Claudia Sheinbaum, Mexico's female president sexually assaulted in public

 

Mexican president's sexual assault triggers national outcry

In a reminder that no woman is safe; Mexico's first female president, Claudia Sheinbaum, is the victim of a public sexual assault. Our team in Mexico report on how the attack has triggered a national reckoning.

In a narco state, wandering through crowds without close security is very reckless behaviour. Hopefully, she will learn from this and be more careful.

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Official Turkish Body Said it was OK for Girls to Marry at 9, Claims it was Only Following Islam

The Caliphication of Turkey

Turkish schoolchildren in Ankara / Reuters / Umit Bektas

Turkey’s opposition have demanded a parliamentary investigation into the Directorate of Religious Affairs, an influential government department, after it proclaimed that Islamic Law approved of boys marrying at 12 and girls at 9.

In an online religious glossary intended for the public released earlier this week, Diyanet, as the body is known, stated that these are the earliest ages for children to reach adolescence, and once the threshold of emotional and physical maturity is crossed, they must be allowed to marry “to save themselves from adultery.”

Child rape is preferable to adultery in Islam.

The statement ignited an immediate firestorm of opposition from politicians, women's rights activists, and secularists.

"The Turkish Civil Code clearly states that adulthood begins at the age of 18. Early marriages violate children's rights, women's rights, human rights. As CHP MPs we ask parliament to investigate child marriages," said Murat Bakan, a deputy from the main opposition party on Twitter.

In the city of Trabzon, female protesters staged a demonstration holding placards reading, “Stop exploitation of children!” while in Izmir, the banners proclaimed, “Child marriage is a crime.”

The legal marriage age in Turkey is 18, with exceptions for 17-year-olds with parental consent, and 16 year-olds with a court-issued permit.

Diyanet has taken down its original entry, clarifying that it “had never approved child marriages and never will” and insisting it was merely interpreting Islamic scriptures. It also emphasized that “consent” was a necessary condition of any union.

A nine year old cannot give consent!

But the outrage, which has included calls and a Twitter hashtag campaign for Diyanet to be shut down, highlights the long-running controversies of underage marriage and Islamization in Turkey.

An academic study last year, estimated that as many as one in three Turkish marriages involve a partner who is under 18. The vast majority of the children involved are women, who are disproportionately likely to be poor, illiterate, living in rural areas, and later subjected to abuse and exploitation.

As if they could give consent!!!

There is concern that in conjunction with November’s mufti law – in which the ruling Islamist AKP party allowed sanctioned clerics, rather than state officials, to register marriages – will legitimize traditional child bride unions, reversing decades of progress.

Meanwhile, Diyanet, which was once a secular watchdog that oversaw restrictions on religious proselytizing, has, according to its critics, morphed into a powerful propaganda tool for the Islamist government.

Erdogan is slowly, patiently tuning Turkey into his own Caliphate.

Its budget has ballooned under former PM and current President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It has attracted scorn for its published rulings, including a (later withdrawn) fatwa that stated a father can desire his daughter, and another, that said it was sufficient for a man to “see his wife as his mother or sister” to divorce her.

Ex-Penn State President Convicted of Covering up Child Sexual Abuse by Football Coach

Former Penn State president Graham Spanier walks from the Dauphin County Courthouse Friday in Harrisburg, Pa. Spanier was convicted Friday of hushing up suspected child sex abuse in 2001 by Jerry Sandusky, whose arrest a decade later blew up into a major scandal for the university and led to the firing of beloved football coach Joe Paterno.

MATT ROURKE , THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
By MARK SCOLFORO / The Associated Press

HARRISBURG, Pa. – Former Penn State President Graham Spanier was convicted Friday of hushing up child sexual abuse allegations in 2001 against Jerry Sandusky, whose arrest a decade later blew up into a major scandal for the university and led to the firing of beloved football coach Joe Paterno.

The jury found Spanier guilty of one misdemeanor count of child endangerment over his handling of a complaint against the retired assistant football coach but acquitted him of conspiracy and a second child endangerment count.

Spanier, 68, showed no emotion when the verdict was read after 13 hours of deliberations. He could get up to five years in prison. His lawyer said he will appeal.

The trial centered on how Spanier and two other university administrators handled a complaint by graduate coaching assistant Mike McQueary, who said he reported seeing Sandusky sexually molesting a boy in a team shower in 2001. The three officials told Sandusky he could not bring children onto the campus anymore but did not report the matter to police or child welfare authorities.

Sandusky was not arrested until 2011, after an anonymous tip led prosecutors to investigate the shower incident. He was convicted the next year of sexually abusing 10 boys and is serving 10 to 30 years behind bars. At least four victims at Sandusky’s trial said they were molested after 2001.

“Evil in the form of Jerry Sandusky was allowed to run wild,” prosecutor Patrick Schulte told the jury.

The scandal sent shockwaves through Penn State. It led to the ouster of both Spanier and Paterno and resulted in the school paying out more than $90 million to settle claims by over 30 Sandusky accusers. In addition, the NCAA fined Penn State $48 million and briefly erased more than 100 of Paterno’s football victories from the record books.

The Hall of Fame coach was never charged with a crime. He died of cancer in 2012 at age 85.

Another prosecutor, Laura Ditka, said Spanier was “convicted for all the children who came to Penn State after what Mike McQueary saw that night.”

Two of Spanier’s former lieutenants, athletic director Tim Curley and vice president Gary Schultz, pleaded guilty to misdemeanor child endangerment charges a week ago and testified against Spanier. But all three denied they were told the encounter in the shower was sexual in nature.

“The verdict, their words and pleas indicate a profound failure of leadership,” Penn State said in a statement. “And while we cannot undo the past, we have re-dedicated ourselves and our university to act always with the highest integrity, in affirming the shared values of our community.”

The prosecution’s key evidence included notes and email exchanges in which the three debated what to do after McQueary’s report.

Spanier approved a plan to tell the retired coach to stop bringing children to athletic facilities and to inform The Second Mile, a charity for at-risk youth that Sandusky founded.

At one point, the administrators planned to inform the state Department of Public Welfare. Instead, Spanier approved putting that on hold, and the agency was never contacted. That decision formed the heart of the case against him.

“The only downside for us is if the message isn’t ‘heard’ and acted upon, and we then become vulnerable for not having reported it,” Spanier told Curley and Schultz in 2001 in the email exchange. He called the plan “humane and a reasonable way to proceed.”

Spanier’s attorney, Sam Silver, said the case involved judgment calls by the administrators. He said there was no evidence of a crime by Spanier.

Ditka said during closing arguments that the three university leaders wanted to protect the university’s reputation at the expense of children.

“They took a gamble,” she told the jury. “They weren’t playing with dice. They were playing with kids.”

A report commissioned by the university and conducted by former FBI Director Louis Freeh concluded that Paterno and the three others hushed up the allegations against Sandusky for fear of bad publicity.

Freeh released a statement Friday night blasting the men and saying he was “very saddened once again for the many victims.”

“Graham Spanier, Gary Schultz and Timothy Curley were the most powerful men who ran the Pennsylvania State University. Today, they are convicted criminals,” he wrote. “And Joe Paterno’s once iconic legacy is forever marred by his own decision to do nothing when he had the chance to make a real difference.”

He said the conviction completely confirms and verifies the findings of his report. He also called for current Penn State President Eric Barron and several board members to step down, saying they are “more concerned about bringing back a bronze statue than worrying about the multiple child victims who have forever been so grievously harmed.” He was apparently referring to a statue of Paterno that was removed in 2012.

Wow! Who Saw That Coming? Turkish Government Listens to People!

Turkey withdraws bill after protests over

child-sexual assault clause

Rare concession to popular will comes after critics say freeing offenders from jail if they married their victims would legitimise rape

Women protesting in Ankara last weekend. One placard reads: ‘Rape cannot be pardoned.’ Photograph: Adem Altan/AFP/Getty

Kareem Shaheen, The Guardian

Turkey’s government has withdrawn a controversial bill that would have granted amnesty to some men convicted of child sex assault if they married their victims.


Erdogan's daughter Dep Chief Woman's Rights Group

The announcement on the bill, a rare concession to popular opposition in the country, came after street protests at the weekend and criticism from civil society groups, including a women’s rights organisation whose deputy chief is President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s daughter, Sümeyye Erdoğan Bayraktar.

The proposed amnesty for some child sex offenders was part of a larger bill approved by lawmakers in a hearing to reform the criminal code. It would have suspended the sentences of men convicted of sexual assault of a minor if they married their victims and could prove the act was carried out without force or “restriction on consent”.

The Turkish prime minister, Binali Yıldırım, had said the bill would be withdrawn in its current form and revised, but the justice minister, Bekir Bozdağ, later said the government would not seek to table a new proposal on the matter.

“If the political parties achieve a broad consensus about this issue in the future, then it can come to our agenda again, but the issue is now closed,” he said, speaking at the parliament in Ankara.

Rights groups had condemned the bill, and weekend protests drew thousands of people. The UN had also criticised it, saying it would would weaken Turkey’s ability to combat sexual abuse and child marriage.

“It would create a perception of impunity in favour of perpetrators of such child rights violations,” Unicef said. “In addition, it would increase the risk for further victimisation of the child if she marries the perpetrator of the sexual abuse.”

In his first public comments on the amendment, Erdoğan earlier signalled that it should be withdrawn and that lawmakers ought to seek a bill that had “broad” backing from society.

“I see great benefit in solving this problem in a broad consensus, taking into account criticism and recommendation from different sections of society,” Erdogan told the state-run Anadolu news agency.

Did Erdogan fall on his head? Does his daughter have that much influence over him that he behaves out of character? Or has the fact that he has arrested everyone who might have ever thought a negative thought about him leave him with the knowledge that protesters might genuinely be concerned about what they are protesting rather than being pawns of his enemies? Whatever the story is, it looks good on him and might even give some hope to Americans and their concern over Ivanka Trump's influence over her father.

Sümeyye Erdoğan -  London School of Economics and Political Science (Hmmm, wonder what her ambitions are?)

The ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) said the particularly controversial element of bill was aimed at resolving the custom of child marriage common in rural areas of the country, and would not pardon rapists.

Researchers from Gaziantep University in 2013 had estimated that one in three marriages in Turkey involved a person under 18, and that the vast majority were illiterate.

The bill would target about 3,000 men who are jailed for breaking the law on child marriage after conducting a religious ceremony with the family and girl’s “consent”. Critics have pointed out that underage girls cannot give meaningful consent.

At least not a consent free of considerable pressure.

Well done, Erdogan! Never thought those words would ever come out of my fingers.

Voice Shaking, Michelle Obama Calls Trump Comments on Women ‘Intolerable’

Is the wrong woman running for president?

Michelle Obama is the best political speaker in America today

Michelle Obama Denounces Trump’s Words on Women

By REUTERS 1:45 Video The first lady, Michelle Obama, on Thursday spoke out against Donald J. Trump’s comments about women. “This is not something that we can ignore,” she said, while campaigning in New Hampshire for Hillary Clinton.

By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, NYTimes

MANCHESTER, N.H. — Michelle Obama issued a deeply personal denunciation of Donald J. Trump on Thursday for his lewd comments about women, exhorting voters in scathing terms to reject his candidacy and the campaign’s increasingly vulgar tenor by backing Hillary Clinton as a matter of conscience.

“This is not normal. This is not politics as usual,” Mrs. Obama said in a 25-minute speech here during which her voice at times quavered with emotion. “This is disgraceful, it is intolerable, and it doesn’t matter what party you belong to,” she added. “No woman deserves to be treated this way — none of us deserves this kind of abuse.”

In remarks that were among the most outspoken by a first lady in modern history, Mrs. Obama, who has mostly avoided the political limelight, positioned herself at the center of a campaign she characterized as having devolved into “madness.” (Theatre of the absurd?). She implored voters to “stand up and say enough is enough.”

“I can’t believe that I’m saying that a candidate for president of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women,” the first lady told several hundred voters at a university here.

“I can’t stop thinking about this — it has shaken me to my core,” Mrs. Obama said, reacting to the emergence last week of a recording in which Mr. Trump was heard coarsely boasting about kissing and groping women without their consent.

What followed from the first lady, who has styled herself America’s “mom in chief,” was a message about empowering women to rise up against sexual abuse and harassment in every context. The speech was all the more striking because it was delivered on behalf of Mrs. Clinton, whose experience with her husband’s infidelity all but disqualifies her from speaking in similarly vivid terms.

Aides said Mrs. Obama had always planned to reshape her stump speech as Election Day neared to focus more on women and the significance of electing the first female president. But when Mr. Trump’s remarks surfaced on Friday, she ripped up that speech, ultimately settling on one that was all the more biting for its intimate tone.

“I feel it so personally,” Mrs. Obama said on Thursday, placing her hand against her heart for emphasis as she spoke about Mr. Trump’s treatment of women. “It’s like that sick, sinking feeling you get when you’re walking down the street minding your own business and some guy yells out vulgar words about your body, or when you see that guy at work that stands just a little too close, stares a little too long so you feel uncomfortable in your own skin.”


Women listening to Michelle Obama speak during a campaign rally for Hillary Clinton on Thursday in Manchester, N.H. “This is disgraceful, it is intolerable, and it doesn’t matter what party you belong to,” Mrs. Obama said of Donald J. Trump’s lewd comments about women. JIM COLE / ASSOCIATED PRESS

“I can tell you that the men in my life do not talk about women this way,” Mrs. Obama added. “To dismiss this as everyday locker room talk is an insult to decent men everywhere.”

The speech was a riveting moment in an already remarkable campaign, coming just before Mr. Trump appeared in West Palm Beach, Fla., to angrily denounce as “false smears” news reports in which several women said he had made unwanted advances on them.

The New Hampshire rally was Mrs. Obama’s sixth campaign appearance for Mrs. Clinton in a month, and the first lady broke from her usual approach and did not speak about Mrs. Clinton’s qualifications for the presidency until halfway through her speech. She said the former secretary of state “embodies so many of the values that we try hard to teach our young people,” and ticked off highlights from Mrs. Clinton’s résumé, saying that any parent would be proud to raise a daughter like her.

But she also sought to appeal to those unenthusiastic about Mrs. Clinton or politics itself, issuing a call to voters across the political spectrum who have been alienated by a contest dominated by outrageous statements and partisan rage.

“We simply cannot endure this, or expose our children to this any longer — not for another minute, and let alone for four years,” Mrs. Obama said. “This has got to stop right now.”

She argued that even voters repulsed by the tone of the campaign — “we are drowning in it,” she said at one point — must consider the norms of behavior they wanted to instill in their children.

“In our hearts, we all know that if we let Hillary’s opponent win this election, then we are sending a clear message to our kids that everything they’re seeing and hearing is perfectly O.K. We are validating it. We are endorsing it,” Mrs. Obama said. “We’re telling our sons that it’s O.K. to humiliate women. We’re telling our daughters that this is how they deserve to be treated. We’re telling all our kids that bigotry and bullying are perfectly acceptable in the leader of their country.”

I have been saying for months now that Trump talks, acts, and thinks like an adolescent. I would prefer someone with at least a semblance of maturity running the biggest military in the world.

Instead, she framed the decision to vote for Mrs. Clinton as akin to a woman’s choice to speak out in the face of sexual mistreatment or violence.

“We need to recover from our shock and depression and do what women have always done in this country,” Mrs. Obama said. “We need you to roll up your sleeves. We need to get to work.”

Video Shows Islamic State Sales of Yazidi Sex Slaves in Turkey

Caution: another very difficult read

German public television aired a segment this month about the Islamic State (ISIS/ISIL) selling Yazidi women in Turkey

Yazidi Family Reunited after purchase negotiated with ISIS in Turkey

Reuters
by MARY CHASTAIN

The station ADR discovered that ISIS used a “liaison office” in Gaziantep, which is also known as Antep, in Turkey near the Syrian border.

Note: video is in German

Other stations NDR and SWR reported:

IS [Islamic State] offers women and underage children in a kind of virtual slave market with for-sale photos. … The transfer of money, as the reporter discovered, takes place through a liaison office in Turkey. …

For weeks, NDR and SWR accompanied a Yazidi negotiator, who, on behalf of the families, negotiates with the IS for the release of the slaves and their children. … the women are sold in a digital slave market to the highest bidder. 15,000 to 20,000 US dollars are a typical price. Similar sums for ransom are also required to free Yazidis. The money is then transferred via IS-liaison offices and middlemen to the terrorist group.

NDR and SWR were present at the liberation of a woman and her three small children, aged between two and four years old, and followed the negotiations. How many Yazidi slaves are still ‘owned’ by IS is unclear. Experts estimate that there still could be hundreds.

The Yazidi negotiator worked to liberate this woman and her children

The woman embraces her relatives after being reunited

The negotiator “transferred more than” $2.5 million to the terrorist group to rescue “250 Yazidi women and children.”

The negotiator meets with the ISIS operatives to deliver $2.5 million

ISIS sellers typically demand between $15,000 and $20,000 for each woman. The Yazidi families sacrifice all their money and savings to rescue their loved ones. NDR also reported that Iraqi Kurdish President Masoud Barzani has paid for some of the ransom demands, even though the money lands in the hands of ISIS.

The reports have resulted in the Gaziantep Bar Association filing “a criminal complaint against” law enforcement in the city for having “committed neglect of duty and misconduct by not taking required measures, and not carrying out preventive and required intelligence activities before the media covered the said incidents.” They demanded the courts prosecute those responsible for these crimes.

Wow, that's courageous!

“The tragic reality is that Gaziantep is a crowded city; the suicide bombers easily cross [to Syria and Iraq]. Unfortunately, Gaziantep exports terrorism,” explained lawyer Bektas Sarkli, the head of Gaziantep Bar Association. “When you see the ammunition captured and especially take into account the money transferred here [it is clear that] ISIS easily shelters in this city. Gaziantep is the logistic site of ISIS.”

Islamic State jihadists target Yazidis because they consider the minority religious sect “devil-worshippers.” In summer 2014, ISIS terrorists invaded northern Iraq, where most Yazidis live, killing men and kidnapping women and girls for sex slavery. Mirza Ismail, founder and chairman of the Yazidi Human Rights Organization, spoke to Congress about the actions, which Yazidis argue fit the legal definition of genocide:

According to many escaped women and girls to whom I spoke in Northern Iraq, the abducted Yazidis, mostly women and children, number over 7,000.

Some of those women and girls have had to watch 7-, 8-, and 9-year-old children bleed to death before their eyes, after being raped by ISIS militia multiple times a day.

- with the unequivocal approval of Mohammed, Allah's messenger

I met mothers, whose children were torn from them by ISIS. These same mothers came to plead for the return of their children, only to be informed, that they, the mothers, had been fed the flesh of their own children by ISIS. Children murdered, then fed to their own mothers.

ISIS militias have burned many Yezidi girls alive for refusing to convert and marry ISIS men. 

Young Yezidi boys are being trained to be jihadists and suicide bombers. All of our temples in the ISIS controlled area are exploded and destroyed. Why? Because we are not Muslims, and because our path is the path of peace. For this, we are being burned alive: for living as men and women of peace.

Gatestone Institute also points out Turkey’s alleged history of aiding rebels and jihadists in Syria since the civil war broke out in 2011. Terrorists took over Azaz, a key town in Syria near the border of Turkey in September 2013, after Turkey “vocally supported the fight against forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and allowed weapons to cross into Syria on its southern border.” The capture of Azaz allowed easier access to Syria to the jihadists. Two months later, CNN reported on a secret route from Turkey to Syria used by Islamic State jihadists.

Turkey supports ISIS
In July 2014, an anonymous man claiming to be an ISIS jihadist told The Jerusalem Post that Turkey funds the terrorist group. A Turkish nurse only known as E.G. complained to authorities that she is tired of treating members of ISIS. She said she is “disturbed” the militants receive treatment in Turkish hospitals even though they hold several Turkish nationals as hostages. A Western official told The Guardian that evidence seized at the compound of Abu Sayyaf, an ISIS leader, proved links between the terrorist group and the Turkish government.

Turkey joined the fight against ISIS over the summer after a suicide bomber killed 32 people in Suruç, and a militant murdered a Turkish soldier.

However, most of their bombs and bullets seem to have been directed toward Kurdish Peshmerga who are fighting ISIS. Kurds are a threat to separate from Turkey and Sultan Erdogan would be happy to eliminate as many as possible.

I curse every cent of that $2.5 million and every other cent ISIS makes on it's selling of women and children. May it bring nothing but destruction upon those who use it.

Afghanistan Vows Measures Against Child Sex Abuse

Add captFILE - Children walking through the prison in Badam Bagh,
Afghanistan's central women's prison, in Kabul.ion

Ayaz Gul
VOA
Afghanistan's government say it has undertaken “serious measures” to enforce the law and prevent sexual abuse reportedly committed by local police commanders against children.

A presidential statement issued Wednesday evening in Kabul has condemned as an "iniquitous, inhumane and irreligious act” the abuse, known as bacha baazi,  or “boy play."

A New York Times report this week detailed extensive rape and other sexual abuse of young boys at the hands of local Afghan police commanders and American-trained Afghan militias. It went on to allege that U.S. soldiers were ordered not to intervene in order to maintain good relations with Afghan allies.

Non-intervention

The report has cited court records and interviews with U.S. military officers. It notes that in certain instances American soliders have been disciplined for disobeying the policy of non-intervention.

President Ashraf Ghani spoke to all security authorities of the country via video teleconference and directed them to prevent “recurrence of any such acts through taking instructive, reformative and punitive measures,” the presidential statement said.

“The laws, culture and religious values of the people of Afghanistan recognize sexual abuse of children as one of the severest crimes and violations of human rights,” it quoted Ghani as saying.

The Afghan government warned that “commission of such crimes, especially in the ranks of the Armed Forces, is intolerable; it will not hesitate to take measures to prevent this abominable phenomenon,” the statement added.

Investigation planned 

It also directed relevant government institutions to form a working committee for investigating and monitoring, and coming up with an oversight mechanism to prevent and prosecute the perpetrators of sexual abuse of children.

In his response to the reported charges on Tuesday, Commander of the NATO’s Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan, U.S. General John Campbell rebuffed the claims that American soldiers and Marines were told to ignore complaints of the sexual abuse of young boys.

“I personally have served multiple tours of duty in Afghanistan and am absolutely confident that no such theater policy has ever existed here, and, certainly, no such policy has existed throughout my tenure as commander,” Campbell said.

He added that "any suspicions of sexual abuse will be immediately reported to the chain of command, regardless of who the alleged perpetrators or victims are."

U.S. officials say that General Campbell has also raised the issue with President Ghani and secured a commitment from him that the Afghan government would redouble their efforts to investigate, and hold accountable those who are guilty of perpetrating such acts.

Raised what issue? He just said there was no issue!

Concern that sexual abusers of children are able to act with impunity was raised earlier this year by the U.S. State Department. Its Trafficking in Persons report noted that "Some law enforcement officials, prosecutors and judges accept bribes from or use their relationships with perpetrators of bacha baazi to allow them to escape punishment."