Girl kidnapped, repeatedly gang-raped by 15 guys,
as Morocco rapes double in one year
Thousands sign petition for 17-year-old girl allegedly raped,
tattooed in Morocco
By Sommer Brokaw
(UPI) -- Thousands of people have signed a petition to help a girl who was allegedly raped and tattooed in Morocco.
The 17-year-old said she was gang raped and forcibly tattooed by a "dangerous gang" in Ben Melal province after being abducted outside a relative's home in June.
In the change.org petition, posted by Loutfi Samadi, she alleges further that she was repeatedly raped by 15 men, beaten and deprived of basic food and sanitary needs.
Images tattooed across her arms, leg and neck include swastikas and scars from cigarette burns.
"They held me for about two months, and raped and tortured me," the girl said. "I will never forgive them. They have destroyed me."
More than 17,000 people have signed a petition on change.org website calling for financial support to remove the girl, identified as Khadija, with rallying cries to sign the petition on social media, under the hashtag, "We are all Khadija."
The girl's father said three suspects were arrested Saturday in connection with her abduction with trial set to start on Sept. 6. Morocco World News reported that more than 10 men were arrested and some managed to escape.
Apparently, most managed to escape. This is a rather bleak commendation of Moroccan police.
Khadija said she had tried to escape several times, but was re-captured and tortured before she was finally released by captors.
"They didn't give me food or drink, and I was not even allowed to take a shower," she told Morocco World News.
"I want justice to be done and [for them] to pay for what they have done to me," she told reporters. "For how many women who, for fear of this hchouma [shame], continue to keep quiet?"
Reported rapes double
Morocco's reported rapes increased from 800 cases in 2016 to 1,600 cases in 2017, an annual report issued by the King's attorney general, Mohamed Abdel Nabawi showed.
A law to combat violence against women in Morocco just became effective this month, and earlier this year Morocco adopted a new law against sexual harassment. Feminist activist Bouchra Abdou, a director of a center for association campaigning for women's rights, said in a statement to Morocco World News that "women's issues raise the alarm for the future of our daughters and women."
Not to mention, men!
Suspect in 1998 rape and murder of Dutch child
- arrested in Spain
By Ed Adamczyk
(UPI) -- The prime suspect in the killing of a Dutch child 20 years ago has been arrested in Spain, authorities said.
Nicky Verstappen, 9, went missing from his tent at a summer camp in the Netherlands in August 1998. His body was found, sexually abused and murdered, the following day in a Christmas tree farm less than a mile from the camp.
The incident horrified the Dutch and led to an extraordinary manhunt across Europe which included the voluntary donation, earlier this year, of 16,000 DNA samples in an attempt to solve the case.
Netherlands police identified the suspect as Jos B., 55. Sky News referred to him as Jos Brech, who was discovered on Sunday in an isolated, wooded area near Barcelona.
Last week, police revealed a DNA match between evidence from the boy's disappearance and one of Brech's relatives. Brech was found after a tip by a man who said he had spoken to Brech several times and recognized him from photographs broadcast on television.
A cold-case team of Dutch forensic investigators re-opened the case five years ago, using new techniques to identify evidence, DutchNews.reported. It added that Brech is a known sex offender.
Netherlands police said in a statement on Sunday that the suspect is currently "in a Spanish jail cell" and will be extradited to the Netherlands.
49 women rescued from Colombian sex slavery ring
By Ray Downs
(UPI) -- Police in Colombia rescued 49 women who were kept as sex slaves in the country's popular tourist city of Cartagena, authorities announced this past week.
The prosecutor General's Office said the women were promised offers of legal work but were sold into sex slavery to pay off debts, which were paid for by having sex with clients.
Prosecutors said the women were kept in inadequate lodgings, given insufficient food and were threatened with violence if they tried to leave. The perpetrators, who are allegedly part of a criminal organization, also kept the women's documentation and passports. Twenty-three of the women were undocumented immigrants from Venezuela.
This was the third operation to crackdown on sex slavery in Cartagena during the past month.
In an earlier operation, 18 people were arrested and 43 warrants were issued for more arrests.
Excellent! Clean up the filth!
Asia Argento reportedly axed from Italian X Factor over child sex assault scandal
Italian actress Asia Argento has reportedly been dropped by ‘X Factor Italy’ after accusations that she sexually assaulted a teenager who appeared in a movie with her came to light.
The dramatic exit follows the recent bombshell that Argento paid former child actor and musician Jimmy Bennett a $380,000 settlement after he alleged that they had sex in a California hotel room in 2013. Bennett was 17 at the time, one year shy of the state’s legal age of consent, and Argento was 37.
Argento has been reportedly pulled from the live version of the talent show, which is scheduled to start airing on September 6. However, she will still appear in the first seven pre-recorded episodes that show Argento and her fellow judges select the show’s contestants through auditions, because otherwise they would’ve had to audition thousands of people all over again.
Argento’s ex-husband and Italian pop star Morgan is rumoured to be her replacement from October 25 when the live shows air. Neither Argento nor the show’s producers have yet commented on her removal.
Ow! that should hurt!
In a statement released by Argento last week, she denied ever having “any sexual relationship” with Bennett, but did admit to the payout. The actress claimed it was her late boyfriend, Anthony Bourdain, who paid the fee on her behalf to end Bennett’s “long-standing persecution” of her.
Bennet once played Argento’s son in the movie she directed, called: ‘The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things’ in 2004, when he was seven years old.
Argento was one of the first to speak out against Hollywood movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by more than 70 women in a groundbreaking revolt that sparked the global “Me Too” movement.
NSW grandfather, 71, eligible for parole in 2039
after years of child sex abuse
By Lucy Cormack
A south coast grandfather has been sentenced to 32 years behind bars for the systemic child sexual abuse and "psychological mutilation" inflicted upon five of his own grandchildren for at least 11 years.
In the attic of his Sussex Inlet, NSW home, his car, his holiday caravan and a south coast motel, the 71-year-old man inflicted varying levels of sexual predation on the grandchildren entrusted to his care; plying them with drugs and alcohol and using them for the production and dissemination of child pornography.
Police investigators and prosecutors maintain it is the worst case of child sex abuse they have ever seen.
The man, who cannot be named to protect the identities of the children involved, was handed the lengthy sentence, with a non-parole period of 24 years, at Penrith Court House on Monday. The 71-year-old has been in custody since he was first arrested in June 2015, in the driveway of his home.
It came within 48 hours of a key victim, his then-15-year-old step-granddaughter, first disclosing more than a decade of abuse to her mother and then police. Her disclosure detailed the grooming and manipulation tactics used by her step-grandfather, which she remembers beginning before she started school.
Most chillingly she told investigators of a purpose-built film studio, located in the attic of his home; containing a mattress, lighting and cameras, where she was subjected to the production of child pornography with her grandfather.
Following her disclosure, her then 13-year-old brother reported that he had also been a victim at the hands of the grandfather, who had been supplying him with prescription drugs since the age of seven and later, cannabis.
A further three biological granddaughters then came forward to police with accounts of sexual abuse and grooming behaviour perpetrated by the man.
The abuse would often take place on weekends and holidays, when the man and the children's biological grandmother would have the children in their care.
His persistent grooming included making offers of money and "modelling contracts" to coerce them into posing in a sexualised way.
The man appeared before a judge-alone trial at the start of this year and in March was found guilty of 73 of 77 counts, resulting from five different complainants, and related to myriad offences. He maintains a plea of not guilty on all counts.
Delivering the sentence on Monday, Judge Robert Sutherland described the abuse as "abhorrent," "heinous" and "depraved". "The psychological mutilation of young developing minds occasioned by such conduct ... can lead to very substantial if not lifelong impairment of such young persons," he said.
During the investigation, led by the NSW Child Sex Abuse and Sex Crimes unit, police recovered three videos and a number of still images consistent with child pornography, involving the man's two step-grandchildren.
Psychological mutilation of young developing minds occasioned by such conduct ... can lead to very substantial if not lifelong impairment.
Judge Sutherland found the man's step-grandchildren had been subject to grooming from a young age, which later reached "Machiavellian proportions," when he created three fictitious characters, to persistently threaten the children by text message.
A psychiatric assessment of the man, conducted in June, found he satisfied the "psychiatric diagnostic criteria for at least a paedophilic disorder". It described him as "somewhat vague, contradictory and eluding in his denial" of the offences, with "limited empathy for the victims".
In a statement read to the court, the man's step-granddaughter, now 19, said even though her childhood had been "taken away," she was "stronger and ... will rise above the trauma and continue with my life and all the good that is in it".
I had to destroy myself from the inside out, in order to realise that the world was not my enemy.
17-year-old step-grandson
Her brother, 17, told the court in his own statement: "At the hands of [my step-grandfather] I became nothing. I had to destroy myself from the inside out, in order to realise that the world was not my enemy."
After his sentence was handed down on Monday, the 71-year-old did not make eye contact with his victims and their extended family in the packed court room, but held up his middle finger before being escorted from the room.
With time already served, he will be eligible for release in June 2039.
Hopefully, he will be in a different place by then.
Welsh primary headmistress admits making
child sex abuse images
Rosemary Bennett, Education Editor
The Times
Gellionnen primary school in Clydach, Swansea
A primary school headmistress described as “a pillar of the community” is facing jail after admitting making illegal sexual images of children.
Rhian Desouza, 43, appeared in court on two charges of making an indecent photograph of a child in May and June of this year.
Desouza, who is married with two children, is due to be sentenced on September 14. She was released on bail and must report to police every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
She had been suspended last month, just before the end of term, from Gellionnen primary school in Clydach, Swansea. Desouza, of Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, has been head of the Welsh-speaking school, which has 187 full-time pupils aged three to 11 and includes a nursery, for five years.
US website adds seven names of Irish clergy to
‘abuse-tracker’ database
Irish data laws preventing full accountability for
church sexual abuse, says victim group
Sorcha Pollak
A US-based research group, BishopAccountability.org, have released a database of convicted Irish clergy but claim that the 90 names represent only seven per cent of the total accused priests.
The Catholic Church’s culture of secrecy, coupled with Ireland’s “strict protection around defamation and data protection”, is making it impossible to ensure accountability for crimes of sexual abuse, a victim’s support group has said.
Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of the BishopAccountability.org website which runs a public “abuse-tracker” of offending clergy, highlighted on Monday the Irish State and church’s continued failure in making perpetrators of sexual abuse accountable for their actions. Last week, the group launched the Irish leg of its online database which identifies 94 priests and brothers who have been convicted of sexually abusing children.
Speaking outside the former Magdalene Laundry on Sean McDermott Street on Monday, Ms Barrett Doyle announced that seven new names had been added to the database following Pope Francis’ visit to Ireland over the weekend. The names included in the database are just “a fraction” of the total number of abusers in the Republic and Northern Ireland, she said, adding that Irish data protection laws had prevented the group from adding additional names.
‘Unfinished business’
“The great unfinished business here in Ireland remains accountability; accountability of perpetrators and the accountability of the Catholic Church supervisors who enabled them,” said Ms Barrett Doyle.
“The detailed documentation of children’s agony in the major state reports has not yielded accountability; no church official has been charged with failing to report as has happened in France and Australia; no secret archives are being raided as had happened in Chile; no prosecutor is publishing names of accused clergy as in Pennsylvania. ”
Mark Vincent Healy, a survivor of sexual abuse by two Irish priests and a member of the international Ending Clergy Abuse (ECA) group, expressed relief at the decision to publish his first abuser’s name in the database. Fr Arthur Carragher, who taught Mr Healy in St Mary’s boys school in Rathmines in the late 1960s and early 1970s, was one of the seven names added to the online database on Monday. Mr Healy’s second abuser, Fr Henry Moloney, is already listed on the site.
‘Harrowing statistics’
Mr Healy, who was one of the abuse survivors to meet with Pope Francis on Saturday, said he presented the pontiff with the “harrowing statistics” of how childhood sexual abuse affects not only the long-term mental health of the victim but also their economic prospects.
Describing him as “the most extraordinary, ordinary man”, Mr Healy said the pope had failed to deliver on any of his promises to survivors of abuse. “It’s the suffering that needs to be addressed and the need to hold these people to account in our courts.”
Peter Isely, another survivor of child sexual abuse and a member of the ECA group, also criticised the pope for failing to provide solutions rather than just apologising. “He leaves but the pain and the trauma and solving this problem remains,” he said.
Sabah Kaiser shares Story of Sexual Abuse at UK Home
One Survivor's Story
By Dhiren Manga
Sabah Kaiser, aged 43, of Bristol, has shared her story of being sexually abused in her own home since the age of seven. She waived her anonymity on Friday, August 25, 2018, to inspire others to come forward.
Originally from Pakistan, Sabah’s family moved to Britain during the 1970s after her father served with the British Army. They settled in Bristol.
Sabah was raised as a child in a house Montpelier along with her 17 brothers and sisters. Sabah went to a school n Eastville and enjoyed what appeared to be a normal childhood.
But behind closed doors, Sabah was being sexually abused and mistreated. Despite knowing what was happening to her was wrong, Sabah felt powerless to prevent it. She struggled against a language barrier, her family and a strict cultural upbringing.
Now a mother of two, she has waived her anonymity to shatter the stigma around hidden sexual abuse in British Asian families.
Sabah’s Story
Talking about her trauma from a young age, Sabah said: “From the age of seven, I was initially abused by what I would refer to as my main abuser.” Her main abuser was part of a paedophile ring which operated from her outwardly respectable family home.
The teenager suffered in silence until the age of thirteen when she asked for help.
However, within a strict Pakistani household, Sabah’s family refused to acknowledge sex or allow it to be discussed. This made it difficult for her to properly communicate what was happening.
She admitted: “I didn’t know the words for my body parts. In fact, some of my body I still do not know the words for in my language and I’m an interpreter.”
Between the ages of seven and 16, Sabah Kaiser was taken advantage of and sexually abused by several men visiting her home.
One incident involved a relative insisting that she strip naked and massage his legs before sexually assaulting her. When the ordeal was over, his wife stripped off the bloodstained sheets in front of a confused Sabah.
The woman told her: “You have wet the bed. If you tell anyone, you’ll be in big trouble.”
The taboo subject of sexual abuse in a Pakistani community meant that people were aware of it but never said anything. “My community were silent perpetrators, standing in the shadows, knowing what was going on and saying nothing.”
“There is a shame surrounding it, yet I feel that the men – under the culture and under the belief – think they are a higher, more valued, more important sex than women are.” Sabah added: “We are, in my experience, considered as property and so property to do [with] what they want.”
Asking for her Mother’s help
Sabah attempted to speak out against her abusers by telling her mother. But despite her mother challenging one of the abusers, he denied the allegations and blamed Sabah for “saying things she wouldn’t dream of saying” in Pakistan.
“I remember telling her what happened. She asked him a question as if she was just asking him ‘did you eat the last chapatti’? It was so casual. ‘Did you touch my daughter?’ was the question. “He was asked the question and he went into a barrage of how I had no respect for my elders.”
Exposing the Abuse
Sabah’s abuse at home was finally exposed after she took the courage to speak of her ordeal to friends and a deputy-head teacher, who subsequently contacted the police and social services. The deputy-head teacher she saw as a father figure and said he was “always looking out for me”.
Sabah bounced tennis balls in the school corridor numerous times to get the attention she wanted. Many times the balls were just confiscated but then eventually the deputy-head teacher told her to come into his office and said: “Right Sabah come in here and tell me what it is you are trying to tell me.”
It was after this conversation that the school were told about the abuse and “the police interview happened and the social services came in.”
She was asked by one of the police officers in the interview at school: “Did he have intercourse with you?” At the age she was, Sabah “did not know the word” or the “meaning of it”.
The police officer said to her if she “did not know what the word meant”, then it could “not have happened” to her.
After this point, social services became active and took her into care. Sabah stayed in care until she was “an adult”.
Continued Abuse
Sabah thought that her abuse was over, however, it continued, but now by a different perpetrator.
The deputy-head teacher had been “asked by the school, by the heads, to counsel” her for the sexual abuse Sabah experienced as a child.
He invited her to his office and Sabah recalls: “Initially he just wanted to hear a lot of detail, and then the abuse began. It was two years it continued for.”
It was not until “another girl had spoken up about it” that other pupils “stepped up” and came forward to report the staff member. He was dismissed from school and taken to court.
Blaming Herself
Realising it happened so quickly, Sabah says: “It was taken seriously. Everybody believed it. But for me, my failure compounded it. It made it worse.”
As this was her second experience as a victim, Sabah started to think that she was to blame.
“For me, I was convinced that at that age, again, still a child, that there’s something wrong with me. That I am the one one that causes this to happen. That it’s not actually their fault. In fact, I was insisting that it wasn’t his fault. That is was my fault.
"I insisted that to the police and I insisted that to my teachers. It’s only now that I know it was his fault, but at the time, I didn’t believe that.”
However, by now Sabah’s “trust had completely gone.” By the time it came to her court case, she did not attend, despite people believing her. She says: “I was so scared. As a child, I felt that I was going to get found out. That the judge would see that it’s all my fault.”
She feels things have changed in this respect today, where people can give evidence with support but back then she was very afraid of the whole process.
Desi Culture’s Problem
Sabah feels her culture has a very important role to play when it comes to dealing with sexual abuse due to the taboo, saying: “In my experience, my culture cloaked it. It protected it.”
“And that’s because the bigger issue, the macro issue isn’t me, it’s how we are seen in the public, in the community. And I’m a woman, I’m a girl, and sex is something that’s absolutely under any circumstances not discussed.”
She feels she cannot reconcile the two things as a woman.
Speaking about her mother, who passed away, she says: “I love my mum and I know she loved me. I forgave her long before she died. I refuse to allow hatred to dwell in my heart because I am only hurting myself.”
Sabah decided to cut all the ties with her family many years ago.
Impact of Abuse
Revealing how the trauma and experience of being sexually abused as a child at home and then at school has impacted her, she says: “I can’t remember a time, I haven’t woken up scared. I can’t remember a time when I haven’t gone to sleep scared.
“Because I feel that people like me, we’re kinda, we’ve been damaged and broken. We were never repaired when we were meant to be repaired. We were failed. Then you grow up with that failure becoming yours. It should’ve been theirs but it ends up becoming yours.”
She feels coping to survive as a victim of child abuse is very difficult as it stays with you forever, saying: “I just wish someone could tell me how to live because I don’t know what that means. You don’t know where you belong. You don’t know where you came from. You absolutely have no idea where you are going.”
She feels now she has the right to be angry and not feel scared and can give the “failure back to them”.
Today, Sabah is using her horrific and dark ordeal as a child to inspire others to come forward like she did and tell their stories as realities.
She is a supporter of an organisation known as the Truth Project, which invites victims and survivors of child sexual abuse to discuss their ordeal with specialist support staff.
Prison sentence in UK for former Costa Blanca resident
on child sex abuse charges
By Darren Parmenter
A BRITISH national that once lived on the Orihuela Costa has been sentenced to eight years and 10 months imprisonment at Snaresbrook Crown Court in London.
David Budd, 72, pleaded guilty in July after being charged with seven counts of indecent assault and four counts of indecency with four female victims, all of whom were children when the offences were committed.
In July 2017, one of the victims came forward to police and disclosed that she had been sexually assaulted by Budd in Newham, East London when she was around nine years old.
Further inquiries by officers from the Child Abuse and Sexual Offences Command (CASO) identified a further three victims, all of whom were also aged around nine years old when they were sexually assaulted by Budd.
In recent years, Budd had been living in Spain. On December 21 last year, he returned to the UK and was arrested at Southend Airport.
Detective Constable Colleen Ryan, from CASO, said: “Budd was an ice cream seller in Newham; a position he used to gain access to and groom his victims.
“He preyed on young children by using his position as an ice cream seller to groom them. He succeeded in gaining their trust and then subjected them to abuse that no child should ever have to endure. The negative impact this has had on his victims’ adult lives should not be underestimated. I would like to commend them for their bravery in coming forward and finding the courage to speak to police.”
Costa Blanca, Spain
Germany: Kindergarten head on trial for
child porn, rape
Major fails by police and church as victim suffered unnecessarily for 2 years and many children were left at risk.
A man is to be tried in the German town of Heilbronn charged with raping a schoolboy and filming the crime. Police are under fire for allegedly not notifying his employer of earlier child-porn offenses for over a year.
A 31-year-old man who worked as the head of a kindergarten goes on trial in the southern German town of Heilbronn on Monday, charged with repeatedly raping a young boy over a period of six years and making films of himself doing so.
The crimes are alleged to have taken place mostly in the man's apartment between 2012 and the start of 2018. The alleged victim was 6 years old when the sexual abuse began.
Police had already begun investigating the man at the start of 2016 for possessing and exchanging pornographic material involving children. His employer, the Evangelical Church in Germany, was, however, reportedly not informed of this until the summer of 2017, raising questions about police procedures.
No kidding! Did they not know who he was and what he did for a living? Why did it take 2 years to investigate this pervert? That's 2 years of child rape for that boy who was 10-12 years old. Seems like a major fail for the police.
The fact that the man then continued to work as kindergarten head until the start of 2018 has also prompted an inquiry within the church. So far, however, there have been no indications that children at the kindergarten were subjected to sexual abuse at the hands of the accused.
Doesn't matter, the children were vulnerable and the man was a pervert; they should have been separated immediately. A major fail for the church also.
'Special bond of trust'
The German children's rights organization "Deutscher Kinderschutzbund" has called for protective procedures to be more rigorously observed.
"People have to completely abandon the idea that 'something like that can't happen with us'," the organization's vice president, Christian Zainhofer, told DPA news agency.
"There is, of course, a special bond of trust with a kindergarten teacher. If it is true that it took 15 months for the man's employer to be notified, that is a catastrophe," he added.
UK child abuser admits sexual assault on underage girl
A 35-year-old child abuser from Derby has admitted to sexually assaulting an underage girl in the city.
Andrew Garlick, of Alvaston, pleaded guilty to a number of charges when he appeared at Derby Crown Court.
Dressed in a black shirt and grey trousers, he spoke to confirm his name and enter his guilty pleas to charges of both sexual activity with a child and sexual assault of the same victim which all took place in the past decade.
After entering his pleas Garlick, of Sandalwood Close, was told by a judge that “custody is inevitable” as he adjourned the case.
Judge Robert Egbuna said: “Mr Garlick, I am going to put your case back to September 24. You know that this is going to be a custodial sentence and a custodial sentence of some length. You have abused this child and there is not much one can say about it which is very good at all.
“You know it’s going to be custody, it is just a case of how long and until then you are remanded into custody.”
Garlick had originally pleaded not guilty to the charges and was due to face trial on September 24 meaning his teenage victim would have to come to court and relive her ordeal when she gave her evidence against him.
But, a month before he was due to face trial, he pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual activity with a child and a further four counts of sexual activity with a child.
Jeremy Janes, for Garlick, said: “It is a desperately sad case and a desperately tragic case for her.
“Mr Garlick understands it needs mature reflection (from the judge before sentencing).”
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