An 11-y/o Argentinian girl pleaded for an abortion to 'remove what the old man put inside me.' She was denied!
'Lucia' was forced to give birth in Argentina after she was apparently denied an abortion despite being raped by her grandmother's 65-year-old partner
WASHINGTON POST
Activists decry on August 9, 2018, senators' decision to reject a bill to legalize abortion in Argentina.
EITAN ABRAMOVICH/AFP/GETTY IMAGES
An 11-year-old rape victim gave birth in Argentina Tuesday after she was apparently denied an abortion by authorities, infuriating women’s-choice advocates in the country who have fought to legalize the procedure.
The girl, referred to as “Lucia” to protect her identity, underwent a Caesarean section Tuesday in the 23rd week of her pregnancy, the Guardian reports. Lucia, whose baby is not expected to survive, had previously begged officials to “remove what the old man put inside me.”
That man is the 65-year-old partner of Lucia’s grandmother – who took custody of Lucia and her siblings in 2015, after her two older sisters were abused by their mother’s partner, the Guardian reported.
Lucia attempted to commit suicide twice upon learning of her pregnancy Jan. 23. She was hospitalized and later placed in state care as a result of apparent self-inflicted lesions, the outlet said.
The birth of Lucia’s child Tuesday was widely condemned by women’s rights activists in the country, who say Lucia and her mother repeatedly asked for her to have an abortion – a request that was delayed by nearly five weeks, according to the BBC. Debate over who the girl’s guardian was complicated the planned abortion, further exacerbated by several doctors who refused to carry out the procedure because of their personal beliefs.
In this Tuesday, Feb. 19, 2019 photo, activists in favor of decriminalizing abortion raise green handkerchiefs as they rally outside Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina. AP PHOTO/TOMAS F. CUESTA
As The Washington Post has reported, Argentine law allows abortion in instances of rape, when the mother is mentally disabled or if there is a serious risk to her health. In any other instance, a woman could be imprisoned for up to four years for undergoing the procedure.
In Lucia’s case, officials ordered a hospital director to “continue with procedures necessary to attempt to save both lives,” a mantra also used by anti-abortion advocates — citing a decision made by a family judge, according to the BBC. That court has since indicated it gave no instruction to save two lives. Moreover, the Guardian reports a doctor warned in court that Lucia faced “high obstetric risk” if her pregnancy was allowed to continue.
No kidding! Mind you, in many Islamic countries, giving birth at 11 years of age is quite common. So are the many complications to the health of the child mother.
Gustavo Vigliocco, health secretary of the province of Tucuman, even claimed Lucia wanted to deliver the child.
“I am close to both the child and her mother. The child wants to continue her pregnancy,” Vigliocco said in a radio interview, according to the Guardian. “We are considering the risks but she has a large contexture, she weighs more than 50 kilos.”
A pro-choice activist throws a bottle toward a wall set up outside Congress, after lawmakers voted against a bill that would have legalized elective abortion in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, early Thursday, Aug. 9, 2018. AP PHOTO/NATACHA PISARENKO
A doctor who performed the procedure said she managed to save Lucia’s life after the girl had been “tortured for a month by the provincial health system.”
“For electoral reasons they [the authorities] prevented the legal interruption of the pregnancy and forced the little girl to give birth,” Dr. Cecilia Ousset told reporters, according to the Guardian. “My legs trembled when I saw her, it was like seeing my younger daughter. The little girl didn’t understand completely what was going to happen.”
Women’s rights advocates agreed with Ousset’s assertion that Juan Manzur, governor of Tucuman, used Lucia to push his political agenda. Journalist and self-described feminist activist Mariana Carbajal wrote in a tweet that Tucuman had treated Lucia “like a receptacle, like an incubator.”
Soledad Deza, of the Women for Women Association, reminded news outlets that Lucia’s abortion would have been legal, considering health risks and the fact she was sexually abused, the Guardian reports. She likened the girl’s experience to “the worst type of cruelty.”
In August, after months of debate, the Argentina senate rejected a bill that would have legalized abortions during the first 14 weeks of pregnancy. While some Latin American countries have loosened abortion laws to be less restrictive, the majority of countries in the region ban abortions outright or permit them only when the mother’s life is at risk, The Washington Post reported.
Those against abortions argue the government should focus its effort on reproductive health and educational services. Citing a government study, The Post has previously reported that 60 percent of pregnancies in Argentina are unplanned.
“I’m mad. I wanted to win,” Maria Paz, 22, a member of the socialist feminist group Las Rojas, told The Post after the bill failed August. “But the senators should feel worse. They’re turning their back on all of these women who want the right to abort.”
Pedophiles are hunting children as young as 5 on Instagram as grooming triples in UK on social media
FILE PHOTO © Reuters / Daniel Becerril
Children as young as five are being groomed and abused on Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook, with 5,161 incidents reported in the UK in 18 months. The number of children targeted on Instagram has tripled in just one year.
Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram were used to target children in 70 percent of recorded incidents, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) reports. While 12-15-year-old girls were the most common targets for pedophiles, about 20 percent of the victims were under 11 and the youngest victim was just five years old.
Groomers used Instagram to contact targets in 428 cases between April and September 2018, a huge increase from the same period in 2017 which saw 126 cases. This figure only includes incidents where police recorded the method of communication used to target victims, the real number may be far higher.
The NSPCC obtained the figures through freedom of information requests to 39 police forces in England and Wales. A number of forces, including the City of London, did not respond to the request. Sexual communication with a child became an offense in the UK in April 2017.
“These figures are overwhelming evidence that keeping children safe cannot be left to social networks," said NSPCC chief executive Peter Wanless.
Pedophiles have long trawled social media networks for grooming victims and for images of children. Australia's Children's eSafety Commissioner Alastair MacGibbon warned in 2015 that tens of millions of photos of children on pedophile websites had been taken from Instagram, often the child’s parents account. “The images are almost always accompanied by highly explicit and very disturbing user comments,” MacGibbon said.
The kind that would be extremely traumatic should the child happen upon them.
In January, it emerged that people were using #dropboxlinks on social media to connect with other pedophiles to trade images of children. When the accounts were reported, Instagram at first said it did not violate the terms. People flooded the hashtags with memes to make it more difficult for the pedophiles to find each other until, following a report in the Atlantic, Instagram restricted the hashtag.
Youtube announced this week it would disable comments on children’s videos after a number of big advertisers pulled ads when reports emerged that pedophiles were leaving predatory messages in the comment sections.
The company also came under fire after it emerged that users who searched for terms like, ‘bikini haul’ were soon brought to videos of children where pedophiles were leaving comments.
Google chose to ignore the reports until a report on the pedophile ring operating in YouTube went viral and advertisers started leaving. Google protects its sponsors diligently, but protects children only when the sponsors insist.
Also, YouTubeKids promised to police videos better after some videos were found with instructions on how to commit suicide embedded in them.
Outrage as So. Africa dentist gets 3 years
for sexual assault on teen boy
His 2nd conviction for CSA
for sexual assault on teen boy
His 2nd conviction for CSA
Ethan Van Diemen, News24
Non-profit organisation Women and Men Against Child Abuse is appalled by the "inappropriately short sentence" of just three years handed down to a George dentist for a sexual assault of a minor.
Dr Ian Venter, a 46-year old dentist from George, was sentenced to three years imprisonment this week for "unlawfully and intentionally" violating a 13-year-old boy in 2015 by asking him to touch his genitals.
"As an organisation advocating for children's rights [we] really believe that child sexual abuse cases should warrant much harsher sentences.
"The Children's Act clearly states that children have a right to safety and should [be] allowed to live free from violence and abuse," WMACA said in a statement on Thursday.
During the reading of sentencing in the George Circuit High Court, Magistrate Francis Makamandela felt the court needed to keep a fair balance and consider all the children concerned, both the victims and Venter’s own children.
Additionally, his particulars are to be included in the National Register for Sex Offenders and he has been found to be unsuitable to work with children.
An application for leave to appeal was dismissed.
The outrage shown in response to the sentencing is due, in no small part, to this being Venter's second sentencing for a sexual offence against a minor.
In November 2014, he was found guilty of a sexual offence against a 15-year-old boy and spent a term of four years under correctional supervision.
Doesn't sound like 'correctional supervision' actually did any 'correcting'.
The second sexual assault was committed just five months after his initial conviction.
"Given that this was his second offence, we believe a much longer jail term would have been the only fitting punishment," WMACA added.
Western Cape National Prosecuting Authority spokesperson Eric Ntabazalila noted that "... the accused was previously convicted in another matter and one of the suspended conditions was that he is not allowed to treat children in his practice. He breached that condition. We are busy pursuing that and we will bring it to court soon."
NZ Minister to look into case of 'deplorable' child sex offender deemed 'fit and proper' for real estate licence
By: Anna Leask
New Zealand Herald
The Associate Minister of Justice is "concerned" how a convicted child sex offender was able to obtain a real estate licence, after being deemed a "fit and proper person".
And he will seek a "full explanation" from the Real Estate Authority about the handling of the case.
Last week the Herald revealed that Nitin Mittal was convicted of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy in 2016.
He was an Uber driver at the time and the child was his passenger.
Mittal initially pleaded not guilty to a charge of doing an indecent act on a young person but later admitted the assault and was sentenced to two months' community detention and 12 months' intensive supervision.
Wow! What a sentence! And did they give him a gold watch too?
He unsuccessfully appealed his conviction, sentence and a judge's decision not to grant him a discharge without conviction.
In April 2018 Mittal was granted a real estate agent's licence.
A conviction for a "crime of dishonesty" automatically rules a person out from holding a licence. However, other convictions are considered on a case-by-case basis.
REA chief executive Kevin Lampen-Smith said the "particular circumstances" of Mittal's application were "fully researched, including review of the District Court sentencing decision and review of a relevant expert's risk assessment".
Astonishing!
Sex abuse privacy breach stuns mum
NZ Health Board has no idea how many times
her child's tragic story was sent out, or to whom
By: Robb Kidd
New Zealand Herald
A mother's world has been "turned upside down'' after a nurse accidentally sent details of her child's sexual abuse to an unrelated party.
The Dunedin woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, was told by the Southern District Health Board in December last year of a privacy breach involving "sensitive information''. But the horrifying details were only revealed in a letter she received last Monday.
Attached to an apology from the SDHB was the contents of the file that was accidentally attached to an email to a Porse teacher on an unrelated matter. In it was the outline of a conversation the woman had had with a nurse in 2017, outlining sexual abuse her child had suffered.
It featured names of the woman's children and schools they attended. She had no idea the discussion had even been transcribed. "I would never have disclosed information if they had said it was being recorded,'' she said.
When the sexual allegations arose, she said her "whole world was destroyed''. Her family had just begun to heal when she was rocked by notification of the privacy bungle.
"It's mind-blowing. I can't describe it. I haven't slept in five days,'' the woman told the Otago Daily Times last week. She has instructed legal counsel and made a complaint to the office of the Privacy Commissioner. From there, she would consider taking the case to the Human Rights Review Tribunal.
She sat down for a meeting with SDHB's primary care and population health general manager Mary Cleary-Lyons on Wednesday. The official explained the file containing the private information had been saved on a computer desktop beside a blank referral form.
Critically, the SDHB could give no assurances to the woman that it had only been sent once. "At the meeting they admitted it had been sitting on the desktop for 16 months and they had no idea how many times it had been sent out,'' she said.
Ms Cleary-Lyons said the private file had since been removed from the desktop and stored correctly, "so we do not anticipate this happening again''. The staff member involved and the wider team had been spoken to, to avoid such an error happening again.
"We are continuing to review the full chain of events and I anticipate we may make further changes to our procedures and systems to improve data security and ensure we adequately protect patient privacy,'' Ms Cleary-Lyons said in a letter.
They told the woman she would receive a copy of any report generated but could give no estimation as to how long the process would take.
SDHB acting chief executive Lisa Gestro apologised "unreservedly, for the distress that has been caused by this situation''.
Questions from the Otago daily Times about other privacy breaches and specific protocols regarding information storage went unanswered.
University of Otago law professor Paul Roth said the Privacy Commissioner's role was to make findings and then assist parties in settling the issue. Matters normally concluded at that juncture but a complainant could then progress the case to the Human Rights Review Tribunal.
Damages could only be awarded unless someone could prove they had suffered harm or loss as a direct result of the privacy breach, Prof Roth said.
The Dunedin mother said the consequences of the breach could be catastrophic.
One of her children had repeatedly harmed herself and the mother worried if there was any hint personal information had been inadvertently leaked, there could be a tragic outcome.
"I feel like I've failed my children,'' she said. "I'll never trust [the DHB] again.''
Wow! There needs to be so much more than 'speaking to' to ensure this never happens again. The nurse needs to be significantly disciplined and the DHB needs to be smacked upside the head. The consequences for the child could be devastating.
It should be feasible to go through the nurse's emails over the past 16 months and determine exactly how many times the file was errantly sent and to whom.
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