U.S. Border Officers Engaged in Pattern of 'Egregious' Abuse Against Minors

By JOHN CARLOS FREY, BRIAN EPSTEIN

Jahveel Ocampo is one of hundreds of young people to file a formal complaint of mistreatment by border agents.  ABC News

Jahveel Ocampo is one of hundreds of young people to file a formal complaint of mistreatment by border agents.

In December of 2009, 15-year old high school student Jahveel Ocampo, her boyfriend and a few of his family members decided to drive east from Encinitas, California, up into the mountains to see the first big snowfall of winter.

They pulled over to a rest stop to use the bathroom and were suddenly blocked by an unmarked truck. A man in a dark blue jacket shouted from the vehicle, Ocampo would say later, directing her and her boyfriend to get out of the car with their hands up.

Ocampo says she had no idea what was happening – until the man asked her where she was born. When she replied, “Tijuana,” she says the man demanded to know whether she was an “illegal.”

He slapped handcuffs on her and her boyfriend and within minutes they were surrounded by several Border Patrol vehicles. Ocampo was separated from her boyfriend, loaded into the back of a car and driven away.

She was taken to a Border Patrol station in Campo, California, about 50 miles east of San Diego. In a complaint filed with the agency in January 2010 and an interview with ABC News this past March, Ocampo describes in detail the harrowing experiences she says awaited her there.

She says she was threatened with sexual abuse by border agents while in custody, part of what the ACLU says is a pattern of misconduct by Customs and Border Protection officials aimed at minors that has largely gone unnoticed and unpunished.

“It’s really a horror show,” said Mitra Ebadolahi, an attorney for the ACLU’s border program, who has been investigating these complaints. “It’s a story of egregious abuse of children who are vulnerable.”

Ocampo says an agent in a blue jacket ordering her to enter a cell and slapping her twice on the buttocks. That agent, joined by another male agent, then took Ocampo to another room, where the pair began to interrogate her.

They told her she had been “snitched out” by her boyfriend, that he claimed they were going to “smuggle drugs,” and that she needed to admit she was in the area for a drug pickup. She said she was confused. She told them they were just going up to see the snow — “clearly, I was wearing a big jacket,” she said in an interview, “clothes that you would normally wear to go to snow” — and began to cry.

Ocampo had come to the country as a young child and was raised in Southern California by undocumented parents. She was now the mother of a 1-year-old child and said she had obtained a temporary visa, which had expired. The agents seemed to know all of that already and began pressing her about her immigration status. She pleaded with them to let her call her mother. The agents refused. They told her, “Nobody’s going to come over here and save you.”

They handed her a document and told her she had to sign it. It was an order of voluntary departure — a deportation order. Ocampo says they told her the only way she would see her mother again was to sign it. This time, it was Ocampo who refused.

That’s when, she says, they threatened her. One officer said, in Spanish, “Right now, we are going to close this door and we are going to rape you and f*** you.” One of them then said, according to the report, “If you cooperate with us, we can deport you to Mexico. Otherwise we will take you to jail and deport your entire family.” Her child, they said, would end up in foster care.

Ocampo, stunned, signed the paper.

Jahveel Ocampo says she was threatened with sexual abuse by border agents while in custody at this border station. ABC News

Ocampo isn’t the only young person to share a story of abuse encountered at the border. As the number of unaccompanied minors arriving from Mexico and Central America has increased, minors have lodged hundreds of formal complaints containing detailed claims of mistreatment by border agents.

In December 2014, the ACLU requested the full investigative files on complaints filed by minors “in order to shed light on longstanding allegations of abusive treatment of children by Border Patrol.” A year ago, after filing suit, the ACLU began to receive thousands of pages of documents from the case files of 408 complaints filed from early 2009 through mid-2015, which Ebadolahi shared exclusively with ABC News and The Investigative Fund, leading to a previous ABC News report on the agency that aired on 20/20 in July.

An analysis of the documents identified several other incidents where detainees allege they were threatened with violence if they refused to pay a bribe, if they refused to answer agents’ questions, if they lied, if they did not behave, if they moved. There were also hundreds of allegations that appear to constitute clear violations of Border Patrol protocols:

• 13 allegations of sexual harassment or assault, including allegations of agents groping minors’ thighs or genitals or making sexual remarks and threats

• 97 allegations of physical abuse, including allegations of Border Patrol agents punching, kicking, and intentionally running over minors during apprehension

• 61 allegations of verbal abuse, including allegations of derogatory, racist and misogynist comments

• 201 allegations of poor conditions such as cold temperatures, provision of spoiled food, and failure to provide potable water

• 98 records indicating that detainees were held for longer than 72 hours

The analysis showed that Customs and Border Protection investigations were cursory at best. Only 2 percent of the investigative files indicate that the complainant was interviewed. Only 4 percent of case files contained indications that the accused agents were interviewed. Only a single investigative file contained indications that physical evidence was collected. Only one file noted that investigators made a site visit.

No files contain any indication that an agent was reprimanded or fired as a result of the complaint.

“It’s an agency that seems to believe that it’s above the law,” Ebadolahi said. “Not a single [case] has been prosecuted.”

In response to questions about Ocampo’s case, a CBP spokesperson issued a statement, saying, “An investigation conducted into the complainant’s allegations revealed no evidence of inappropriate or threatening behavior by CBP personnel. CBP takes all allegations of mistreatment seriously, and does not tolerate actions that are not consistent with our core values of Vigilance, Service to Country and Integrity.”

An October 2015 document, “National Standards on Transport, Escort, Detention, and Search,” lays out detailed CBP protocols and standards when it comes to the treatment of minors and other migrants in detention.

It limits detention to 72 hours, requires the provision of timely medical care, comfortable temperatures, bathroom access and adequate nutrition. It spells out a “zero tolerance policy prohibiting all forms of sexual abuse.” And it prohibits agents from engaging in verbal abuse: “CBP employees must treat all individuals with dignity and respect,” it reads, “perform their duties in a nondiscriminatory manner,” and “speak and act with the utmost integrity and professionalism.” 

Though the document requires agents to keep “room temperature within a reasonable and comfortable range,” there were 100 allegations of cold or frigid temperatures. Though the protocols prohibit minors from being held with adult detainees, there were seven allegations of minors being held with adults, exposing a child, in one case, to alleged physical abuse. Though the protocols require food to be provided “in edible condition,” there were 83 allegations of food provided that was frozen, expired, or spoiled. Though the protocols require the provision of potable water, 84 detainees allege that it was not made available.

Many of the complaints contain far more troubling allegations, such as this sample from a single three-month period in 2014:

• In a May 2014 complaint, a 16-year-old boy alleges that he was strip searched and verbally abused at a facility in Brownsville, Texas. An agent accused him of lying about his date of birth and threatened that if he did not tell the truth about his age he would become the sexual property of other detainees.

• In another May 2014 complaint, a 13-year-old girl held in a facility in Hidalgo, Texas, alleges that she was “verbally abused” and, despite recent surgery to remove an ovarian cyst, denied pain medication, denied sanitary napkins, and left in a cell with blood-stained pants.

• A June 2014 complaint alleges “serious verbal abuse, threats, and possible torture” of an unaccompanied minor who was held at a facility in Brownsville, Texas, while five months pregnant. Agents believed “she was lying” when she complained of pain, delaying by a day her transfer to a hospital, where she had a miscarriage.

• Another June 2014 complaint alleges that agents at the Otay Mesa port of entry in California “mocked” and “abused” a 15-year-old girl. She alleged that “when they searched her, they forced her legs apart and touched her private parts so hard she screamed.”

• A July 2014 complaint, filed by a 9-year-old child, alleges that an agent in a facility in Brownsville, Texas, called her and the other children “dogs” and other “ugly things,” banged on their cell door at night to interrupt their sleep, and laughed as he slammed the cell door open onto the detainees, injuring a young girl and declining to offer her care for her bleeding arm.

“The volume of the allegations, the consistencies across the allegations, is really deeply troubling for anyone who cares about the welfare of children and professionalism of our government officers,” said Ebadolahi “Imagine where you have serious allegations of sexual misconduct or physical abuse, saying, ‘I don’t remember that happening.’ ‘Okay, it didn’t happen.’”

James Tomsheck, who served as assistant commissioner for Internal Affairs at CBP during the Obama administration, said the widespread allegations of abuse are a direct result of a failure of accountability.

“Throughout my eight years in the organization, there were consistently problems with discipline …[and] how much discipline employees received for misconduct,” Tomsheck said. “The vast majority of CBP officers and Border Patrol agents execute the mission with high integrity and with appropriate restraint … [but] there’s a serious problem with discipline in the agency that enhances the idea that you are unlikely to be held accountable for misconduct, subsequently resulting in an increased amount of misconduct.”

After signing the deportation order, Ocampo spent the night crying in the Campo Border Patrol station.

“I was really scared at the moment,” she said. “You’re alone in a room with two men where…they can see inside but you can’t see outside. So any moment somebody could’ve grabbed me, done something to me. I could’ve been screaming, yelling — nobody was gonna come.”

Ocampo was moved that evening to a shelter for unaccompanied minors in San Ysidro, Calfornia. She was eventually able to get a visa extension and, at 22, is married to a U.S. military serviceman. She is now attending college.

Her 2010 complaint regarding her allegations of threats and verbal abuse was investigated by the office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the Department of Homeland Security. The investigators claim that Ocampo was “disrespectful and uncooperative” during processing and that she “was not mistreated, verbally abused, or intimidated.”

A final letter from that office in the file indicates that CBP researched documents and records, and obtained information from Border Patrol agents and a supervisor, and concluded that “agents acted in a manner consistent with policy and regulation.” CBP was “unable” to find any witness or record to support her complaint.

There is no indication that Ocampo herself, or any of those she was detained with, was ever interviewed.

This project was conducted in partnership with The Investigative Fund, where three-time Emmy Award-winning journalist John Carlos Frey was a fellow specializing in coverage of the U.S.-Mexico border. The Investigative Fund’s Summer Concepción and ABC News’ Pete Madden contributed to this report.

UK Government Sent Children to Blacklisted Homes Overseas

The child abuse scandal of the British

children sent abroad

By Tom Symonds
Home affairs correspondent, BBC News

Buildings at Bindoon were constructed by migrant children

For several decades, the UK sent children across the world to new lives in institutions where many were abused and used as forced labour. It's a scandal that is still having repercussions now.

Imagine the 1950s, in the years before air travel became commonplace or the internet dominated our lives. Imagine being a child of those times, barely aware of life even in the next town. An orphan perhaps, living in a British children's home.

Now imagine being told that shortly you would board a ship for somewhere called Australia, to begin a new life in a sunlit wonderland. For good. No choice.

It happened to thousands of British children in the decades immediately following World War Two, and they had little understanding of how it would shape their lives.

The astonishing scandal of the British child migrants will be the first subject for which the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse will hold full public hearings. It's first because the migrants are now nearing the end of their lives.

Clifford Walsh stands in the port of Fremantle near Perth in Western Australia.

He is now 72. Fremantle is where, in 1954, aged nine, he stepped off the ship from London, looking for the sheep he'd been told outnumbered people in Australia 100 to one.

Cross at Bindoon  CLIFFORD WALSH

He ended up at a place called Bindoon.

Hog's heaven for pedophiles

The Catholic institution known at one point as Bindoon Boys Town is now notorious. Based around an imposing stone mansion in the Australian countryside, 49 miles north of Perth, are buildings Walsh and his fellow child migrants were forced to build, barefoot, starting work the day after they arrived.

The Christian Brothers ruled the place with the aim of upholding order and a moral code. Within two days of arriving he says he received his first punishment at the hands of one of the brothers.

"He punched us, he kicked us, smashed us in the face, back-handed us and everything, and he then sat us on his knee to tell us that he doesn't like to hurt children, but we had been bad boys."

"I was sobbing uncontrollably for hours."

His story is deeply distressing. He tells it with a particularly Australian directness. He is furious.

A teacher reads to a group of children in Stevenage who are about to be sent to the

Fairbridge school in Molong GETTY IMAGES

He describes one brother luring him into his room with the promise he could have some sweet molasses - normally fed, not to the boys, but the cows. The man sexually abused him.

He claims another brother raped him, and a third beat him mercilessly after falsely accusing him of having sex with another boy.

"We had no parents, we had no relatives, there was nowhere we could go, these brothers - these paedophiles - must have thought they were in hog heaven."

He has accused the brothers at the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, the first time he has fully disclosed his experiences.

At the time he says: "I was too terrified to report the abuse. I knew no other life.

"I've lived 60 odd years with this hate, I can't have a normal sexual relationship because I don't like to hold people," says Walsh. "My own wife, I couldn't hug."

Bindoon CLIFFORD WALSH

He was troubled by all the memories.

"I couldn't show any affection. Stuff like that only reminded me of what the brothers would do all the time."

Exclusively British

Britain is perhaps the only country in the world to have exported vast numbers of its children. An estimated 150,000 children were sent over a 350-year period to Virginia, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and what was then Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe.

Australia was the main destination in the final wave between 1945 and 1974.

There were twin purposes - to ease the population of orphanages in the UK and to boost the population of the colonies.

The children were recruited by religious institutions from both the Anglican and Catholic churches, or well-meaning charities including Barnardo's and the Fairbridge Society. Their motivation was to give "lost" children a new life, and it would be wrong to say that every one of Britain's exported children suffered.

But for too many, the dream became a nightmare. Hundreds of migrant children have given accounts of poor education, hard labour, physical beatings and sexual abuse.

A demonstration of boxing at the Fairbridge school in Pinjarra, Western Australia GETTY IMAGES

Fairbridge Schools

Attempts were made to recreate a happy home life. At the Fairbridge Farm School in Molong, four hours outside Sydney, children lived in cottages, each with a "house mother".

Fairbridge was not a religious order, like the Christian Brothers, and some of its former children have praised the start it gave them.

But not Derek Moriarty. He was at Molong for eight years, one of hundreds of children to have endured poor food, inadequate education and physical labour. His life has been deeply affected by his Fairbridge upbringing.

He suffered at the hands of the then-principal of the school, Frederick Woods, a man he says kept 10 canes, and to the horror of the children, a hockey stick - which he used to beat the boys.

Boys play football at the Fairbridge school at Pinjarra GETTY IMAGES

Perhaps inevitably, Moriarty alleges sexual abuse - by a member of staff who took his clothes off and touched him.

"I was nine or 10," he says, "and I didn't understand it." He eventually ran away from Molong, attempted suicide at the age of 18 and has always suffered from depression, not helped by the years it took to discover the details of his family back in the UK.

In 2009 the Australian government apologised for the cruelty shown to the child migrants. Britain also made an apology in 2010.

Opening the can of worms

The pressure for answers and reparations had been growing. Questions might never have been asked, had it not been for two seekers of the truth.

In the early 1980s a Nottingham social worker, Margaret Humphreys, came across Australian former migrants who had suddenly started to realise they might have living relatives in the UK.

Many had been told, as children, their parents were dead. It wasn't true. "It was about identity," she says, "being stripped of it and being robbed of it."

Her life's work has been about reuniting "lost children" with their lost relatives. Having reinstated their sense of identity, she went on to build a lifelong bond with many former migrants, and they began to disclose the physical and sexual abuse they had suffered.

"As you go along, you're learning more and more about the degrees and the awfulness of the abuse. That's been incremental because people can really only talk about it over a longer period of time when there is trust. There's a lot of trauma involved here."

David Hill sailed out of Tilbury bound for a Fairbridge farm school

Further revelations about the Fairbridge homes were uncovered by one of their own.

David Hill was shipped out from Britain with his brothers to the Fairbridge farm at Molong in 1959. He was one of the lucky ones. His mother followed him later, providing him with a stable future.

He became a highly successful public figure in Australia. He was chairman and managing director of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and is a keen historian. Hill brought together the Fairbridge boys and girls to tell him their stories. Like those from the west of Australia - they were dominated by beatings and abuse.

Derek Moriarty was among those who unburdened themselves for the first time to Hill, as part of the research for his 2007 book The Forgotten Children and a 2009 ABC television documentary.

"I felt a weight lifted off my shoulders when I told him," Moriarty says. "But my abuse paled into insignificance compared to some others."

David Hill's work triggered claim after claim from men and women about their experiences as children.

Children gather at the Fairbridge school at Molong

They wrote and told him of a litany of sexual abuse. There was no sexual education at the school and, failing to understand what was happening, they were left traumatised.

Hill makes the astonishing claim that 60% of the children at Fairbridge Molong allege they were sexually abused, based on more than 100 interviews.

The Australian law firm Slater and Gordon successfully claimed compensation on behalf of 215 former Fairbridge children, of whom 129 said they had been sexually abused.

For the Christian Brothers the figures are even higher. The Australian Royal Commission on child abuse recently revealed 853 people had accused members of the order.

Hill is one of the expert witnesses who will give evidence to the UK Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA). The inquiry has been bitterly criticised since its creation - and some have questioned its huge scope.

Is there any point in it considering the history of child migration, dating back so far?

Children at Pinjarra hear a speech by the Duke of Gloucester GETTY IMAGES

A pedophile's dream

The Australian Royal commission is examining child migration closely. In 1998 the UK's Health Select Committee also held hearings, in which the Child Migrants Trust described the Christian Brothers institutions as "almost the full realisation of a paedophile's dream".

But the committee did not get to the bottom of it, concluding: "The Christian Brothers were very insistent that the abuses were not known to those who controlled these institutions. We cannot accept this."

Sources close to the current public inquiry have told the BBC it will produce new and startling revelations about the scale of sexual abuse abroad, and attempts by British and Australian institutions to cover it up.

This will include an examination of the claims of some child migrants that they were sent abroad weeks after reporting sexual abuse at their children's home in the UK. The allegation is that they were hand-picked. Either to get them out of the way, or because they were of interest to paedophiles.

Three former Fairbridge boys have claimed that the then-Australian Governor General, Lord Slim, sexually molested them during rides in his chauffeur-driven Rolls Royce while visiting the home. It is understood these allegations could be considered by the inquiry.

The inquiry could also definitively answer a crucial historical question. Did the British government know it was sending children to be mistreated in a foreign country?

Margaret Humphreys is adamant: "We want to know what happened, we want to know who did it, and we want to know who covered it up for so long."

The Blacklist

In fact, government files reveal that there was a time when the migration programme could have been stopped. It came in 1956 when three officials went to Australia to inspect 26 institutions which took child migrants.

Confidential report  NATIONAL ARCHIVES

There was enough warning of this "fact-finding mission" to allow a Fairbridge official to warn the manager of the Molong farm: "It would be advisable to see (the children) wore their socks and shoes." Even in a land where it was easy to encounter poisonous wildlife, that wasn't standard practice at many of the institutions.

The resulting report, delivered back to the British government, was fairly critical. It identified a general lack of expertise in child care and worried that children were living in institutions in remote rural areas, whereas the trend in Britain was towards fostering them into urban families.

However the report had a second "secret" section, never published, which went a little further.

This named names - including those of five institutions which were not up to standard. When the UK's Home Office saw the report, it wanted five more added to create what became an infamous blacklist - places which should not receive more children because of poor standards of care. Fairbridge Molong and Bindoon were both on the list.

St Joseph's orphanage, Sydney

Dhurringile Rural Training Farm, Victoria

St Joseph's, Neerkol, nr Rockhampton, Queensland

Salvation Army Training Farm, Riverview, Queensland

Methodist Home, Magill, Adelaide

St Vincent's Orphanage, Castledare

St Joseph's Farm School, Bindoon, Western Australia

St John Bosco Boys' Town, Glenorchy, Hobart

Fairbridge Farm School, Pinjarra, Western Australia

Fairbridge Farm School, Molong, New South Wales

But the report had barely scratched the surface. It made no mention of sexual or physical abuse.

Given the length of time it took for the child migrants to tell their stories, this is perhaps unsurprising.

But during the post-war years, sexual accusations were made against three principals of the Fairbridge Farm School at Molong.

David Hill has revealed they included a claim that Frederick Woods - the man who beat boys with a hockey stick - was "sexually perverted" and had abused a girl resident. An internal investigation exonerated him.

This does not appear to have been disclosed by the Fairbridge Society either to the public or the 1956 inspectors. They had a schedule to keep to, and their visits to institutions spread across a vast country were fleeting.

Placards EPA

Similarly, at the Christian Brothers' homes in Western Australia, children were terrified of criticising the brothers.

Former Bindoon resident Clifford Walsh was there during the fact-finding mission. He doesn't remember it, but says speaking out would have resulted in an extremely severe, possibly even life-threatening, beating.

The truth is that neither the institutions, nor the inspectors, came close to creating the sort of atmosphere where children could tell them their darkest secrets and be taken seriously. If that had happened, not just in Australia, but throughout modern British history, we might not have needed the current public inquiry .

Creating a stir and covering it up

It might have missed the crimes being committed in the institutions, but when the 1956 report hit the desks of Britain's bureaucrats it created quite a stir.

Something strongly resembling a cover-up began. Files held at the National Archive set out the response of government officials. One wrote in 1957 that the Overseas Migration Board, which advised the government, was "sorry the mission was sent at all".

After a series of changes at the top, Alexis Jay is now the head of the British inquiry

Some on the board "urged very strongly that the report should not be published."

The government archives record that at a meeting with the organisations running the migrant programmes, Lord John Hope, under-secretary of state for Commonwealth relations, discussed what would be disclosed to parliament from the report.

"I think you can rely upon us to do what we can in as much as we shall pick out all the good bits," he said. "I shall not be in the least critical in Parliament."

The UK Fairbridge Society piled on its own pressure - its president was the Duke of Gloucester, uncle to the Queen. Officials discussed the "immediate parliamentary repercussions" which could result from holding up the migrant programme.

Sir Colin Anderson, the director of the Orient Line, which benefited from the business of shipping the children, appealed for the report not to be made public because of the controversy it might cause.

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse

The inquiry into historical child sex abuse in England and Wales is to examine claims made against local authorities, religious organisations, the armed forces and public and private institutions

Momentum for the inquiry started with the Jimmy Savile scandal

The inquiry is expected to take about five years to complete

The first phase of the inquiry will consist of 13 separate investigations

The child sexual abuse inquiry so far

In a sympathetic phone call, a senior official from the Overseas Migration Board responded that the Fairbridge Society was an "extremely fine endeavour for which everyone felt the highest praise".

And what did the government do? Files at the National Archive show officials squirmed in institutional discomfort at the idea of taking any meaningful action.

In June 1957 the Commonwealth Relations Office sent a secret telegram to the UK High Commission in Australia - "we do not want to withhold approval", it said, for more children to to be sent from the UK.

After more pressure from the Fairbridge Society, 16 children waiting to travel were sent on their way.

The key recommendation of the inspectors, that the British home secretary agree each and every decision to send a child, was quietly shelved.

The Fairbridge Society continued to ship out children, though concentrated on those whose mothers intended to join them later.

David Hill's response is anger, even today. With tears in his eyes he says: "I'm surprised how vulnerable it has made me feel - that it could happen and happen to the extent that it did.

"The British government not only continued to approve children to be sent, but they financially subsidised for them to go. To institutions they had put on a blacklist unfit for children, condemned."

Molong Farm School finally closed in 1973. The Fairbridge Society is now part of the Prince's Trust and still runs activity holidays for children.

Bindoon CLIFFORD WALSH

The Prince's Trust said it had never been involved in child migration, "but we do hold the archive of the former Fairbridge Society. We are cooperating fully with this important inquiry."

Bindoon remained open until 1966. It is now used as a Catholic college.

The Australian Royal Commission recently estimated that 7% of the country's Catholic priests were involved in child abuse.

Except the Christian Brothers and 3 other Catholic orders were shown to have more than 20% pedophiles. One order exceeded 40%. And those are conservative estimates.

And such is the scope of sexual abuse allegations in the Catholic and Anglican churches in the UK that entire strands of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse are dedicated to them.

The IICSA investigation will be able to seize the records, not just of the British government but also the migration institutions themselves - including the archives of the Fairbridge society.

Sixty years later, former Bindoon boy Clifford Walsh strongly believes this inquiry can help answer some of his questions about the culpability of the government and British institutions.

"They sent us to a place that was a living hell. How come they didn't know that? Why didn't they investigate? And if they investigated, then they were incompetent or there was a cover-up."

The child migration programme will also provide ample evidence for the UK's effort to consider (or failure to consider) the long-term effect of child sexual abuse. Something which may turn out to be a central theme of the inquiry.

Historian and Fairbridge boy David Hill estimates it took victims he interviewed 22 years on average before they felt able to disclose what happened.

But it will also provide a final chance for Britain's lost children to return to the land of their birth and tell their stories. The anger has not gone away, and their childhoods have left invisible scars which have lasted a lifetime.

One of the child migrants we spoke to asked us not to name him, after he returned to Bindoon armed with a sledgehammer.

His target? The ostentatious burial place of Brother Paul Keaney the institution's founder. By the time he'd finished, enough damage had been done to the marble grave slab that Bindoon's current owners, a Catholic college, were forced to remove what remained.

It was one man's small blow against a history of child cruelty.

Have you been affected by abuse?

The Child Migrants Trust attempts to reunite children sent abroad with their families

NSPCC specialises in child protection

National Association for People Abused in Childhood offers support, advice and guidance to adult survivors of any form of childhood abuse

Survivor Scotland offers help to improve the lives of survivors of childhood abuse in Scotland

Childline is a private and confidential service for children and young people up to the age of 19

The Children's Society works to support vulnerable children in England and Wales

Stop It Now! supports adults worried about child abuse, including survivors, professionals, those with a concern about their own thoughts or behaviour towards children and friends and relatives of people arrested for sexual offending

More Arrests in Pakistan Child Sex Extortion Scandal

BY MANILA TIMES
   
HUSSAIN KHANWALA: Pakistani police arrested five more people Monday over a major child sex abuse scandal after a lawyer for the victims accused them of protecting culprits, while activists said the case was just the tip of the iceberg.

At least 280 children were filmed being sexually abused by a gang of 25 men who used the hundreds of videos they produced to blackmail the youngsters’ parents, according to Latif Ahmed Sara, a lawyer and activist representing the victims.

    Irfan - one of the 280 children sexually abused and extorted 

The case has provoked expressions of outrage in Pakistani newspapers, several of which have suggested a politically-influenced cover up.

Corruption in Pakistan!???! Say it ain't so!

The village at the heart of the scandal, Hussain Khanwala, lies in the Punjab stronghold of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) party.

Sara accused the police of dragging their feet, as some of the videos date back to 2007.

“The police are protecting the criminals, they are supporting them and have provided them an opportunity to escape the village,” the lawyer told reporters.

An initial police probe, carried out last week at the behest of the provincial government, described the allegations as “baseless”, a conclusion immediately rejected by local media and rights activists.

Shahbaz Sharif, the chief minister of Punjab province where the abuse took place, has ordered an independent judicial inquiry and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has vowed stern action against those responsible.

On Monday Pakistan’s upper and lower houses of parliament passed unanimous resolutions condemning the abuse and demanding exemplary punishment for the culprits.

The Lahore High Court, however, declined the chief minister’s request, saying police should continue their investigation.

“The judicial inquiry is required where facts are hidden, in this case police are already investigating and some of the accused have already been arrested,” court spokesman Arif Javed told AFP.

The total number of suspects in custody stands at 12 following Monday’s arrests.

The head of Punjab’s Child Protection Bureau, Saba Sadiq, described the case as “the largest child abuse scandal in Pakistan’s history”.

The abusers allegedly tried to extort money from parents of victims, selling clips of the videos locally for 40 Pakistan rupees each (around 40 US cents) if they did not pay up.

AFP

    Hussain Khanwala

A Sex Abuse Scandal is Rocking the Catholic Church in France

Cardinal tries to finesse his way through past indiscretions

Lourdes (France) (AFP) - A French cardinal on Tuesday denied accusations he covered up the sexual abuse of children amid a growing scandal that has deeply embarrassed the Catholic Church in France.

Even the fiercely secular French government weighed in, with Prime Minister Manuel Valls urging Cardinal Philippe Barbarin, the archbishop of Lyon, to "take responsibility" in the case.

"I have never, never, never covered up acts of paedophilia," Barbarin retorted during a news conference in Lourdes, a major Catholic pilgrimage site in southwestern France where the country's bishops were meeting.

Cardinal Barbarin's statement has to be tempered by his understanding of what it means to 'cover up acts of padeophilia'. 

Barbarin has been caught up in the scandal over abuses that took place 25 years ago, long before he became archbishop of Lyon in 2002.

A priest in his diocese, Bernard Preynat, was charged in January after victims came forward with claims he had sexually abused Scouts between 1986 and 1991.

Prosecutors say Preynat has admitted the charges.

The victims have filed complaints against several senior diocesan officials, including Barbarin, accusing them of failing to report the priest or remove him from duty despite being aware of his past.

Barbarin said that when learned of the priest's past in 2007, he immediately called a meeting with him.

Bernard Preynat

"Firstly I said 'How is such a thing possible?'. He said, 'There's no point explaining it, you wouldn't understand," Barbarin told journalists.

That doesn't work so well as justification for doing nothing.

He then asked Preynat if he had committed further abuses since 1991 and the priest swore he had not. Barbarin said no accusations had been made since.

"You can reproach me for having believed him... but covering up means knowing and letting it happen. Absolutely never," he said.

See what I mean? His understanding of 'covering up' includes 'letting it continue', which is enabling, not covering up. Covering up is simply not reporting a criminal activity, which is exactly what he did. Furthermore, he took Preynat's word that he was no longer an active paedophile. It appears he took no steps to verify that. He didn't seem to think that there was any possibility that a child sex abuser might lie. So, in fact, he also enabled Preynat to be in a position where he could continue his perversion at the expense of innocent children. There is no justification for what Barbarin did - he must resign.

Accusations were made against Preynat only when a victim who was allegedly abused in the 1980s realized in 2015 that the priest was still in service.

The diocese removed Preynat in May 2015. When complaints were first made against him in the 1980s, he was merely suspended for a few months.

- 'What to do with old cases?' -

The case recalls the recent Oscar-winning film "Spotlight", which highlighted how the Church would transfer deviant priests between parishes in Boston in the United States.

While this practice is no longer commonplace, the French case raises the question of how deep Church authorities should dig into abuse cases lurking in their past.

"I know what must be done on current cases. But what to do with these old cases?" Barbarin asked during the news conference.

The Vatican has backed the cardinal, saying he had shown "a great deal of responsibility".

Good grief, if that's responsibility... what are they comparing it to? Methinks their standards of responsibility are extremely low.

However the media attention drew fresh accusations against Barbarin.

A 42-year-old man revealed he has pressed charges against Barbarin for failing to act in 2009 when the cardinal learned that he had been abused at the age of 16 by another Lyon priest.

Barbarin told journalists that both cases had passed the statute of limitations for legal action when he learned of them -- adding the phrase "thank God", which provoked even more outrage.

"Now we are bordering on pathetic," said Bertrand Virieux, a spokesman for the victims' group that is suing the cardinal.

He added that even more cases could come to light in the coming days.

- 'The culture has really changed' -

Pierre Pican circa 2000

The scandal has been extremely embarrassing for the Church in France, which has worked to harden its stance against predator priests since Pierre Pican, bishop of the Normandy town of Bayeux, was convicted in 2001 for failing to report abuse.

The Catholic Church continues to be dogged by cases of pedophile priests and past cover-ups, despite Pope Francis' promise of a crackdown.

Barbarin's case, as well as a scandal in Australia that has seen Vatican finance minister Cardinal George Pell accused of protecting predator priests, have been used to illustrate that a culture of silence persists.

But Le Figaro daily argued that decades-old abuse cases do not necessarily reflect how the Church reacts today.

"Most dioceses in the world now get rid of any accused priest... The culture has really changed in the Church," an editorial read.

Did it have any choice? I suspect if it did, there would be no change.

'God Weeps' at Child Sex Abuse - Pope Francis

So do pedophile priests and Bishops, once they're outed

From BBC US & Canada

Pope Francis met with prisoners in a Philadelphia jail

Pope Francis has met and prayed with five victims, all now adults who had suffered sexual abuse as children, on Sunday morning at a seminary in Pennsylvania, saying "God weeps" for their suffering.

The group - three women and two men - had been abused by clergy, family members or teachers, Father Federico Lombardi said in a statement. Each was accompanied by a family member, he added.

The Pope told the survivors, an unknown number of whom had been abused by priests, that clergy and bishops would be held accountable when they abuse or fail to protect children.

Many abuse survivors are angry at how the Vatican has dealt with allegations.

The Roman Catholic Church in the US has been embroiled in child sex scandals.

US dioceses have made huge compensation payouts to victims.

The Pope was "overwhelmed with shame that men entrusted with the tender care of children violated these little ones and caused grievous harm," he told bishops following the meeting, on the final day of his visit to the US.

He told the victims who were abused by a member of the clergy that he was "deeply sorry" for the times when the abuse was reported, but victims or their families "were not heard or believed," the Vatican said in a statement.

"Please know that the Holy Father hears you and believes you," Pope Francis told the survivors.

Lupe Cantu, of McAllen Valley, Texas, hangs rosary beads on a barricade along
Benjamin Franklin Parkway as she waits for Mass delivered by Pope Francis,
Sunday, Sept. 27, 2015, in Philadelphia (AP)

The Pope listened to the survivors' stories, prayed with them, and expressed his "pain and shame" in the case of those harmed by clergy or church workers, Fr Lombardi said.

The Pope "renewed his commitment" to ensure that victims are treated with justice, the guilty are punished, and to effective prevention in the Church and in society, the statement said.

But survivors' advocacy groups expressed some scepticism at whether the Pope's words would lead to any change.

Pope Francis greets seminarians at St Charles Borromeo Seminary in
Philadelphia (September 27, 2015) Reuters

The Pope met trainee priests at a seminary outside Philadelphia

John Salveson, President of the Pennsylvania-based Foundation to Abolish Child Sex Abuse, said:

"The truth is that the survivor community has been asking the Church to take several simple steps to protect children and hold perpetrators and enablers accountable for years, but the Church has refused to take these actions.

"If Pope Francis wishes to take effective action to back up his words he could take these steps immediately."

In June the Pope approved the creation of a tribunal to hear cases of bishops accused of covering up child abuse by paedophile priests.

Members of the St. Anthony of Padua Church walk over the Benjamin Franklin
Bridge towards Philadelphia ahead of a Mass celebrated by Pope Francis AP

Catholics were gathering in Philadelphia on Sunday morning ahead of a Mass later in the day that would draw more than a million people.

Last year, the UN strongly criticised the Church for failing to stamp out abuse and for allowing cover-ups.

The Pope's trip to the USA has certainly affected the country. Other than the Speaker's resignation, we will not really know how profoundly it affected America for some time. 

One can't help but be impressed at how much more Christ-like Francis is than his predecessors. One wonders whether his popularity will draw people from the evangelical church toward Catholicism, for so many in the evangelical church are such a long way from being Christ-like.

CSA - Pedophile Papal Envoy Charged; Archbishop Resigns

The Vatican is to put its former envoy to the Dominican Republic, Jozef Wesolowski, on trial on child sex abuse and child pornography charges.

Pope Francis has also accepted the resignations of a US archbishop and his deputy, accused in Minnesota of having ignored a priest's child abuse.

Jozef Wesolowski is accused of sexually abusing children in the Dominican Republic from 2008 to 2013. He is under house arrest in the Vatican.

The trial is to begin on 11 July.

Wesolowki

Wesolowski, 66, is also charged with possession of child pornography, dating from his return to Rome in 2013.

The moves are seen as part of a crackdown by Pope Francis on clerics and employees of the Church who exploit minors.

Last year, the Pope compared the actions of those who commit such crimes to a "satanic mass".

He also strengthened the Vatican's laws against child abuse.

Defrocked

Wesolowski, who is originally from Poland, was recalled from the Dominican Republic in 2013, after allegations surfaced accusing him of abusing Dominican boys.

He had spent five years in the Caribbean country as the papal envoy.

He was defrocked in June last year after he was found guilty by a Church tribunal - he is the highest-ranking church official to be defrocked for such abuse.

He will now be tried by a Vatican criminal court.

A Vatican statement said the IT systems used by Wesolowski would be scrutinised.

He has been under house arrest in the Vatican since September.

The Vatican said at the time of his arrest that he had not been placed in a police cell because of his poor health.

If found guilty, he could face between six and 10 years in prison.

US resignations

The Vatican also accepted the resignations of an archbishop in the United States and his deputy following accusations that their archdiocese covered up the sexual abuse of children.

They are Archbishop John Nienstedt and Auxiliary Bishop Lee Anthony Piche from the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis.

John Nienstedt resigned as archbishop on Monday

John Nienstedt said in a statement that his leadership had drawn attention away from the good works of the church but stressed he was leaving "with a clear conscience".

Their resignation comes after prosecutors charged their archdiocese with "turning a blind eye" to repeated reports of inappropriate behaviour by a priest who was later convicted of molesting two boys.

Neither man was named in the indictment.

Prosecutors accuse the archdiocese of failing to respond to "numerous and repeated reports of troubling conduct" by Curtis Wehmeyer, a former priest currently serving a five-year prison sentence for molesting two boys.