2020 brings overhaul of North Carolina’s
sexual abuse laws
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - The new year will bring new training requirements for reporting and preventing child sexual abuse and sex trafficking in North Carolina's schools.
The News & Observer reported Monday that the training requirements are part of an overhaul of state sexual assault laws.
The changes include making it a Class 1 misdemeanor for adults to fail to call authorities if they suspect a child is being abused.
The statute of limitations will also be extended for civil suits against abusers.
Ama K. Abebrese joins AmaCares to fight
child sexual abuse
The television personality among other things, engaged the students on how to identify abusers, the need to report cases to authorities and most importantly how not to fall victims to the cruel act.
On her part, Benedicta Ama Batcho, founder of AmaCares mentioned that her team is poised to see a significant impact as efforts to change communities’ perception about child sexual abuse continue unabated.
“Our mission is to raise awareness so that you don’t become victims of sexual abuse, " she said.
Prior to this, AmaCares had been to Hope Academy in the Central Region and Gbawe Cluster of Schools on November 29 and December 2 for same.
The team donated some food items to Hope Academy after the interaction with the students.
AmaCares has organized several workshops in the country since its inception. In September this year, the NGO interacted with students of Sekyere-Kwamang in the Ashanti region and educated them on child sexual abuse. The schools included the Seventh Day Adventist Junior High School, District Assembly Junior High School, Anglican Junior High School, Presbyterian Junior High School and Kwamang Senior High School.
Beyond the education and advocacy, AmaCares, according to the founder, has dedicated counselors and doctors who provide counselling services and treatment to victims of child sexual abuse.
“We don’t only seek to change community’s perception about the issue. Survivors are dear to our hearts. Due to the emotional and psychological trauma they go through as a result of the sexual abuse, provision has been made for counselors and doctors to attend to them accordingly. If anyone abuses you, speak out,” Ms Batcho stated.
Task force recommends repeal of statute of limitations in sex assault lawsuits in Connecticut
By Joe Wojtas Day staff writer
Hartford — A General Assembly task force voted unanimously Tuesday to recommend lawmakers introduce legislation that would eliminate the current statute of limitations on the filing of lawsuits by victims of sexual assault, abuse or exploitation.
The recommendations also specify the change be retroactive, meaning victims of any age could sue, including those who are now prohibited from doing so because they are older than 51, the current age limit for filing lawsuits.
If a bill containing the recommendations is approved by the General Assembly in the upcoming session and signed into law by Gov. Ned Lamont, it would make Connecticut just the second state in the nation behind Vermont to totally eliminate the statute of limitations for sexual abuse victims to file lawsuits. Other states, such as New York, have increased the age to file suits and created a one-time window of a year or two for victims of any age to file lawsuits.
Tim McGuire of New London, who alleges he was sexually assaulted when he was 8 by a Catholic priest in Noank but has been unable to sue the Diocese of Norwich due to the current statute of limitations, called the task force’s recommendation Tuesday “fabulous” news.
“It’s exactly what we’ve been fighting for,” he said. “How can anyone set a time limit on when you’re ready to say what happened? This would help all the victims who have been left behind."
“There should be no law to protect these guys. The law needs to protect kids, not pedophiles,” added McGuire, who testified before the legislature’s Judiciary Committee last year about repealing the statute of limitations.
The task force was the result of an unsuccessful effort in the last legislative session to eliminate the statute of limitations for 27 months to give sexual assault victims who had been prevented from filing lawsuits because they were older than 48, the cutoff age at the time, an opportunity to do so. In addition to forming the task force to study the issue and make recommendations, the legislature also increased the age limit from 48 to 51.
The task force, which has a Jan. 15 deadline to submit its report with recommendations to the General Assembly, is headed by state Sen. Mae Flexer, D-Killingly, a strong proponent of eliminating the statute of limitations.
Over the past few months, the task force has held hearings on the issue, listening to testimony from victims, experts on the issue, a representative of the American Tort Reform Association and Marci Hamilton, a University of Pennsylvania professor and constitutional law scholar who has tracked and studied the issue across the country for the past 16 years.
Hamilton told the task force in December that, on average, it takes a person until age 52 to reveal to someone they were sexually assaulted as a child. That is one year later than the current statute of limitations for filing a lawsuit in Connecticut.
The task force agreed to include in its report that the trauma of childhood sexual assault makes it difficult for victims to come forward.
Task force member Paul Slager, an attorney, said it was important that the task force recommend the change be retroactive, so sexual assault victims who are unable to file a suit now can take advantage of the change.
“It would be unfair to punish them,” he said.
National Assembly approves Zainab Alert Bill
to curb child sexual assault in Pakistan
to curb child sexual assault in Pakistan
ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly (NA) on Friday approved the proposed Zainab Alert, Recovery and Response Bill, 2019, making it mandatory for police officers to take action in a child abuse case within two hours of it being reported.
The bill – which was passed exactly two years after the body of nine-year-old Zainab Ansari, a rape-murder victim, was found in Kasur in 2018 – was presented by Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari in June last year.
Zainab’s rape and murder in 2018 had sparked outrage and protests across the country after she was found dead in a trash heap in Kasur on Jan 9, 2018. Her case was the twelfth such incident to occur within a 10-kilometer radius in the city over a 12-month period.
In August 2019, a parliamentary committee deferred the passage of Zainab Alert Bill with directions to the government to rationalise the “extreme” punishment proposed for sexual assault against children.
All members of the committee, except a few, had opposed rigorous imprisonment until death for the sexual assault of children. Others had said that rigorous imprisonment with a death sentence was a fitting punishment for individuals sexually assaulting minor children.
Under the bill passed on Friday, the maximum sentence handed down to perpetrators of child sexual abuse will be life imprisonment with a fine of Rs1 million (about $14,000 USD) while the minimum sentence will be 10 years.
Further, a helpline will also be established to report missing children while an agency, for issuing an alert for missing children, will also be set up.
The bill also proposes taking action against police officials who cause unnecessary delay in investigating such cases, adding that those who fail to respond to the alert within two hours may also face action.
 |
| Shireen Masari |
Taking to Twitter, Umar expressed the hope that the bill is also passed in the Senate, adding that protecting the country’s minor children should be the responsibility of the country’s lawmakers as well of the state.
Once the bill is passed by the Senate, it will pave the way for setting up Zainab Alert Response and Recovery Agency where missing child cases will be reported and which will generate an automatic alert.
KASUR KILLINGS:
In the last few years, Kasur has been rocked by multiple incidents of abuse, rape and killing of children.
In 2015, Kasur’s Hussain Khanwala village had attracted worldwide attention when a child pornography ring was busted. Hundreds of video clips had emerged showing a gang forcing dozens of minor boys and girls to perform sexual acts and filming them. The gang had also used the videos to blackmail families of the children and extorted millions in cash and jewelry from them.
Last year, once again, the Punjab district came into the limelight after police in September found remains of three minor boys who they suspected were murdered being sexually assaulted.
At the time, Mazari had said it was “shocking to see continuing stories of child abuse victims surfacing in Kasur”.
In a series of tweets, she had said the government’s Zainab Alert Bill has been pending with the National Assembly Standing Committee on Human Rights chaired by PPP Chairperson Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari “for months now”.
Mazari had said her ministry had written to the standing committee to forward the bill to NA but it had not been done so far, terming the situation “frustrating procedures of unnecessary delays in human rights non-political legislation”.
Child sex scandal sparks soul-searching in France
Allegations about author Gabriel Matzneff force public debate
over attitudes to child sex abuse
Michael Pooler in ParisGabriel Matzneff, the once-acclaimed French author, is distinguished by his taste for a taboo that today draws almost universal revulsion.
But the octogenarian is now at the centre of a scandal that has rocked the country’s literary establishment following publication of a book, describing him as a predator and paedophile, by a woman who says he groomed her for sex when she was a child.
In Le Consentement — or Consent — Vanessa Springora recounts her alleged experiences in the 1980s, when, she says — at the age of 14 — she was in a relationship with the then 50-year-old Mr Matzneff. French law sets the age of sexual consent at 15.
“He was not a good man,” writes Ms Springora, now 47 and head of a publishing house. “He was what we are taught to dread from childhood: an ogre.”
The affair has forced the country to reckon with a not-so-distant era when such illegal behaviour was tolerated — even defended — by some intellectuals and often went unchallenged by the media and public institutions.
It is the latest example of outrage in France provoked by men accused of sexual crimes, from Roman Catholic priests to prominent figures such as the late Jeffrey Epstein and his collaborators, through to film-maker Roman Polanski.
French authorities have opened an investigation into Mr Matzneff, who has denied any wrongdoing, and this week the publisher Gallimard said it would end the sale of his diaries.
There was a time in France when having a little one as a sexual
partner was accepted by society. It was maybe even a sign of a
kind of elegance or refinement. This is over — big time
..
Homayra Sellier, Innocence in Danger
“There was a time in France when having a little one as a sexual partner was accepted by society. It was maybe even a sign of a kind of elegance or refinement. This is over — big time,” said Homayra Sellier, the founder of Innocence in Danger, a non-governmental organisation seeking to protect children against violence and abuse.
Born to Russian émigré parents, Mr Matzneff’s mores were nurtured in the permissive culture that flourished in the wake of the May 1968 protest movement, which led to radical changes in society and sexual liberation.
In a sign of just how far boundaries were pushed, a petition published in Le Monde and Liberation newspapers in 1977 defended sexual relations between adults and children. Luminaries such as Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre and Roland Barthes were among the signatories.
Long after Mr Matzneff’s 1970s book entitled The Under 16s left no secret of his tendencies, and other works gave graphic descriptions and mentioned children as young as eight, the writer was in 2013 awarded the Renaudot essay prize.
Rodolphe Costantino, a lawyer who represents child sexual exploitation victims, said views such as Mr Matzneff’s were held only by a “tiny intellectual minority”. “For most French citizens, it was unacceptable and intolerable,” he said.
What has changed is the lifting of taboos around victims speaking out, as well a realisation by the public of the long-term consequences of abuse, he said.
The backlash against Mr Matzneff has led to mea culpas from figures who, with hindsight, are regarded as having shown complacency. Bernard Pivot, the host of a much-watched literary TV show on which Mr Matzneff appeared, has said that in the 1970s and 80s, “literature came before morality”. He expressed “regrets” for not having called out the behaviour.
The strength of public feeling for some observers represents a rupture with a past where high-profile figures were often above the law. Ms Springora’s Le Consentement is currently Amazon’s French best-selling book.
Jérôme Fourquet, a political scientist at the pollster Ifop, told Le Figaro newspaper: “In the new world, clemency and impunity reserved for the elites is no more.”
With doubts about whether Mr Matzneff will face charges because of the time that has elapsed since Ms Springora’s allegations, campaigners are pushing for an end to the statute of limitations barring the prosecution of crimes that took place before a certain date.
The episode has also sparked calls for France’s age of consent to be reviewed and for stricter laws punishing sex with underage children.
© Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA
Mr Matzneff appears unrepentant, dismissing Ms Springora’s account as a “disparaging, hostile, blackened portrait” that seeks to paint him as “a manipulator, a predator, a bastard”.
“I find it idiotic, over-the-top that I am complained about in 2020 for books published 30, even 40 years ago,” he wrote in a letter to TV channel BFM this week.
Mr Matzneff still has a few defenders. Josyane Savigneau, the former book editor of Le Monde, dismissed the scandal on Twitter as a “witch-hunt”.
At the Écume des Pages bookshop in the Saint-Germain neighbourhood, a bastion of the Paris literary scene, the writer’s most recent diary, published in November, was sold out. But before the scandal erupted, “he was almost forgotten, except by a small group of readers”, said one employee.
Experts urge social media, gaming tax to study
online impact on children
By Don Jacobson
The report suggests tax-funded study into the impact of social media and online gaming on young people.
File Photo by LoboStudioHamburg/Pixabay/UPI
In an 83-page report titled, "Technology use and the Mental Health of Children and Young People," the Royal College of Psychiatrists said although studies have shown negative consequences linked to social media usage, existing research is fragmented and unsystematic.
What is urgently needed, they said, are much larger-scale, longitudinal studies to compare social media effects on children at different developmental stages and examine whether technology causes harmful outcomes and potential benefits.
In its report, the group calls for an independent government regulator for online safety -- similar to one that's already been proposed by the British government -- that could "establish a levy on tech companies proportionate to their worldwide turnover" and implement user data in the studies.
The tax-derived funds could be used for independent research and training packages for clinicians, teachers and others who work with children and young adults.
Social media and gaming companies, the psychiatrists said, should be "required to increase social responsibility measures" like that which the British government demands of the gambling industry.
Friday's report is preceded by a foreword from the father of Molly Russell, a 14-year-old girl who killed herself in 2017 after viewing material about self-harm on Instagram.
Ian Russell said a "turnover tax" would fund "much-needed research into the impact of harmful content on Internet users, particularly the most vulnerable."
Without such research, he added, "we cannot understand how content can lead our children and young people -- our sons and daughters -- to self-harm or, in the most tragic cases, die by suicide."
This is a great idea if it includes research in social media's role in child sexual abuse, the prevalence of it and the incredible damage it does to kids and adult survivors.
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