Husband of former Aussie ambassador to Spain acquitted of child sex abuse charges
By Debleena Sarkar
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| A man walks past under colourful umbrellas in Getafe, outskirts of Madrid, August 1, 2013. Picture taken with a fisheye lens. Reuters/Juan Medina |
Kapociunas, who is an artist, was living with his wife Jane Hardy who was the ambassador to Spain at that time. He faced a two-week trial before the ACT Supreme Court this month. He was facing three counts of charges for engaging in sexual activities other than intercourse with a minor.
The Canberra Times reported that the incidents allegedly happened in Kapociunas’ room in Madrid last year. Kapociunas denied the allegations brought against him. After the jury passed its verdict, he left the court along with his wife and refused to make a comment on it.
A month after Kapociunas was charged with the offence in October last year, Hardy ceased to be Australia’s ambassador to Spain. The matter on the undecided charge will be taken up in court in February.
Rotherham child sex abuse trial:
Alleged victim "lied to protect family"
ADELE FORRESTA FORMER “girlfriend” of alleged child sex abuse defendant Basharat Hussain told a court she lied in a police statement — but said she did it because she was finally escaping him.
Sheffield Crown Court heard today that the woman made the statement in 2003 when Hussain was arrested by police at Manchester Airport for drug offences after they returned from holiday, saying that their relationship had been “mainly fine” and he had never been violent towards her.
Ms Gillian Batts, for Hussain, said this was the truth and what she had told police recently about his physical and sexual abuse was a lie.
The woman said she had seen his arrest as her “escape” from him because police told her he was “going away for a long time” — at least seven years, she believed.
Ms Batts said this would have been the ideal opportunity to tell the police about her abuse.
She answered: “For who, to believe me? Why would I drag all that up? It was a relief they had got him and he had gone, that was my way out.”
Ms Batts said: “So you agree you lied in a statement to the police?”
The woman (33), said: “I lied to protect myself and my family.”
The defence barrister said that when a police officer visited the woman’s home in October 2013 she had been asked questions about certain people, including Hussain.
Ms Batts said the woman told police she had been in a relationship with him but was not a victim of abuse.
The witness replied: “I said that because I didn’t want any more to do with it, I didn’t want to go through that horrible feeling. I said that to just end it all.”
The woman said she went to the police five months later in March 2014 because the visit had caused her to suffer from depression and flashbacks and she felt she needed to finally tell someone.
Ms Batts suggested that some of the claims she had made about being forced into oral sex, being bound and having petrol poured over her, were identical to references made in the independent enquiry (Jay report) she had heard about in the news.
Ms Batts said: “You have taken your inspiration for your allegations from the contents of this enquiry.”
She replied: “They are not inspirations, it was my life.”
Ms Batts added: “Every allegation you have made is set out on page one of that report.”
The witness answered: “I have not read a report, that was my life, not a story, no coincidence.”
Mr Tair Khan, for co-defendant Arshid Hussain, said the woman’s claims that Arshid forced her to perform oral sex on men were fabricated.
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| Arshid Hussain |
A statement from the complainant’s mother was read to the jury. In it she said she did not see Basharat and her daughter’s relationship as normal and he seemed to control her.
She said her daughter became withdrawn and Basharat would “just let himself into our house and go straight up to her room”.
She added: “He would never say hello, I thought he was rude and disrespectful.”
Bizarre! No wonder the girl had problems.
The jury has now been released from the trial for the Christmas break and will return on January 4.
Arshid and Basharat Hussain deny all the charges against them.
Rotherham child sex abuse trial:
Accused "poisoned victim's pet cats"
ADELE FORREST
In the same trial as above...
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| Sheffield Law Courts |
The woman says Basharat Hussain (38), who is accused of 15 child sex abuse offences, did not tell her why he had poisoned the animals.
“I just found them in the garden think it was when I was about 18,” she recalled in a police interview shown to Sheffield Crown Court.
“I loved them two cats they were brother and sister I found them in the garden curled up dead and he laughed.
“He said: ‘I've poisoned them’, I don't remember why.
“There had been nothing wrong with them up to that point, they were only young cats.”
Hussain denies all the charges against him.
The trial continues.
Report slams U.N. for "gross institutional failure" in child sex abuse cases
UNITED NATIONS -- The United Nations' "gross institutional failure" to act on allegations that French and other peacekeepers sexually abused children in the Central African Republic led to even more assaults, according to a new report released Thursday.
One young boy who initially reported an attack on his friends more than a year ago now says he has been raped, too.
"These children were betrayed by the very people sent to protect them"
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
The independent panel found that the accounts by children as young as 9 of trading oral sex and other acts in exchange for food in the middle of a war zone in early 2014 were "passed from desk to desk, inbox to inbox, across multiple U.N. offices, with no one willing to take responsibility."
Among those said to have looked the other way were the U.N. children's agency, UNICEF, as well as human rights staffers.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, in a statement, expressed "profound regret that these children were betrayed by the very people sent to protect them" and said he accepted the panel's broad findings.
The panel, led by Canadian judge Marie Deschamps, found that U.N. staffers failed or hesitated to pass the children's allegations to more senior officials, sometimes because of political concerns with France involved; showed "unconscionable delays" in protecting and supporting the children; failed to further investigate the allegations; failed to properly vet peacekeepers for past abuses; and, overall, appeared more concerned with whether one U.N. staffer had improperly alerted French authorities.
"The welfare of the victims and the accountability of the perpetrators appeared to be an afterthought, if considered at all," the report says.
As of now, more than a year and a half after U.N. staffers first heard the children's allegations of sexual abuse, no one has been arrested. Four French soldiers were questioned last week and released without charge, according to the Paris prosecutor's office. They have not been publicly identified.
Sudan: Child Sex Abuse On the Rise in Sudan Capital
Khartoum — The Sudanese Ministry of Health has warned for a growing number of cases of sexual abuse of children in Khartoum state.
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| Khartoum, Sudan |
Addressing a forum on gender-based violence in Khartoum on Thursday, Dr Ibrahim Abdelrahman, director of the Health Ministry's Primary Health Care Department, reported that the number of rapes of children, especially school children, has risen rapidly this year.
Surveys conducted by the Health Ministry in schools in the Sudanese capital this year showed a significant increase in mental health disorders among school students. It turned out that an increasing number of children have been sexually harassed or raped at home.
Abdelrahman announced that his Ministry has decided to establish new mental health clinics "to face this dangerous phenomenon".
Batoul Abdelrahman, director of the Ministry's Women and Child Health Department, noted "a significant deterioration in the mental health of women and children across the country".
She attributed the increased number of suicides and other violent deaths recorded among women and children to "the proliferation of manifestations of violence across Sudan".
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| Sudan, Africa |
'Peripheries'
In July, El Jareeda newspaper published a report about sexual abuses against children in the capital.
The chairman of the National Union of Mentally Disabled People, Dr Yasir Mohamed Mousa, said that more than 3,500 cases of sexual abuse against children were recorded in 2014 and early 2015.
He noted that many rape cases against minors occur in Khartoum's peripheral districts, particularly in El Baraka, El Haj Yousif, Mayo, Mandela, Gabousho, and El Nasir, where there are no police stations and most of the residents are displaced people from the war zones of Darfur, the Blue Nile, and the Nuba Mountains in South Kordofan".
According to a teacher of the Lubaba Basic School in El Nasir district, southern Khartoum, eleven of the school's pupils were raped at home. Six of the cases resulted in pregnancies.
He claimed that the crimes reported to the police represent less than five percent of the actual rape cases.
Any victim of sexual violence has to report the incident to the police by filling out a Form 8. Obtaining this form used to be obligatory for victims before being allowed treatment at a hospital until 2005 when the law was revised. Yet an international women's initiative reported three years ago about confusion among the Sudanese police, medics, and victims about the use of the form.
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| Khartoum |
‘Britain’s most prolific dad’ found guilty of child sex abuse
Richard Hartley-Parkinson for Metro.co.uk
Michael Redman has been told to expect a lengthy jail term
Surrey, UK - A man nicknamed Britain’s most prolific dad after fathering 28 children has been found guilty of sexually assaulting a young girl.
Michael Redman used his job as a bus driver to meet women and boasted of his parenting capabilities after reproducing with nine different women.
He’s now been convicted of repeated indecent assaults on a girl from the ages of 12 to 15.
He molested the girl and forced her to pose for degrading images and sexually assaulted her in woodland in Frensham, Surrey.
Redman was found guilty of three counts of sexual assault on a child, two counts of assault by penetration and four counts of making indecent pictures.
He’s fathered 28 children with nine women
His victim told police: ‘He would make me pose naked for him. He would feel my breasts while he was taking photos of me and he would put his fingers inside me.
‘He would make me lie in various poses on my bed when I wasn’t wearing anything. He would also drive me to the woods and take pictures of me there.
‘He would undress me and touch me and he told me I would like it.’
Redman’s crime eventually came to light when the victim told her own father about what had happened.
Judge Peter Moss told him to expect a lengthy prison sentence.
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