British police bust human trafficking ring,
rescue 29 women
By Clyde Hughes
(UPI) -- British police arrested 17 suspected human traffickers early Thursday and rescued more than two dozen women they'd been holding captive as part of a global ring, Scotland Yard investigators said.
The Metropolitan Police Service busted the ring with early morning raids in the London areas of Redbridge, Havering, Barking and Dagenham, Newham, Brentwood and Tower Hamlets. They said others were simultaneously arrested in Romania.
Investigators said the 17 accused -- 14 men and three women between 17 and 50 years old -- were arrested on suspicion of modern slavery, controlling prostitution, drug offenses and firearms charges.
"[We] recognize the seriousness of modern slavery and the devastation it brings to people's lives," Met Police Det. Chief Inspector Richard McDonagh, said.
"We have an investigative capability across frontline policing and have invested in specialist resources through our central specialist crime -- vulnerability investigations team, which tackles complex cases. This allows us to target offenders and support victims."
The rescued women, who ranged in age from 20 to 40, were moved to a safe location, McDonagh said.
"Romanian police officers working shoulder to shoulder with our British partners is a great achievement, a proof of our mutual permanent support and a great professional reward," said Romanian Ambassador to Britain Dan Mihalache.
Well done people!
Shamed PSNI officer discovered with stash of 16,000 child porn images pictured for first time
Jason Johnson, The Irish Sun
Robert Jason Ainscough was rumbled after police launched a probe over claims he had been sending women pictures of his privates while in uniform.
One of his victims told The Irish Sun he had sent her x-rated snaps from the toilets of a Co Down PSNI station.
Ainscough, 34, originally from Dublin, was sacked and charged with a number of offences.
Yesterday he was due to be sentenced for misconduct in public office and making indecent images of children at Craigavon Crown Court. But Judge Roseanne McCormick QC delayed her decision until Monday saying: “I want to consider all matters very carefully.”
Ainscough, whose address was given as c/o Lurgan PSNI station, pleaded guilty to six counts of misconduct in public office. He also admitted 13 charges of making indecent images of children.
ON DUTY OFFENCES
All the offences were committed between 2014 and 2016.
Prosecutor Nicola Auret said Ainscough exchanged sexually explicit messages, including texts, photographs and videos with three different women while on duty.
A constable for eight years, he also used the police computer to access and share personal information on two of the women.
Ms Auret said the offences were brought to light in September 2016 when one of the women came forward. She told the court: “The photos indicated a male in full police uniform exposing his penis.” The photos and videos were taken in the toilet of Banbridge PSNI station.
She said that “all the texting was consensual.”
That investigation led police to seize computer hard drives and memory sticks from Ainscough’s home. It was then that detectives found 16,681 indecent images of children.
Ms Auret outlined how the vast majority, some 16,673 images and videos, were classified in the lowest category C, with eight being classified as B.
Defence QC Charles McCreanor conceded that while “it’s his own fault,” Ainscough has “effectively lost everything. He has lost his career, he has lost his good character, he has lost the respect that he had...he has lost out on every front imaginable,” said the lawyer adding that Ainscough’s mental health has spiralled downwards to such an extent that there had been “suicidal ideations.”
He said he is “very much a shell of what he might have been...contrite, ashamed, embarrassed.”
UNIFORM PICTURES
He urged the lawyer Judge McCormick “to be as merciful and lenient as you can.”
Earlier, one of his victims – who did not give evidence in the case - told us how they met on dating website Plenty of Fish as she was emerging from an abusive relationship.
She said: "He just kept sending me pictures and asking for more pictures from me.
"I did send him pictures and it went on like that for a while but I got into a bit of a spiral when they started to become flirty."
She said the officer began sending shots of himself in uniform, then of himself in civilian clothes and flashing his manhood.
She added: "He had no concerns, he seemed to think there was no problem with any of it.
"Things tailed off but he would always get back to me asking for more and more photos. It really started to freak me out."
Ainscough was freed on continuing bail until Monday morning.
Afghanistan paedophile ring may be responsible
for abuse of over 500 boys
Social workers claim teachers and local officials are implicated, and believe thousands more children may have been targeted
Stefanie Glinski in Kabul, Guardian, UK
Experts warned that the poverty of victims plays a role in the silencing of sexual abuse crimes.
Photograph: Stefanie Glinski
Some of the victims of the abuse have since been murdered according to the campaigners who first discovered videos of abuse posted to a Facebook page.
Honour killings
Five families killed their sons after their faces were seen on videos posted to social media. Two other boys – a 13 and 15 year old – were killed last week, although the perpetrators are unknown.
Civil society organisation, The Logar Youth, Social and Civil Institution, which has been working in the region for 16 years, revealed the extent of the abuse after discovering more than 100 videos on the social media site.
The institution is investigating other high schools in the region, believing thousands more children may have been abused.
Mohammed Mussa, a lead social worker at the institution, alleges that teachers, headteachers and local authority officials are implicated in the abuse ring.
“The boys we have spoken to are between the ages of 14 to 20 and the cases were reported in relatively secure areas. That’s one of the reasons why we think that the numbers could peak significantly,” he said. “Perpetrators might coordinate because they understand that if legal action is taken against them, they work as a group rather than an isolated incident.”
One school boy, Tamim*, 17, from Logar province, said that he recorded his headteacher’s demands on his phone last year.
“He told me that he loved me and wanted to have sex with me,” Tamim said. His parents hadn’t believed him until they heard the recording.
Students said the headteacher had built a private room in the school’s library, where he molested male students after school and on weekends.
Tamim said the headteacher has been fired from his post, but is understood to now hold a position in the Ministry of Education.
A Ministry of Education spokesperson Nooria Nazhat said: “If there is a complaint about our staff, the judicial authorities are responsible to investigate it. If a teacher behaves inappropriately, the teacher is punished according to the law … Detecting crime and investigating it is not the task of the Ministry of Education. We have 220,000 teachers – we can’t check on all of their lives.”
Another student, Daud*, 18, who used to attend a different high school, said one of his teachers would fail him in class and then demand sexual services in return for a passing grade.
So far, 66 cases of abuse have been identified at his school.
“My teacher said, ‘you don’t need to study, I will pass you anyway’,” Daud told the Guardian. “Often, students from poor families were singled out because they were vulnerable,” he said.
According to Mussa, some of the teachers were reported to the police but were released shortly after and have not been charged.
“The rapists are teachers, older students, authority figures and even extended family members,” he said. He and his team have received death threats since exposing the abuse.
Blackmail
He added that many of the abused boys have also been threatened. “Many of the victims are blackmailed. They are forced to sell drugs or engage in illegal activities in exchange for their rape videos to not be released,” Mussa said.
“Impunity, toxic gender norms and poverty of victims play a big role in the silencing of these crimes. These boys come from the most marginalised sections of society, they don’t have a voice and very few speak up on their behalf,” said Charu Hogg, executive director of the All Survivors Project, an organisation working with male victims of sexual violence in Afghanistan where, she said, sexual abuse was massively underreported.
Patricia Gossman, associate Asia director at Human Rights Watch, added: “There is impunity for child rape because very often the perpetrators are powerful men in the military, police, or other official institutions. Even though the practice has been criminalised, the law too often goes unenforced.”
The mountains of southern Logar. Children often fear speaking out about sexual abuse for fear
of ruining their family’s ‘honour’. Photograph: Stefanie Glinski
And ruining their families 'honour' often means they will be murdered by their own families
Male sexual abuse is widespread in Afghanistan. Psychologist Lyla Schwartz, who runs mental health initiative Peace of Mind Afghanistan, said victims rarely report what happens as any attention or subsequent trial can ruin the family’s “honour”.
“Oftentimes, families blame the receivers of sexual violence instead of the perpetrators, not believing that respected authority figures would engage in such behaviour. That’s part of the reason there has been not a single prosecution for male rape this year – and few, if any even – in previous ones.”
Schwartz has now started counselling several of the boys.
“If the children aren’t being helped to deal with the traumatic experience, it can exasperate into violence, mental health disorders, PTSD or even perpetration of sexual abuse. The students are so vulnerable and they will put the blame on themselves and feel shame, even though they didn’t do anything wrong,” she explained, admitting that since the cases were so rampant and on such high levels, there isn’t capacity to help everyone.
Afghanistan’s 37-million-strong population continues to lack widespread psychological support and more than 18 years of war have left much of the country devastated, with the both the Taliban and Islamic State continuing to gain territory.
Much of Logar – home to less than half a million people – is controlled by the Taliban, who have killed several of the sex abusers, according to the Logar Youth, Social and Civil Institution.
A further 25 families of raped boys have relocated to different provinces. “Hundreds of others don’t have the means to do that,” explained Mussa, who has since asked the US Embassy in Kabul to help to support the boys.
Sexual violence causes deep and long-lasting psychological harm to victims, said Hogg, warning of limited numbers of staff to respond to the needs of sexual violence survivors of all genders in Afghanistan. “Stigma causes a significant barrier to seeking support,” she added.
It’s hard to say just how many boys have been abused in Afghanistan. “The practise is frowned upon, but it’s still practised widespread,” said Schwartz.
“Every class we talked to had students report forceful sexual abuse,” explained Mussa. “It happens in every province. Children’s rights are completely neglected.”
* Names have been changed.
Logar Province, Afg
MPs React to Logar, Afghanistan, Sex Abuse Claims
A heated discussion over a recent report in the UK’s Guardian about widespread sex abuse of school-aged children in Logar province roiled the House of Representatives on Saturday, with some members outraged by the abuse and others outraged by the claims.
The Guardian article, published on Wednesday, alleged sexual abuse of “550 children and youth” from “six schools” in the province.
Rahman Rahmani, the House speaker, described the alleged child abuse in Logar schools as "appalling" and called for the punishment of the perpetrators. “The news of children sexual abuse in Logar province was really terrifying,” said Rahmani.
“Logar's case and the like ... it's not normal. Anyone who commits an act of sodomy twice is entitled to death,” said Nazir Ahmad Hanafi, a member of the Afghan House of Representatives.
Two days ago, Mohammad Mussa Mahmoudi, the head of Logar's civil society, in an interview with TOLOnews claimed that a study he conducted in six schools in the province revealed that 550 students had been sexually abused.
Ostrich Syndrome
On the other hand, some members of the House of Representatives said that the allegations of mass sexual abuse of children in Logar province are false.
“Some countries, some advertising networks, are trying to destroy this great and heroic nation,” said Sayed Ahmad Khadem, an Afghan Parliament member.
“Several members of the Education and Internal Security Commission, and a few members from the same province, need to investigate the incident,” said Lailuma Hakimi, another member of parliament.
A group of Logar residents on Saturday held a protest against the claims made by the Guardian and called for these “allegations” to be cleared.
“This report is completely baseless and a lie and everyone who said it… is only for their own personal interest,” said Sayed Daoud Hashimi, one of the protesters.
On the other hand, the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) called on the Ministry of Interior (MoI) to ensure the safety of those who had revealed the allegations.
“The AIHRC also calls on security agencies to ensure the safety of human rights activists and civil society activists working in this regard,” said Razia Sayad, Commissioner for Children, Human Rights Commission.
“The police have taken serious security measures today to secure their office. They must report to relevant security authorities to ensure that threats are properly addressed,” said Nasrat Rahimi, the MoI spokesman.
The acting education minister, Mirwais Balkhi, says the issue will be seriously investigated in the province’s schools.
Good. Because I can tell you one thing for sure, 550 sexually abused children in those schools is an underestimate. Stigma, which is based in false pride, has enabled paedophiles for generations. It's time to stop!
Logar Province, Afg
Male rape and sexual torture in the Syrian war:
‘It is everywhere’
When Sarah Chynoweth was asked to report on sexual violence against men and boys
in the Syria crisis, she had no idea of the scale of the problem
Sarah Chynoweth
The toll of the war on Syria has been immeasurable. The Old City of Homs has been destroyed by
years of conflict. Photograph: Andrew McConnell/UNHCR
Last year I agreed to undertake a fact-finding mission for the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, on sexual violence against men and boys in the Syrian crisis. We knew that many women and girls were being targeted for rape and other sexualised violence, but we didn’t know much about what was happening to men and boys. Drawing on a few existing reports, I assumed some boys were being victimised, as well as some men in detention centres, but that sexual violence against males was not common. I worried that few refugees would have heard of any accounts and that they wouldn’t talk to me about such a taboo topic anyway. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
In October 2016, I landed in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, where more than 200,000 Syrian refugees had fled. The UNHCR arranged for a translator and discussions with refugees at a nearby camp. I met with the first group, eight Syrian men who had fled the war. I asked them about their lives in the camp, how they were getting by, and what their main concerns were. Once we had established some rapport, I tentatively probed whether they had heard of any reports of sexual violence against men or boys in Syria. They looked at me incredulously, as if they couldn’t believe that I was asking such a basic question, saying: “Yes, of course. It is everywhere. It is happening [from] all sides.”
I was surprised at their response and their candour. I was also sceptical: rumours are rampant in war zones. Had they heard any accounts from someone they knew personally? Again, resounding replies of “yes” from the men. As I met with more and more refugees – almost 200 across Iraqi Kurdistan, Jordan and Lebanon – I received similar responses, and was inundated with heartbreaking stories.
We cannot think of any family who doesn’t have someone who was detained and sexually abused
In Lebanon, a Palestinian man who had lived his entire life in Syria asked to speak with me after the group discussion. He told me how armed men had entered his village and raped him. The experience had left him devastated, and he was too emotionally distraught to work, even though he had to care for his younger sister.
In Jordan, one young Syrian man told me about his uncle, who had been randomly detained. While in detention, his captors sexually tortured him. After his release, he stopped eating and became an alcoholic, dying from liver failure soon after.
A number of women described how men changed after these experiences – isolating themselves, no longer interested in sex, and at times becoming violent. Some were not able to work because of the physical and mental impact of the violence, putting their families at risk of poverty.
I met one man who suffered from painful and debilitating injuries as a result of sexual torture, and a few aid workers said anal injuries were not uncommon for men who had been detained.
The accounts were heart-rending and horrific. They were also abundant. At a large refugee camp in Jordan, I met a group of women who were eager to talk about the issue. According to them, men and boys are routinely sexually abused during detention in Syria, a comment echoed by other refugees, and scores of men had been detained by different armed groups. I asked them to guesstimate how many men in the camp had undergone sexual violence while in detention. They said, “Between 30% and 40%. We cannot think of any family who doesn’t have someone [who was detained and sexually abused].”
Other refugees told me how armed groups would conduct raids on homes, during which “they raped everyone” – both women and men. I heard that phrase a number of times from refugees across the three countries.
People said that after having fled to neighbouring countries, some younger boys were being sexually victimised by older boys and men, who lured them with promises of food or money. A few women said that their sons were too scared to go to school, afraid of being sexually assaulted on the way or at the school by their peers.
What surprised me most were accounts of sexual exploitation at work. An 18-year-old Syrian man who was working two jobs was the first person to tell me about it. He described how his boss demanded sexual favours before paying his wages. He felt he couldn’t refuse because he had to care for his mother and two sisters; his despair and shame were palpable. It was a story I would hear from other refugee men and boys, many of whom were working without a legal permit. Faced with grinding poverty, diminishing aid and intense pressures to provide for their families, they felt they had no choice but to submit.
I also met with a group of gay and transgender refugees who faced the double stigma of being both refugees and sexual and gender minorities. One gay man told me how, in Syria, he had been detained for four months, during which he and other male detainees were raped anally with sticks and bottles. He still experiences pain when sitting. He had fled to a neighbouring country, but didn’t find safety there. He was again sexually assaulted by a local gang as well as by a security guard. He knew he was still at risk.
Other members of the group shared disturbing accounts of sexual assault by taxi drivers, neighbours, landlords and military personnel. They were too afraid to report these to the police, who could assault them again, or even arrest them under laws addressing “public morality” or “unnatural practices”.
In Jordan I met a group of psychotherapists who specialised in treating torture survivors, and asked them why sexual torture was being used in this conflict. They said torture was designed to inflict deep psychological pain that disrupts one’s sense of self. In places such as Syria, where same-sex sexual activity is strictly forbidden and traditional gender roles are entrenched, the use of sexualised torture against men and boys is unsurprising.
Studies from other wars where sexual violence was documented – such as in Liberia, northern Uganda and the former Yugoslavia – also show that men and boys are targeted for a range of sexualised violence. Wartime sexual violence is a complex issue, but it can also be a very effective way to humiliate, terrorise and subjugate women and men.
And though women and girls are the main victims during conflict and displacement – with an estimated one out of five forcibly displaced women having suffered sexual violence, and this is likely to be an underestimate – it doesn’t mean the number of male survivors is small. For example, a 2010 study in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo found that almost one-quarter of men in selected conflict-affected territories had experienced sexual violence: an estimated 760,000 men. LGBTI people are particularly at risk of sexual violence in detention and as refugees.
There is more to this story on the Guardian.
One woman's fight to stop the 'generational curse'
of child abuse in N.Z.
One Survivor's Story
Cate BroughtonKath Coster is on a mission to make sure no child has to suffer the abuse she did. She is one of about 110,000 adults who were abused as children while in state or faith based care - the subject of a Royal Commission of Inquiry. Cate Broughton reports.
When her mother died, Kath Coster curled her hair as she lay in an open casket. "Everyone kept rubbing her hair so I had to go back day after day and curl her hair because it was all flat, stuck against her head."
Coster's mother gave her up as a baby, and later nearly killed her during three years of violent abuse.
The violence ended when Coster, then about 10 years old, was removed and made a ward of the state.
It marked the beginning of years of sexual, physical and emotional abuse at the hands of foster parents and girls homes.
But when her mother died six years ago, Coster had long forgiven her.
"I thought I was white because my Mum, at that stage was Australian and my Dad was English. No one told me."
STACY SQUIRES/STUFF
"I thought I was white because my Mum, at that stage was Australian and my Dad was English and no one told me."
"I loved my Mum when she died because Mum took accountability. She carried it to the grave when she didn't need to, because I was over it by that stage."
Coster, a member of the survivors advisory panel advising the Abuse in State Care Royal Commission, cannot say the same for the government – yet.
"The state has never taken accountability for any damage it has done to me or any other children. And for me to move forward and know that lid has been put on, that accountability is the first step."
In her later years, Coster's mother told her she had given her up because she wanted a better life for her.
Kath Coster, aged 2 years, with her first foster mother. Coster is a member of the survivors advisory panel for the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-Based Care.
She was fostered to pākehā parents as their only child and knew nothing of her Māori heritage.
Coster has happy memories of her first seven years in their home, mainly in Central Otago, but later came to resent being stripped of her family and culture. "I thought I was white because my Mum, at that stage was Australian, and my Dad was English, and no-one told me."
When she was suddenly taken back to her own family, the change came as a huge shock.
Her mother did not cope with her arrival. The family had grown from three to six children, as Coster and two other siblings returned home around the same time.
Her father was a heavy drinker and it was a volatile household.
Kath Coster pictured with her birth mother (right) and her daughter (middle) in the early 1980s. Coster is on the survivors advisory panel to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into State and Faith-based abuse.
The abuse by her mother resulted in broken bones and at one stage her mother tried to drown her.
Eventually the police were called, Coster was removed and she was made a ward of the state.
While the intervention meant she stayed alive, from the age of eleven Coster was subjected to sexual predators behind the closed doors of foster homes, as well as brutality in girls homes.
An elderly couple in Rangiora only accepted young girls and Coster soon discovered the foster father was a paedophile. He regularly molested her. "It was a really nice home apart from what he was doing and I didn't know what was what because things were getting worse."
Coster became withdrawn and physically ill as a result of the abuse and the couple decided they didn't want to keep her. She went to Strathmore Girls Home in Christchurch before being placed in another foster home in Motukarara, near Akaroa.
"It was fine for two years. And then my foster father at the time decided he would try and repetitively have sex with me." A scar on her leg remains to this day, a gash from barbed wire during a desperate attempt to escape the man.
Kath Coster suffered years of abuse after being removed from her family at the age of 11 years old. She was eight years old in this photo. Coster is a member of the survivors advisory panel for the Royal Commission of Inquiry into State and Faith-Based Abuse.
"I used to sit in the bedroom sometimes and be too scared to come out and go to the toilet, and there was a towel in the bedroom and I'd wet on that rather than go out into the hallway to take the chance that he's going to be walking around somewhere."
A social worker realised what was happening and she was taken back to the girls home.
Once there staff told her to take all of her clothes off to be photographed naked. When she refused she was sent to 'the cells' where she remained for two weeks until reluctantly agreeing to the photograph. But she then learned she had to undergo an internal pelvic examination. Terrified, she refused and was taken back to the cells for several weeks before finally succumbing.
The experience left her with a life-long terror of such tests. "Years later I ended up with cervical cancer because the horrific side of having smears was way too much."
During her time at the girls home, she was frequently punished, and found the place more closely resembled a prison than a place for children.
There is more on this story on Stuff
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