Swedish Justice Ministry Manipulated Crime Statistics – Study

I, and many others, have been complaining about this for years. The government is hiding the reality of gang violence, sexual assaults, gang rapes, and organized crime coming from migrants who were let into the country by the tens of thousands with little or no vetting. The government's stupidity and lack of honesty and responsibility has left Swedish people, especially young girls/women unaware and unprotected. They should be charged with complicity in every rape of a Swedish woman/girl by a migrant.

FILE PHOTO: A police officer investigates the scene of a fatal shooting in Malmo, Sweden

© Reuters / Johan Nilsson

Sweden’s Ministry of Justice pressured the country’s Crime Prevention Council to hide, manipulate, or ignore potentially embarrassing crime statistics, a university study has found.

Sweden’s Crime Prevention Council (Brå) has a difficult task. In a country where media outlets omit police-circulated descriptions of suspects’ ethnicity, and the government actively downplays the surge in gun crime and bombings in its immigrant ghettoes, Brå is charged with compiling factual, accurate crime statistics.

Stockholm was shaken by three explosions in one night last week. But the blasts didn’t even make headlines. With violence rising, the country’s government seems more concerned with downplaying the problem instead of tackling it.

According to a study published by Linköping University this week, the government intervenes here too to downplay “politically sensitive” data.

Employees told the university researchers that their managers – acting on orders from the country’s Justice Ministry – instructed them to manipulate results on “hot potato” issues. Presumably, these results were ones that could embarrass the government, and likely dealt with issues of race or immigration.

One interviewee stated that “methodological deficiencies” was the reason given for the change.

Brå’s own statistics show an upsurge in lethal violence since 2014, particularly among criminals and in disadvantaged and immigrant neighborhoods. They also show a sharp rise in sexual violence, assaults, threats and robbery since 2015, when the country welcomed more than 160,000 refugees and migrants – more per capita than any other European country.

Yet the government would rather these statistics remained hidden. One Brå employee compiling a report on violent crime remarked that the government delayed its publication until after last year’s election, due to its “politically sensitive results.” The report in question was also seen as humiliating, as it directly contradicted an earlier report that used a different method to conclude that violent crime was decreasing.

'A different method' - that would be like 'creative accounting'!

When it was eventually published, the report was allegedly relegated to Brå’s website, and was not printed.

Many interviewees feel that rather the organization’s problems stem from its organization under the Ministry of Justice. Rather than working independently to advise policymakers, they feel that they are working to advance their agendas instead.  

With gang crime and grenade attacks ongoing in Swedish cities, Justice Minister Morgan Johansson was the subject of a no-confidence vote called by the right-wing Sweden Democrats party last month. Johansson survived the motion, but unfiltered crime statistics have fueled Sweden’s opposition. If the Linköping University report is to be taken at face value, his ministry has every reason to stifle crime statistics.

Against this background, a number of Swedish industry leaders have sounded the alarm. Volvo CEO Hakan Samuelsson said in July that his company is struggling to attract foreign experts due to crime concerns, while Scania CEO Leif Östling warned in October that Sweden has “taken in far too many people from outside,” and predicted “internal wars” unless the government clamps down on immigration.

Meanwhile, the Sweden Democrats, who push a tough-on-crime, anti-immigration platform, have reached their highest ever level of public support. According to a Statistics Sweden poll published this month, the party scored 22.6 percent, making them the country’s second biggest party.

Trials, Investigation, Statute of Limitations, Complicity on This Week's Catholic PnP List

Frenchman takes groping complaint against AB to Vatican

VATICAN CITY — One of a half-dozen men who have accused the Vatican’s ambassador to France of groping them said Wednesday he plans to take his legal complaint directly to the Vatican, alleging the Holy See had invoked diplomatic immunity for the high-ranking churchman in a French criminal probe.

Mathieu De La Souchere filed a police report in Paris earlier this year accusing Archbishop Luigi Ventura of touching his buttocks repeatedly during a Jan. 17 reception at Paris City Hall. De La Souchere met with one of Pope Francis’ sex abuse advisers about the allegations Wednesday.

The Paris prosecutor’s office has opened an investigation into alleged sexual aggression. The Vatican said Ventura was cooperating with the investigation. But De La Souchere said the French case was essentially stalled over the immunity question.

“The French government’s request to the Vatican to lift the diplomatic immunity remained unanswered,” he told The Associated Press.

De La Souchere said his lawyer plans to file a complaint with the Vatican City State’s criminal tribunal next week. The tribunal largely follows the Italian penal code and is separate from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which handles sex abuse-related crimes under the Catholic Church’s canon law.

“This new judicial step here in the Vatican, we hope, will be one more step toward the trial that we all the victims in France are waiting for,” De La Souchere said after meeting with the Rev. Hans Zollner, a founding member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors.

De La Souchere met with Zollner and another man who has accused Ventura. Catholic online site Crux has said as many as a half-dozen men have accused Ventura of unwanted groping over the course of his diplomatic postings, which have included Canada and Chile.

Ventura has repeatedly denied wrongdoing. His French lawyer, Bertrand Ollivier, did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

The archbishop’s whereabouts are unknown, but he attended a meeting at the Vatican last month of all the Holy See’s apostolic nuncios, or ambassadors.

Vatican spokesman Alessandro Gisotti said Ventura “has fully and voluntarily cooperated with French judicial authorities who are in charge of his case, and will continue to do so.” He didn’t immediately respond when asked about the status of Ventura’s immunity.

Ventura did agree to investigators’ request to take part in a “confrontation” with his accusers in May, according to French media reports. All accused him of putting his hands on their buttocks, sometimes repeatedly, or making other inappropriate gestures.

Speaking to one alleged victim, identified as Benjamin G., Ventura first claimed he didn’t remember the incidents in question and then said Benjamin misinterpreted his actions, according to French newspaper Le Monde.

The Vatican has previously recalled its diplomats when they get into trouble during overseas postings, as is common for governments with diplomats serving abroad.

In the most high-profile case, the Vatican recalled its ambassador to the Dominican Republic and prepared to put him on trial in the city state’s criminal tribunal for allegedly sexually abusing young boys. But he died before trial started.

I'm sure he didn't miss-out on his trial!

More recently, the Vatican convicted a diplomat from its U.S. embassy (2nd story on link) for possession and distribution of child pornography and sentenced him to five years in prison.

The Vatican also invoked immunity during the recently-concluded trial in France that convicted French Cardinal Philippe Barbarin of failing to report an admitted pedophile to police. Also accused in the case was a Vatican official, Cardinal Luis Ladaria, who now heads the Vatican office in charge of handling sex abuse cases.

The Vatican invoked Ladaria’s immunity as a public official of a foreign sovereign — the Holy See — and he was not prosecuted. Barbarin enjoyed no such immunity as the archbishop of Lyon and was convicted and given a six-month suspended sentence (3rd story on link).

Francis recently named a temporary administrator to run the Lyon archdiocese after Barbarin stepped aside pending his appeal.

Catholic Church allowed Brother John Laidlaw to keep teaching after abuse, court hears

By Karen Percy

John Laidlaw used a walking stick as he entered the County Court of Victoria this morning. (ABC News)

A teenager molested by Christian Brother John Laidlaw in the 1980s has told a Melbourne court he thought he was being "punished by God" when he was sexually assaulted at his family home.

The man is one of six victims sexually assaulted by Laidlaw from 1963 to 1984 when he taught at a number of Catholic schools, including St Joseph's in Warrnambool and Parade College in Bundoora.

Brother Laidlaw taught all six boys who were aged between 12 and 17 when they were assaulted.

In a victim impact statement read to the County Court, the victim known as Master 16 said he lost his innocence when Brother Laidlaw forced him to perform oral sex when he was home sick one day.

"He broke me in a million pieces," he said. "I trusted him. I respected him. He made a conscious decision to betray that trust. I thought I was being punished by God."

Laidlaw pleaded guilty to seven charges including indecent assault and sexual penetration.

The court heard he abused his role as a teacher and as a sports coach, using the boys' injuries as an excuse to offer sports massages, which became abuse.

"He was scared and confused as to why the offender was touching his genitals," prosecutor Diana Piekusis told the court about Master 13.

Laidlaw wrote letters to victims

One complainant was 12 years old when he was assaulted by Laidlaw after being injured during a football game.

Six years later, the complainant told his father of the assault, the court heard. But the court heard that his father, who was also a police officer, laughed at him.

You can't imagine what it is like to go to a parent with something you think is important, and they just laugh at you. 

Master 17 addressed the court, saying he had flashbacks of the time and that his mother struggled with learning "what she suspected".

At the end of his speech, he turned to Laidlaw in the back of the court and said: "I genuinely forgive you. Shalom." Shalom is the Hebrew word for peace.

The court heard Laidlaw took a sabbatical in the US in the early 1990s, to get his life in order, undertaking a 12-step program to deal with alcohol abuse and his sexual addiction.

It was during that time Laidlaw wrote letters of apology to two of the boys. Each letter praised the boy's courage and honesty, and apologised for "the hurt you have been caused".

Makes it sound like it wasn't he who caused that hurt.

In 2017, when he was interviewed by police over the charges, the court heard he downplayed the letters, saying he did not recall many of the acts he was accused of.

Laidlaw continued to teach after being found 'unfit'

The court was told the Catholic Church received a "visitation" report in 1973 after Laidlaw left St Patrick's College in Ballarat.

That report determined that Laidlaw was "unfit for the job" after "revelations of improper conduct" and "serious acts of indiscretion."

Laidlaw taught at at least eight more schools before retiring in 1993.

Defence lawyer Simon Moglia admitted that by the 1980s Laidlaw's "conduct had clearly escalated leading to charges of a more serious nature".

He also acknowledged the fact the boys had to "continue in school each week to deal with Brother Laidlaw added to the harm and the difficulties caused to them".

"It is a shame to all of us that the community and those around the victims have not understood that and have not heard complaints as they should have been heard," Mr Moglia told the court.

"[Laidlaw] too at the time of the offending did not appreciate — like many of us — the gravity of the consequences of these actions."

He said his client admitted there was a "clear breach of trust ... clear indecency and sexual assault".

Judge Peter Berman will sentence Laidlaw on July 18.

Head of top Catholic school stands down
after damning report

Inspection found Ampleforth college failed to meet child protection standards

Harriet Sherwood Religion correspondent

England’s most prestigious Catholic school, Ampleforth college, is facing a new leadership crisis after an inspection found it was failing to meet child protection standards.

The college confirmed its acting head, Deirdre Rowe, was stepping down after just 10 months in the job, and an interim head would be appointed.

The move follows an unannounced inspection to monitor progress, carried out in May at the request of the Department for Education. According to a report in Catholic journal the Tablet, the highly critical inspection report found the school did not meet standards for safeguarding, leadership, behaviour, combating bullying and complaints handling.

The north Yorkshire college was founded more than 200 years ago by Benedictine monks at Ampleforth Abbey. Its former pupils include Julian Fellowes, the Conservative peer and creator of Downton Abbey, the actor Rupert Everett and the sculptor Antony Gormley. Its fees are more than £35,000 a year for senior boarders.

Rowe was appointed as acting head last August after five years in charge of safeguarding at the college. She will hand over to a new interim head, before a permanent head is appointed later this year.

A spokesperson for Ampleforth College said: “We have recognised that a small number of incidents, where our robust policies have not been followed, have led to the judgment from the inspectors that we have not yet met all of the required standards. Each incident has been, or is being, investigated and addressed with the authorities and the students and parents involved.

“Given the investment that has been made in our academic curriculum, governance and staff training, we know our school deserves world-class leadership. As a result, we aim shortly to appoint an interim head, to begin in post by September 2019, and we have advised the DfE of this plan. They will bring considerable change management and safeguarding expertise to the role, before we make an announcement on the appointment of a permanent head by the end of the year.”

The leadership changes mean that, by the end of 2019, the college will have had four heads in just over a year, according to the Tablet.

Last August, the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse published a highly critical 211-page report on Ampleforth and another Catholic school, Downside in Somerset.

Ampleforth Abbey has been managed by a lawyer appointed by the Charity Commission since April 2018 after its abbot, Cuthbert Madden, was removed from post following allegations that he indecently assaulted pupils. Madden has denied the claims.

Ex-priest goes on trial for decades-old child sexual abuse in El Paso, Texas

By:  Jim Parker   Madeline Ottilie
KVIA

EL PASO, Texas - Opening arguments and initial testimony took place Tuesday as the trial of a former El Paso Catholic priest accused of child sexual assault got underway in court.

Miguel Luna, 68, is charged with aggravated assault of a child in a case that dates back to the 1990s while he was still an active priest; the alleged victim is now a 36-year old woman.

He's pleaded not guilty to all 12 counts against him.

Prosecutors on Tuesday compared Luna to a "wolf in sheep's clothing."  But the defense played off that analogy, saying Luna was like "a wolf in nature," claiming he was faithful to the church.

Luna started working as a priest in the 10-county Diocese of El Paso in 1982, but was later removed from ministry in 2013.

The victim took the witness stand Tuesday, essentially testifying to details she told investigators that were outlined in court documents previously reported on by ABC-7.

The victim testified she was an alter server at Corpus Christi church and only eight years old at the time, when Luna began kissing her "passionately" during confessionals. Between the ages of 10 and 13, Luna allegedly touched her breasts and sexually assaulted her.

The victim recalled Luna telling her "remember this is confession so whatever happens in here stays in here."

When she was 12 years old, the victim said Luna moved to another church, but he stayed in contact with her — even picked her up from school.

She choked up in court as she told jurors about how he would take her back to his new church, where he is alleged to have forcefully sexually assaulted her. The woman testified he also took her to a motel in Mexico.

She added that Luna continued having sex with her until she was 17 years old. The former priest reportedly had a close relationship with the victim's mother — and the woman said the assaults ended when she finally moved away.

Luna sat in court relatively quiet and expressionless during the opening statements and his alleged victim's testimony.

The Diocese claims that Luna admitted to the assaults when church officials first became aware of the allegations and looked into it.

Buffalo, NY Diocese still investigating priest
more than a year after abuse accusations

By Jay Tokasz
Buffalo News

Fourteen months after a Lockport man accused Monsignor John M. Ryan of molesting him in the 1980s, Bishop Richard J. Malone has yet to decide whether Ryan committed the abuse and should be further punished.

The man's May 8, 2018 application to a Buffalo Diocese program that compensates victims of clergy abuse prompted Malone to suspend Ryan, 89, last July from publicly celebrating Masses and other priestly functions.

This past May, the diocese received a second complaint about Ryan from a Pennsylvania woman who said the former superintendent of Catholic schools repeatedly molested her in the late 1950s when she was a parishioner at Queen of Heaven Church in West Seneca. Her lawyer notified the diocese in a letter.

Both accusers said they plan to sue the diocese in August under the Child Victims Act, which allows a one-year window for childhood sex abuse victims to pursue civil cases from years ago that were time-barred under statutes of limitations.

Ryan served as superintendent of Catholic schools from 1975 to 1981, overseeing more than 42,000 students in about 150 elementary and high schools in eight counties at the time.

Ryan’s lawyer, Rodney Personius, said Monday that the priest adamantly denies the abuse allegations.

Ryan, who remains on administrative leave, declined to comment when contacted by phone.

“I’m not going to say anything. I’m just waiting for what I’m sure will be a positive result from the board. That’s all I have to say,” he said before hanging up.

There is considerably more to this story on the Buffalo News

Chile removes statute of limitations on child sex abuse amid Church crisis

World Reuters 

By Natalia A. Ramos Miranda

SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Chilean President Sebastian Pinera signed into law on Thursday a bill to remove the statute of limitations on sex crimes involving children amid a sex abuse crisis that has rocked the country's Catholic Church and claimed more than 200 victims.

The law, which first was proposed in 2010, ends impunity in cases that would have previously had a statute of limitations that varied between five and 10 years, depending on the nature of the crime. The new law is not retroactive.

"Beginning today, the passing of time will never more be an accomplice to those who abuse our children, nor an ally of impunity," Pinera said.

The centre-right Pinera revived the nearly decade-old bill last year, following a visit to the South American nation by the pope that brought to the surface a string of abuse allegations now being investigated by prosecutors.

Chile's Public Ministry says it is investigating more than 150 cases of sexual abuse or cover-up involving the Catholic Church.

The new law applies to crimes of rape, sexual abuse, the production of pornographic materials and prostitution involving children and adolescents.

Melbourne judge slams Catholic Church over

handling of paedophile priest Robert Claffey

Amber Wilson

A Melbourne judge who will soon sentence a repeat offender pedophile priest has condemned the Catholic Church for prioritising "the sinner" over children.

Robert Claffey, 76, is already serving more than a decade in prison for sexually abusing 12 children as young as five, between 1969 and 1992.

Claffey was a priest at Our Lady Help of Christians Church in Wendouree during the 1980s.

The church became aware of his behaviour in the 1980s, but moved him "parish to parish" throughout western Victoria, at one point even installing him as a replacement for notorious pedophile Gerald Ridsdale.

In 2016, Claffey was jailed for a minimum of 13 years and four months.

But on Monday, Claffey admitted he abused another two boys in Ballarat during the 1980s, following fresh allegations.

One of the victims was aged between 12 and 15 at the time, while the other was aged six to seven.

Defence lawyer Alan Hands has asked County Court Judge Paul Higham to consider Claffey had already been "vilified" by the media and community, and shouldered the burden of his offending for years.

"He was moved from parish to parish," Mr Hands said on Friday. "For a number of years, he was hunted around the western district."

He noted Claffey had become a lay priest at his own request in 1994. But the judge wasn't convinced the pedophile was vilified or burdened by guilt.

"Some parents had got up the courage to challenge the church. I don't see how we make the leap from that to vilification. Being held accountable for your actions is not vilification," he said.

While noting the Catholic Church was "not in the dock", Judge Higham added the church did not report Claffey to police, but simply moved him around.

"Their priority was to bring the sinner back to the church rather than protect the children," he said.

"The church did not report him to the police and he did not report himself to the police. Where is the evidence that he had this matter hanging over him...over the decades?

"Where is his sense of guilt?"

Judge Higham noted Claffey initially contested the allegations he is now in jail for, only confessing in 2016.

Also on Friday, one of Claffey's victims told the court he had lost faith in the church.

"I felt I could not tell anyone and if I raised or complained about what happened to me, I would not be believed, I would be sinning," the man said.

"I have lost my faith in the church...for many years I was a broken person."

Judge Higham thanked the man for attending court. "I reassure you that your voice is heard in this court," he said.

The court is waiting to receive one more victim statement before Claffey is sentenced for his Ballarat crimes on July 18.

Teacher Destroys Career, Family and Friends with Child Porn Weakness

Former Woodchurch High teacher jailed after

child sex abuse stash found

Police found indecent images of children as young as four

BY JOSH PARRY, Echo

Mark Haslock, 47, who previously taught at Woodchurch High on Wirral was jailed for eight months at Mold Crown Court, and forced to sign the sex offenders register for the next ten years

A former Wirral teacher has been jailed after police found his stash of thousands of child sex abuse images of children as young as four.

Mark Haslock, 47, who previously taught at Woodchurch High on Wirral was jailed for eight months at Mold Crown Court , and forced to sign the sex offenders register for the next 10 years.

Haslock, of Victoria Road in Llandudno, was also made the subject of a 10-year ‘sexual harm prevention’ order, which prevents him from working with children or vulnerable adults in the future.

The teacher, who most recently worked at Ysgol y Grango at Rhos near Wrexham, was arrested after police found more than 1,200 images on two computers - 280 of which were in the “most graphic” category.

Judge Heywood, speaking via a video link from Swansea Crown Court, said Haslock was a man of “good character” - but that a “darker and different side” had emerged during the trial.

Police had recovered 289 images of the most serious category A, 297 category B and 624 category C, involving children as young as four.

At an earlier trial at Caernarfon a jury convicted him of making and possessing indecent images of children, and taking an indecent image between June 2014 and August 2015.

He was cleared of a charge of voyeurism.

Haslock attempted to defend his actions by saying the images were downloaded while trying to get material for sex education classes.

However Judge Heywood dismissed his excuses as “farcical” - and said he was “still in denial” about the case.

He said: “It gives me no pleasure to sentence you, this is a significant fall from grace.

“You are a talented teacher, a devoted husband and family man highly regarded by friends and professionals alike.”

He doesn't fit my description of a 'devoted' husband and family man! 'Highly regarded' by friends and colleagues only because they didn't really know him. 8 months hardly seems like enough time to turn this man around considering he still doesn't admit he has a problem.

The court heard that the defendant’s wife was also a teacher – but the judge said the teaching profession would no longer be available to him.

“I take the view that I would be failing in my public duty if I did anything other than impose an immediate custodial sentence.” 

I'm not sure, your honour, you didn't still fail in your public duty. Your concern for Haslock and his family is nice, but I wish you were more concerned for the victims of his crimes. More than 1200 images is a significant contribution to the marketplace for images of sexually abusing children, which, of course, requires children to be sexually abused. Haslock is complicit in the sexual abuse of children! Your sentence is a relative slap on the wrist.

The Republican Fail on Sex Assault and Child Sex Abuse

Please note, I am not a Democrat! I am equally as disgusted with one party as with the other. But what Marci says below is, to a degree, obvious from my many posts regarding the blocking of statute of limitations reforms in New York and Pennsylvania. 

MARCI A. HAMILTON

Republicans would do well to catch up to the rest of the culture on the issues of sex assault and child sex abuse. They are quickly being outpaced by a society that no longer is willing to wink at the rapist or child abuser. Context for rape and child abuse no longer matters: the people are sick of child sex abuse and sex assault, period, whether it occurs in the religious, sports, school, university, or family arena. Smart politicians are seeing that this is a scourge with no political preference.

Yet, too many Republicans—with rare exceptions like Rep. Jason Spencer of Georgia and Rep. Deborah Hudson of Delaware—are responsible for blocking simple legislative change that would identify the hidden predators and provide justice to victims. And they are doing it for all the wrong reasons.


A Case Study: Ken Starr’s Spectacular Fall from Grace

The spectacular fall of Ken Starr in the wake of an ugly Baylor University scandal involving the cover up of sex assault by football team players needs to be studied by ambitious and currently powerful Republicans. This is not like the Dennis Hastert scandal where everyone could pretend his problems from the past don’t affect Republicans now.

Starr, the son of a minister, was a literal star in the Republican firmament: he clerked for Chief Justice Warren Burger, was appointed a federal appellate judge of the powerful Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (1983-89), and then served as the solicitor general (1989-93). During that time he was on President George H.W. Bush’s short list for the Supreme Court, though the appointment eventually went to David Souter. Starr has been a distinguished litigator for Kirkland and Ellis and also served as Independent Counsel (1994-99) investigating the scandals surrounding the Clintons, including the death of Vince Foster and then-President Bill Clinton’s dealings with Monica Lewinsky, which led to the historic House vote to impeach Clinton in 1998. The investigation was politically charged, and Starr was criticized heavily. He even later expressed regret for having taken on the Lewinsky assignment. Still, in 2004, he landed softly as dean of the Pepperdine University School of Law (2004-2010). As dean, he continued to take on headliner cases, including the defense of billionaire Jeffrey Epstein against statutory rape charges involving numerous girls brought to his home. Epstein eventually pled to one charge of soliciting sex from a minor and served minimal time in jail near his home in Palm Beach, Florida.

In 2010, Starr accepted the position of president of Baylor University, a private and distinguished Baptist university. Five years later, the criminal trial and conviction of a former Baylor football player for sexual assault led the university to hire the Pepper Hamilton law firm to do a private investigation. It turned out that the 2015 conviction was not the football team’s first conviction for rape; another former player had been convicted in 2014. The report led Baylor to demote Starr in May 2016 to chancellor and law professor. But that was not the end of the scandal for Starr, who resigned as chancellor the next month. Only two months later, in August 2016, he left the law school. The football coach, Art Briles, also lost his job. Numerous women have joined a Title IX lawsuit against the university for creating the environment that led to their sexual assaults. Still, Starr was recently quoted saying, “I personally have doubts that there were gang rapes.”

I would posit that Ken Starr’s career is a case study for Republicans. You can land one prestigious post after another within the Republican firmament, but the United States now draws the line at a failure to stop sexual assault. Three factors are at play: First, sex assault victims no longer accept the silence that society once imposed on them. Second, the internet tore apart the social fabric of the media and powerful figures that kept a lid on such claims, informed each survivor she (or he) is not alone, and educated the rest of us. Third, self-interested institutions are figuring out that presiding over the cover up of sex assault and child sex abuse leads to no good end.

Now, some may counter this reasoning by pointing to Donald Trump’s election to the United States Presidency despite his own admission that he liked to grab women’s genitals and his association with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. But his election is a product of the Electoral College. He was soundly beaten in the popular vote by close to 3 million votes. For every other politician, the popular vote is what matters.


The State of Statute of Limitations Reform: Republicans Are the Primary Barrier

The leading edge for law reform to reverse the rape culture is statute of limitations reform for child sex abuse victims. Largely led by Democrats, a significant number of states in recent years moved to eliminate these SOLs and/or to revive expired SOLs, as these maps show. There is much more to be done for child and adult victims, and the worst states in the United States offer some insights into the politics of rape and abuse.

The four worst states in the United States for child sex abuse victims are: Alabama, Michigan, Mississippi, and New York. The legal reason is that for those whose SOLs have expired, the only option is to file a civil lawsuit to shift the cost of the abuse from the victim to the ones who caused it. In these four states, the archaic civil SOLs expire long before virtually any victim is ready to come forward.

Politics is destiny for the rape victims in these four states. In all but New York, the Republicans control the state house and the governor’s office by a large majority. In dysfunctional New York, a Democratic governor is in power, but Republicans control the Senate through a coalition with seven Democrats who call themselves the “Independent Democratic Conference.” There is no question that the Republicans are the reason no movement has happened in New York for the decade in which advocates, including myself, and many others have been making the case for justice.

Typically, what happens with SOL reform when Republicans are in control is that leadership refuses to release it from committee and so no vote on the floor can occur. This has happened in state after state in recent years including New York and Michigan. (Alabama and Mississippi are so far behind on the prevention of rape that SOL reform bills don’t even get filed.) The reason Republicans bottle it up in committee is because no member relishes voting against rape victims in public, right there in front of the press and voters. Therefore, if a bill increasing justice for child rape victims can get beyond a committee to the floor and the light of day, typically it will pass, and pass unanimously. What this tells us is that Republican leadership is at least savvy to the optics of voting against justice for child rape victims. Leadership is not so savvy about the appearance of caring, as Republican leaders like Sen. John J. Flanagan in New York refuse to even meet with the victims and advocates seeking justice for child rape victims.

What Republican leadership is failing to grasp in these four states, and plenty of others including Pennsylvania, is that there is an irrefutable logic in the culture to increase the power of victims to name their perpetrators and to shift the cost of abuse to the perpetrators and institutions that caused it. It’s just the right thing to do. Powerful institutions are engaging in self-inflicted wounds when they side with rapists as Ken Starr, the Catholic bishops, USA Gymnastics and USA Volleyball officials, and many others can inform Republicans.

So why do Republican legislators block SOL reform in these states? No one knows each of their private motives, but the political landscape indicates slavish pandering to religious leaders who have much to hide, whether they are Catholic or Baptist. Yet, the lobbying against victims and in protection of pedophiles is hypocritical in the current culture of extreme religious liberty, and Republican politicians need to do some soul-searching of their own on this issue.


Complicity with Sex Offenders

Catholics and Baptists have united since the Affordable Care Act was passed to argue that it is a violation of their religious liberty rights to be made “complicit” in the use of contraceptives by their employees or to deal with LGBT or same-sex marriages. Republican-appointee judges have been more than willing to hand the religious claimaints wins on the complicity argument in the courts. Indeed, this complicity theory has been the can opener that released the Religious Freedom Restoration Act’s power to undermine women’s rights to reproductive choice and to foment discrimination based on sexual orientation, as evidenced in the reasoning of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby and Zubik v. Burwell at the Supreme Court and the reasoning of Judge Reed O’Connor in recent opinions here and here.

Their complicity reasoning, however, has to work both ways. The argument is that when they make decisions that affect others’ choices involving abortion, birth control, or sexual orientation that they are complicit in those very choices. It is not that they themselves would be engaging in abortion, birth control, or dealing with LGBT individuals, but rather that they are complicit when others make those choices following their actions. So the Little Sisters of the Poor were complicit in their employees’ use of birth control if they permitted birth control to be a part of their overall health plan.

On the very same reasoning, every time a bishop or a Baptist pastor fails to protect a child from rape or sex abuse in his organization, he is complicit in the abuse. The bishop is not the perpetrator, but rather is complicit in the perpetrator’s actions after he fails to block the sex abuse. The same is true for university presidents and Republican politicians. There is a stark choice being offered by the SOL reform movement: predators or children, and their own theory of responsibility nails their culpability.
For each SOL reform bill Republicans block, they are choosing to protect predators and endanger children. In their own religiously-determined universe, that means they are complicit with rape and sex abuse. That is a path to failure. Just ask Ken Starr.

MARCI A. HAMILTON

Marci A. Hamilton is a Fox Distinguished Scholar in the Fox Leadership Program at the University of Pennsylvania and the CEO and Academic Director of the nonprofit think tank to prevent child abuse and neglect, CHILD USA, and the author of God vs. the Gavel: The Perils of Extreme Religious Liberty and Justice Denied: What America Must Do to Protect Its Children. She also runs two active websites covering her areas of expertise, the Religious Freedom Restoration Acts, www.RFRAperils.com, and statutes of limitations for child sex abuse, www.sol-reform.com. Professor Hamilton blogs at Hamilton and Griffin on Rights. Her email address is hamilton02@aol.com.

Planned Parenthood’s Very Disturbing Complicity in Child Sex Abuse

(LiveActionNews) -- What do you think of when you hear the words “Planned Parenthood”? Cecile Richards wants you to think of a health care organization that has the best interests of American women at heart. Planned Parenthood is an organization that is concerned with abortion above all else, even if it means doing something as abhorrent as covering up sexual abuse.

In 2007, Lila Rose first exposed Planned Parenthood’s willingness to cover up sexual abuse and statutory rape. She went undercover at clinics around the country, posing as an underage girl who had become pregnant by an older man. Even when Rose claimed to be as young as 13, and impregnated by a man as old as 31, Planned Parenthood employees still didn’t report the abuse to police, as required by law. Instead, they encouraged Rose to lie about her age or counseled her on how best to obtain an abortion without her parents or police finding out.

Sadly, there are numerous instances of this happening in real life, too.

Danielle Cramer was a teenager who was kidnapped by 40-year-old Adam Gault. For over a year, he held her captive, and raped her. When she became pregnant, he took her to Planned Parenthood…where they asked no questions, performed the abortion, and gave her right back to Gault. 

By Donna Tommelleo, Associated Press  |  August 2, 2007, Boston.com

HARTFORD -- A man accused in the yearlong disappearance of a teenage runaway was matched with DNA collected after she had an abortion, according to a warrant for his arrest yesterday on an additional sexual assault charge.

Police yesterday also added kidnapping charges against the man, Adam Gault, 41, and against two women who lived with him in the West Hartford house where the missing girl was found in June, locked in a small storage room.

The arrest warrant filed yesterday indicated the girl told investigators that she had an abortion on May 1 at Planned Parenthood in West Hartford, but would not identify the father. Police obtained a search warrant to test tissue from the fetus. The tissue had been sent to a lab in Massachusetts, a standard procedure.

"I thought that when a woman had a termination of pregnancy, that that was the end of it, so to speak," Gault's lawyer, Gerald Klein said outside court. "But, apparently they have the fetus."


A clinic in Philadelphia was caught covering up multiple cases of child rape. 

The Planned Parenthood Locust St., Philadelphia, Health Center’s policy, updated December 2012, stated:

Statutory sexual assault (“statutory rape”) is sexual intercourse when one person is under the age of 16 and the other is 4 or more years older. It is a crime, however it is NOT a mandated reportable incident.

This is, of course, false. And the Pennsylvania Department of Health inspectors found that for six of the girls seen at Planned Parenthood under the age of 16, no one at Planned Parenthood had any documentation proving that they had verified the age of the person who had sexual intercourse with the girls.

Of these six girls, two were age 14, and four were age 13.

… Two of the 13-year old girls were known to have had sex before the age of 13. One reported her first sexual intercourse at age 11. Another reported her first sexual intercourse at age 12. It was in their medical records. Even Planned Parenthood’s own policy acknowledged that sex with a child under age 13 is always, by definition, rape.

Under Pennsylvania law, a child under 13 cannot give consent. These incidents of child sexual abuse should have been reported by Planned Parenthood employees, but they were not.


In California, a 13-year-old girl was repeatedly subjected to sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather. When she became pregnant, he took her to Planned Parenthood, where staffers did not report the abuse, but performed the abortion and sent her back home with her stepfather. She continued to be the victim of abuse for another seven months. 

California, Sept 8, 2008: According to court documents, a Santa Clara County sexual predator impregnated his 13-year-old stepdaughter and forced her to have a late-term abortion.

The man then continued to molest her for another seven months until the child’s mother discovered the abuse and contacted police.

Despite two visits to Planned Parenthood and a surgical abortion at San Francisco General Hospital, no healthcare provider bothered to inform law enforcement.


In San Francisco, an 11-year-old girl was raped, and Planned Parenthood covered up the crime.

San Francisco, CA 15 Dec, 2005 — A testimonial posted on a California Planned Parenthood abortion business’ website regarding an 11-year-old rape victim has sparked a call for an investigation into the organization’s handling of sexual abuse cases.

In the “Shared Stories” section of Planned Parenthood Golden Gate’s website, a client’s shared her story.

“I was raped at 11, by my 17 year old boyfriend. I chose not to tell my parents because I didn’t think their involvement would help, that was the right choice for me. Planned Parethood [sic] helped me deal with the aftermath of the rape allowing me to deal and cope as best as I could in my own way.”


Two separate Planned Parenthood clinics were sued, by two different teenage girls, for refusing to report that they were being abused. One of the girls told staffers that she was being abused by her father – they did nothing, and she continued to be abused for another 18 months. The second girl sued because Planned Parenthood staffers performed an abortion on her without notifying her parents first – which is against Ohio state law. Planned Parenthood also failed to report that she was a victim of rape.

Cincinnati, OH, 10 May 2007 — A suburban Cincinnati Planned Parenthood has been sued by a teenage girl who accuses it of covering up her sexual victimization by her father. Under Ohio law, doctors, nurses, teachers and other professionals are required to report alleged sexual abuse to authorities and the teen says that didn’t happen in her abortion case.

The unnamed girl filed the lawsuit in Warren County Common Pleas Court on Wednesday saying she told Planned Parenthood staff about the incest.

Under the lawsuit, the teenager says Planned Parenthood’s failure to report the incest to police resulted in another 18 months of sexual abuse at the hands of her father.

According to AP, the girl eventually told someone else about the problems, leading to her father John Blanks Jr’s prosecution and a five year prison sentence.

The lawsuit claims Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio uses a "don’t ask, don’t tell" policy. 

The teen’s Cincinnati lawyer, Brian Hurley said he’s obtained a handwritten note from Planned Parenthood that mentions the phrase, "don’t ask/don’t tell" and said the note was from a Planned Parenthood trainer, Julia Piercey.

"So, to me, their position is laughable," Hurley told the Cincinnati Enquirer. "It came from their own files, from their own trainer."

This is the second lawsuit against the Cincinnati Planned Parenthood over its treatment of teenagers.

An earlier lawsuit from neighboring Hamilton County involved a 14-year old girl who was a victim of rape and Planned Parenthood is accused of doing a secret abortion on her.

The girls’ parents filed a lawsuit against the abortion facility for violating the state’s parental notification law by not telling them of her abortion, which may have been coerced.

The girl in that case provided an incorrect phone number to Planned Parenthood officials for notification. Instead of giving the abortion center her parents’ phone, she gave the number for her 21-year-old boyfriend.


"Apparently they made no effort to confirm to whom they were speaking when they placed their call to notify the parents," Hurley told the Cincinnati Enquirer newspaper. "They did the minimum they could under the existing law."


There are incidences of sexual abuse cover-up at Planned Parenthood facilities all over the country.

“In Ohio, a Planned Parenthood facility permitted a soccer coach who had impregnated a 14-year-old child to sign off on her abortion without her parents’ knowledge or consent.”

A case in California details how a perpetrator was able to continue the pattern of abuse.

“In one California case, a well-known swimming coach, Andrew King, a sexual predator, impregnated a 14-year-old girl who then received an abortion at Planned Parenthood. King went on to sexually molest and abuse scores of other girls.”


But tragically, it doesn’t end there. Planned Parenthood is also willing to aid and abet child sex trafficking.

Investigations found seven Planned Parenthood clinics in four different states were willing to aid and abet the sex-trafficking of minor girls by supplying confidential birth control, STD testing, and secret abortions to underage girls and their traffickers.

Seven clinics in four different states were found to be willing to participate in the exploitation of minor girls, supplying birth control, STD testing, and abortions to children who were being trafficked. And Planned Parenthood didn’t report any of it. Staffers even coached the traffickers on how best to avoid being detected by law enforcement, so that these young girls could remain in slavery.

Steven Wagner, former director of the Human Trafficking Program at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services explains how forced abortions – a common occurrence in the trafficking world – are often a “death sentence” for the girls and women:

“If someone is being trafficked — which is to say, under the domination of a pimp/trafficker — she is by definition unable to provide informed consent to an abortion or to a regime of contraception. The victim has no voice in this decision. Indeed, providing such services to a victim of sexual trafficking benefits only the trafficker by getting the victim back out on the street and making money sooner.

The average age of entry into commercial sex exploitation is about 14. The average life expectancy of someone in commercial sexual exploitation is seven years. Start at 14, dead by 21. The mortality rate for someone in commercial sexual exploitation is 40 times higher than for a non-exploited person of the same age. Helping a victim return to exploitation more quickly by terminating a pregnancy increases the odds of death.”

Sex traffickers use Planned Parenthood, and abortion, to keep girls enslaved. In addition to subjecting them to sexual slavery, the traffickers force these girls into abortions, the majority of which are unwanted, without giving them any kind of follow-up care or respite time after the procedures. Does Planned Parenthood care? No, they take their money, perform the procedure, and hand the girls right back to their captors.

If you look inside Planned Parenthood, you’ll see it has never had women’s best interests at heart, and is frequently complicit in crimes against women and young girls.

Joe Paterno Allegedly Knew of Sandusky's Child Sex Abuse in 1976

Dan Stack

Flowers lay at the foot of the statue of former Penn State football head coach Joe Paterno prior to the Blue/White spring scrimmage game at Beaver Stadium in University Park, PA. MATTHEW O'HAREN/ICON SPORTSWIRE
   
According to Charles Thompson of PennLive,com, there are new shocking reports that Joe Paterno knew of child sex abuse going on at Penn State as early as 1976. This is according to court documents.

If true, this could rattle the football program to its core–again. This would also mean that Paterno never went to higher ups with this news.

Of course, at the center of the case is what longtime assistant coach Jerry Sandusky was accused of doing in his time at Penn State as Paterno’s right-hand man. Some say Paterno turned a blind eye to all of this, and this latest news will pour gasoline on that fire.

More from Thompson of PennLive.com:

It came in the form of a single line in a court order on a related insurance coverage case involving Penn State, and its full ramifications can’t immediately be gauged.

But that line was eye-popping in itself.

The line in question states that one of Penn State’s insurers has claimed “in 1976, a child allegedly reported to PSU’s Head Coach Joseph Paterno that he (the child) was sexually molested by Sandusky.

The order also cites separate references in 1987 and 1988 in which unnamed assistant coaches witnessed inappropriate contact between Sandusky and unidentified children, and a 1988 case that was supposedly referred to Penn State’s athletic director at the time.

All, the opinion states, are described in victims’ depositions taken as part of the still-pending insurance case, but that, according a PennLive review of the case file, are apparently under seal.

Sandusky was charged and convicted of multiple counts (45) of sexual abuse of children in 2012. He is scheduled to serve 30 to 60 years in prison.

Paterno died in 2012 and is still a beloved figure on campus.

A lawyer for Paterno’s family denied the allegation.

If true, this would make Paterno complicit in the sexual abuse of all of Sandusky's victims after that date.

Another Child Sex Abuse Horror Story Covered Up by the Catholic Church

Caution: There is some somewhat graphic verbal descriptions of sex abuse in this video

Click on the image for Joanna's excellent report. It is 24 minutes long.

Express reporter Joanna Della-Ragione investigates shocking claims of historic child sex abuse at a former approved school, St Peter's in Gainford, County Durham, UK. 

St Peters survivor Tony

Express reporter Joanna Della-Ragione

Speaking for the first time, the victims tell their own story and explain how the Catholic Church covered-up the appalling scandal. 

This is the first report I've seen on this dreadful story that involves gay, child sex abuse by a teacher, a priest and the Headmaster of the school. 

The diocese is not releasing any useful information as they are still in 'circle the wagons' mode.

As Joanna finds out, the headmaster was found out to be molesting boys, so he was moved to another facility nearby, where he was able to continue to destroy the innocence of young boys. This act makes the church complicit in the sexual molestation of children. No wonder they are not being forthcoming.

As mentioned, this is the first I have heard of this story and there is absolutely no other information on it on the internet except for this 10 minute video by Bill Maloney. I'm not sure when he made it but it was uploaded to YouTube in 2010, so the story has been out there, but no-one has taken it up again until Express reporter Joanna Della-Ragione. Thank you for doing this, Joanna; you are my hero today. God bless you!

Another caution: Bill is prone to vulgar language and this video is no exception

St. Peters must be included in 

Judge Lowell Goddard's

inquiry on child sex abuse

Gainford, County Durham

Swedish Police Admit to Covering up Sexual Assaults Committed by Refugees

Police fail to report on numerous sexual assaults of young girls by Afghan youth refugees at music festival

© TT News Agency / AFP

Swedish police are accused of covering up mass sexual assaults allegedly committed by refugees at a music festival. It follows claims that gangs of youths, mostly from Afghanistan, molested girls as young as 11 or 12 at the annual event.

According to Dagens Nyheter newspaper, an internal police report on the 2015 'We Are Sthlm' festival stated that “the problem of young men rubbing themselves up against young girls returned as in previous years.”

"These are so-called refugee youths [mostly] from Afghanistan...the [group] was also responsible for several fights during the evening,” police wrote.

Noting that the youngest victims were only 11 or 12, an unnamed officer admitted that he would “never have let my own daughter [go to] the festival if I knew what happened.”

However, when Stockholm police made a public statement on the event, it said there had been “relatively few crimes” considering the large number of festival-goers.

The police force has been accused of covering up the sexual assaults committed by refugees, with Officer Peter Agren – who was in charge of policing at the festival – calling the accusations a “sore point.”

“We sometimes dare not to say how it is because we think it might play into the hands of the Sweden Democrats,” an anti-immigration party, he said.

And there it is, an admission of lying to gloss over the sexual abuses by refugees upon Swedish girls and women. And why? Is it for the sake of political expedience, or political correctness? There needs to be an inquiry into this so that it stops. Police and politicians are deliberately putting the girls of Sweden in harms way by covering up the immensity of the problem of rape and sexual molestation committed by Muslim refugees on Swedish girls. That makes them complicit; they should be held accountable, and it has to stop, now!

Sweden's 'We Are Sthlm' festival - Stockholm

Stockholm Police's head of communications, Varg Gyllander, said it was wrong to not speak openly about what took place at the festival, Radio Sweden reported.

“As [the person responsible for communications] in Stockholm, I am self-critical, we should have communicated that. I actually do not know why it did not happen," he said. “I actually do not know why it did not happen."

“...The problem is probably not the police work as such, but that we have failed to communicate what has been done and what has happened," Gyllander added.

Meanwhile, Sweden Democrats MP Bjorn Soder told Expressen: “It is a scandal without equal. This must be investigated immediately. Could this be something that happened at several locations in the country, that they do not bother to tell you certain things because it could ‘play into the hands of a particular party’?”

'We were touched everywhere' 
Speaking to Dagens Nyheter, a girl referred to as Anna, now 15, recounted that she and her friends had been repeatedly encircled and sexually molested by a group of boys at the festival.

She noted that festival guards merely spoke with the boys, and sometimes removed them from the area, but they would return to the same spot almost immediately.

A girl referred to as Fanny, now 17, also recalled her experience of sexual assault at the festival, stating that she and her friends were touched on their buttocks, breasts and “everywhere.”

“You felt powerless, it was not really nice. When we tried to take us out, they tried to stop us and some hit us,” she told Aftonbladet.

She said she didn't report the event to police because she “saw no cops, [and] it [is] difficult when one does not know whom to notify.”

The Dagens Nyheter investigation has found that no one has been held to justice for the crimes committed. National Police Commissioner Dan Eliasson has promised a review of the officers' actions following the assaults, telling Expressen newspaper that he will “see that this is being investigated.” Police Union president Även Lena Nitz has also called for a thorough investigation.

Not the first time 
The violence, which began on the first day of the festival, was not unexpected, as similar crimes had taken place at the 2014 event – including one incident in which the fingers of a male were reportedly inserted into a girl's vagina.

Now this is a curious turn of phrase. It sounds as if the male's fingers were inserted into the girl's vagina by someone else - like it wasn't his fault. Political correctness is not restricted to police and politicians, the media are still down-playing the tragedy afflicting Swedish girls. 

Guards, volunteers, and police officers had reportedly been instructed to be especially alert and intervene at the slightest sign of trouble.

“We had talked a lot about this, and developed a strategy for how we would monitor the crowd and [be ready] to make rapid interventions,” Agren said.

Over the course of five days, 200 young males were removed from the premises under the Public Order Act. However, many of the crimes went unreported because victims did not see any officers in the vicinity, or they could no longer identify the whereabouts of the perpetrators due to the large crowds.

The annual 'We are Sthlm' festival is aimed at young people between the ages of 13 and 19, and usually draws around 200,000 visitors.

The reports come as the German city of Cologne faces a similar scandal, with authorities accused of covering up the role of asylum seekers in a string of sexual assaults on New Year's Eve.

Both Sweden and Germany have become known for their pro-immigrant stance in recent years, with Sweden becoming the first country to offer permanent residence to all Syrians. It has accepted more asylum seekers than any other European country, relative to population size. It did, however, announce a crackdown on immigration at the end of last year, after several local authorities stated they could no longer accommodate the influx of refugees.