Ex-Tory Campaign Manager GUILTY of
Online Child Sexual Abuse Offences
By James Smith, Politicalite
A FORMER campaign manager for the Conservative Party has admitted online child sexual abuse offences, after a National Crime Agency (NCA) investigation.
Mark Lerigo, 49, of Coventry, pleaded guilty at Warwick Crown Court to distributing indecent images of children (IIOC), three counts of making IIOC, one count of possessing extreme pornography involving animals, one count of possessing prohibited images of children and one count of publishing an obscene article.
NCA officers arrested Lerigo in November 2018. As well as the images, investigators found a WhatsApp chat with another offender discussing the sexual abuse of children.
Lerigo had an iPad which contained a total of 1,005 illegal images including 146 category A (the most serious) abuse pictures of children, and 258 images of extreme pornography.
He also had a laptop which contained evidence of a total of 414 illegal images – including 59 category A images.
He will be sentenced on 21 August.
Graham Ellis, NCA operations manager, said: “Offenders who view indecent images are fuelling more and more sexual abuse of children. Every time an abuse image is shared or viewed the child is revictimised.
“Child sexual abuse is a priority threat for the NCA. It doesn’t matter what walk of life an offender is from, we will do everything in our power to catch them.”
The NCA is responsible for developing the threat assessment for child sexual abuse (CSA) in the UK and orchestrating the response to it. As well as conducting its own investigations, the NCA is responsible for developing intelligence around cases and sharing them with policing partners for individual forces to investigate.
Between the start of the coronavirus lockdown on 23 March and 19 July, the NCA developed and disseminated 5,707 online CSA packages to UK policing.
During this time the agency has arrested 62 CSA offenders and safeguarded or protected 147 children.
At the start of lockdown the NCA launched its #OnlineSafetyAtHome campaign in response to the threat from CSA, to reach those most at risk.
Resources aimed at parents, carers and children have now been downloaded nearly 450,000 times.
Child protection charity the Lucy Faithfull Foundation runs the Stop It Now! helpline which offers confidential advice to anyone concerned about their own or someone else’s behaviour towards children.
If you are concerned a crime has been committed against a child contact your local police. For child safety advice visit Thinkuknow.co.uk
Auckland man who tried to buy girl on Dark Web
loses name suppression
Edward Gay
DAVID WHITE/STUFF
Aaron Hutton has admitted charges of dealing in someone under the age of 18 for sexual exploitation and possessing 417 objectionable material images.
Aaron Joseph Hutton thought he was chatting to fellow paedophiles on the internet. Unbeknownst to him, he was actually talking to agents for the Department of Internal Affairs.
Hutton hid behind the profile name “Kiwipedo” on the secretive Dark Web, where he dealt in child sexual abuse images and tried to buy a girl under the age of 7.
On Thursday, Hutton admitted charges of dealing in someone under the age of 18 for sexual exploitation and possessing 417 objectionable material images.
But his name has been covered by a suppression order, which was lifted by Judge Allan Roberts on Friday.
According to court documents released to Stuff, the Department of Internal Affairs believed Hutton used the Dark Web to talk to other paedophiles and attempted to get access to a girl.
The Dark Web is an area of the internet that allows users to operate anonymously. While the Dark Web itself is not illegal, it does lend itself to illegal uses, such as the sale of drugs and weapons.
Aaron Hutton can now be named as the paedophile who used the profile name Kiwipedo on the Dark Web.
DAVID WHITE/STUFF
DAVID WHITE/STUFF
Hutton's conversations with other Dark Web users – secretly agents with the Department of International Affairs – show that he was looking for someone who could “traffic children internationally”.
He is said to have posted that he was “not wasting time” and was “serious!!!”
The pair then went on to exchange a number of messages over the following six weeks, with Hutton asking how the agent’s “search” was going and offering help.
In one message Hutton said: “As for the trafficking still keen just trying to organise my life so I can accept the item.”
He described the notorious Austrian sex offender Josef Fritzl as his “hero”. Fritzl kept his own daughter as a sex slave for 24 years in a cellar in their garden and fathered seven children with her.
Exactly how the DIA agents were able to identify Hutton as Kiwipedo is suppressed. However, Stuff is able to report that the agents used a tracing device that led them to Hutton’s workplace.
In August 2015, police and agents for the Department of Internal Affairs executed a search warrant at Hutton’s work. When agents searched his computer, they found traces of his Dark Web identity.
At his home, agents found drugs and another hard drive containing more than 400 images of children being sexually abused. Another device contained encrypted folders with the titles “Pure Evil & Darkness” and “Sick & Twisted”.
One of the hard drives contained a folder called Silk Road – the same name as an online black market accessible only on the Dark Web. Silk Road has since been shut down. Run by a man in the United States, it allowed users to browse anonymously and purchase child sex abuse material, people, weapons, drugs and even order assassinations.
That folder was inaccessible, however through a forensic application two other folders, called “illegal porn” and “child porn”, were found.
A password-protected excel file spreadsheet had a number of worksheets called “next week’s funds, smokes, child payments” on the bottom and included a number of online accounts.
Through forensic analysis, a file containing a number of search terms relating to child sex abuse material was found. The court heard this could have been a stored list for possible search terms for users on the Dark Web.
Hutton’s case took the best part of five years to come to trial. Three days into the evidence and shortly before the defence was due to open its case, Hutton pleaded guilty.
He will be sentenced in September.
Police unearth human foetus at home of Madrassa teacher accused of sexual assaulting daughter with 5 others
The Kasargod police have booked 6 persons including the victim’s father, a Madrassa teacher, for sexual assault.
Sreedevi Jayarajan, The News Minute
The Nileshwar police in Kasaragod unearthed a 3-month-old human foetus in the house of the Madrassa teacher, who was accused of sexually assaulting his 16-year-old daughter along with 5 other men.
The accused Madrassa teacher admitted that he had buried the foetus, which belonged to the minor child who was sexually abused, after an illegal abortion.
The evidence has now been sent for forensic examination by the Kasargod police. A case has also been registered against the doctor who conducted the illegal abortion.
The shocking case came to light on July 19, when the child’s maternal uncle complained to the police that he suspected sexual abuse.
Upon investigation, it was revealed that the 50-year-old Madrassa teacher had been repeatedly sexually abusing the minor for over two years. The police registered cases against the father and five other youths under various sections of the POCSO, Juvenile Justice Acts and the Indian Penal Code.
The accused have been identified as Mohammad Riyas, Mohammad Shareef, Ahmed, Eijas and Mohammad Ali, who have all now been arrested.
The child’s mother is being investigated for her possible role in the abuse. However, she is yet to be arrested, Nileshwar police confirmed.
“We have registered cases under Section 75 of the Juvenile Justice Act (Punishment for Cruelty to Child), section 376 (2) (m) (punishment for rape), Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) section 5 read with 6 (punishment for aggravated penetrative sexual assault) and others,” an officer at the Nileshwar police station confirmed to TNM.
According to reports, the accused Madrassa teacher is a repeat offender, having cases in the Bekal station for abusing four minor boys in 2017. Although he was booked under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) act, he received bail in the case as the court proceedings dragged on.
A native of Karnataka, he came to Kasargod to teach in the Madrassa and was reported sacked after the sexual assault case was reported in the Bekal station.
UK paedophile ‘used Amazon vouchers to buy
child sex abuse images online’
BY BRINKWIRE
A paedophile teaching assistant who swapped Amazon vouchers for child sexual abuse pornography is facing jail.
Kevin Sheppard offered eight coupons worth £365 to an online seller in exchange for the sick footage between June and September 2018.
The 26-year-old, who worked at Huxlow Science College in Northamptonshire, admitted his desire for underage girls in a police interview. He requested a video of a 15-year-old girl from the seller, who is now under police investigation.
None of Sheppard’s offences were linked to the college and he resigned the day after officers arrested him in June 2019. He was detained at his home in Kettering where police recovered his iPhone and laptop.
Sheppard’s phone had an app which contained 46 category A (the most severe) images of child abuse; 19 category B and 35 category C. His laptop contained 17 category B videos of child sexual abuse and 10 category C images, Northampton Magistrates’ Court heard.
Sheppard admitted three counts of making indecent images of children (IIOC) between September 2014 and July 2019, and one count of encouraging the distribution of IIOC in July 2018.
NCA operations manager Robbie Slater said: ‘There is no greater priority for the NCA than protecting children from sexual abuse. Offenders like Sheppard who view indecent images fuel more and more sexual abuse of children.’
Steve Gordon, principal of Huxlow Science College, said: ‘We are appalled to learn of the conduct of a former teaching assistant. The safety of all students at our school is our highest priority and we have stringent procedures in place which have been fully complied with.
‘Immediately after his arrest, Mr Sheppard was no longer permitted to enter the school grounds and he resigned from his post. We are reassured that the NCA investigation confirmed that no students or school equipment were involved in any of the offences.’
Sheppard will be sentenced at Northampton Crown Court on 25 August.
Five Yorkshire men arrested in Rotherham child sex abuse investigation
They were arrested as part of the National Crime Agency's investigation Operation Stovewood
Five men from Yorkshire have been arrested in connection with allegations of abuse relating to four girls in Rotherham.
It is part of a National Crime Agency investigation into the alleged offences which are said to have taken place around 20 years ago. At the time the girls would have been aged between 11 and 16.
National Crime Agency officers working as part of Operation Stovewood made the arrests over the course of three days this week starting on Tuesday, July 28.
Four of the men arrested are from Rotherham and the other man from Leeds.
All were aged between 38 and 50. They were questioned and then released while investigations continue.
Philip Marshall, senior investigating officer for Operation Stovewood, said: “Our priority in all these investigations is to support victims, and I’d urge anyone who was the victim of child sexual abuse in Rotherham between 1997 and 2013 to come speak to us in the strictest of confidence.
"We will do all we can to support you.
“Operations like those that have taken place this week demonstrate that we, together with partners in South Yorkshire, are determined to bring offenders to justice, and more arrests are to come.”
Victims or witnesses who might have information to help can find contact details on the Stovewood pages of the NCA's website.
Stovewood is the single largest law enforcement investigation into non-familial child sexual abuse (CSA) in the UK.
To date, 134 people have been arrested, with 20 convicted and sentenced to jail terms totaling 248 years.
And they are almost all Pakistani Muslims, which this cowardly report neglects to mention, thereby being guilty of the very same attitude that allowed the disgusting state of child trafficking to flourish in Rotherham for decades.
Paedophile woman, 48, is jailed for 12 years after committing ‘exceptionally depraved’ sex assaults on a child in Teesside
By KATIE FEEHAN FOR MAILONLINE
A Teesside woman who committed a string of sex offences against a child has been jailed for 12 years.
Sandra O'Rourke sexually assaulted the victim and encouraged them to engage in sexual activity.
Teesside Crown Court heard how the 48-year-old also carried out sexual acts while she was in the child's presence. Richard Bennett, prosecuting, said the child was told to keep it a 'secret' and that nobody would believe them if they spoke out.
In a statement, read to the court by Mr Bennett, the victim was said to suffer from flashbacks and be receiving counselling.
O'Rourke, of Harbour Walk, Hartlepool, pleaded guilty to seven counts of inciting a child to engage in sexual activity and four sexual assault charges. She also admitted two counts of engaging in sexual activity in the presence of a child.
Stephen Constantine, defending, said O'Rourke was under the influence of cannabis for a 'substantial' amount of the time the abuse took place.
He told Judge Stephen Ashurst that he 'can't do any better' than to remind him of the defendant's words. He said: 'She says this: "I'm angry with myself and disgusted with what has happened to say the least. I can't find the words to describe my remorse and regret for what has happened."
'She herself recognises that she must be punished, that she will engage with whatever help will be provided to her. 'I ask, your honour, to keep the inevitable sentence as short as you can in the circumstances.'
Judge Ashurst told O'Rourke that the crimes she committed were 'exceptionally depraved and serious'. He said her victim has flashbacks and believes they will never be able to forget what has happened.
Judge Ashurst sentenced O'Rourke to 12 years in prison with an extended licence period of one year.
Sgt Paul West from Cleveland Police's Child Abuse Vulnerable Adults (CAVA) unit said: 'The court heard in a victim impact statement how this offending has had a significant impact on the victim's life.
'I'd like to praise their bravery in coming forward and their strength throughout the court process. 'We welcome today's sentence and hope it will give the victim some closure.'
Meet the Maltese women who are speaking out on sexual abuse / child sexual abuse
NationalSocietyClaudia Calleja
Times of Malta
As the international Me Too movement gains momentum in Malta, several women are finally revealing their sexual abuse trauma. Claudia Calleja lifts the lid on their stories.
Becky* was about 12 years old when her mother would leave her with her partner’s father, who she trusted. The mother never suspected he was sexually abusing her young daughter.
“I can’t remember how old I was. But I remember I used to like Teletubbies at the time... I don’t remember all of the abuse either. But I remember on several occasions he used to abuse me orally. At the time, the worst thing was I didn’t even think it was bad. I can’t remember how long this went on for either, but I know we moved far away and I never saw him again and he later died. My mother doesn’t know till this day,” wrote Becky.
She was one of the dozens of women who told her story of sexual abuse on the Facebook community page Women for Women.
Becky, who is now in her late 20s, consented that her story be published in Times of Malta on condition of anonymity to raise awareness of these realities.
Many others posted their experience in the closed Facebook group, under #MeTooMalta. These Maltese women joined the international #MeToo movement against sexual harassment and sexual abuse.
Many of the disturbing stories had common threads. The women often said they were abused when they were children or teens, and abused by people they trusted – relatives, friends and teachers. Some were too young to even realise what was happening, while others felt something was wrong and suffered psychological repercussions as they kept their shame bottled up for years.
Others managed to stop things before they got out of hand. Carmen* was one of them. Now in her early 30s, Carmen was about six years old when she, together with some other students, were summoned to the headmaster’s office “to read to him”.
“We were waiting in line outside his office... and at one point he called me, it was my turn. I started reading this book and at one point he told me to put the book down. Then he got both of my hands and put them on his groin... and started kind of rubbing... and rubbing my hands more and more. At one point (in hindsight) I remember I was like... uhhh... why is it getting so hard?
“And then my six-year-old me told him: mummy tells us not to touch other people’s private parts. I must have shocked him or something.
“He said: but it’s OK... then he stopped and told me to go back to class,” she wrote in her post, which she consented to Times of Malta to reproduce.
Carmen adds: “This specific headmaster has nowadays passed away. But the memories remain. Bottom line... always, always teach your kids about private parts from a young age.”
The need to change the law
Women for Women founder Francesca Fenech Conti was shocked at the number of women who came forward.
“I hope this response will act as a wake-up call to our authorities that we have a massive problem.
At one point he told me to put the book down.
Then he got both of my hands and put them on his groin
“We need to acknowledge it and dig deep and conduct research into the root causes to ensure our future generations of children do not suffer sexual abuse and trauma of this kind at the hands of those who are meant to protect them,” she said.
 |
| Francesca Fenech Conti |
Lawyer Kaylie Chetcuti, who graduated last year, made this the focus of her dissertation titled ‘A study on the limitations of prescription in cases of rape, defilement and sexual assault in Maltese criminal law’.
Her recommendation is to amend the law to start the prescription period once the victim turns 18.
“Unfortunately, when children are abused it is often by people they trust, even parents. They do not know the system and their very abusers block them from reporting the crime.
“By the time they become adults, it’s too late to report,” she said, adding that turning 18 might offer more understanding and financial independence to victims wishing to report abuse.
Support for victims
Rebecca Farrugia, 28, is one of the founding members of online support group White Tulip Malta. She set it up last year following her personal experience nine years ago when she was sexually assaulted after being drugged by someone she trusted.
“I felt shock and shame for a very long time and never spoke up about what happened. Then one day I was speaking to a friend of mine and she told me about her experience when she was a child. I thought: ‘This is happening to many people. We are led to feel we have done something wrong.’ So out of anger and want to make a difference it was set up with the aim of offering education, compassion and empowerment,” she says.
This is happening to many people.
We are led to feel we have done something wrong
NGO Victim Support Malta also provides a range of support services for victims of sexual assault and rape. This support ranges from access to a social worker (throughout the initial stages of accessing support, and to ensure that clients are well supported and well informed) and free access to psychotherapeutics, counsellors, and free legal support.
If one wishes to check whether or not the case can be prosecuted at law, VSM is able to offer free legal consultation, and to support the individual in filing the report if this can be done. For information, contact executive director Krista Tabone on 2122 8333 or krista@victimsupport.org.mt.
The Women’s Rights Foundation also offers free legal advice to victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking and gender discrimination through a free legal helpline 8006 2149.
White Tulip can be reached via Facebook or by sending an e-mail to whitetulipmalta@gmail.com.
Forced Into Sterilisation, Sexual Violence, Uyghur Women Shine Light on Campaign of Control by Beijing
Uyghur exile Gulbakhar Jalilova says she suffered sexual abuse while she was held in detention centers in Xinjiang. (CNN)
For years, Uyghur women both inside Xinjiang and around the world have accused the Chinese government of a campaign of abuse, including forced sterilization, cultural indoctrination and incidents of sexual violence.
CNN
Zumrat Dawut said she was forcibly sterilized by the Chinese government for having one too many children.
A former resident of Urumqi, the capital of China's western Xinjiang region, the 38-year-old Uyghur woman said she was fined 18,400 yuan ($2,600) in 2018 for having three children, one more than she was allowed to under Chinese rule.
When she went to pay the fine, Dawut said she was told she'd also need to have a mandatory "birth control procedure."
She said she was taken to a clinic, where she was hooked up to an IV and given a general anesthetic. A local doctor later told her she'd undergone a tubal ligation, a procedure that uses keyhole surgery to clip, cut or tie a woman's fallopian tubes.
The doctor said the procedure was permanent -- she wouldn't be able to have any more children.
Dawut's story is not unique. For years, Uyghur women both inside Xinjiang and around the world have accused the Chinese government of a campaign of abuse, including forced sterilization, cultural indoctrination and incidents of sexual violence.
It's part of a wider pattern of human rights violations by the Chinese Communist Party in Xinjiang, where authorities are accused of detaining up to two million Muslim-majority Uyghurs and other minority ethnic groups inside vast, fortified centers as part of efforts to enforce greater control over the region.
Rahima Mahmut, a Xinjiang exile and project director for the World Uyghur Congress in London, said women in Xinjiang are living in "hell."
"Just like any genocide, women are always the number one target ... There is a very, very serious crime happening at such a large scale," she said.
The Chinese government has consistently denied all allegations, presenting its efforts in Xinjiang as legal and necessary measures to prevent extremism, and has used a series of what state-run media refers to as terrorist attacks in 2014 and 2015 to justify its crackdown.
It has also attempted to discredit Dawut's account specifically, with the state-owned newspaper the Global Times quoting claims from her own brother that she's "peddling lies online."
CRACKDOWN ON WOMEN
Beijing has a history of policing women's reproductive rights as part of the "one-child policy," a mass campaign to slow birth rates in China. From its introduction in 1980, the policy officially saw 400 million births "prevented," amid reports of state-enforced abortions and mandatory contraception.
The one-child policy was changed to allow two children in 2015 amid a rapidly-shrinking birth rate. In Xinjiang, rural couples are allowed to have up to three children, which authorities claim is out of respect for ethnic minorities' cultural traditions of large families.
Now a new report, titled "The (Chinese Communist Party's) campaign to suppress Uyghur birthrates in Xinjiang," alleges that Beijing is trying to reduce the Uyghur population through enforced contraception and sterilizations.
It was compiled by Adrian Zenz, a leading Xinjiang scholar, and is backed up by years of witness reports and statements from women both in Xinjiang and around the world.
Xinjiang is culturally and ethnically different from the rest of China, with a large population of Turkic minority groups who until recently were the majority in the region. For years, the region has maintained an uneasy relationship with the government in Beijing.
For some reason, this report refuses to point out the Uyghurs are almost entirely Muslim. Consequently, their allegiance is to Mohammed, not to the CCP. This is intolerable to Communists.
For decades, Zenz said Uyghurs often had larger families than officially permitted, sometimes with as many as nine or 10 children, and when authorities decided to discipline them it was usually only a fine.
But beginning in 2017, Zenz quotes official Chinese government policy directives calling on administrators to "severely attack behaviors that violate family planning (policies)." From that year onwards, minority regions began a "special campaign to control birth control violations."
According to the report, the stricter enforcement led to increased prosecutions of birth control violators and harsher punishments.
Xinjiang accounted for 80% of new IUD insertions throughout China in 2018, according to official government records outlined in the report and confirmed by CNN. The statistics are primarily due to a massive drop in the use of IUDs in the rest of the country, as Beijing pushes women in the rest of China to have more children.
In Xinjiang, the opposite is happening. There, the number of sterilizations has skyrocketed, according to government records. In 2014, the year before the start of the government crackdown in Xinjiang, there were 3,214 sterilizations in the region -- in 2018, there were 60,440.
In his report, Zenz claimed that as a result of these policies, the natural birth rate in parts of Xinjiang with a large Uyghur population had seen a significant decrease in population growth.
According to Zenz's calculations, across all parts of Xinjiang predominantly populated by Turkic minorities, natural population growth dropped from more than 15% in 2014 to just over 4% in 2018.
Zenz estimated the birthrates by combining official Chinese government statistics for Xinjiang prefectures and weighting them by population. Worryingly, Zenz said that some predominantly Uyghur prefectures such as Kashgar didn't publish their population growth rates at all in 2019.
The Global Times news outlet has claimed that Zenz's math is wrong, and attributed the slower population growth to increased education and income levels in Xinjiang.
In response to the report, the Chinese government said that between 1978 and 2018, the Uyghur population in Xinjiang had grown from 5.5 million to more than 11 million.
However, Zenz claims that he has found evidence of a deliberate campaign to control Uyghur population growth that goes far beyond stricter enforcement of the two-child policy.
The report claims that Chinese authorities imposed targets for up to 80% of child-bearing women in four southern prefectures, with large Uyghur populations, to undergo "birth control measures with long-term effectiveness."
In some cases, women had IUDs inserted after only their first child, according to Zenz's report.
"China is trying to reduce birth rates in Xinjiang because this was a region where birth rates were the higher than the rest of the country. And in a sense it was seen to be out of control. And of course it makes the Uyghurs harder to control. The more people you have, the harder they are to account for," Zenz said.
The report also aligns with witness testimony from Xinjiang detention centers where multiple women have described being given injections and pills which stopped their periods.
Uyghur exile Dawut said she spent about three months in a detention center from March 2018. Inside the center, she said she was forcibly given medication, after which she stopped menstruating.
CNN spoke to an ethnic Uyghur and doctor from Xinjiang, who asked to go only by her first name, Gulgine, for fear of retribution.
Gulgine fled to Turkey in 2012 and set up a clinic in Istanbul in 2013. She said since then she has examined around 300 exiled Uyghur women from Xinjiang, and almost all of them had some form of birth control. About 80 had been sterilized.
Many of the women who had been permanently sterilized told Gulgine that they didn't know they had undergone the procedure until she told them.
Zenz said that his findings were the firmest proof yet of "genocide" in Xinjiang. "It specifically fulfills one of the five criteria of the United Nations convention for the prevention of genocide, which is the suppression of births," he said.
There is much more on this horrible story on News18.
Xinjiang, China
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