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Nowhere is safe for children as perverts roam homes freely in Nairobi
By MERCY ADHIAMBO | The Standard
November 6th 2020 at 00:00:00 GMT +0300
The first time it happened, he told her it is a game. He fondled her and said it was their special moment they should secretly share when nobody was around.
She was nine years old. The stepfather who is a matatu driver was always home early. Her mother, a food vendor in Kawangware was always away.
“I was afraid, but he kept warning me that if anyone knew, he would kill my mother and something bad will happen to me,” she says.
With time, he became more daring. The evening when he went beyond touching and raped her, he told her it was because she was special. She cried afterwards, but he reminded her that she cannot tell anyone. Then vaginal itching started, followed by heavy bleeding.
“When she told her mother that she was having a discharge, he took a Bible and swore that he did not do it,” says the girl’s aunt.
They believed him. He continued to defile her as he had been doing even before the Covid-19 pandemic, and people had started noticing that she had changed.
“The teachers would tell us that she would get startled easily, and she barely concentrated in class,” says the girl’s aunt. When schools closed due to the pandemic, she went to visit her aunt, and it is then that she revealed what she was going through.
It is at Nairobi Women’s Hospital that they were hit with the reality of what the little girl had gone through. Vaginal infection, torn private parts, bleeding uterus, and heavy psychological torture were among the conditions she was treated for. The police arrested the man but he was released soon after.
“We were told cells are full, and because of coronavirus, they could not hold him,” says the girl’s aunt.
They now live in anxiety. The man hovers close, so the girl rarely leaves home. She takes a lot of medication, but her aunt says she prefers to sit alone, lost in her own thoughts.
“She is 10-years-old but has gone through so much. It is sad that the person who did it is free. We worry that he might harm her, so she never leaves the house. It is not the right way for a child to live,” says the aunt.
Hit her mother
Looking back, the aunt admits that the signs were all there. The clinginess and refusal to go home whenever the girl visited relatives should have made them dig deeper. The man had instructed the girl never to visit people.
“He would turn violent and hit her mother whenever he found out my niece had visited us. One time, she wanted to spend the night at her grandmother’s home, and the man got so furious, she had to be taken home at night,” she says.
Psychologists say most abusers always alienate their victims from the public. Sylvanus Wambani, a counsellor, notes one of the earliest signs that a child is being sexually abused by someone close to them is when the person gets paranoid about the child interacting with adults.
“They fear that the child will reveal the abuse to other adults. Some of them even pull the children out of school because teachers are always the first to notice abuse in children,” he says.
Sadly, he says that most of the sexual abuse cases are perpetrated by people close to the child. Even more confounding, Wambani notes is the fact that families prefer out of court settlement cases of sexual abuse to be handled without the involvement of authorities.
He adds that other signs of abuse are the child secluding themselves or becoming clingy to people they feel might save them from the situation.
Martha Sunda, director of Childline Kenya, an organisation that works with the government to stop child abuse paints a grim picture on the number of children who report sexual abuse.
“Since the set up of the Child Helpline in Kenya, the highest reported form of child abuse was child neglect consistently. This narrative has changed with the onset of Covid-19. In this season, defilement cases have skyrocketed, accounting for at least 63 new cases reported every month. This is alarming,” she says.
Face stigma
According to the agency’s data in the last few months, 32 children of up to 5 years old, 71 aged between 6 and 10 years, and 277 children aged between 11 and 17 years were sexually abused. The number, she says, is higher since most children rarely report sexual abuse.
She urges teachers to encourage children, even when using online learning platforms, to report cases of abuse.
Data from the latest Violence Against Children report by the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection Services indicates that two-thirds of females who experienced childhood sexual violence are likely to be victims again before they turn 18.
Those who report are likely to face stigma. The girl’s aunt says she has to look for a new school for her niece.
“She says she does not want to go back to her former school, because when the man was arrested at home, some of her classmates saw, and word went round,” she says.
While launching the report in July, Labour and Social Protection Cabinet Secretary Simon Chelugui said sexual violence experienced by girls aged between 13 and 17 years has increased.
UK teacher, 25, jailed for two years for sexually abusing pupil, 15, who considered genital mutilation to escape her
Abe Hawken
9 Nov 2020, 17:28
A TEACHER was today jailed for more than two years after sexually abusing a 15-year-old pupil who considered genital mutilation to escape her.
Fay Mcrobbie was 25 when she groomed the teenager at her school in Berkshire.
Reading Crown Court heard she forced the youngster to join her martial arts class where she kissed him. She later took his virginity at a friend's house.
But the schoolboy was so devastated by her demands, he admitted considering sexual harming to make himself less attractive to her.
The court was told how Mcrobbie, now 32, had planned a future for the pair before he ended their two-year relationship.
PUPIL AFFAIR
He claimed he did not love the learning support assistant anymore and when she found out he was starting a relationship with a girl of his own age she penned a letter threatening to kill herself.
The pupil, now 22, stood up in Crown Court to express how the teacher's controlling behaviour had deeply affected him.
He said: "Fay was relying on me emotionally, I felt responsible for her feelings. She would turn to me if she was feeling sad, I had started to distance myself from my friends and family.
"The relationship only got worse, arguments were getting more frequent and the reasons were getting more silly each time. I was becoming severely depressed as I could not speak to anyone, Fay was my only friend.
"I told her I did not love her anymore. She broke down saying she could not continue life if we were not together, she told me she wanted to kill herself. At the time I would have done anything to get her away from me, I even considered genital mutilation."
"Fay found out about my new girlfriend and she went crazy. She made it her mission to break us apart. At the time I would have done anything to get her away from me, I even considered genital mutilation - I thought if I had nothing there to interest her then she might leave me alone."
The pupil, who cannot be named for legal reasons, added: “I felt I wanted to run away, I was very much not ready, it was the first time I was naked in front of someone else. I felt dirty, I could not stand the sight of myself in the mirror and I felt my innocence had been taken away."
After the relationship had turned sour, the victim later disclosed his secret to an employer who, with his permission, informed police.
Mcrobbie was arrested on May 16 2019 and gave a "no comment" interview but later admitted three counts of causing a child to engage in sexual activity.
Defending the sobbing teacher, Robert Slinn, said: "Fay is appalled by her actions.
'YOU GROOMED HIM'
“She knew it was damaging at the time but she was fatalistic in her own view."
In sentencing Mcrobbie, Judge Paul Dugdale said: "The victim was 10 years younger than you when you first got involved with him. There is no doubt that you groomed him. You were in a position of trust as his teacher and you treated him like your boyfriend.
"You placed further pressure writing to him telling him and his girlfriend that you were going to kill yourself.
“The reality is not only were you acting in breach of trust, having a sexual relationship with a pupil 10 years younger than you, you were behaving in a controlling coercive way towards him because of the perception that you were in a relationship and you needed him to support you in the difficulties in your life.
"You used him for that purpose as well as using him for your own sexual gratification. He was not remotely able to deal with it and you caused a lot of damage.”
Mcrobbie, of Wallingford, Oxfordshire, was jailed for two years and four months and will be subject to a Sexual Harm Prevention Order for 10 years.
Ghana student ‘bites off armed robber’s penis when he broke in
and forced her to perform sex act’
Imogen Braddick
9 Nov 2020, 15:51
A STUDENT bit off an armed robber's penis after he allegedly broke into her room and forced her to perform oral sex, according to reports.
Emmanuel Ankron, 23, has been accused of raping the 24-year-old woman after he turned up at hospital covered in blood in Ghana.
The woman told police she woke to find a man breaking into her room while holding a sword in Obuasi at 2.30am on Saturday.
She says he drugged and raped her and then stole her TV, mobile phone and cash, reports the BBC.
He went to leave with the stolen items - but then returned and attempted to rape her a second time, it is alleged.
It was then that she bit hard on his penis, reportedly severing it from his body.
The organ was retrieved by police and sent to the hospital for possible reattachment, according to reports.
Ankron was arrested after turning up at the same hospital where his alleged victim was being treated for her injuries.
She is said to have recognised him at the clinic and told police.
The woman told local ADOM TV after she was released from hospital: "Around 2.30am, I was sleeping and I heard someone hitting my window and the person finally broke into the room - I saw him holding a cutlass.
"So when I woke up and asked him what he was coming here to do, he responded that he was coming to steal. Before I knew, he reached for my panties and (raped) me.
"He took my phone and money. So I pleaded with him to take the things, but he shouldn’t kill me. And he said before he leaves, he must have another round again."
She said she bit him as hard as she could, and he reacted by biting her on the back before running away.
A police statement reported by local media says: "The suspect, with blood oozing from the wound, ran away leaving the TV set and her mobile phone behind."
Penticton, B.C. man will spend 18 months behind bars for
collection of 27,000 images of child sexual abuse
Chelsea Powrie, Castanet - Nov 9, 2020 / 12:47 pm
Photo: Chelsea Powrie. A masked Kenneth Large enters Penticton court in September.
A Penticton man who pleaded guilty to collecting a stash of nearly 27,000 images and videos of child sexual abuse will spend 18 months in jail for his crime.
In court Monday, Judge Gregory Koturbash handed down his sentence to Kenneth Daniel Large, 49.
Large had previously admitted to his criminal collection and self-described compulsion. He was caught with his stash in October 2018, after the blog website Tumblr alerted authorities to potential child porn activity from an account registered to Large.
An RCMP search warrant executed on his phones, computers and other electronics revealed 26,366 images and clips of sexual abuse, some involving children as young as 6.
Crown counsel Ann Lerchs sought two years in jail for Large, followed by two years of probation, while Large's lawyer James Pennington argued for a two-year conditional sentence to be served in the community.
But Koturbash decided a conditional sentence would not do, given the volume and graphic nature of the collection, and the fact that a term of house arrest served in the very basement of his parents' house where Large spent so much of his time amassing the images in the first place did not seem like much of a punishment.
"There is nothing within my power that would redress the harm done [to the victims in the images]," Koturbash said. "The only way to acknowledge the harm is to send him to jail."
He added that the sentence should be a deterrent to others, to send "a message that if you are caught you will go to jail."
Koturbash did not go as high as two years in his sentence, noting mitigating factors like a prompt guilty plea, Large's past two years on bail with no breaches, expression of remorse and his history of seeking counselling.
He also noted in his sentencing that Large did not create the images and videos in question.
Large was escorted out of the courtroom in handcuffs to begin his 18 months of incarceration. Following that, Large will have strict probation requirements for three years, including limiting his allowed uses of the internet and access to children under 16.
He will also have a 10-year ban on attending any public space where children under 16 could reasonably be, and will be on the sex offender registry for 20 years.
Magnum Continued to Sell Photographs of Vulnerable Children,
Including Sexually Explicit Images
by Andy Day, Fstoppers
Three months after announcing an inquiry into its archive, it emerged that Magnum Photos was still selling sexually explicit images of what appear to be children through third-party websites. An image of a half-naked child playing with their genitals was also available for purchase. Further images described as “juvenile prostitutes” were still for sale on the Magnum website itself until they were removed on Friday.
Magnum temporarily took its archive offline in August and a number of images by photographer David Alan Harvey were withdrawn. Shortly afterwards, Magnum’s president, Olivia Arthur, announced an internal review. Despite this, Harvey’s sexually explicit photographs — tagged “teenage girl - 13 to 18” — were this week still available for purchase through third-party websites that license the photographs from Magnum.
A number of images by Patrick Zachmann appear to have been removed from Magnum’s archive on Friday afternoon (November 6) after concerns were raised on Twitter.
Perhaps most problematic is a photograph by Zachmann that shows a young child (described by the metadata as 0-3 years old), drinking from a bottle of milk, naked from the waist down, and holding his penis. The image is accompanied by the title “FRANCE. Paris. Summer 2001” and is presented without further context. It was available to purchase without any restrictions until it was removed from the Magnum website on Friday November 6, but it remained available to purchase as of Monday November 9 through a third-party website.
Three images featured identifiable children photographed in 1993 during a police raid in Thailand on what is described in the caption as a “‘gay’ beach.” Several photographs describe the children — whose faces are visible — as “juvenile prostitutes.”
In the U.K., victims of sexual offenses must be kept anonymous in order to protect the victim from the potential of further trauma. It is now widely understood that children cannot be “prostitutes” but are instead victims of sexual exploitation and abuse.
When asked about the removal of images from its archive last week and the continued presence of problematic images on third-party websites, Magnum provided the following statement:
Magnum announced earlier this year that we were embarking on a re-examination of our past archives, with outside guidance. Progress has already been made, but with almost one million images sitting across many different platforms and millions more tags amassed across our 73 year history, this was never going to be a quick process.
Everyone at Magnum remains committed to ensuring we carefully examine our archives to ensure we fully understand the implications of past work, both in terms of imagery and context. Images and tags that have been found to be inappropriate have been removed, but there remains much work to be done. This is a journey with plenty of road ahead of us.
Magnum photographers are assisting by looking at their own archives and highlighting any problematic images. We are also grateful to others outside the organisation who have brought to our attention additional materials that the review has not yet addressed.
To be clear, Magnum is a rights-managed business and images are not licensed without the express permission of photographers and the company. We often refuse requests to license sensitive images and we always require them to be used responsibly in appropriate context as part of our usage agreement.
When asked previously, Magnum offered no comment on whether it had appointed the outside guidance mentioned in its statement on August 14. It also would not comment on whether it has been in contact with law enforcement.
In August, Magnum explained that while its inquiry into Harvey’s photographs was ongoing, the assumption that Harvey's photographs might feature sexually exploited children was not correct. “It seems that at some point mis-tagging of these photos has led you to a mistaken conclusion that they represent something they do not,” Magnum stated in an email. The spokesperson for Magnum later clarified that “the review remains ongoing and Magnum has not reached a conclusion or made an assertion.”
Last month, in a separate issue relating to a historical accusation, Harvey was suspended by Magnum for one year following an investigation. A statement posted on the Magnum website explained that the investigation was carried out “by an independent investigator, Magnum’s board, with the assistance of outside legal counsel” and has “concluded that the behaviour represented a breach of its code of conduct and by-laws.”
Magnum has repeatedly refused to make its code of conduct public, stating that it is a confidential document.
92 y/o man jailed for sexual assault in Dorchester in 1980s
By Josie Klein
A 92-year-old man has been jailed for more than five years after he was convicted of sexually assaulting a young girl in the 1980s.
Formerly a successful businessman, Eric Alan Amey, from Puddletown, was sentenced today at Bournemouth Crown Court, days after being convicted of four counts of indecent assault of a child aged under 12.
The offences occurred on one occasion at some time between July 10 1984 and July 10 1988 in the Puddletown and Crossways areas.
Today, Amey was sentenced to five years and three months in prison. He has also been placed on the Sex Offenders Register for life.
Amey was a successful businessman in the local community and was well-known under the nickname 'Giant'.
Police officers said they hoped Amey's jail sentence would give some sense of closure to the victim and her relatives.
Detective Constable Holly Spillman, of Weymouth CID, said: "Eric Amey has been given a custodial sentence for the crimes he subjected his victim to.
"This offending has had a profound impact on the victim’s life and the lives of her close family. I hope the fact he has now been brought to justice will bring her the sense of closure she deserves.
"I would like to pay tribute to the victim for her bravery in coming forward, reporting these offences to Dorset Police and giving evidence in court.
"I would also like to commend the witnesses who gave evidence at the trial for the strength and courage they demonstrated throughout.
"I hope that the outcome of this case will give any other victims of sexual abuse the confidence to report offences, no matter when they were committed."
For non-urgent reports of child sexual abuse or to make an enquiry, go to www.dorset.police.uk and follow the ‘Do it online’ function.
Seriously, ‘Do it online’ to report sexual abuse? OMG!
Here you can pass all the details of your concerns to Dorset Police via the online enquiry form. You can also email 101@dorset.pnn.police.uk or call 101. If you believe a child is in immediate danger dial 999.
Alternatively, you can call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111 or, to report a case of child sexual abuse directly, go to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) at www.ceop.police.uk
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