UK’s Prince Andrew ignores pretrial hearing in US sex abuse case,
says he was served summons incorrectly
And, of course, we all know Prince Andrew would never
do anything improperly
13 Sep, 2021 17:12
Prince Andrew, the British royal accused of sexual abuse in a lawsuit by one of Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged victims, was not represented at a pretrial hearing in New York, with his lawyers saying he was improperly served papers.
The Duke of York was served legal papers late last month, ahead of a trial in which he is accused of sexual assault, battery and inflicting emotional distress on Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who also claims to have been abused by deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein when she was under the age of 18.
The civil case began in New York on Monday with a pretrial hearing. However, court documents filed by Andrew’s legal team state that the disgraced prince is contesting the manner in which he was served the court summons, which was handed to police security outside the Royal Lodge in Windsor, England, instead of directly to Andrew by an agent of the crown.
Andrew was not going to be represented at the pretrial hearing, the Times reported, as doing so would have amounted to recognizing the summons.
The Queen’s second son has denied ever having sexual relations with Giuffre and told the BBC in 2019 he had “no recollection” of ever meeting her. However, he has been photographed with his arm around Giuffre.
Also present in the infamous photograph is Ghislaine Maxwell, a former girlfriend of Epstein and purported ‘madam’ who allegedly helped the notorious pedophile groom and abuse underage girls. Maxwell is currently held in a Manhattan jail awaiting her own criminal trial on sex trafficking charges, which is set to begin in November.
15th Sept 2021:
The high court has agreed to intervene if necessary to serve papers on the Duke of York in the sexual assault civil case filed against him in the US, it has said.
R. Kelly Sexually Abused Aaliyah When She Was 13 or 14,
Witness Says
The witness, a former backup performer, said she walked in on the singers as they
were engaged in a sex act around 1993, one year before they were illegally married.
procured by a member of his inner circle. Credit...Kevin Mazur/WireImage, via Getty Images
By Troy Closson and Emily Palmer, NY Times
Sept. 13, 2021 Updated 7:27 p.m. ET
A former backup performer for R. Kelly testified that she saw Mr. Kelly engaging in a sex act with the R&B singer Aaliyah around 1993, when Aaliyah was only 13 or 14 years old.
The woman, who testified under only the name Angela, told jurors at Mr. Kelly’s criminal trial in Brooklyn that she was performing with Mr. Kelly on tour when she went to visit the singer on his tour bus.
But as she began to open the door, Angela said, she saw Mr. Kelly, who was in his mid-20s at the time, and Aaliyah “in a sexual situation,” she told jurors. Aaliyah was seated in a chair, she said, and Mr. Kelly was kneeling and appeared to be performing a sex act on the girl.
Angela “closed the door abruptly,” she said, and never spoke with Mr. Kelly about what she saw.
The testimony came on the 15th day of Mr. Kelly’s trial, during which six accusers, including Angela, have said that Mr. Kelly had sex with them while they were underage. But Angela’s account stood apart from others: Aaliyah, whom Mr. Kelly married illegally in 1994, is the youngest girl that the singer has been accused of sexually abusing. And Angela became the first accuser to testify that she had seen the two engaged in sexual acts. Aaliyah, whose full name was Aaliyah Dana Haughton, died in a plane crash in 2001.
Mr. Kelly, 54, faces one count of racketeering and eight counts of violating the Mann Act, which prohibits transporting people across state lines for the purpose of prostitution. He has denied the accusations and pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.
Also on Monday, a second male accuser testified against Mr. Kelly. The witness, identified only as Alex, said Mr. Kelly groomed him for sex beginning when he was 16. He said that they began having sex when he was 20, and said that from 2007 to 2019 he was “brainwashed” by the singer.
Aaliyah, who was one of the most celebrated music stars of the 1990s, has been a significant focus of Mr. Kelly’s trial. The marriage of the two singers, using falsified documents when Aaliyah was 15 and Mr. Kelly was 27, prompted the first significant scrutiny of his encounters with underage girls.
Potential sexual crimes that date to the early 1990s would typically be too old to prosecute. But the racketeering charge, which claims that the singer, whose full name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, was the head of a criminal scheme that preyed on women and underage girls for sex, allows the government wider latitude.
Angela said she first met Mr. Kelly around 1991, when she was between 14 and 15 years old. The singer began to have sex with her while she was underage and a student in high school, she testified.
Angela recalled that Mr. Kelly often pressured her and several others who worked around him as backup performers to have sex.
She told jurors that she first met Aaliyah shortly before the young singer began to work on her first album, “Age Ain’t Nothing but a Number,” with Mr. Kelly. Aaliyah traveled on a tour with him to “get her feet wet” in the industry around 1992 or 1993, Angela told jurors, but it was during that trip, she said, that she saw the two engaged in a sexual act.
Aaliyah would have been 13 or 14 at the time.
On a separate stop in Washington, D.C., during the tour, Angela recalled that she and a group of other girls including Aaliyah were reprimanded for breaking the singer’s instructions. Angela told jurors that they had made a trip to a 7-Eleven convenience store for food, but that Mr. Kelly had told them not to leave their hotel. When he learned of their disobedience, he demanded sex, she said.
“Robert told all of us we would have to put out,” she said. “It was dues time,” she added, explaining to jurors that the singer often presented having sex with him as a form of paying their dues.
Angela said that she refused the singer’s advances. While Aaliyah was among the girls that Mr. Kelly had addressed, she was not aware whether the two had sexual encounters immediately following that incident.
Alex, the male accuser who appeared on Monday, also testified to “countless” sexual encounters with the R&B superstar and other women at Mr. Kelly’s direction.
There is much more to this story on the NY Times.
‘The FBI protected a child molester’: US gymnasts Biles & Maroney
hit out at authorities at hearing into pedophile doctor Nassar
15 Sep, 2021 16:43 / Updated 5 hours ago
US gymnasts Simone Biles and McKayla Maroney spoke about pedophile doctor Larry Nassar. © Reuters
Elite US gymnast Simone Biles has slammed the FBI investigation into the claims of sexual abuse by disgraced former team doctor Larry Nassar, as the star gave an emotional testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Biles' stinging remarks to Congress were delivered as part of a committee launched to determine mishandling of the FBI's investigation into Nassar, 58, who was convicted and sentenced to between 40 and 175 years in prison as a result of a prolonged series of sexual abuse of numerous young athletes under his care.
Biles and another athlete, Aly Raisman, appeared before the committee along with FBI Director Christopher Wray, who is expected to face an aggressive line of questioning from the committee. Gymnasts McKayla Maroney and Maggie Nichols are also set to testify.
"I don’t want another young gymnast, Olympic athlete or any individual to experience the horror that I and hundreds of others have endured, before during and continuing to this day in the wake of the Larry Nassar abuse," a tearful Biles said in her comments.
"To be clear, I blame Larry Nassar and I also blame an entire system that enabled and perpetrated his abuse. If you allow a predator to harm children, the consequences will be swift and severe."
The committee was formed following the release of a 119-page report from the Department of Justice Inspector General which unearthed several key mistakes and cover-ups by FBI agents involved with the case which are thought to have prolonged Nassar's abuse and led to further victims being targeted.
The Inspector General's report found that between the authorities being first notified of the allegations against Nassar and his eventual arrest in 2016, he abused at least 70 more women and girls - though legal counsel for them say that the real figure is likely closer to 120.
And let's not forget that most of these girls were likely molested several times.
It also found that the Indianapolis FBI field office has been unusually slow to respond to what was a lengthy list of serious allegations against the Olympic team doctor. This reportedly led to two FBI agents lying about their investigations into the case, one of whom is understood to have been fired in the past week.
"The scars of this horrific abuse continue to live with all of us … The impacts of this man’s abuse are not ever over or forgotten," continued Biles.
"USA Gymnastics and the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee knew that I was abused by their official team doctor long before I was ever made aware of their knowledge.
"We suffered and continue to suffer, because no one at the FBI, USAG, or the USOPC did what was necessary to protect us," she added. "We have been failed."
This is more than a failure. Some of the actions, or lack thereof, by the FBI were almost certainly deliberate. Therefore, it is not a failure but a conspiracy.
Nassar, who is currently incarcerated in a Florida penitentiary, was accused of the sexual abuse of more than 330 women and girls during his time working with USA Olympics and Michigan State University, with Biles – who is the most successful gymnast in history – offering a highly critical opinion of the FBI's investigation but adding that she was "relieved" since speaking out about her abuse after feeling "a lot of pressure" to keep it to herself.
McKayla Maroney, another victim of Nassar's, has also stated that she was sexually abused by Nassar over the course of a seven-year period which began when she was just 13-years-old.
"I was molested by the US gymnastics national team and Olympic team doctor Larry Nassar," said Maroney in her opening remarks to the committee. "And in actuality, he turned out to be more of a pedophile than he was a doctor."
Maroney also alleged that the FBI grossly mishandled the investigation and made "entirely false claims" related to her accusation - something she says took the FBI 17 months to document.
"What I’m trying to bring to your attention today is something incredibly disturbing and illegal," she added. "After telling my entire story of abuse to the FBI in the summer of 2015, not only did the FBI not report my abuse, but when they eventually documented my report, 17 months later, they made entirely false claims about what I said after reading the office of inspector general’s OIG report, I was shocked and deeply disappointed at this narrative.
"They chose to fabricate. They chose to lie about what I said and protect a serial child molester rather than protect not only me, but countless others."
Ex-House Speaker Dennis Hastert settles child sexual abuse
payments suit
FILE - This undated file photo provided by the Lake County Sheriff's Department shows ex-U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert. Ex-US House Speaker Hastert and a man who accused him of child sexual abuse reached a tentative out-of-court settlement Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2021, in Yorkville, Ill. (Lake County Sheriff Department via AP File)
By Michael Tarm - Associated Press -
Updated: 9:00 p.m. on Wednesday, September 15, 2021
YORKVILLE, Ill. — Former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert and a man who accused him of child sexual abuse reached a tentative out-of-court settlement Wednesday over Hastert’s refusal to pay the man $1.8 million - the outstanding balance in hush money that the Illinois Republican agreed to pay the man in 2010.
Lawyers would not release details of the settlement, arrived at just days before a civil trial in the case that was set to start. It would have focused on a novel legal issue about whether Hastert’s verbal agreement to pay $3.5 million to buy the silence of a man he abused as a teenager amounted to a legally binding contract.
The man has been referred to only as James Doe in court papers since the breach of contract lawsuit was filed in 2016 in Illinois court in Yorkville, Hastert‘s hometown just west of Chicago.
The hush-money deal would eventually lead to a federal criminal case against Hastert five years later and to public disgrace for the a GOP stalwart who, for eight years as House speaker, was second in the line of succession to the presidency. In the federal case, prosecutors said Hastert sexually abused at least four male students between the ages of 14 and 17 throughout his years at Yorkville High School. Hastert was in his 20s and 30s.
Federal prosecutors said during criminal proceedings that the hush-money deal was voluntarily entered into and that the victim never sought to blackmail Hastert that he’d go public about the abuse. The abuse happened when the victim was a high school wrestler and the now 79-year-old Hastert was his coach.
Hastert paid $1.7 million over four years but stopped the payments after the FBI questioned him in 2014 about illegally concealing huge cash withdraws from his bank. After Hastert pleaded guilty to a banking charge and was sentenced to over a year in prion in 2016. He couldn’t be charged with sexual abuse because the statute of limitations had long since run out.
After Hastert‘s sentencing, the victim sued for breach of contract to force Hastert to pay the outstanding $1.8 million.
A Kendall County judge, Robert Pilmer, announced that the trial was off on Wednesday afternoon during a hearing scheduled earlier to discuss logistics of jury selection - which was supposed to begin Monday.
After the hearing, attorneys for both the plaintiff and Hastert declined to provide any settlement details, including whether Hastert agreed to pay the man and, if so, how much.
Asked if the resolution of the civil case was a coda on a long, arduous journey for her client, plaintiff attorney Kristi Browne told reporters outside court: “It’s never over for a victim of childhood sexual abuse. …It impacts them for the rest of their lives.”
The sides planned to hammer out a written agreement over the next several days and notify the judge by Sept. 24 that it is completed, Browne said.
“Frankly, I was looking forward to the trial,” Browne said. “I would have loved to try this case. I think it was a good case. …But this is a resolution my client is comfortable with.”
Browne declined to say whether the judge’s recent decision to make her client’s name public at trial entered into his decision to settle now.
A trial would likely have been emotionally draining for both Hastert and the man he abused, both of whom could have been called to testify.
Questions were raised during the over four years since the suit was filed about whether Hastert’s legal team might try to suggest Doe was trying to extort the ex-Speaker.
Browne said Judge Pilmer ruled earlier that Hastert‘s lawyers could not attempt to make that claim. “We weren’t expecting that term to be used in court. We weren’t expecting that to be raised as a defense,” she said.
At his 2016 sentencing, U.S. District Judge Thomas M. Durkin repeatedly rebuked Hastert before issuing a 15-month sentence, telling him that his abuse devastated the lives of victims.
“Nothing is more stunning than to have the words ‘serial child molester’ and ‘speaker of the House’ in the same sentence,” Durkin told Hastert.
The judge also noted how Hastert had told investigators that “Individual A” - how the man in the civil case was referred to in the federal criminal case - was making a bogus claim of sex abuse to extort him for money.
“Accusing Individual A of extortion was unconscionable,” Durkin said. “He was a victim (of abuse) decades ago and you tried to make him a victim again.”
Federal prosecutors said it was Hastert who asked that lawyers not be brought in to put the $3.5 million deal in writing. They portrayed it as a legitimate deal between an abuser and the abused.
Hastert admitted in his criminal case that he abused the man and other athletes, though in some filings in the civil case he sometimes appeared to be backing away from that admission.
“I think he has said different things at different times,” Browne told reporters. “But I can’t speak to what his intent was or his motivations were.”
Asked by a reporter outside court Wednesday if Hastert was, in fact, reneging on that admission, Hastert‘s attorney, John Ellis, declined any comment.
Yorkville, Ill
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