly has the past two years passed the Child Victims Act backed by most survivor advocates that would extend the time frames that a victim could bring a civil case or seek criminal charges and create a one-year window to revive old cases time-barred under current law. Gov. Cuomo supports a similar measure but is opposed by the Catholic Church and other groups like the Boy Scouts of America and insurance companies.
Young’s bill would have created a $350 million Child Victim Reconciliation and Compensation Fund that would be run out of the state controller's office and funded with asset forfeiture money controlled by the Manhattan district attorney’s office. Supporters say it would help victims who were abused by those with little or no money, while critics say it would shield abusers and the institutions they work for.
It is just criminal how the Catholic Church and Boy Scouts of America are lobbying so hard to prevent people who were sexually abused under their watch from getting justice and from getting some kind of closure. There is no repentance, no assumption of responsibility, and certainly no fear of God in their actions. It is disgraceful! Insurance companies - you don't expect anything resembling responsibility to act in a humane manner. They are 110% about money and could care less how much people suffer. Unfortunately, some NY Republican Senators are obviously no better.
40 years later, scars of abuse at NY school
remain for two women
Two Survivor's Stories - NY State schools
By Maki Becker, Buffalo NewsIt was more than 40 years ago.
Maggie George was a student in the Kenmore-Town of Tonawanda School District when, she said, she had a long-term, inappropriate relationship with a teacher at her high school.
At the time, she thought of it as a love story. She never considered him a boyfriend, but loved the attention he gave her.
Now 61, George sees what happened to her as emotional and sexual abuse and, inspired by the #MeToo movement, decided a few months ago to report what happened to the school district. She also shared her story with The Buffalo News.
"I’ve got a lesson for others to learn," George said.
She is not the only one.
Neither woman reported their allegations while they were students but both said that years later as adults, they tried to report the teachers. Nothing was done.
Then, last fall, came the widely publicized allegations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, which marked a sea change in attitudes toward claims about sexual harassment and assault by powerful men.
Next, dozens of Olympic gymnasts accused their doctor of sexually abusing them.
Around the same time, a former student at the prestigious Nichols School in Buffalo came forward with allegations about an inappropriate relationship she had had with a teacher when she was a student, prompting a massive investigation by the school. Also, the Diocese of Buffalo acknowledged that dozens of priests had been accused of sexually abusing children.
Earlier this year when George came forward to her old school district, they listened.
“Based on the allegations, I don’t care if it happened last week or 40 years ago, it’s disturbing,” said Kenmore-Tonawanda Superintendent Stephen Bovino, who was appointed to his position in 2017.
But there’s a limit to what a school district can do, Bovino said, with so many years having passed. The teachers the women named have long since retired. Statutes of limitations would prevent any criminal charges from being filed.
It’s a quandary many institutions face: What do you do about decades-old accusations?
Confronting the past
It’s not uncommon for survivors of abuse to come forward many years later, said Robyn Wiktorski-Reynolds, clinical operations officer at Crisis Services, which operates a 24-hour sex assault hotline and provides advocates for victims.
“When a child is abused by an adult — an authority figure, a family member, a loved one or a person trusted with their care — it makes the ability to come forward even harder,” Wiktorski-Reynolds said. “The child wonders if they themselves will be punished, will they be believed.”
Rebecca Stevens, the director of the Child Advocacy Center, said in the 1970s and 1980s, child sex abuse was almost exclusively discussed in terms of “stranger danger.” But the reality then and now is that most children who suffer abuse aren’t plucked from a street by a scary stranger. “They are abused by somebody they love or trust,” Stevens said.
Florina Altshiler, a Buffalo attorney who used to prosecute sex crimes in Alaska, predicted there will be many more cases. “We’re going to see a lot more old cases coming forward now,” Altshiler said, “because the culture is changing and victims of crime who remained silent for decades may feel like they’re not alone and may feel comfortable.”
Two former students of the Kenmore-Tonawanda Union Free School District are grappling with their experiences of sexual abuse at the school years ago. (John Hickey/News file photo)
‘A naïve and unworldly kid’
Lorna Barrie was 16 years old and a junior during the 1974-1975 academic school year when the alleged sexual contact began with her coach, who was also a teacher, she told the district and The News.
Barrie’s father died when she was 5. She thinks she was searching for a father figure in the coach who recognized her talent as an athlete.
He also recognized her vulnerability!
“In my junior year, I pulled my hamstring muscle during training,” she said. “He would take me into a smaller room at the field house … and ‘massage’ my strained muscle,” she told The News.
The massages turned to fondling and kissing, she said. She said the teacher also had her touch him.
“I was in shock and totally confused and terrified,” Barrie said. The teacher “told me I was special; I was his ‘beauty’ and that he was going to help me realize all of my dreams. I was a naïve and unworldly kid. I respected him as an authority figure and coach … so I just gave in and did as he said and accepted what he was doing to me.”
The touching turned to intercourse. She said the sexual incidents continued through the summer and into her senior year when she was 17. She said the teacher “assaulted me in his car, in his basement, in his home office and in his parents’ home and pool around the corner from where he lived.” She said there were several incidents on school property.
“I loathed myself,” she said. “I was absolutely disgusted by what was happening.” But she said she craved the teacher’s approval.
Another former student, who asked to remain anonymous, accused the same teacher of forcibly kissing her against her will in a locker room in June 1985 when she was 17 and a senior. She said she reported the incident to the district. Two other former students also recently reported witnessing inappropriate behavior by the same Ken-Ton teacher in the 1970s and 1980s.
The News contacted the accused teacher at his home in Florida on June 2. He declined to speak on the record at that time but arranged to speak again by June 5. The News made multiple attempts to reach him again but he did not return calls.
‘Robbed of a normal high school experience’
Maggie George said the relationship with her teacher started when he noticed her at a school dance. She was 14½, a sophomore, and she learned he had asked some girls about her. He was 27.
She said a few days later the teacher asked her to play one-on-one basketball then drove her to the Buffalo Zoo parking lot where he repeatedly tried to kiss her.
“He was begging me to kiss him,” George said.
She was taken aback. But she also liked the attention, she recalled. Like Barrie, her father had died. George said she was 11 when her father died of a heart attack in her arms.
It left her withdrawn. The teacher stopped his physical advances, at least for a while. But she said he continued to pay an unusual amount of attention to her. They would sit and talk for hours and also play tennis, she said.
In the summer at the end of her junior year, when she was 16, she said the teacher coaxed her to jump into the pool one day with their clothes on. George said he touched her breasts and then he put her hand on him.
“That is not what a teacher is supposed to be doing,” George remembered thinking. “I froze.”
At that moment, a custodian walked in to the pool area and George remembered the teacher saying something to him.
After that incident, George said she tried to keep her distance, but the teacher continued to pay attention to her and she was still drawn to him. She said she didn’t go to her prom because he didn’t want her to.
On the day of her high school graduation, George said the teacher found her after the ceremony and asked her to come meet him at his property five days later. She said she did and they had sex. She was no longer a student and was now 17, which was the legal age of consent.
She acknowledged that there were only a few physical encounters but she now believes the attention he lavished on her was inappropriate and manipulative.
George wrote about her experience with the teacher in a My View column titled “Predator stole years of my life” that appeared May 13.
"Because of him, I was robbed of a normal high school experience that I could look back on with any semblance of fond memories," she wrote. "The guilt and shame I felt were overpowering at times ... As is typical of childhood sex abuse victims, I spent years blaming myself for the abuse, feeling guilty and ashamed, and viewing myself negatively."
The teacher George accused of sexually abusing her denied knowing George and refused any other comment to The News.
A friend of George’s from high school confirmed to The News that she saw the teacher paying an unusual amount of attention to George and that she confided in her that their relationship had become sexual around the time it was going on.
Another former student said that the same teacher touched her buttocks after engaging her in a game of one-on-one basketball when she was a senior and 17, around 1973.
Previous attempts to report
Barrie read George’s account in The News and was stunned to see the parallels in what had happened. They did not know each other in high school, they said. She reached out to George and the two have remained in touch and are supporting each other’s decisions to come forward.
They’re also part of a closed Facebook group of alumni. Neither woman reported the incidents while they were students, but both said they tried to.
Barrie said she sent a handwritten letter to the district many years ago — possibly in the 1990s. She said she met with an administrator at her old high school — while the teacher she had the relationship with was still there — but nothing happened after that. She also said she reached out to local newspapers, including The News.
“I never heard anything back from anybody,” she said.
George said she reported her situation to the Ken-Ton school district in the fall of 1998 after learning the teacher may have been involved with another student. She learned at the time that the teacher had retired. She said the person she talked to at the district — she doesn’t know the name of the person — said that an attorney would get back to her. “I never heard from anyone,” she said.
Revoking teaching certification
Ken-Ton Superintendent Stephen Bovino, who was appointed to his position in 2017, said his administration is limited in what it can do about allegations about incidents from the 1970s. Ken-Ton officials declined to discuss details about allegations made against former teachers, but talked in general about how it has handled recent complaints.
The district could — and would — do a lot more if the allegations were made about recent behavior, or if accused teachers were still employed by the district. “We would interview other students, staff members,” Bovino said. “If the allegations were found to be accurate, that would result in discipline or termination.”
The district can collect information about the allegations, as well as how previous administrations dealt with reports, and file a moral character complaint to the state Education Department, known as a “Part 83” complaint. It includes allegations of sexual abuse but includes all kinds of complaints that could lead to an educator’s certification to be permanently revoked.
Bovino said he is “obligated to report whenever there’s a situation with current or past employees that calls into question their moral character.” The state receives thousands of Part 83 complaints every year. In the last three years, the state has revoked the licenses of 267 educators as a result of Part 83 complaints.
The district hired a private investigator to find the teachers and determine whether they were still teaching or coaching minors. The district did not obtain any information that indicated either man was teaching or coaching, officials said.
The district also encouraged the women to take their allegations to law enforcement. The incidents that happened when the women were under 16 could be considered crimes, but anything later would not. The age of consent in New York has been 17 since 1967, according to research by the Erie County District Attorney’s Special Victims Bureau.
But statutes of limitations on sex crimes against children would prevent any possible charges from being filed about earlier incidents, even under the proposed Child Victims Act. The legislation, passed by the State Assembly in May and delivered to the State Senate, would extend the statute of limitations on pressing criminal charges of the most serious sex crimes to 10 years after the child turns 18 and give a victim until he or she is 50 to file a civil lawsuit about child sex abuse. George is 61 and Barrie is 59. Statutory rape isn’t included in the Child Victims Act.
Bovino said the district learned about the closed Facebook page, and directed Chris Swiatek, the district’s assistant superintendent of human resources and Patrick Fanelli, the district’s community relations coordinator, to express that the district “is more than willing to listen to what they had to say,” Bovino said.
Swiatek talked to George by phone and interviewed Barrie in person, the women told The News. Other Ken-Ton alumni also have contacted the district to report they had seen one of the teachers behave inappropriately, they told The News.
Barrie and George said they felt that this time, the district took their complaints seriously. “He seemed sincerely dedicated to trying to help,” Barrie said.
George said: “As far as currently, we could not ask for more cooperation than we are receiving from Mr. Chris Swiatek at KenTon.”
George and Barrie said they’ve been in contact with state education officials, who said that their cases will be investigated but any outcome could take years. Both the women said that while their memories are painful, they have moved on with their lives and are happy now.
But they want people to understand that what happened caused long-lasting damage that took them years to come to grips with. Barrie said she and George were inspired by the #MeToo movement but don’t want people to think they’re just jumping on the bandwagon.
“I don’t want the attention,” she said. “I don’t want anything out of it other than for him and people like him to be stopped.” The women want to keep other girls and boys from going through what they did and for teachers and administrators to take action when they notice a colleague paying too much attention to a student.
And they want other people to not be afraid to come forward.
“For all of you who are still keeping your decades-old stories inside of you,” George wrote in an email, “I hope you find peace. Forgive yourself for not protecting yourself. What did we know? We were just children. I am OK now. Please be OK, too.”
Wisconsin man sentenced to 20 years for child
sexual assault granted a retrial
Sharon Roznik, Fond du Lac Reporter FOND DU LAC - The same judge who, back in 2015, sentenced a Brandon man to 20 years in prison for repeated sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl has granted him a retrial.
Fond du Lac Circuit Court Judge Peter Grimm vacated the conviction against Doehler on April 25 and granted him a new jury trial on grounds he was denied effective counsel — a right guaranteed under the Sixth Amendment.
According to Grimm's findings, the jury was deprived of evidence, did not have all available facts and was improperly instructed by state prosecutors.
"In this court's 27 years on the bench, this case, with its highly unique facts, presents the backdrop for the difficult decision for a trial court who allows counsel the leeway to have a fair trial and conduct it as they see fit," Grimm wrote, stating it was his first time ever granting such a motion.
Doehler was found guilty during a four-day jury trial held in November 2014, during which he was represented by attorneys Anthony Nehls and Dylan Schultz. Grimm presided over the case and sentenced the defendant to prison in March 2015.
The teenager accused Doehler of having sexual intercourse with her multiple times for nearly two years, and claimed the sex was consensual. The girl told police she also had sex with Doehler’s 30-year-old stepson on two occasions, according to court records.
Despite numerous meetings with law enforcement, social workers, therapists and other professionals, the teen did not report the alleged abuse to anyone until living arrangements changed that made her unhappy, the finding states.
The teen, who was labeled "troubled, with significant behavioral issues," had reportedly lived in numerous places, had a reputation for being untruthful, previously reported sexual abuse from other men she knew and had received treatment for mental health issues, Grimm stated in the record.
The teen's testimony was the whole case and her credibility was vital to obtain a conviction, Grimm said.
An investigation revealed there was no physical evidence that Doehler had sexually assaulted her. The defense also presented testimony that the teen accused two other men of having sex with her after she had been accused of bad behavior. In a few instances, she later denied she said it, Grimm wrote.
The judge said defense counsel showed deficient conduct when cross-examining the teen regarding prior inconsistent statements and various contradictions, and it failed to object to jury instructions from the state that were an "erroneous statement of law," and "deficient and prejudicial," the findings stated.
"The court's improper jury instruction preventing a jury determination on a prior untruthful allegation of sexual assaults further undermines confidence in the outcome," Grimm stated.
The jury verdict was signed by a 22-year-old foreperson, who disclosed they had been raped at age 13 and was not believed by their family, Grimm wrote in his findings. No issue of the defense attorney's failure to strike this juror was raised in any post-conviction motions.
The case was not an "open and shut case for the state," Grimm wrote. Regardless of whether the trial counsel was ineffective, the combined impact of the evidence that the jury never heard, the erroneous non-standard jury instructions and the missing jury instruction justifies reversal in the interest of justice, he wrote.
Doehler served about three and a half years of his original 20-year sentence. The case is scheduled for further court proceedings.
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