Pennsylvania

(Please note, this article is from April, 2012. The second article is a follow up from this past week.)

Sex abuse survivor embarking on Journey From Silence

April 8, 2012

What kind of person would think it's a good idea to dramatize child sex abuse by embarking on a 10,000 mile, heart-shaped journey across three nations in a 50cc Honda scooter that's top speed is 35 mph?

I wrote about him last time. His name is Tom Burick, a survivor of child sex abuse that he says began 30 years ago involving a member of his extended family.

Burick will leave Easter Sunday from the street in front of a high-rise apartment building in Westmoreland County on what he calls a Journey From Silence. He expects to be gone for six to eight months, and as we discussed his plans, it became clear that this trip will have a certain unscripted quality that some travelers would find unsettling.

For example, as we talked this week, he and industrial designers still were working on designing and building a single-wheeled trailer that Burick will pull behind his scooter to carry a tent, food, clothing and other supplies. Since it's against the law to take this type of scooter on an expressway, he'll try to stick to smaller highways — mostly riding on the berm — and secondary roads. He said he's tried it going up steep hills and found himself topping out at 15 mph, with the throttle wide open.

He figures he'll pitch his tent in the wild and in campgrounds, and he said members of a group of scooter enthusiasts have offered their hospitality in various places around the country. After his southernmost point in Mexico City, he'll swing up along the West Coast and into Canada, where his route curves to make the top of the heart.

This didn't look like such a big deal as he plotted each section online, but now that he has stapled-together map sections laid out on his living room floor, it's daunting. "To see a 4-by-4-foot map across three nations in the shape of a heart, that's pretty crazy stuff."

One concern, besides the obvious roadway safety issues, is that he'll be traveling deep into Mexico, and he speaks no Spanish. "I don't know how that part of the trip's going to go," he told me, "but I have faith."

We connected through one of my blog posts, on which he offered poignant comments about his experiences. I later ran some of it in my column, complete with his name — with his permission — a big step for someone still feeling the stigma of what happened to him.

This trip, figuratively as well as literally, represents another giant step forward for him. You can read more about this, including his sponsors and regular accounts from the road, at journeyfromsilence.com. You also can make donations there toward his $20,000 goal. Beneficiaries will be the Horry County (S.C.) Rape Crisis Center, the child sex abuse prevention organization Stop It Now! and an organization that provides resources and assistance to victims, Joyful Heart Foundation. All use a heart in their logos, which is in keeping with his heart-shaped theme.

He's hoping that his trip will attract enough media attention that it will both draw donors and spread his message about crashing through the walls of silence.

He has made up neon yellow safety T-shirts that he'll be wearing, explaining what he's up to as people see him on the road. One of them says, "Riding 10,000 miles across three nations for child sexual abuse," along with his website address, which he hopes will attract more readers and awareness. He's also trying for corporate financial sponsorships, in addition to the equipment and in-kind help he's already received.

One of the things I love is the symbolic significance of so many aspects of his trip. For example, he's leaving on Easter, a symbol of rebirth and of the faith that has helped sustain him through very dark times in his life. And the southern point of his heart is the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. Among other things, she has been described as the Protector of Children.

The most chilling symbol is the starting and ending point for his Journey From Silence. Living in an apartment in that Westmoreland County high rise, Burick recently discovered, is the man he says molested him.

"I get goose bumps even talking about it."

If this were a TV movie, there would have to be a meeting, but Burick says he doesn't think anything constructive would come of that.

Still, there's no telling what might happen after 10,000 miles of self-discovery. "At the end of the ride, that could change," Burick admits. "I don't know how I'm going to feel."

http://articles.mcall.com/2012-04-08/news/mc-bw-journey-from-silence-2-20120406_1_abuse-survivor-scooter-child

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Pennsylvania

Abuse victim's Journey From Silence ends in joy

August 15, 2015

by Bill White

Tom Burick was 7,330 miles into his 10,000-mile, three-nation Journey From Silence to combat child sex abuse when he was sideswiped by an RV in San Jose, Calif., breaking his arm.

He had accumulated many wonderful friends and experiences in the three months since he set off in his little Honda Ruckus scooter from Westmoreland County in April 2012. Still, he was afraid he would let all his supporters down if he stopped short of his goal. In fact, he drove two more days, in excruciating pain, before going to the hospital.

He found himself arguing that the doctor should construct his cast so he could still grip the scooter's throttle. It was crazy. Burick recalls, "He looked at me harshly and said, 'Your journey is over. Get your plane ticket and go home.'"

It took a while, but Burick eventually came to understand that he hadn't failed. "Once I realized what I was able to accomplish and the lives that I touched, that kind of went away."

His story has a wonderful, happy ending I'll tell you about in a moment, but first I'll offer some background.

We had formed a connection the year before because he stumbled across my stories on child sex abuse after the Sandusky case began rekindling his own horrible memories of being repeatedly molested by an extended family member — and his parents' refusal to contact authorities when he got the courage to tell them two years later. It left him so damaged that he found himself going through life with the emotional perspective of a 13-year-old boy, not an adult.

It was a major turning point in his life when he agreed to let me use his name in one of my columns advocating less-restrictive statute-of-limitations laws in sex abuse cases, something we both feel strongly about. Finally he was out of the shadows.

Within months, he was preparing for his Journey From Silence to combat child sex abuse by raising money and awareness in the United States, Mexico and Canada.

I followed his travels via his website and occasional emails. In perhaps the most shattering moment of his trip, he received a text from his younger brother, revealing that he had been sexually abused, too, by the same person. It was the first time his brother had talked about it, and Burick found his emotions spinning out of control.

He has all kinds of stories about the publicity he generated all over the country for his cause, the members of the scooter community and others who embraced and helped his efforts — and the fellow child abuse survivors who were moved by his trip and sought him out to talk about their lives. Check my blog Monday at themorningcall.com for one of those stories, from Texas.

But let's get to that happy ending. He sent me an email last week from his new home in the Phoenix area with a post-journey update. When I told him I wanted to write about him again, he sent a more complete account, which we followed up with a phone conversation.

He told me that as his broken arm healed, he began healing inside, too. He sat down with his parents to discuss for the first time in 30 years what had happened to him and how they responded, and he left the conversation feeling he finally had put that pain to rest.

With help from a domestic violence center, he finally found the strength to end an abusive 16-year relationship that, stripped of his self-esteem, he felt was all he deserved. Then he moved across the country to start a new life, which he calls the best decision he ever made.

"The most powerful changes seemed to come with the blessing of a new job," he wrote. "My background is computers and robotics. In an unusual twist, I was offered a job as a technology instructor in an autism vocational training program. I provide technical job training to young people living with autism. I have never felt so useful in all my life. I love my students and my job and am profoundly grateful each and every day.

"I cry a lot these days, but they're warm, flowing tears of joy. For the first time in 30 years, I am living completely depression free and have a life more wonderful than I could have EVER imagined."

Burick, 47, told me he intends to finish his trip someday, but without the pain he carried on his back from Pennsylvania to California. "I know that last thousand miles are going to be the victory lap," he said.

Best of all, he loves his new life as an emotional adult, and it shows in his voice and his words.

"I never realized that life could be this good," he said. "I thought the best I was ever going to be able to do with this is go through my life with depression and anxiety and maybe get to the point where it was minimally manageable. That was my expectation for my life. To come out on the other side in such a powerful way, I'm at a loss."

He said, "I think it's so important to let other survivors know that if you're willing to fight for this, it can be better than you can imagine. I get up every day and I thank God for this new life and new opportunity. Every day is filled with joy and gratitude."

Whatever happens with his trip, Tom Burick's real journey from silence has reached the perfect destination.

http://www.mcall.com/opinion/white/mc-bw-child-abuse-victim-20150815-column.html

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Pakistan

Child trafficking: A psychological outlook

by Ayesha Fakhar -Legal Psychologist

When children are young their entire world revolves around their parents and primary care givers who can provide all sorts of support to them. Parents are the primary source of security, love, care, understanding, nurturance and support. Child abuse, however, is a dilemma across the world and defined as the physical, sexual or emotional maltreatment or neglect of children. Another therapeutic term that is used in combination with child abuse is ‘interpersonal victimisation'. In simple words interpersonal victimisation is any harm that comes to individuals because other humans have behaved in ways that violate social norms.

Pakistan, however, has stumbled upon a its biggest child abuse case in history, discovering about four hundred video recordings of two hundred and eighty children in the state of Punjab. Officials have called for a federal inquiry into what is termed as the largest child abuse case in the history of Pakistan involving around three hundred children.

It is gruesome to even think of children being drugged and hit with weapons before being forced into performing various sex acts that are recorded on camera. Childhood sexual abuse infringes on the basic rights of human beings. Children should be able to have sexual experiences at the appropriate developmental time and within their control and choice. The nature and dynamics of sexual abuse and sexually abusive relationships are often traumatic. When sexual abuse occurs in childhood it can hinder normal social growth and be a cause of many different psychosocial problems.

It is gruesome to even think of children being drugged and hit with weapons before being forced into performing various sex acts that are recorded on camera

The International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural rights general comment no.14 on Article 12 of the Covenant which safeguards the right to healthcare states that “States should provide a safe and supportive environment for adolescents, that ensures the opportunity to participate in decisions affecting their health, to build life skills, to acquire appropriate information, to receive counselling and to negotiate the health-behaviour choices they make. The realisation of the right to health of adolescents is dependent on the development of youth-friendly health care, which respects confidentiality and privacy and includes appropriate sexual and reproductive health services.”

Psychologically speaking, the negative impact of child abuse on adult mental health has been documented for over 150 years. The psychological impact of abuse on a child depends on a range of factors, including: the type of abuse, the severity of abuse, the relationship of the child to the abuser/s, the child's family environment and their relationship with their parents or other caregivers, and whether the child has previous experiences of abuse, or a history of support, care and love. These factors can soften, or exacerbate, the impact of abuse on a child's psychological wellbeing, and the likelihood that they will develop mental illness later in life.

Child abuse violates the trust at the core of a child's relationship with the world. When the primary relationship is one of betrayal, a negative schema or set of beliefs develops. This negative core schema often affects an individual's capacity to establish and sustain significant attachments throughout life. Survivors often experience conflicting relationships and chaotic lifestyles, frequently report difficulties forming adult intimate attachments and display behaviours that threaten and disrupt close relationships.

A number of studies have explored the relationship between childhood trauma and later health concerns. Research has found that childhood abuse contributes to the likelihood of depression, anxiety disorders, addictions, personality disorders, eating disorders, sexual disorders and suicidal behaviour. The long term effects of child abuse are far-reaching, without the right support the effects of childhood abuse can last a lifetime.

Some common psychological effects that are widely seen in child abuse cases are Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), depression, dissociation, panic attacks, personality disorders and various eating disorders. All these children who suffer from this horrendous event will experience some sort of psychological trauma for the rest of their lives and will make them vulnerable to many other mental health illnesses. The impact of child abuse does not end when the abuse stops and the long-term effects can interfere with day-to-day functioning.

However, it is possible to live a full and constructive life, and even thrive – to enjoy a feeling of wholeness, satisfaction in life and work as well as genuine love and trust in your relationships. Understanding the relationship between the prior abuse and current behaviour is the first step towards ‘recovery'.

The effects of childhood abuse last into adulthood and counsellors need to be well trained in order to provide proper support to the victims

When these children who have survived the traumatic child abuse will grow up to be mature adults, their lives as seen in this case will be characterised by frequent crises like job disappointments, relocations, failed relationships, financial setbacks, etc. Many will be the result of unresolved childhood abuse issues. The reasons are complex, but for many survivors ongoing internal chaos prevents the establishment of regularity, predictability and consistency. Many survivors function in ‘crisis mode' responding with stopgap measures which don't resolve the underlying issues. This can be exhausting and dispiriting and contribute to feelings of helplessness and hopelessness.

As this is a prevailing issue in the country these days, with this knowledge, it is imperative that the authorities should take strict action against this gruesome calamity that has befallen us and counsellors and therapists of our country should increase their knowledge regarding childhood sexual abuse. Child trafficking and childhood sexual abuse is a traumatic experience that has many consequences throughout the person's life. The effects of childhood abuse last into adulthood and counsellors need to be well trained in order to provide proper support to the victims.

http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2015/08/15/features/child-trafficking-a-psychological-outlook/

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United Kingdom

‘Child abuse victims murdered and bodies dumped in lake'

The detective who cracked the Stephen Lawrence case has been investigating claims that child abuse victims were murdered decades ago and their bodies dumped in a lake.

by James Murray

Retired Clive Driscoll spent years investigating child abuse by paedophiles in south London.

In his book, In Pursuit Of The Truth, he recalls interviewing a troubled woman called Vicky, who later starved herself to death. She detailed horrific ritual abuse.

The former detective chief inspector writes: “She talked about a place in Kent where she had been taken, along with other children, and made to run away from dogs.

“They were dumped in the woods and given a head start before the hunting pack was released. She survived. Other kids weren't so fortunate.”

Mr Driscoll took her back to the isolated spot near Gravesend and discovered landmarks she mentioned from her childhood after being adopted by an abusive couple. He says in the book: “So Vicky's facts weren't wrong. In turn, everything else she told me needed taking seriously, including the fact that the injured children were thrown into a lake.

"When I checked the police records, I discovered that body parts belonging to five people had been found there.”

Mr Driscoll, who discovered the evidence which led to two men being jailed for the Lawrence murder, said police had found two torsos bound together.

He was unable to discover any more details about the body parts or whether they were children or adults but the lake appears to be near Cuxton village.

Kent Police said they had no records of human remains being found in a lake during the Sixties.

A spokesman added: “We understand that the recollections of Mr Driscoll come from third-party hearsay and there is no evidence to suggest they constitute fact.”

lIn Pursuit Of The Truth is published by Ebury Press and costs £20.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/598643/Stephen-Lawrence-detective-child-abuse-victims-dumped-in-lake

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Utah

Legal help cuts incidence of domestic violence, saves money

by Marjorie Cortez

SALT LAKE CITY — Free or low-cost legal services for people seeking protective orders would reduce incidence of domestic violence and lower associated societal costs, a new report states.

The Institute for Policy Integrity report found that victims are more likely to receive protective orders if they have legal representation.

The report, “Supporting Survivors: The Economic Benefits of Providing Civil Legal Aid to Survivors of Domestic Violence,” also found that the availability of civil legal aid may be "even more effective than alternative interventions such as the provision of shelters and counseling services."

Stewart Ralphs, executive director ot the Legal Aid Society of Salt Lake, said the report confirms family law attorneys' long-held perceptions that protective orders curb domestic violence and enhance safety.

"We have intuitively known this for decades, and it's heartening to see that studies confirm our belief that access to a free lawyer for victims of domestic violence truly does reduce domestic violence in our community," Ralphs said.

Legal Aid Society of Salt Lake is a nonprofit civil legal aid agency that helps child and adult victims of domestic violence obtain protective orders and stalking injunctions for free regardless of income.

While it does not have the resources to track clients long-term, Ralphs said the agency contacts clients one year after a court has granted them a protective order. Ninety-one percent report there has been no further abuse and 95 percent report feeling safer.

Meanwhile, 69 percent of clients reported that their household incomes had remained stable or increased.

Legal Aid Society and partner agency Utah Legal Services, a nonprofit law office that performs a variety of civil legal services for people with low incomes, helped 3,687 individuals and 9,068 dependents escape abuse in Salt Lake City in 2014.

While the law offices' primary role is to provide legal advice and represent clients in court, the agencies are also a "gateway" to other agencies that provide services that can help families experiencing interpersonal violence.

"It's extremely rare when a victim of domestic violence says that the only thing they need addressed in their household is just a protective order," Ralphs said.

Legal Aid Society's partnership with YWCA Utah's Family Justice Center "is even more efficacious" than simply offering legal services, Ralphs said.

The Family Justice Center brings together specialized services in one location where victims can report domestic violence-related crimes to police, get legal help with protective orders and stalking injunctions, speak to victim advocates, contact prosecuting attorneys to learn about the criminal process or discuss a pending criminal case, find shelter, housing and support groups, and obtain employment and job training.

"When we were just standing alone all we'd do is get protective orders and send you out the door (with a) 'good luck.' We were not meeting the needs of our clients," Ralphs said.

"Now we can say, 'Besides us getting this protective order, what kinds of things do we need to get you in touch with so we can meet all the needs of your family?'"

The report says domestic violence is a serious public health problem that has impacts beyond the victims themselves.

"In addition to the substantial costs to the victims, society is forced to bear a significant burden in the form of, among other effects, criminal justice costs, social services costs, and externalities on children. These substantial costs provide additional support for society's interest in reducing the incidence of domestic violence through whatever policy tools are most cost-effective," the report states

It adds that societal costs are reduced when people obtain protective orders because there are fewer criminal justice interventions, fewer people become homeless, and physical and mental health treatment costs are reduced because there are fewer assaults.

Each year, violence perpetrated by intimate partners generates costs in excess of $9.05 billion, the report says, although other sources place the figure around $6 billion annually.

States and municipalities should assess the evidence and consider adopting a policy granting domestic violence victims free or reduced-cost counsel in civil protective order proceedings, the report says.

While much of Legal Aid Society's funding comes from federal grants, it has received state funding for the past six years, according to Ralphs. It is also a partner in And Justice For All, an umbrella organization for Utah's primary civil legal aid agencies.

"Utah isn't quite to par with some of our surrounding jurisdictions but they are investing in it at this point in time. I'm very pleased to have the state as a partner. The reason is, the Administrative Office of Courts. The courts can see when we have people represented by Legal Aid Society of Salt Lake, by Utah Legal Services, instead of the person being a pro se litigant, the outcomes are so much better," he said.

"We don't clog up the legal system because they know what they're doing to proceed expeditiously."

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865634607/Report-Legal-help-cuts-incidence-of-domestic-violence-saves-money.html?pg=all

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Healing From Child Sexual Abuse: Let Yourself Grieve, Get Angry

by Eirliani Abdul Rahman

Healing is not a linear process. You may revisit a particular issue, say, the fear of intimacy, as you begin a new relationship. Or you may have to learn to set limits with your children if you have always had issues with boundaries.

But the process of moving on cannot be rushed. Getting there will take time. You should not be doing it just because your partner and family members are urging you to get over the past. You will need resolution. Healing is a painful process but if you can go through every stage, and remain vested in the journey, then the road ahead will get easier.

The first thing is to grieve, and to deal with your anger. To grieve for your loss of innocence, for the betrayal of a loved one, and for the lost moments of your childhood. For feeling abandoned and ashamed. For being utterly alone.

Grieving also means taking cognisance of the harm that was done to you, the relationships ruined and the healing that you must now undertake, including the time, resources and energy involved. If you do not allow your grief to come to the surface, it may limit your capacity to fully participate in life. If you give it voice, the intensity of your grief will hopefully reduce over time.

Second, anger can be empowering, transformative. As a child, you may not have been aware of your right to get angry. Rather than being angry with your abuser, you may have turned the anger inward, leading to depression and/or self-destructive behaviour. As a child, you may have blamed yourself for the abuse, choosing to numb your feelings. As you grew older, you may have resorted to alcohol or other forms of addiction to drown the self-critical voices in your head.

But anger can be a powerful, healing force. Survivors have told us what a release it was to be able to direct their anger at their abusers, finally. Not at their mothers, hapless bystanders. But unleashing their full anger at the perpetrators of the abuse and to finally find the courage within themselves to do something about healing. Anger, for survivors of child sexual abuse, is a confusing thing. If you were abused as a child by someone you loved, with whom you shared good, happy memories, it can be difficult to admit the pain of anger. For the fear that it will remove the beauty of that relationship, all the positive aspects before the abuse took place.

This leads to the third point: anger does not need to negate what was good in your life. You can be angry -- and have the right to be angry -- about the abuse that happened, and still hold on to those cherished memories. Anger is a vital part of healing. Anger can also be channelled in positive ways, for instance by speaking out against child sexual abuse and the taboo surrounding it. And more importantly, it clears your mind and lets you learn to love and accept yourself again.

Let go. Start healing.

http://www.huffingtonpost.in/eirliani-abdul-rahman-/healing-from-child-sexual_b_7910664.html

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Utah

Students work to raise sex trafficking awareness locally, globally

by Marjorie Cortez

SALT LAKE CITY — In a small conference room at the shared work space Impact Hub, a group of high school students tackled the weighty issue of sex trafficking Saturday afternoon.

The students are the latest members of Backyard Broadcast, a youth resistance movement dedicated to fighting sex trafficking in the United States. Teens interested in becoming advocates and teaching others about the issue came together to learn more about sex trafficking and effective means to inform fellow students, policymakers and others how they can reduce its incidence.

The organization, launched three years ago, has clubs or "stations" at Cottonwood, Kearns, Skyline, Davis and Judge Memorial Catholic high schools. Backyard Broadcast director Terry Palmer said the organization plans to reach out to other Wasatch Front schools this fall to further the reach of the organization.

As Backyard Broadcast student leaders have graduated, some have launched "stations" at the colleges they now attend, including Madi Palmer, founder and station chief of Cottonwood High School's chapter. She now attends Cal State Monterey Bay.

Sarah Weyrich, entering her senior year at Judge Memorial, said she got involved because she wants others to be aware of youths who are at risk of being trafficked.

This summer, Weyrich traveled to Guatemala to do service work. Prior to her trip, she became intensely aware of the issue.

"I had done some research about the airport I was flying into. What I found was that sex trafficking is really big at the airport there. I was traveling alone and they love to pick up young girls for sex trafficking. So I wanted to be more aware how to avoid that," she said.

But Weyrich said she has also learned that people fall prey to sex traffickers in Utah. Last week, a federal grand jury in Utah indicted eight people for alleged sex trafficking of children.

"If you had asked me a month ago I would have had no idea that all this was happening in my hometown and something like that could have happened to me if I'd gone on the wrong side of the path," said Weyrich.

According to Backyard Broadcast's website, youths who are vulnerable to sex trafficking are generally young teens, youths who have experienced abuse, have unstable home lives and older boyfriends.

The average age a child is forced to have sex for money is 13 years old, according to the organization's website.

"According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, at least 100,000 American children are being trafficked every year," the website states.

During Saturday's training session, students were taught how to lobby state lawmakers and other policymakers and tips for interviews with the news media and presentations to the community and fellow students.

The youths also learned about who is at risk of human trafficking and how to help them.

Some Backyard Broadcast leaders have worked through the summer to raise awareness and prepare for activities during the upcoming school year.

"This was just a brush up, a mini-training. We'll do a bigger training in October. But we wanted to remind them of what we're supposed to be doing, do some planning for some events, get together with like-minded friends and see what other stations are doing. We're also thinking about doing an international trip this summer," Terry Palmer said.

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=35987321

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South Dakota

Backpage.com is enabling sex traffickers

by KSFY

We're going to spend a couple moments now talking about sex trafficking.

There were more arrests made for it again this year during the Sturgis rally.

But the efforts to stop this crime are a year round proposition and the state's attorney general tells me, a popular web site is part of the problem.

There's a reason the state pays such close attention to the Sturgis rally when it comes to sex trafficking.

It brings thousands of people here from out of state and that's part of the problem.

"Most of the arrests being made are men coming from out of state here into South Dakota to prey upon South Dakota children." In his office in Pierre, South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley tells me the sex traffickers...the pimps...are always on the road with the young women and in some cases children they sell for sex; hoping to stay one step ahead of the law.

"Traffickers coming from Minneapolis, coming from Denver, Iowa, Nebraska and there's kind of this little Midwest tract that's kind of starting." Polly Dean is one of the founders of Sioux Falls based "The New Colossus"; a group working to help women and children escape the sex trafficking life.

Even now, she encounters people who tell her she is making something out of nothing. "I still get told that. I still have people look at me and I still have them say I don't know what you're doing, I think that you;'re making a big deal out of nothing."

But the numbers show this problem is in fact, something to be worried about.

29 arrests in recent years here in South Dakota; the result of year round operations involving the state partnering with local agencies to investigate, infiltrate and incarcerate. "What these operations do is they really remove sexual predators from our streets and they also act as a deterrent."

But it's hard to track the traffickers. Much of what they do is online. Most of it is tough to identify.

But some of it is out there in the open, easy to find, easy to use and there is nothing the state of South Dakota can do to stop it.
For example, Backpage.com.

"49 attorneys general across this nation felt so strongly about what Backpage was doing and the advertising of children for sexual activities that we sent a letter to Congress asking for them to take away the immunity that Congress has given to Backpage.com." Backpage.com has an adult services section that makes the web site at least 23 million a year.

Jackley identifies it as one of the key instruments sex traffickers use to line up business for the women and children under their control.
But under a federal law, states can not hold a web site liable for criminal activity. which is why traffickers use it.

"The people who are going on to purchase from those ads don't care about trafficking. They don't care about a woman's willingness or a man's willingness to partake in these sorts of things. They go on that site for themselves."

Two years ago, an attorney for Backpage.com told me one web site can't be held responsible for the entire sex trafficking problem. But two years later, the web site is still accepting ads for adult services. That leaves state law enforcement with little choice but to sit by and watch the internet become a safe haven for those who pocket the money off of someone else's pain. "Anybody with children, with grandchildren care about this. This is something effecting everyone across the nation. We are doing something in South Dakota about this to protect children and grandchildren."

"If everyone could remember that, that these are people. this is someone's mother, this is someone's daughter, this is someone's friend."

Recently, credit card companies American Express, Visa and MasterCard have made the decision to no longer do business with Backpage.com, because of concerns the company is profiting directly from sex traffickers.

http://www.ksfy.com/home/headlines/Jackley-Backpagecom-is-enabling-sex-traffickers-321970492.html

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Massachusetts

Massachusetts Court Affirms Anti-Human Trafficking Law

by The Associated Press

The constitutionality of a Massachusetts law that targets sex trafficking was upheld Thursday by the state's highest court, which rejected claims by two men that the statute was vague and its scope too broad.

The Supreme Judicial Court said in a unanimous opinion that the 2011 law was “sufficiently clear and definite” and did not violate the due process rights of the two men, who are believed to be the first people convicted under the statute.

In their appeal, lawyers for Tyshaun McGhee and Sidney McGee claimed the statute's language, particularly the phrase “commercial sexual activity,” was unconstitutionally vague. They said the law also lacked the elements of use of force and coercion that a federal sex trafficking statute requires to establish the crime.

The two Boston men were accused of recruiting three drug-addicted women, supplying them with narcotics and coercing them to have sex with men who responded to online ads.

The law signed by then-Democratic Gov. Deval Patrick established the crime of human trafficking for sexual servitude, forced labor and organ trafficking. It increased penalties for human trafficking, and backers said they hoped it would bring a shift in law enforcement toward treating children and others who work as prostitutes as victims.

The two men, who are not related, were the first people to be convicted under the law, according to the Suffolk District Attorney's office.

The justices rejected arguments that the wording of the law was vague, saying it used commonly accepted and easily understood terms, including “commercial sexual activity,” which lawyers for the defendants argued could be construed to include such things as nude dancing or adult movies.

The law forbids actions that will knowingly cause or enable another person to engage in commercial sexual activity, the court said.

“Conduct of this nature is afforded no constitutional protection,” wrote Justice Francis Spina.

Suffolk District Attorney Dan Conley's office, which prosecuted the case, said Thursday that since the law's passage the district attorney has adopted a so-called safe harbor policy that treats young prostitutes as victims of exploitation rather than offenders, and that the policy is now required statewide.

McGhee is serving a 10-15 year sentence in state prison; McGee a 10-12 year term. The high court said in its ruling that McGhee's sentence exceeded the allowable maximum by one day and because of that, he must be resentenced.

Locked in cells of silence by disbelief and shame

by Boz Tcjovodjian

The tragic reality is all too often victims of sexual abuse remain silent about the horrors they have endured. Many live their entire lives in silence. Studies have found that approximately sixty-three percent of adult sexual assaults and eighty-eight percent of child sexual abuse is never reported.

Why do so many victims remain silent? In over twenty years of confronting this evil, I have learned that there are many reasons that silence takes over the life of survivors. Like everyone else, abuse survivors are individuals with a unique life story and their own reasons for not telling anyone about the abuse. During the past twenty years, I have grieved as I have listened to some of the darkest chapters in the life stories of many amazing abuse survivors. Oftentimes, the gloomiest chapter is the silence.

A silence that holds victims hostage with little hope for release.

A silence that deceives victims day after day that they suffer alone.

A silence that extinguishes all remaining hopes and dreams.

A silence that is no different than a prison cell.

Though the reasons for silence may differ with each survivor, there are two that I have encountered time and time again when listening to survivors. I share them hoping that a greater understanding and empathy will propel us to do whatever we can to help survivors escape the cell of silence.

Disbelief.

I cannot recount how often abuse survivors have shared with me that their silence was fueled by an incapacitating fear of not being believed. So often this fear is legitimized when survivors see how other victims are disbelieved and marginalized when they take the brave step forward out of their cell of silence. Case in point, how many women had to come forward before many people even began to acknowledge that Bill Cosby is a rapist? To date, almost 50 victims have stepped forward and there are still some that disbelieve their claims and have the audacity to label these courageous women as "opportunistic”." Please don't think that the refusal to believe a sexual abuse victim is a rarity in 2015. Tragically, it happens every day to so many brave victims, old and young, who take a step out of their cell of silence. Oftentimes, these survivors are disbelieved by the very people they had hoped would believe and support them such as family members, friends, pastors, church members, teachers, and even police officers. The list goes on and on. Disbelief pushes many survivors back into their cells of silence. Disbelief also alerts other watching victims who are considering ending their silence that it may be safer to suffer in silence. What a tragedy.

On a brighter note, it is often when multiple voices speak out that others are empowered to step out from their cell of silence with a hope that they will finally be believed. That was the hope shared by many who stepped forward to end their silence about the atrocities committed by Bill Cosby. That was also the hope of the 19 th victim who came forward this past week in Chicago.

(In next week's blog, I want to spend some time focusing on the value and power of multiple voices and how these voices can bring justice to offenders and to the institutions that protect them.)

Shame.

I'll never forget the day I was sitting with a group of adult child sexual abuse survivors talking about why they had remained silent for so long, when one of the men who had been victimized by a priest spoke up with tears streaming down his face and said, “It was the shame of it all, shame is what kept me silent.” Shame is an especially vicious weapon when wielded to silence victims within faith communities. Offenders distort faith teachings in order to convince their victims that they are at least partially responsible for the heinous acts perpetrated against them. Faith based shame keeps untold numbers of abuse survivors locked in cells of silence convinced that they are worthless in the eyes of God and everyone else. My friend, Mike Reagan, recounts that when his perpetrator showed him a nude photo he had taken of eight-year old Michael weeks earlier, the door of his own cell of silence was slammed shut for decades. Mike recounts, “I will never forget that photograph, because it changed my life, I knew I had to get away from my mother. I had to get away from God. I thought God had abandoned me, and I knew then I was going to hell.”

Perpetrators are not the only ones who shame victims. Anyone who ignores, disbelieves, or even minimizes the voices of survivors must take responsibility for shaming these brave souls into dark and desolate cells of silence. A shame that still brings tears to the eyes of my friend decades after being raped by a priest and told that it was all part of “God's plan”. A shame that keeps so many precious survivors locked away in silence. The truth about shame is that victims who get shamed have nothing to be ashamed of, and that those who shame have everything to be ashamed of. Sadly, this truth so seldom reaches those who most need to hear it.

It is my prayer that as we stop tolerating disbelief and shame, abuse survivors will be empowered to break out of their cells of silence with their heads held high, finally realizing that they are worthy in the eyes of God and everyone else who matters.

http://boz.religionnews.com/2015/08/14/locked-in-cells-of-silence-by-disbelief-and-shame/

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Michigan

Coldwater man accused of CSC and child abuse involving twin baby girls

COLDWATER, Mich. (NEWSCHANNEL 3) - A man living with his girlfriend in Coldwater is being held in the Branch County jail on a $500,000 bond after being charged with two counts of criminal sexual conduct and child abuse involving his girlfriend's twin two-year-old daughters.

The girl's mother is being held the Branch County jail after being charged with lying to police during the investigation into the CSC charges against Matthew Williams, 21 of Coldwater.

Williams said, "Yes, I changed them by myself, but at no point had I ever harmed or thought about harming them two little girls."

He said he had just changed the first daughter's diapers and had begun to change second child when he noticed a problem.

Williams said, "I wiped her one time and she had started going to the bathroom so I put her diaper back up and when I pulled it down she was bleeding."

Williams said he immediately called the girl's mother who recalled what she observed when she returned home, "…rushed home to find her having a small trace of blood inside of her Pull Up."

The mom who was charged with initially lying to police during the course of the investigation when asked if Williams had ever been left alone with her daughters tells us she was not overly concerned as a good friend of hers was also at the home while Williams was upstairs changing the girls' diapers.

She described what she saw the next time she saw her daughter at the hospital after the girl's father brought both of them into the emergency room.

She said, "She had a 50 cent size bruise over her genital area and was consistently bleeding and was very, very distraught."

Williams has been charged with two counts of first-degree CSC and child abuse involving both of her twin daughters and their mom was able to see Williams during the arraignment.

"I really wanted to hurt him" she said. "…Had to see him in my arraignment, really wanted to hurt him."

Both are due back in court August 25.

http://www.wwmt.com/news/features/top-stories/stories/Coldwater-man-accused-of-CSC-and-child-abuse-involving-twin-baby-girls-185690.shtml#.Vc8tE_OFOpo

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Indiana

Pence adds 113 child abuse staff

2nd hiring wave for embattled agency under lawsuit

by Niki Kelly

INDIANAPOLIS – Following a class-action lawsuit and a 26 percent increase in cases, Gov. Mike Pence announced Thursday that the state will hire 113 new child abuse and neglect caseworkers.

This comes on the heels of 100 workers who had already been hired in recent months after the legislative session in which lawmakers provided $7.5 million in new funding.

The Department of Child Services was sued in July over allegations case workers are overworked and unable to protect thousands of children across the state. In the suit, the ACLU of Indiana represents a case manager responsible for 43 cases when the state required maximum is 17.

Pence said the new 113 workers will cost about $7.2 million and the money will likely come from outside the Department of Child Services budget. But he didn't specify from where.

“I believe that by hiring these additional caseworkers we can help ensure that personnel at DCS are able to provide children in difficult circumstance with the time and attention they deserve,” he said. “Our administration will continue to put kids first, because that's what Hoosiers expect.”

But it took months for the Pence administration to act.

Last November, the fiscal year 2014 data – which ended in June 2014 – showed the state needed 216 family case managers to meet state mandated caseload limits.

In March, after an outside analysis, Pence requested funding for 100. Those have since been hired and now another wave is being promised on the eve of fiscal-year 2015 data about to be released.

The State Budget Committee will get that report from DCS today. The agency would not provide new caseload data to The Journal Gazette.

State law requires DCS family case managers to average no more than 12 initial assessments or 17 ongoing cases per worker.

In 2014, only one of 19 regions met that standard. Region 4 – including Allen and eight other counties – was 9.5 caseworkers short. In comparison, Marion County alone was 80 caseworkers short.

There are currently 1,546 family caseworkers that carry caseloads of abused or neglected children. About 190 are currently in the 12-week training period. And there are 45 vacancies.

The agency has a nearly 20 percent turnover rate, up from last year. And there are more than 18,000 kids in the child welfare system statewide.

Democrats were behind a large push to add caseworkers during session. But they think the administration is not going far enough.

“Today we must recognize that while this is progress, we are only now achieving the bare minimum required by law to protect children. Hoosiers know the minimum isn't enough,” Senate Democratic Leader Tim Lanane said. “There are still areas of the state where significant gaps exist, where family case managers are handling many times the number of cases legally permitted under the law.

“The unthinkable burden this circumstance places on case managers and the children and families they are charged with protecting is inexcusable. This is encouraging progress, but we have a long way to go.”

DCS Director Mary Beth Bonaventura said the agency would comply with state-mandated caseload ratios if not for the 26 percent increase in cases, largely fueled by drugs.

She also called the workers “warriors” for going into troubled homes every day to protect children.

“It appears that the State is attempting to address the fact that DCS is currently failing to comply with the mandatory caseload standards that the legislature established to protect Hoosier children,” ACLU Indiana Legal Director Ken Falk said. “We will have to evaluate the effect of these additional positions to determine if the agency is finally able to meet its statutory mandate.”

http://www.journalgazette.net/news/local/indiana/Pence-adds-113-child-abuse-staff-8225119

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6 Reasons To Reveal Childhood Sexual Abuse

by Dr. Margaret Rutherford -- Clinical Psychologist, Mental Health/Midlife Blogger

There are some stories I hear as a therapist I would never repeat.

Not only because of confidentiality.

Because I don't want someone else, who has not been listening and learning for 20 years, to have to cope with the horror of how parents can abuse their children. Or what an older sibling can do. What children can be forced to watch. To experience.

If you can imagine it, no matter how cruel, it has happened to a child.

The loss is irretrievable. Innocence. Gone. Safety. Ripped up and torn apart. Any sense of sanity or reason as to why things happen or what is fair or just - shredded. Maybe every day. Maybe randomly. Maybe when he or she is drunk or high. Maybe when they are stone, cold sober.

For no reason other than they can. And they get away with it.

The blame that roars out of their violence sticks to the child's spirit like super glue. The fight, for the rest of that child's life, for some sense of belief in one's own worth is a steep uphill grind. Shame of what others will think of them "if they knew" haunts them. If they don't become haters and blamers themselves.

Which, if they don't, is miraculous. And a testament to a more than resilient spirit.

The pain does not simply belong with the perpetrator. It can be attached to the other parent. Who knows it's going on. Or sometimes a whole family. Grandparents. Aunts and uncles. Neighbors who can hear or see.

And do nothing.

In this child-centered culture of ours, where overprotective soccer leagues give awards to kids who didn't win the match so that no one will feel like a "loser"... Somehow I wonder if people are in denial that children are still being hurt.

Some seemed shocked when they hear of a 6-year-old, raped and killed by her parents. "I can't believe something like that would happen."

It does happen. Every day. Not to the people "in those neighborhoods." Or "poor people."

It could be anyone.

What do you do if you are an adult, and were a victim of abuse? If you were battered, cussed at, thrown up against walls, made to eat things not meant for human consumption, starved, locked up. Sexually assaulted. By someone whose job it was to keep you safe? And you have never told?

What good would it do now for you to reveal it? To talk about it with someone you trust. (Finding people to trust in the first place would have been very difficult for you, but hopefully you have or can imagine it.)

A few thoughts.

1. If you are keeping his or her secret, then they may still be controlling you.

You are, in a way, being governed by them. And might feel that somehow, if you had just been smarter, or a better athlete or student. Quieter or louder. Stronger or not so strong. That somehow you could have stopped it from happening.

Maybe it was your fault after all.

If there is a bone in your body that believes this, please confront that thought. Because it is wrong. That's only what you were told out of complete justification for violence and cruelty.

2. You might benefit from hearing how the abuse is connected to problems you are having now.

If you unhook from the secrecy of the abuse, hear and accept that it had nothing or very little to do with you, then many times those problems are eased.

Think of the abuse as being a heavy weight you have been carrying around for years. If you put it down, you have much more mental and emotional energy. You might see how your perception of yourself changes in other ways as well.

3. You would be valuing and soothing yourself.

You may never choose to confront. I only advise this if and when you are completely prepared for what may be another onslaught of justification and anger coming back at you, rather than the romanticized version you might have in your mind of a deep apology. You might get that. But there's a huge chance that you won't. If that was going to happen, your perpetrator would probably have initiated that themselves.

Just in the telling of the abuse, you are honoring the child who still remembers the pain. The confusion. The dread. The fear. And you are connecting with that child within you. Soothing him or her.

And that has incredible merit.

4. There's a possibility he or she is still hurting someone else.

This gets more complicated, especially with sexual abuse. Therapists are mandated reporters for child abuse, but if you are telling a therapist about your child abuse when you were a child, then your therapist and you can discuss your options. If a child is living in the home with your abusive parent, that should be a very serious discussion.

5. You are never too old to heal. To make changes in your life.

I had the honor of hearing about sexual abuse from a 70 year old. It made an immense difference in his life. Another from an almost 80 year old, who told me he had finally attended a high school reunion (his 60th) and felt like he could stand tall. For the first time.

6. If it happened once, that's all it took.

I hear a lot, "But it only happened one time. It's not really abuse."

That's not true. It never happened to a lot of people. Never. Your world changed forever when it happened to you.

One time is all it takes.

To report child sexual abuse, call the National Child Sexual Abuse hotline at 1-866-FOR-LIGHT (866-367-5444) or for immediate help, dial 9-1-1.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-margaret-rutherford/why-you-should-reveal-childhood-sexual-abuse_b_7957764.html

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Pakistan

Sexual Abuse, a Taboo

by Mehr Tarar

The horrific report by The Nation on a Kasur-based gang allegedly involved in child pornography has sent shock waves throughout Pakistan. As I think about the different parts of the report, the picture that forms in my mind in not limited to Kasur. To me, it is not merely a child sex-abuse scandal. To me it is much of what is wrong with our society. And while this latest report has shaken the collective conscience of Pakistan, it is merely a wake-up call about the phenomenon of child sexual abuse that is so rampant it is nothing but escapism to consider it an uncommon occurrence.

Without going into any sociological and anthropological discourse about a "taboo" subject like homosexuality, and the fascination with male pornography in a patriarchal, male-dominated nation like Pakistan's, suffice it to say it exists in all strata of society. The Kasur sex-abuse case is not about individual choices to indulge in homosexual acts; the Kasur sex-abuse case is a series of sexual exploitation of underage males, spanning over years, reportedly 2006 to present day. It is a crime against humanity on multiple levels: moral, social, legal, even if the religious aspect is set aside for a moment. Forcing minor, adolescent boys to perform sexual acts on one another, video-taping the acts, blackmailing the victims and perpetrators -- in this case minors -- and their families, and distributing/selling the videos in local market and on the internet are all bookable crimes under any moral, social or legal code.

And that brings into focus the other ills that endorse and enable the perpetuation of such crimes, some acting as an inducement to minors being lured into participating in acts that they are either too young to understand the enormity of, or too afraid to stop their occurrence.

The weaknesses and loopholes of an inherently flawed legal system, which serve as an enabler of the exploitation of a certain class, go hand in glove with the corruption and cronyism of the political paradigm. Police stations do not serve as a place where all are equal, and for a person from the underprivileged class to even have an FIR registered becomes more problematic than the original issue. Once an FIR is registered, there is blatant disregard to investigating the complaint, and slapdash attention is given to questioning and apprehending - if the case is strong - the perpetrator. Court cases drag on longer than the complainant's life, and even when convicted, most perpetrators - especially those endowed with any or all of the trifecta - power, money, connections - manage to escape the sentence on bail, or get a reduced sentence.

Political patronage of the police is a fact of life, and when they are not acting as the personal security detail of the self-avowed VIPs, the overworked, underpaid police are busy rounding up the usual suspects from a certain class, while ignoring the real accused. Money talks, and bribery walks. How the elected members of the provincial and federal governments exploit their constituents -- from one election to another -- ignoring their day-to-day issues, and even the big ones like the rape of their underage boys is an indication of the weakness of the political system that is based on the manifesto of serving the nation but fail to do so caught up in protecting criminals.

The biggest issue, the elephant in the room, is the staggering number of out-of-school children in Pakistan. Out of approximately 25 million out-of-school children, as per an Alif Ailaan report, 13 million are in Punjab, and while there is a huge tom-toming of government's efforts to overhaul the education system, this number is a stark manifestation of the low prioritization of education. There would be no noteworthy decrease in the malaise until parents/guardians of children are fined, penalized or locked up for their failure to send a child to school. Education may not have the same connotation for everyone, but as per the Article 25-A of the Constitution of Pakistan it is mandatory for government to ensure free and compulsory education to children. School-going children are less susceptible to falling into hands of different mafias that are in the business of exploitation of children, especially boys, from a certain income-bracket. Beggary, prostitution, bonded labor, trafficking and present-day slavery exist, and out-of-school children become the easiest prey.

Sexual abuse exists on all levels in all societies all over the world. While it is important to inculcate a sense of security in children empowering them to voice their thoughts and fears, it is also important to remain attentive to the changes in the temperament of a child. Sexual exploitation engenders a state of fear in the victims, silencing and internalising their grief, ergo it is imperative to create a responsive environment, encouraging an ethos of talking and sharing.

Sexual abuse is not a taboo. Sexual abuse is a crime, and like any other crime it must be reported, investigated and punished. That is the least that the collective conscience of a society and a nation owes to a victim, whose physical, mental and emotional trauma remain unforgettable, and in some cases, irreparable.

California

Bay Area child sex abuse suspect arrested in Boyle Heights after 14 years on the run

by Brittny Meha

A former Northern California schoolteacher wanted for 14 years in connection with several counts of sexual assault against children was arrested Wednesday in Boyle Heights.

Frank Joseph Montenegro, 52, was taken into custody after a foot pursuit and struggle with FBI fugitive task force agents. Montenegro, who had been residing at a community home in Boyle Heights, was in state custody in Los Angeles awaiting transfer to officials in Alameda County.

A federal criminal complaint filed in federal court in San Francisco in August 2001 said the Alameda County district attorney's office charged Montenegro a month before with multiple counts of sodomy of a child under 14, oral copulation and continued sexual abuse of a minor.

He was charged following an investigation by detectives with the Fremont Police Department. At the time, Montenegro had been working as an elementary school teacher.

After investigators determined Montenegro had fled across the border to Mexico, the FBI was asked to help find him.

The FBI's fugitive task force followed up on a tip received by the Los Angeles Police Department that Montenegro had resided locally for several years.

The FBI's Los Angeles Fugitive Task Force includes agents and officers with the FBI, the LAPD and the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's parole division.

Montenegro will be arraigned in Alameda County. Authorities expect the U.S. government to drop a federal warrant charging Montenegro with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.

Fremont police spokeswoman Geneva Bosques said Montenegro fled in July 2001 in a rental car, which was later found in Mexico. That was his last known whereabouts, Bosques said, leading the department to contact the FBI.

“This was a very big case at the time,” Bosques said Thursday. “He was very well known within the school district and within our community … the fact that he has now been found and is going to be brought back up here is really great news for us, as well as for his victims.”

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-sex-abuse-arrest-boyle-heights-20150813-story.html

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FIRST LOOK: TLC's Documentary Breaking the Silence Gives Voice to Victims of Childhood Sexual Abuse

by Emily Strohm

Following the cancellation of TLC's hit series 19 Kids and Counting the network has partnered with two of the nation's leading sexual abuse prevention organizations to create a new documentary addressing the issue.

Breaking the Silence teams up TLC with RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) and Darkness to Light (D2L) a nonprofit organization that works to empower people to prevent child sexual abuse and will share the stories of survivors of sexual abuse.

In an exclusive First Look clip from the one-hour special Erin Merryn opens up about being a two-time survivor and discusses her passionate fight to end abuse with Erin's Law legislation, which requires sexual abuse prevention education in public schools and has already been passed in 26 states.

"Like so many survivors, I ended up keeping it a secret for years," she says. "Now, as a mother with my own child, I want to make sure my children know how to speak up."

Viewers will also hear from experts during a sexual abuse prevention training given by Darkness to Light, one of the nation's leading organizations for abuse prevention, where Jill and Jessa Duggar attend following their own family's experience as they hope to help others and promote adult education for the protection of children .

Breaking the Silence airs Aug. 30th at 10 p.m. ET on TLC.

http://www.people.com/article/tlc-child-sexual-abuse-documentary-breaking-the-silence-first-look

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California

These ‘Gentle' giants help heal wounds young and old

by Naomi Pfefferman

On a recent morning, Ellie Laks was hugging a yellow Jersey cow named Buttercup in the lower barn of her 6-acre animal rescue, The Gentle Barn, in Santa Clarita. She explained she had rescued the cow some seven years ago from a man who was illegally slaughtering animals in his backyard, a place strewn with animal feces and where dead and dying animals languished alongside the living ones. Buttercup arrived at The Gentle Barn “terrified of people, filthy, emaciated and malnourished,” said Laks, whose memoir about her experiences, “My Gentle Barn: Creating a Sanctuary Where Animals Heal and Children Learn to Hope,” was published by Harmony last year.

After Laks nursed Buttercup back to health, however, the cow went on not only to become the matriarch of the Barn's herd, but also helped to heal the psychic wounds of human beings who were invited to visit the facility: war veterans, people with disabilities, and especially inner-city students and kids from foster homes and probation camps, among others.

“Abused animals can heal abused children because they have the same kinds of stories,” Laks, 47, said. “If you have a child who is too angry and shut down to be able to sit in traditional therapy and talk about their emotions, we can talk more indirectly to them through the story of an animal.”

Buttercup is one of more than 180 animals who live at the Barn, founded in 1999, which also houses goats, sheep, chickens, turkeys, peacocks, llamas, horses, donkeys, dogs, cats, pigs, parrots and an emu. All of them help nurture the approximately 25,000 children and adults who visit the Barn each year.

Denizens of the barnyard include Faith, a cow once destined to become veal who arrived at the facility suffering from anemia, skin funguses, pneumonia and raging fevers some years ago; Sir Fancy Pants, a turkey Laks saved from slaughter one Thanksgiving; Biscuit, a 1,000-pound pig who, as a piglet, was rescued from a pumpkin patch the day before he was to be butchered; and Andrew, a stud horse who was left to die in a ravine.

Amy Evans, a therapist with Optimist Youth Homes & Family Services, said that hearing the animals' stories of abuse, abandonment or neglect has helped her clients “to open up and to process some of their own traumas.”

Laks recalled a foster child who arrived at the barn about a decade ago, angry and defiant; he had been severely beaten by his alcoholic stepfather before being removed from his abusive family. “I started talking about Bonsai, our miniature horse, whose alcoholic owner used to punch him in the face,” Laks said. The boy, in turn, asked Laks and her husband, Jay Weiner, who runs the Barn alongside Laks, to repeatedly tell Bonsai's story. “Then he ran over to the horse, threw his arms around his neck and whispered over and over again, ‘You're going to be OK,' ” Laks said.

Laks understands firsthand how animals can be therapeutic for survivors of childhood abuse. Born in Israel and raised in an Orthodox Jewish home in St. Louis and, from age 13, in Los Angeles, where she attended YULA Girls School and Beth Jacob Congregation, Laks as a girl was molested by two babysitters and then by a stranger at a lake near her home.

“A man I had never seen approached me and gave me candy and money to do things a 7-year-old girl should never be asked to do,” Laks wrote in her memoir.

Laks goes on to describe how her mother dismissed her story with a curt, “Don't be ridiculous,” while her father became furious and forbade his daughter from visiting the lake where she had loved to commune with the local wildlife. “That invalidated my whole being,” Laks, whose grandfather was the former chief rabbi of South Africa, said during an interview at her kitchen table. “That's when I tried to kill myself for the first time.” Laks attempted to do so by smashing her head in with a shoe, then tried to jump out of an upstairs window but couldn't manage to break the glass. A close-up encounter with a hummingbird saved her: “One being was seeing me … and was reminding me that I was not alone,” she said.

Thereafter, Laks continued to find refuge in the company of animals, secretly nursing birds that had fallen from their nests or a turtle that had cracked its shell. She also played with a host of pets, including hamsters and even a dove she once received as a gift for finding the Passover afikomen. But when her parents tired of the animals, after a few weeks or a few months, the creatures inevitably disappeared. (Laks' Australian shepherd, Simon, was one exception).

“The spirit and essence of Judaism is reverence for life, and yet in the Orthodox practice all around me at the time, it seemed the opposite,” she said. “People seemed to approach animals as filthy, inferior and didn't quite acknowledge them as sentient beings. … The moment I left Orthodoxy was when a rabbi told me that people are forbidden from saving a dog from a burning building on the Sabbath.”

As a young adult, Laks bought into her community's idea that intensely caring for animals, as she did, was ridiculous, and her self-enforced separation from four-legged creatures eventually led to her to spiral downward into a four-year addiction to crack cocaine in her early to mid-20s.

“That culminated in a day where I had literally binged for three weeks straight,” she said. “I weighed 90 pounds, my hair was matted, and I hadn't showered or eaten. … One morning came and I was crawling on the floor trying to find remnants of the drug in the carpet … and I thought, ‘My God, what are you doing?' ”

Laks promptly got clean, returned to college and founded a dog-walking business, using her first paycheck to save a black Labrador and her puppies from the pound. “Animals played every part in rehabilitating me,” she said. “They're my lifeline.” Ten months later, Laks founded a dog rescue that saved only the most unwanted, sick animals, “which felt like coming home,” she said.

Fast forward to 1998, when Laks, then married to her first husband and nurturing barnyard animals as well as dogs at their half-acre property in Tarzana, chanced to drive by a decrepit petting zoo while out running errands with her baby son, Jesse.

“The first thing I was hit with when we went inside was the most God-awful smell,” Laks recalled. “It was all filth and disease. I saw a little roundabout with ponies with kids on their backs, their noses practically touching the ground. Then my eyes gazed over the sea of goats and sheep, and it didn't take me long to find that all their hooves were overgrown. And then on the outskirts, there were dead animals in cages. None of the animals had any water even though it was 110 degrees … I ran for the door, but there was a little goat, Mary, blocking my way. … Her legs were crisscrossed so that she could barely walk. Her stomach was enormously distended, her coat was black with filth, and she had bloody, pus-filled tumors all over her legs.”

When the petting zoo's proprietor refused to allow Laks to take Mary home, Laks returned to spend every day, all day petting and standing vigil by the goat — until, on the 12th day, the frustrated owner finally relented.

Laks went on to adopt 14 more animals from the zoo, as well as even more creatures from a homeless woman who was living in her car. “One day I looked out into our backyard, which was now full of animals, and it just hit me like a ton of bricks: I had just started my dream,” she said.

Laks named her facility The Gentle Barn and began phoning groups that catered to at-risk children and adults, inviting them to visit.

In the early 2000s, The Gentle Barn moved to its current location in Santa Clarita, where it braved fires and financial woes before celebrities such as Ellen DeGeneres helped put the nonprofit on the map. (DeGeneres once sold a lock of Justin Bieber's hair for $40,000 in order to donate the proceeds to the charity.)

The Barn now hosts up to 25,000 visitors a year, with a budget of $50,000 per month. It's open to the public on Sundays and has more than 450,000 Facebook subscribers. A new 15-acre property nearby houses sick and healing animals, and in June, Laks helped open a second Gentle Barn in Knoxville, Tenn.

“In my book, I talk about not fitting in with Judaism, but I do feel that I am living the core values of Judaism every single day,” she said. “It's about kindness, love, gentleness and remembering the holy in all of us.”

For information and to visit The Gentle Barn, visit: gentlebarn.org

http://www.jewishjournal.com/the_ticket/item/these_gentle_giants_help_heal_wounds_young_and_old

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Kansas

DCF defends use of special investigators in child abuse cases

Investigators not required to hold a college degree, but agency says they have social work or law enforcement backgrounds

by Jonathan Shorman

The Kansas Department for Children and Families hit back Thursday at criticism of its use of special investigators — who aren't required to hold college degrees — to look into reports of child abuse and neglect.

The agency said the investigators, who also aren't required to hold social work licenses, have either social work or law enforcement backgrounds.

“Special Investigators are not individuals who walk straight out of high school and into the living rooms of families in crisis. Our special investigators often have a social work or law enforcement background and then receive additional training through the agency,” DCF Secretary Phyllis Gilmore said in a statement.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reported on the department's use of the special investigators in a story posted online Wednesday and in Thursday's newspaper. Rebecca Proctor, director of the Kansas Organization of State Employees, had raised concerns about the increasing use of investigators. The agency said investigators had been in use since the 1990s.

The agency uses both special investigators and social workers to investigate reports of child abuse and neglect. Social workers must hold bachelor's degrees in social work and obtain a license from the state.

DCF said on Thursday it had 34 special investigators in 2010 and that the number had climbed to 54. On Wednesday, the agency supplied a current figure of 71 special investigators. It said Thursday that figure included those who look into adult abuse and neglect.

For comparison, the department has about 378 social workers.

“They perform support work for social workers, much like paralegals support the work of lawyers. We take seriously our obligation to protect children. Kansas consistently surpasses national safety measure averages with regard to child safety, both in and out of foster care,” Gilmore said.

According to a job description posted by the state of Kansas on its jobs board, cases assigned to a special investigator range from simple to complex. The investigator exercises independent judgment on the investigation of assigned cases and in coordination with a social worker, the description says. Work is controlled by routine review and consultation with a supervisor.

Though no post-secondary education is required, the job description says “loss of life, disruption of operations of a major agency” best describes the results of an error in action or decision by an investigator.

In addition to a statement, DCF also posted a video it produced of an interview that includes 10 special investigators. The video includes comments from Rhandyl Miller, a special investigator based in Topeka, who the DCF said has a master's degree in social work and comes from a law enforcement background.

“Myself, like John (another investigator) and a lot of other people in this room, were quite offended by the article because as John touched on, we all are quite educated, we all have a lot to bring to the table for this position. Most, if not all, of our (special investigators) come from some sort of law enforcement background or some sort of investigative background,” Miller said.

Kansas Rep. Jim Ward, D-Wichita, who last month urged lawmakers to audit DCF, called on Gilmore to resign Thursday.

“Another disaster on (Gov. Sam) Brownback's watch. These people have gone too far. Enough is enough,” Ward tweeted.

http://cjonline.com/news/2015-08-13/dcf-defends-use-special-investigators-child-abuse-cases

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Pennsylvania

Revised state child abuse report coming by late August

by Julianne Mattera

A revised version of the 2014 state child abuse report that was pulled nearly two weeks ago for errors should be available to the public by Aug. 27.

Kait Gillis, spokeswoman for the department of Human Services, confirmed that timeline Thursday afternoon.

Gillis said that she had spoken with Human Services Secretary Ted Dallas and that the 2014 Annual Child Abuse Report would be posted online as soon as possible, but within two weeks.

The agency originally released the annual report July 27 — nearly three months after the May 1 deadline outlined in state law — updated it at least once, and then removed it a little before noon July 31 after media outlets and at least one child advocate contacted the agency on changes to the report or errors.

In a statement, Dallas had said that errors in the report "were most likely related to the transition to new software used to collect and analyze data." Dallas had said the department would be reviewing the report "to ensure all numbers are accurate" before reposting it.

When asked whether those reviewing the report were the same people who compiled the original report, Gillis said that group would include "some of the same folks plus some additional individuals."

"We will only put out information that we can verify and that is what will be included in the report," Gillis said via email.

When ready, Gillis said the revised report would be posted on the section of the department of Human Services website dedicated to annual child abuse reports.

http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2015/08/revised_state_child_abuse_repo.html

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Activists urge Pope Francis to address sex abuse by clergy during U.S. visit

by Michelle Boorstein

PHILADELPHIA — John Salveson didn't give up his obsession with the Catholic Church easily. There were polite letters in the early 1980s, asking that the priest who molested him when he was a teenager be removed.

His bishop wrote back, but the priest remained, transferring parishes through the late '80s, according to a grand jury report. “Sincerely yours in Christ,” the bishop closed his letters.

Later, Salveson led a group that advocated for church reform. But by the mid-2000s, he had grown discouraged and shifted his focus to pushing for stronger laws and enforcement.

Prompted by Pope Francis's trip to Philadelphia this fall, Salveson has renewed his activism toward the church, calling for the pontiff and other participants in a global Catholic meeting on family issues to discuss child sex abuse by clergy members and wear black ribbons to represent “the darkness that infects the souls of survivors,” he said.

The official itinerary for Francis's U.S. trip includes no mention of the topic, although some experts think the pontiff will address it in an impromptu way, as Pope Benedict did during his last trip to the United States, in 2008.

The visit is reason for celebration among those who consider Francis the first pope to begin restoring the Catholic Church's moral authority after sex abuse scandals, which led many American Catholics to fall away from their faith. But it is painful for many others who think Francis and the church have not done enough to reach out to victims or punish those who oversaw abusers.

Advocates point out that the pope has held no bishop explicitly accountable — allowing a few to instead quietly resign. And church officials continue to spend millions fighting litigation.

Most sex abuse survivors have never received an apology from their church leaders, advocates say. They are unable to seek relief in criminal or civil courts because of statutes of limitation and are left with deep scars that can make it challenging to hold a job or have an intimate relationship. The vast majority of survivors have left the Catholic Church, experts say, and to see it celebrated regularly in the media can be painful.

Arthur Baselice, a retired Philadelphia police detective whose son died of a drug overdose a decade ago after years of clergy abuse, is angry about the pope's efforts for survivors.

“He's creating a diversion. All he does is talk. You think this guy ever worked a day in his life? How could he have empathy for people like us?” Baselice said. Then he began to cry.

Others think Francis's actions demonstrate his intent to make lasting changes.

“I think he's a rock star,” said Andy Druding, 54, a survivor from Philadelphia who said he is unable to work because of post-traumatic stress and depression. “He really seems to be someone who genuinely seems to want to get to the bottom of this and stop it.”

Victims of sex abuse who praise Francis note that the pontiff has taken concrete steps, including embracing six survivors during a Mass in 2013.

“I beg your forgiveness, too, for the sins of omission on the part of church leaders who did not respond adequately to reports of abuse made by family members, as well as by abuse victims themselves,” he said. “This led to even greater suffering on the part of those who were abused, and it endangered other minors who were at risk.”

Later that year, Francis created a high-level commission charged with making recommendations on how to prevent abuse, help victims and punish church officials responsible.

Another highly praised move came in June when Francis followed the commission's recommendation to create a Vatican tribunal that eventually will be able to try and penalize bishops who cover up abuse. A system was in place to punish abusers, but until now, there has been no process for the bishops who oversaw them.

But five days after announcing the tribunal, the Vatican allowed two Minnesota bishops caught up in a criminal sex abuse case to resign without comment . It is unclear whether the two will face the future tribunal. Prosecutors had charged the archdiocese — not the bishops — with mishandling abuse cases.

Members of the papal commission — which includes two survivors and prominent Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley — have been outspoken in their criticism of the church in various cases.

“Pope Francis has brought a little more hope that the church is changing. But on the other hand, there's an enormous amount of things that are not changing and that survivors see,” said Marie Collins, an Irish abuse survivor who sits on the commission.

Philadelphia, where the pope will participate in the World Meeting of Families, is home to the only U.S. church official ever charged with covering up abuse. Monsignor William Lynn was convicted in 2012, following two unusual grand jury reports accusing three consecutive archbishops of protecting abusers.

Salveson said he'd like to tune out the news about the upcoming papal visit, but as a prominent executive headhunter who sits on high-level boards, he is in regular contact with those involved with the trip. People often ask him his view of Francis.

Following Salveson's letter to him about the abuse, John McGann, his bishop on New York's Long Island, spoke to Salveson's alleged abuser, the Rev. Robert Huneke, according to letters McGann shared with Salveson. In one such letter to McGann, the priest apologizes, saying, “I deeply regret the incidents and am truly sorry for any harm caused. I have undergone counseling as well as spiritual direction and will continue both and feel there will be no recurrence of such incidents.” Huneke died in 2002.

In 2003, Salveson was among 23 men who alleged in a $100 million lawsuit against the Rockville Centre Diocese that they were abused — they named 15 priests — and that the diocese in Suffolk County covered it up. The lawsuit came a few months after a Suffolk County grand jury report cited abuse cases involving 23 priests whom the report said the diocese transferred around in an effort to bury details of the abuse. Prosecutors told the Associated Press at the time that they were prevented from pursuing criminal charges against the diocese because of statutes of limitation, and civil lawsuits were dismissed for the same reason.

In a story he has recounted many times, Salveson described being a 13-year-old Catholic school student on Long Island when he first encountered Huneke, a young priest who had just arrived at the parish. The priest took to Salveson and invited him on a road trip. One night, Salveson said, the priest crawled into his bed and performed oral sex on him.

After the incident, Salveson became, in effect, two teenagers, he said: one who was a confident and high-functioning student, and a second who lived in terror of Huneke while also seeking his approval. When Salveson tried to stop the involvement, he said, Huneke either lambasted him as ungrateful or cried and begged for it to continue.

Huneke eventually followed Salveson to college to pursue his own academic work, and the relationship continued until Salveson was 20 and broke things off with the priest.

In 1978, Salveson moved to Philadelphia, where he struggled with a serious drinking problem and depression. In the early 1980s, after he realized in therapy that he'd been a victim of sexual abuse, he contacted McGann out of concern that Huneke was abusing others. McGann thanked Salveson for raising “the matter” and said Huneke had “overcome the situation” and was thriving as a priest.

McGann died in 2002, a year before the grand jury report was released. Spokespeople for the Rockville Centre Diocese did not comment after repeated requests.

Huneke was transferred to different parishes, and the grand jury report found that there were other victims, including during the two-year period after Salveson's initial complaint. Huneke left the priesthood about 1989, according to media reports.

“I really could not believe the bishops wouldn't do something about this guy, and at a minimum tell people they had this problem in their parish,” Salveson said.

In 2006, Salveson founded the Foundation to Abolish Child Sex Abuse, which advocates for longer criminal statutes of limitations and expanded civil windows for victims to sue.

“I thought it was my job to change the church. And what I learned from 1980 until today is that it is not a moral issue [for the church], it is a risk-management issue,” he said.

In an op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer last month, Salveson said he was again spotlighting the Catholic Church because he doesn't think the problem has been solved. Today, he wrote, there is a pope “who holds such promise and generates such hope.”

Although new allegations against Catholic clergy members are less frequent, there are major exceptions. Earlier this month, Minnesota media reported that more than 400 claims of child sex abuse are being made against the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis. The claims are coming because of a landmark 2013 state law that lifted the statute of limitations for three years.

Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, a psychologist who advises dioceses worldwide on child protection, said the pope is making what insiders consider dramatic bureaucratic changes that will show impact after Francis is gone. But in the meantime, he said, the issue is what message is being sent.

“The image from some people can be cold and uncaring and not listening,” Rossetti said.

Druding, the survivor from Philadelphia, said he was raped as a boy after choir practice. In two recent e-mails with the archdiocese's victim assistance coordinator, he asked if he could meet with Archbishop Charles Chaput about the abuse, and with the pope during his visit.

In the e-mails, the victim assistance coordinator tells Druding that he can't meet with Chaput until the archdiocese's internal investigation of the allegations ends. As far as the pope goes, the coordinator wrote in a July 17 e-mail, “at this time, there is no meeting planned with any other groups or people. I hope you are enjoying the summer.” (A spokesman for the Philadelphia Archdiocese said it can't comment on internal communications.)

Druding, who sounds thrilled about Francis's trip, said he hasn't given up hope of seeing him. The pope plans to visit inmates in a prison that is around the corner from his house.

“Maybe I'll go over and there and wave,” he says. “If they let you get close.”

New Jersey

Cape May man arrested in sex assault of boy

Frank L. Thomson was assistant with West Cape May Boy Scouts

CAPE MAY — Frank L. “Sandy” Thomson, 68, of Cape May, was arrested for alleged aggravated sexual contact, luring/ enticing a child and two counts of endangering the welfare of a child, according to county Prosecutor Robert Taylor.

At the time of his arrest, Thomson was an assistant scoutmaster of West Cape May Boy Scout Troop 73 as well as the treasurer at the Corinthian Yacht Club in Cape May.

According to a news release, on July 16, the Special Victims Unit of the county Prosecutor's Offi ce received a call from a concerned citizen who related suspicious activity regarding an 11-year-old male and Thomson. A joint investigation was started by the Prosecutor's Office Special Victims Unit and the Cape May police relating to the suspicious activity.

After several interviews, it was learned that Thomson was “grooming” the young juvenile for sexual purposes by buying him expensive gifts. These interviews also led investigators to another juvenile male who was allegedly sexually assaulted by Thomson several years ago, according to the Prosecutor's Office.

Thomson was arrested July 25 and charged with one count of luring/enticing a child by various means and endangering the welfare of a child concerning the 11-year-old juvenile.

On July 28, Thomson was again charged with aggravated sexual contact and endangering the welfare of a child concerning the sexual assault that allegedly occurred several years ago.

Taylor stated the crimes are subject to a term of imprisonment of three to 10 years in state prison. Thomson was lodged in the Cape May County Jail in lieu of $175,000 full cash bail assigned by Judge Dorothy Garrabrant.

Taylor stated this is an ongoing investigation and urges any citizens who may have information concerning this investigation to contact the Prosecutor's Office at (609) 465-1135. He further stated that his office would continue to work hand and hand with each municipality in the county to target sexual predators that prey on the children of Cape May County.

Pennsylvania

Fayette couple charged after teen daughter arrives at hospital near death from starvation

by Liz Zemba

A 13-year-old girl whose adoptive parents are accused of nearly starving her to death told police she stole food from her elementary school classmates and plucked candy canes from a Christmas tree to stave off hunger.

“The victim stated she did this because ‘she was hungry' and ‘she felt like she wasn't getting fed enough,'” Trooper Craig Spisak said in criminal complaints filed Wednesday against the teen's parents, Jennifer Ann Havrilesko, 39, and Edwin P. Havrilesko, 40, both of Luzerne.

Too weak to use her thumbs and fingers to hold a fork or glass, the girl told police she “would scoop her food to eat it.” She asked her parents to take her to a doctor, but they told her she had to wait until her brothers started school, police said.

“The victim added she was regurgitating her food all the time,” Spisak said in the complaints. “The victim said she did this because she was hungry and she wasn't getting enough food.”

The Havrileskos are charged with aggravated assault, child endangerment, reckless endangerment and simple assault. Jack Connor, a Uniontown attorney who represents the couple, disputed the allegations.

The girl weighed just 50 pounds — less than she did at age 7 — and was near death when the Havrileskos took her to Uniontown Hospital on July 20, 2014, because her speech was slurred and she fell while trying to get out of bed, police said.

When Uniontown Hospital flew the girl by medical helicopter to Children's Hospital in Pittsburgh, Jennifer Havrilesko went home and fell asleep, police said.

At the Pittsburgh hospital, the girl was admitted to an intensive care unit because she was near death from extreme malnourishment and had open sores and bruises all over her body, police said. Dr. Adelaide Eichman reported she “would have died without full life support,” Spisak said in the complaint.

“When advised of victim's grave medical condition, (Jennifer) Havrilesko stated, ‘I should have taken her to the hospital sooner,'” Spisak said.

Contacted by phone on Thursday, Jennifer Havrilesko declined comment on the allegations. Her husband, Edwin “Ed” Havrilesko, did not return a phone call.

Connor said the girl, who is now 14, denies the allegations against her parents.

“I don't know how you have charges when you have the victim denying it ever occurred,” Connor said.

Connor said the Havrileskos have cooperated with police, providing them with doctors' reports of various medical conditions.

“There has been a lengthy history,” Connor said, indicating he was surprised to learn the charges were filed.

According to the criminal complaints, Jennifer Havrilesko told state police her daughter “was always skinny” and suffered from mental health issues, anxiety and food allergies. She told officers the girl “ate like a horse, eating what was given to her,” but often threw up.

Eichman told police the girl previously was seen by a dermatologist, rheumatologist and vascular surgeon, but she found no evidence of food allergies or an eating disorder, according to the complaints. She told police she was concerned the girl's parents restricted her diet unnecessarily.

The girl weighed 65 pounds when she went to live with the Havrileskos, their two biological children and two other foster children in June 2011, police said. The couple adopted her in August 2013.

She weighed 57 pounds in early 2014, when she underwent surgery to relieve a seizure disorder, according to the complaints. By March 2014, she recovered to 63 pounds, but dropped to 50 pounds by July 19, 2014.

Within four months of her admission to Children's Hospital, the teen told police she went from 48 pounds at the time of her hospitalizing to 88 pounds. She told them during a Nov. 13, 2014, interview at Fayette County Children and Youth Services that although the Havrileskos gave her three meals daily and protein shakes for snacks, she had food allergies that have since disappeared.

“The victim stated she was allergic to lots of foods, but now she is not,” Spisak said in the complaint.

The girl told police the sores, bruises and scabs on her wrists, ankles, feet, spine, shoulder and rear were from scratching herself and scuffling with a 63-pound, 5-year-old boy. She attended elementary school until the middle of the fifth grade, she told police, when she transferred to cyber school following allegations she stole food from her classmates.

The Havrileskos were arraigned Wednesday before Redstone District Judge Michael Defino and released on $50,000 unsecured bond each. They face preliminary hearings Aug. 25 in Central Court in Uniontown.

http://triblive.com/news/adminpage/8872303-74/police-girl-havrilesko#axzz3i4C0agXp

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Florida

South Florida couple accused of turning teen into sex slave

by Fox News

A South Florida couple allegedly turned a teen into their sex slave and sealed her off from the outside world for more than five years, police said.

Rob Johnson, 44, and his wife, Marie Johnson, 43, of Port. St. Lucie, were arrested on Tuesday and charged with felony sexual assault.

The Port St. Lucie Police Department said the girl was sent to live with the Johnsons at age 13 after her mother died, and was told she could only be part of their family if she agreed to have sex with them. She was told to call Rob Johnson “master,” investigators said in an arrest affidavit, and Marie Johnson pushed her against a wall and held her by her throat until she agreed to the sexual demands.

The girl, who isn't identified in police filings, was beaten when she didn't follow the couple's directions or complete her chores. The girl said the abuse continued for more than five years. All the while, Rob Johnson held Sunday school classes for his family at their home, invoking Old Testament passages to justify the actions, according to the arrest affidavit.

The girl, now 21, was homeschooled, not allowed to use the phone and forced to rehearse what to say to doctors if she was asked about sexual activity, according to police.

The girl eventually was able to leave the home after her grandmother purchased a plane ticket to bring her to Ohio, the police said.

The Johnsons were freed on bail later Tuesday, the St. Lucie County Sheriff's Office said, after each posted $60,000 bond. No attorney was listed for them.

Port St. Lucie is on Florida's Atlantic coast, about 115 miles north of Miami.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/08/13/south-florida-couple-accused-turning-teen-into-sex-slave/

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Florida

JSO: 'There is a public safety threat' after child rape

by Lorena Inclán

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Wednesday marks two days after an 8-year-old child survived a violent sexual attack. Jacksonville Sheriff's Office says she was taken into the woods in Arlington where she was beaten and raped.

Investigators continue to canvass the area going door to door speaking with registered sex offenders.

Action News Jax requested an interview with the JSO public information officer Melissa Bujeda.

Bujeda said parents need to know the threat is real.

“Absolutely there's a public safety threat because we don't know who this individual is. We don't know if it's a one-time situation or if it may happen reoccurring,” Bujeda said.

JSO is still canvassing the area, but they are not sure where they will be once school goes back into session.

"We don't know. It's a day by day with any investigation, as well as with this investigation. So at that point we will take the precautions necessary when that time comes," Bujeda said.

Right now, the only witness is the victim who is recovering in the hospital.

Action News Jax asked our Law and Safety Expert Dale Carson about how investigators can piece this crime together with so little information.

"From the attack itself, the nature of the damage, the sexual nature of the crime, all those things can be used by a profiler to determine who likely did this," Carson said. “They would also have already submitted this to their local profiler here to see if that individual can generate some more specific information about who the attacker is.”

JSO said they also need the public's help.

“We need tips from the community. We are asking anyone who may have any information in reference to who may have seen this heard something hearing someone talking about it recently in the area call us,” Bujeda said.

Neighbors said they also want to see the apartment complex ramp up patrols so Action News Jax went to the office to bring them those concerns.

They didn't want to speak on camera but they are reportedly beefing up security and are currently in talks with JSO to come up with a long term plan.

With less than two weeks until the start of school, JSO is warning parents of the potential threat.

"Kids need to be supervised going to and from school. People need to have child care precautions taken after school," Bujeda said.

Click here to see the steps that JSO wants parents to take to protect their students as school gets underway.

http://www.actionnewsjax.com/news/news/local/jso-there-public-safety-threat-after-child-rape/nnJL3/

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Australia

What's in a name? Online child abuse material is not ‘pornography'

The Victorian government recently proposed changes to “child pornography” legislation. The new laws will double the criminal penalties for possessing child abuse material from five to ten years' imprisonment.

The Victorian laws, if passed, will also introduce three new criminal offences:

•  administering a child pornography website;

•  encouraging use of a website to deal with child pornography; and

•  providing assistance to another person to avoid apprehension for a child pornography offence.

The legal changes are welcome. But the continued use by politicians and the media of the term “child pornography” minimises the seriousness of these crimes. Applying the term “child pornography” to photographic and digitised images of child abuse contributes to the view that the person committing the offence was “only looking” and “so what's the harm”.

Calling it what it is

There are three key problems with not calling these images what they are: online child abuse material, or child exploitation material.

First, it creates a false distinction between the viewing of images and the contact sexual abuse of a child. Not only does research suggest that there is an overlap between those who view child abuse material and those who engage in contact sexual offences, but the viewing of the material also contributes to the demand for its production.

Viewing the material needs to be understood as collusion in the continued sexual abuse of children. For victim-survivors, the knowledge that images of their abuse continue to be viewed and distributed extends the trauma of the original crime. Viewing these images is not somehow a virtual or victimless crime.

Second, it potentially mislabels the material as a legally acceptable form of pornography. Using the term “pornography” likens online child abuse material to an acceptable sub-genre of mainstream, adult, consensual pornography. Online child abuse material represents the photographic or video evidence of a criminal act against infants, children and young people.

Third, it contributes to the normalisation of child sexual assault. Research suggests that perpetrators sometimes use online child abuse material to desensitise themselves to the impact of their actions prior to committing a sexual offence, or to “mentally rehearse” the abuse. Perpetrators also use online child abuse material to “groom” child victims in preparation for contact sexual offences against them.

The images normalise that other children or young people are “doing these things”, and make it easier for an offender to coerce victims into sexual contact. It is in part for this reason that Australia and the United Kingdom, among others, have passed laws criminalising computer-generated, hand-drawn or otherwise simulated images of child sexual abuse – though not without some disagreement.

The extent of the problem

Figures released in early July by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) showed a 550% increase in investigations into online child abuse material.

Such is the extent of the problem that ACMA not only has a role in the investigation of the use of online child abuse material but also in its removal. There is an ongoing attempt to stop the dissemination of such material both locally and globally.

The Victorian government's proposed changes are a timely recognition that these crimes represent serious sexual abuse or exploitation of infants, children and young people. These laws will further support police to investigate and respond to these crimes quickly. This is particularly important, since forensic analysis of the images can help identify current victims of sexual abuse both in Australia and internationally.

The legislative changes are a crucial part of the response to child exploitation. But they must be accompanied by greater public awareness and partnership with industry, as well as improved service sector responses to online child sexual abuse.

Technology giants Google and Microsoft, for example, have supported the development of technology to assist in the identification and removal of child abuse material. Despite this, police reportedly experience barriers when investigating perpetrators involved in the dissemination of the material online. These include the sheer scale of the proble, insufficient resources to support investigations both in Australia and in collaboration with police internationally, as well as sometimes a lack of co-operation from online and social media service providers.

Research further highlights the damaging impacts of online child abuse material for “affected” partners, families and communities of people who possess or distribute online child abuse material – in Victoria and Australia-wide. Much more needs to be done to support and respond to affected partners and their families.

We should stop using the term “child pornography” to talk about these crimes. Not only is it inaccurate, it is potentially damaging.

http://theconversation.com/whats-in-a-name-online-child-abuse-material-is-not-pornography-45840

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Kansas

Unlicensed investigators play a role in child abuse inquiries

No college degrees required for special investigators

by Jonathan Shorman

Kansas is using unlicensed workers to investigate suspected child abuse and neglect — with the only formal education requirement that they have a high school diploma.

The Department for Children and Families has been using the workers, called special investigators, in addition to social workers, who are licensed by the state and hold at least a bachelor's degree.

The agency has been employing special investigators statewide, said Rebecca Proctor, director of the Kansas Organization of State Employees. She said KOSE first heard about three or four months ago the agency was using special investigators.

The department said it has been using the investigators since the 1990s, however.

“As I understand it, it started where there were just a couple to assist. Now there are an ever-increasing number of special investigators and fewer social workers,” Proctor said.

Proctor said — from her understanding — in some cases when a social worker position becomes vacant, it is filled by a special investigator. Theresa Freed, DCF spokeswoman, said the agency has 71 special investigators and 378 social workers.

The state's jobs board describes the special investigator's job, which includes assisting in investigating and assessing child abuse and neglect reports, as well as nonabuse reports. The minimum requirements for the position are a high school diploma and one year of experience “investigating, fact finding or enforcing state laws and regulations.”

Freed said education in communications, psychology, social work, public or business administration, criminal justice or law may be substituted for experience as determined relevant by the agency.

Despite no requirement for post-secondary education, a formal job description says “loss of life, disruption of operations of a major agency” best describes the results of an error in action or decision by an investigator.

“Cost due to errors may be significant. Failure to investigate or observe procedures could result in serious harm, permanent injury, or death to a child or adult,” the description reads.

Freed said investigators are trained, however.

“Each Prevention and Protection Services staff member plays an integral role in ensuring the safety of children in our state. This includes our Special Investigators who go through extensive training so they have the tools and skills needed to support the work of social workers,” Freed said in an email.

A posting for a special investigator job in Sedgwick County says DCF has multiple positions located at its Wichita Service Center. Proctor said in many cases the agency has had difficulty in filling open social worker positions and suggested that had prompted, in part, increased use of special investigators. Special investigators also aren't part of the state's civil service system.

“Word evidently has gotten around in some areas that it's not necessarily the most employee-friendly place to work,” Proctor said of DCF.

Freed first responded to questions about the agency's use of special investigators by telling a reporter the questions would be treated as a records request under the Kansas Open Records Act.

Records requests can take weeks to fulfill, and requesters also can be charged for the production of documents.

“It will require some time to pull all of the information from Prevention and Protection Services and Office of Personnel Services,” Freed wrote in an email.

However, Freed later provided answers to the questions on Wednesday.

According to the Kansas Behavioral Sciences Regulatory Board website, the state currently has 1,746 licensed baccalaureate social workers, 3,257 licensed master social workers and 1,934 licensed specialist clinical social workers. It is unknown how recently the numbers were updated.

DCF also is trying to lure college-educated individuals into becoming special investigators. Job postings for social workers indicate that if an applicant doesn't have a social work license but has a bachelor's degree in social work, he or she may qualify as a special investigator.

The post says the salary for a social worker is $18.26 an hour, while the salary for a special investigator is $15.75 an hour. That works out to about $38,000 and $32,760 a year, respectively.

According to the Social Work Policy Institute, a think tank established by the National Association of Social Workers, less than 30 percent of child welfare workers have professional social work degrees.

“The emotional toll on child welfare workers — who are often ill-prepared for the life and death decisions they have to make, who carry caseloads that are too high, and who lack adequate supervision and support — impact the safety, permanence, and well-being of children, as well as the willingness of the workers to remain at their jobs in the long term,” the institute said in 2011.

“Turnover is highest among those who are hired with the least background education and training.”

Though the Social Work Policy Institute suggests the majority of child welfare workers don't hold social work degrees, Kansas' decision to send in frontline child abuse investigators without degrees marks a departure from its neighbor to the east.

Missouri requires frontline workers to hold bachelor's degrees, said Emily Van Schenkhof, deputy director of Missouri Kids First.

“It's highly unusual, and I would say that's very troubling that they're heading in that direction,” Van Schenkhof said of Kansas.

DCF has faced scrutiny in recent months over its handling of a different child-related area: foster care. Several children have died in foster care during the past several years, prompting calls for investigation.

In July, the Legislative Post Audit Committee voted down a request to audit the state's foster care system.

http://cjonline.com/news/2015-08-12/unlicensed-investigators-play-role-child-abuse-inquiries

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West Virginia

Child Abuse Reports Rise During Beginning of School Year

by Melissa Murray

Many times, abuse goes un-reported. Children that are victims may be afraid to tell someone.

"Sometimes I think children are afraid to disclose, afraid maybe they won't be taken seriously, afraid that the person won't believe them," said Vesna Meinert, Executive Director for CASA of Marion County.

Abuse can come in many forms. It could be physical, sexual or emotional. Child neglect is what Meinert said they see the most in Marion County, an average of one to two new cases each week, but the victims might not have the courage to report it.

With kids returning to the classroom in just a few days and weeks, they may feel like school is a safe place to go to tell someone about the abuse that is happening in their life. So what should teachers and students do if someone comes to them with this information?

Under West Virginia law, teachers, counselors and school personnel are required to report abuse, but peers could be scared to tell an official.

Corporal Don Neal of the Fairmont Police Department said it's crucial they tell someone.

"They're actually helping an individual,” Cpl. Neal said. “We've had it in the past where we've had kids come up and we've intervened and we've helped or save kids lives because of that."

Meinert said there is an increase of reported abuse following the first few months of school, and students have the resources to talk with someone they trust.

"See your teacher, see your counselor, ask to see the administrators at your school. Ask to see the resources officers that will be in place here in the schools in Fairmont."

Cpl. Neal will act as a school resource officer in the upcoming school year at West Fairmont Middle School. He plans to use mailboxes as a way for kids to report anything confidentially.

"Those mailboxes are something that kids can go by and say ‘hey a friend of mine, this is happening to them' or something to that nature and it'll be something that's confidential and we'll follow up and do the investigation," Cpl. Neal said.

Cpl. Neal said reporting any kind of abuse, could be the difference between life and death for a child.

http://www.wboy.com/story/29773387/child-abuse-reports-rise-during-beginning-of-school-year

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The Test That Predicts With Startling Accuracy If Childhood Trauma Will Hurt You in Adulthood

But like any single test, it doesn't capture the whole person.

by Regina Walker

In the mid-1980s, a doctor named Vincent Felitti was running Kaiser Permanente's Department of Preventive Medicine in San Diego. One of the programs offered was an obesity clinic, and the program should have been a resounding success. But Felitti was mystified by the high attrition rate: over 50% of the participants in the obesity clinic dropped out before meeting their weight-loss goals. (The clinic worked with folks who wanted to lose as little as 30 lbs, although it was really designed more for those who wanted to lose 100 lbs or more.) The really weird thing was this, though: the dropouts left the program even though they were losing weight.

Felitti wondered, as time went on, if weight gain might actually be a coping mechanism—could weight gain be a way of lessening the pain of childhood trauma and specifically, childhood sexual abuse? Eventually Felitti and a colleague, Dr. Robert Anda of the Centers for Disease Control, surveyed nearly 20,000 patients for various forms of childhood trauma, and the results were an eye-opener: childhood emotional trauma and stress were found to be strongly correlated with everything from high-risk behaviors in adult life (like sexual promiscuity and alcohol abuse) to a greater risk of heart disease, cancer, and chronic lung disease.

The test they administered is now known as the Adverse Childhood Experiences test, or ACE test. It's a simple-to-take but powerful diagnostic tool that generates a 0-10 score, which can offer significant insights into your risk for a number of high-risk behaviors, including addiction—as well as your risk for other serious physical and mental illnesses.

The idea that childhood trauma might have a connection with adult health problems came to Felitti almost by accident, according to a recent interview. He was running through a series of questions when he accidentally asked a client in the weight-loss program, "How much did you weigh when you first became sexually active?" instead of "How old were you when you were first sexually active?" The patient said, "Forty pounds," and went on to reveal, through tears, that it had been with her father. Felitti says, "I remember thinking, 'This is only the second incest case I've heard about in 23 years of practice.'"

As time went by, and Felitti began probing the subject more deeply, he realized that many of his clients had suffered sexual abuse and other traumas—both in childhood and in adulthood. At first, fellow professionals didn't want to believe what he was telling them—in part, it was possible to deny the validity of his findings thanks to the small number of people he'd interviewed. (Medical studies, to be statistically valid, need to include a reasonably significant number of people.) But Felitti found an interested ear in Dr. Robert Anda, an epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control.

Felitti remembered, vividly, a remark a sexual abuse victim had made during an interview: "Overweight is overlooked, and that's the way I need to be."

The discussions between Felitti and Dr. Anda were to eventually lead to a much larger-scale study, in which over 17,000 individuals—all members of the Kaiser HMO—reported on the number of traumatic childhood experiences that they'd been through. As you might imagine, the study was a long one and took place over the course of a decade or so. What became known as the ACE Study, determined that seven basic categories of “adverse childhood experiences”:

•  psychological, physical, or sexual abuse;

•  violence against one's mother;

•  living with household members who were substance abusers, mentally ill, suicidal, or imprisoned

were risk factors for behaviors like alcohol abuse, substance abuse in general, high-risk behaviors, and other health problems.

The test in its current form consists of 10 questions that evaluate these seven factors, as well as the absence of an emotionally supportive environment, physical neglect, and loss of a parent due to divorce or abandonment; a yes answer to any of these questions is counted as one point on the 1-10 scale. For instance, on this scale, persons with an ACE score of four or more were twice as likely to be smokers, 12 times more likely to have attempted suicide, seven times more likely to be alcoholic, and 10 times more likely to have used intravenous street drugs. As time went by, and data accumulated, it became clear that traumatic childhood experiences weren't just correlated with high-risk behaviors, but with other medical problems as well.

A 1998 study published by Felitti and Anda in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine details some of the correlations that the two physicians uncovered. Felitti and Anda evaluated seven categories of "adverse childhood experiences" and discovered that among the nearly 10,000 respondents at the time the study was published, "more than half of respondents reported at least one, and one-fourth reported more than two, categories of childhood exposures" (to traumatic experiences).

Here's the kicker: Felitti and Anda wrote that, "persons who had experienced four or more categories of childhood exposure, compared to those who had experienced none, (in addition to the connection between high ACE scores and high-risk behaviors noted above) had a greater risk of a whole host of stress-related physical ailments. They wrote that they had discovered "a graded relationship to the presence of adult diseases including ischemic heart disease (basically, risk of heart attack) cancer, chronic lung disease, skeletal fractures, and liver disease. The seven categories of adverse childhood experiences were strongly interrelated and persons with multiple categories of childhood exposure were likely to have multiple health risk factors later in life."

To understand just how high levels of stress can create negative impacts in childhood that resonate well into adult life, it's important to understand that the brain isn't fully developed at birth. Rather, the brain continues to develop in significant ways throughout childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood. We sense this intuitively (many parents of teenagers wonder how their child's personality could have changed so abruptly!) but high levels of stress throughout these phases of life can have negative impacts down the road.

Harvard University's Center on the Developing Child recognizes three basic types of stress, and three basic types of stress response.

1. The first is the so-called positive stress response—in a nutshell, you might say this is normal, everyday stress that primes the nervous system, and the body in general, to cope with the sometimes significant stressors that a child will encounter in later life. You can think of these as exercises, in a way, that leave the mind and body better prepared to deal with what a person will eventually have to deal with in adulthood (the Center mentions such things as receiving a new caregiver, or getting immunized.)

2. The next level are so-called tolerable stress responses. Here, things are a little more dicey—the tolerable stress response is a response to genuinely traumatic events, like losing a loved one, a bad injury, or a natural disaster. These could be devastating events—but what makes them tolerable, and even an aid to having greatly improved coping skills in adulthood, is whether or not the child going through them has a supportive environment, and especially, supportive adults. If the answer is yes, then the result might well be better coping skills down the road; if the answer is no, then the outcome might not be so rosy.

3. The most negative stress response is the "toxic stress response." You get a toxic stress response when there are powerful negative events that take place in the absence of adult support, and/or when such events take place often over time. These are the real horrors of childhood: the feeling of being helpless, combined with ongoing "emotional abuse, chronic neglect, caregiver substance abuse or mental illness, exposure to violence, and/or the accumulated burdens of family financial hardship—without adequate adult support."

This third case is potentially the most hazardous. We now know that when under any kind of stress, the body releases substances known as hormones that alter body function; stress hormones can be very helpful over the short term, but over the long term they can cause significant harm. Most importantly, stress hormones over an extended time period can actually cause physical changes in the developing brain—leaving a person more vulnerable to both high-risk behaviors like addiction, and to serious physical illnesses (and, of course, the two often go hand-in-hand.)

Now, it's possible to take the ACE test online and if you do, you might find yourself wondering just how seriously you should take the results—are you really doomed to a lifetime of high-risk behaviors, and to a high risk of serious illness, thanks to events over which you had no control as a child? Jack Shonkoff, at the Center for the Developing Child at Harvard University, points out that while the ACE test can be a powerful, predictive and diagnostic tool, it also often fails to identify mitigating factors that might significantly reduce your chances of hurting in adult life because you were hurt as a child.

In a 2015 NPR article, journalist Laura Starecheski noted that the ACE score is "not a crystal ball," and in the same article, Shonkoff remarked, "There are people with high ACE scores who do remarkably well." How's this possible? Well, the problem with the ACE test is that it only asks about the bad, and totally ignores the good. The good things that can happen in childhood—and which help, potentially, counteract the bad—are known as "mitigating experiences." While the ACE score is a pretty good guideline as to what major red flags in a person's childhood might be, it's not a certain indicator of what adult life might be by any means. And, as well, it's important to remember that if you are a parent who's struggled with issues like substance abuse and addiction, or who's been with your child through a divorce, that these mitigating experiences can considerably counteract the negative effects evaluated by the ACE test.

The results are fascinating, if not crude. The ACE quiz asks about experiences under the age of 18 but a child who experiences divorce at age five has a very different experience than the child whose parents divorce at age 16 or 17.

There is as much missing as there is there. For example, "positive" or "restorative" childhood experiences are not included in the study. Those types of experiences can actually add to the ever-important quality of resiliency. For example: Did the child with the incarcerated parent have a loving grandparent who cared for him/her? Was there a teacher who took special interest in the child of the drug-abusing parent and made the child feel special, smart, appreciated? Did the alcoholic/drug addicted parent(s) ever become sober, thus teaching the child that the ability to heal and change is real and possible? The ACE quiz cannot in 10 yes or no questions gather that information.

The insights gained by Felitti and Anda are powerful, and a clear warning to be aware of the risks posed by childhood physical and emotional trauma—and the risks posed to the developing brain by such events. But like any single test, it doesn't capture the whole person—and it's in just those aspects of life that hope lies for transcending even the most traumatic childhood experiences.

“The Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline”: Report Highlights Schools' Role

by Lisa Jenkins

When Sasha was in high school, she was raped. Two years later, she had dropped out of high school and was arrested on petty theft charges.

According to a recent report entitled “The Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline: The Girls' Story,” Sasha's experience at school in the assault's aftermath was the catalyst for these consequences. Rather than provide her support, her classmates ridiculed her, and school became a constant reminder of the assault. Sasha immediately stopped attending, and her school provided no assistance as she attempted to transfer schools. When her mother began homeschooling her, the school district went so far as to threaten to contact child services for keeping Sasha out of school.

Sasha received no trauma-related services through her school or otherwise, and cites this ongoing trauma and fear as her reason for refusing to attend school. Her education ultimately took a back seat to these mental health concerns, and she dropped out of school and entered the juvenile justice system.

“The Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline” report makes it clear that Sasha's experience is far from anomalous. The report summarizes research conducted by the Human Rights Project for Girls, The Center on Poverty and Inequality, and The Ms. Foundation for Women, and illustrates the enduring cycle of victimization that still plagues incarcerated girls in the U.S.

Its main findings are two-fold. First, “the proportion of girls–especially girls of color ­in the juvenile justice system is increasing.” This holds true despite the fact that girls' crime rates have not experienced the same jump in recent decades. Studies on this are still in preliminary stages, but the report attributes this increase to “more aggressive enforcement of non-serious offenses that are rooted in the experience of abuse and trauma.” These offenses include misdemeanors, status offenses, outstanding warrants, technical violations, and truancy.

Second, girls in the juvenile justice system are far more likely to have been victims of sexual violence. In fact, this is likely due to the fact that their brushes with the law are tied directly to their reaction to the trauma of assault. Furthermore, “the decision to arrest and detain girls…has been shown often to be based in part on the perception of girls' having violated conventional norms and stereotypes of feminine behavior, even when that behavior is caused by trauma.”

Essentially, the United States justice system functions in a way that imprisons the victims. Girls under legal age experience sexual assault at a higher rate than any other group, and this report suggests that their victimization continues long after the assault is over. In a nationwide study of justice-involved girls, 32% had been sexually maltreated, 39% had been sexually assaulted or raped, 40% had been physically abused, and 56% had been domestically abused. This results in a “sexual assault to prison pipeline” that is difficult to escape, as pictured below:

This victimization is compounded as too many girls like Sasha find the school environment unsafe or unwelcoming in the aftermath of sexual assault. Schools regularly fail to support these students, prompting disengagement, truancy, and challenging behaviors, which are often met with suspension, expulsion or contacting law enforcement. Because of this lack of support, these girls end up compromising their education, missing out on what is perhaps their best tool for escaping the pipeline.

“There is a common, dangerous trope that our girls are okay,” says Malika Saada Saar, Executive Director of the Human Rights Project for Girls, in an email to The Chronicle . “They are not…It is time for our schools to recognize, and respond to, the sexual abuse to prison pipeline and to rethink the ways in which girls are silenced, diminished or pushed out of schools.”

A brief by the National Child Traumatic Stress Network further explains the impact of this trauma and subsequent discipline on girls' identities: “Youth who have experienced chronic trauma do not believe that the adults around them can or will protect them, and sometimes they are right. What is interpreted as delinquent behavior or pointless acting out is often their attempt to assume the burden of taking care of themselves.”

The report outlines several policy proposals for remedying this lack of trust and support. First, schools need to be examined closely for the way they handle sexual violence both on campus and in their students' homes. The report says girls' rates of sexual violence within schools need to be studied as well, in order to best allocate victim support services.

Second, it suggests that schools need to take a more nuanced approach to disciplining the victims of sexual violence. Many violations can be connected directly to a history of sexual victimization, and the simple recognition of this fact could provide invaluable support for the girls in the process of recovery; schools need to be prepared to train staff to recognize and respond to this reactive behavior.

According to the Illinois State Board of Education Ensuring Success in School Task Force, “When there is a relationship between the survivor's behavior and the survivor's experience of violence–for example, when students engage in acts of self-defense–schools need to be flexible and modify punishment appropriately.”

“The Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline” makes it clear that these are not case-by-case concerns; rather, they are representative of a society-wide tendency to criminalize girls for their sexual victimization. When their schools allow them to be ridiculed, ignored or even truant, they send the message that girls' mental well-being and educational success are not priorities. Through this cycle, girls are given few opportunities to redefine their own place in their communities; one instance of sexual violence can upend their lives entirely.

https://chronicleofsocialchange.org/featured/the-sexual-abuse-to-prison-pipeline-report-highlights-schools-role/11903

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Ohio

Warning signs of child abuse

by Maytal Levi

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Ohio (WDTN) – About five kids die every day in the United States from child abuse according to experts.

2 NEWS spoke with the director of CARE House who helps treat children with resources all under one roof. Director of CARE House, Libby Nicholson sees about 600 abused kids come through their doors every year.

Nicholson says if someone is abusing a child, it typically isn't a one time thing. The abuse can leave victims with lifelong emotional and physical injuries.

“We as adults have a responsibility to choose responsible caregivers for our children. That's often difficult for parents who lack resources. So, they resort leaving their children with people who are not adequate or competent and then bad things happen” said Libby Nicholson, CARE House director.

To get in touch with services you can call your local law enforcement agency or CARE House at (937) 641-4545.

http://wdtn.com/2015/08/11/warning-signs-of-child-abuse/

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Montana

Montana hospitals step up to prevent child abuse

by Jen Shaw

In Montana we care, we support each other, and we care about our children. This became clearer than ever for Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies the Montana Coalition when we lost our funding from the Montana Children's Trust Fund and many of our Montana hospital partners stepped up to support PURPLE-MT, our Shaken Baby Syndrome prevention program.

Montana is called the last best place, and it is definitely a great place to grow up! Unfortunately, too many Montana children will never get to experience what it's like to grow up at all. The best of us would like to think we don't have to teach others about how to treat a child. It feels as though it should be common sense that shaking a child is dangerous. Within the last four months, however, there have been two incidents in Helena alone, where young Montana children have become the victims of intentional Abusive Head Trauma, also known as Shaken Baby Syndrome.

HMHB believes that Montana's children are too important to continue to allow this to happen. We want all Montana children to be safe and to have the opportunity to grow and thrive and find out for themselves why growing up in Montana is great. That is why HMHB sincerely, deeply appreciates to our hospital partners who stepped in to financially assist HMHB's PURPLE Montana efforts: St. Peter's Hospital, Benefis, Billings Clinic, St. Vincent, Bozeman Deaconess, Community Hospital of Missoula, St. Patrick's, Kalispell Regional and Anaconda Community Hospital.

http://billingsgazette.com/news/opinion/mailbag/montana-hospitals-step-up-to-prevent-child-abuse/article_1eefa0c2-953b-5489-9285-65f94e4b178d.html

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Ohio

Mom Fights For Child Abuse Law Change Following Toddler's Death

MIAMI VALLEY-- Dayton Police confirm the autopsy of Jacob Barker shows he suffered internal trauma.

The two-year-old boy was pronounced dead Sunday, August 9th at Dayton Children's Hospital.

Justin Payne, who identified himself as the boy's mother's boyfriend, was arrested for felonious assault related to the death and has now been charged with murder.

Payne told a 9-1-1 dispatcher Barker had choked on a pop-tart.

A records search showed Payne has already served more than two years in prison for hurting an eight-week-old child in 2011.

The eight-week-old's grandmother said the baby suffered bruises and fractures at the time.

Hearing about Payne's latest victim, she grieved for the family involved.

"I just wish it never happened," said grandmother Rayette Whittle, "And I wish they never met Justin. I wish Justin wasn't around any kids whatsoever, and it's too late."

Whittle told ABC22/FOX45 her granddaughter was luckier than Jacob Barker, and has no lasting effects from the abuse.

A Medway mother is seeking to change Ohio's child abuse laws to add jail time to sentences when offenders cause permanent damage.

Randi Shepherd's daughter Destiny was shaken and thrown against a wall when she was a baby, by Shepherd's boyfriend at the time Terrence King.

"He can do one hundred years and it's not going to bring what happened back, it's not going to change anything," Shepherd told reporter Kelly May.

King served eight years in prison for the injuries he caused Destiny, while Destiny will live the rest of her life with the brain damage she suffered.

Randi is fighting for a law in Destiny's name that would double jail sentences for offenders when the damage they cause leaves permanent effects.

If the law had been in place today, Jacob Barker might not have had contact with the man now charged with his murder, Justin Payne.

"He could have been in prison a lot longer than three years," Randi Shepherd said, "He probably wouldn't even be out today."

"At this point I can only say that this act, the loss of this child, is criminal in nature," said Lt. Wendy Stiver with Dayton Police.

Police are still investigating and would not release the circumstances surrounding Barker's death.

Randi said she felt lucky that Destiny survived the abuse.

"There's no words to take her pain away," Randi said about Jacob Barker's mother.

Destiny's Law passed in the Ohio House of Representatives in 2014.

It will go before the Ohio Senate in the fall of 2015.

A Go Fund Me account has been set up to help with funeral costs for Jacob Barker.

Justin Payne is set to make his first court appearance tomorrow afternoon.

http://www.abc22now.com/news/top-stories/stories/Mom-Fights-For-Child-Abuse-Law-Change-After-2-Year-Old-Killed-183505.shtml

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Detainees In Family Detention File For $10 Million In Damage Claims

Salvadoran woman with broken fingers says medical staff refused to treat her and guards insulted her.

by Roque Planas

Immigrant women and children locked in family detention centers are seeking $10 million in damages from the Department of Homeland Security over allegations of medical neglect and other forms of mistreatment.

The five administrative claims filed Monday, which could lead to federal lawsuits, mark the latest jab against the Obama administration's policy of detaining mothers and their children together in order to dissuade Central American migrants to cross illegally into the United States and ask for asylum.

One of the women, Yancy Mejía, traveled with her 4-year-old son by land from El Salvador into the United States in March. She says she no longer felt safe in her home country after a gang abducted her for five days and raped her, only releasing her when her mother paid a $4,000 ransom. She arrived in the United States with twisted fingers that had been broken during the gang's beatings.

But at the Southern Texas Family Residential Center, a family detention center built in December in the Texas town of Dilley, she says staff refused to help treat the painful fractures and referred to her and other detainees as “f**king migrants” who “came to invade their country.”

She says staff declined to give medical attention to her child, who vomited repeatedly and refused to eat. Instead, medical staff told her to give the child water because he was dehydrated. After several days, a group of lawyers helped press the center to send her son to a nearby hospital, where he was diagnosed with a virus that had caused an ear infection. He was treated there with antibiotics for five days, she said.

“It was horrible living in that place,” Mejía, who was allowed to leave the Dilley detention center nine days ago with an ankle monitor while pursuing her asylum claim, told The Huffington Post. “I spent so much time suffering in that prison. We came to this country looking for help. It's an injustice that they lock us up for months.”

Another woman who filed a complaint, Celina Gutiérrez Cruz, told The Huffington Post last month that her child vomited blood repeatedly for a week before guards at the Dilley detention center finally took her to an off-site medical facility to receive treatment. Prior to that, medical staff told Gutiérrez Cruz to have her 6-year-old daughter drink water.

As with many other asylum seekers locked in family detention, ICE has refused to allow Gutiérrez Cruz or her daughter leave the facility, even though she passed a “reasonable fear” interview with an asylum officer -- the first step toward establishing a “withholding of removal” claim, which is similar to asylum but provides fewer protections and requires a higher level of scrutiny.

Gutiérrez Cruz, 22, says she fled Honduras after a gang tried to force her to traffic drugs and serve as a “concubine.” Members of the gang beat her and then threatened to kill her daughter if she refused, she says. A psychological evaluation found that both she and her daughter suffer from PTSD.

“They said they would take my daughter away from me and kill her,” Gutiérrez told HuffPost by phone last month from detention. “That's why I took the decision to come here. But I didn't know that I would be locked up for so long. ... Why don't they let us out?”

Treatment by guards at the family detention centers caused the detainees to suffer damages including “physical pain and suffering,” as well as “mental and emotional pain and anguish,” according to the filing.

“Each one of these five women has stepped forward to bear witness to the reality of what's happening in the government's refugee family internment camps," Andrew Free, who represents detainees locked in family detention as part of the CARA Pro Bono Project, told HuffPost. "Each one of these five women and their children have been held hostage to a government narrative that is deliberately misleading. The government wants the courts and the general public to believe that these people are economic migrants who come here seeking work and a better life. … But the overwhelming majority of the women and children that are coming here are looking only for the safety and refuge of longstanding asylum laws, and the government does not want to allow them to have access to it."

A spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement said ICE does not comment on pending litigation, but defended the agency's general handling of mothers and children locked in its detention centers.

“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) takes very seriously the health, safety and welfare of those in our care," the statement said. "The agency is committed to ensuring that individuals housed in our family residential centers receive timely and appropriate medical health care. ICE's family residential standards are designed to provide onsite health care and remote specialized services as needed for all residents."

The Obama administration largely abandoned family detention in 2009 in the face of continued protests. But following an influx of some 68,000 family units last year -- the vast majority of them from the poverty- and violence-plagued Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras -- the administration expanded family detention once more.

Federal officials added bed space for families at the Karnes County Residential Center in Texas, and constructed an entirely new one at Dilley. Both family detention centers are run as for-profit enterprises. Corrections Corporation of America, the country's largest private prison contractor, runs the Dilley detention center, while GEO Group, the second-largest contractor, runs the Karnes detention center.

Both centers have generally defended their handling of detainees in family detention, while referring more specific questions to ICE.

A federal judge ruled last month that detaining mothers with their children violates the 1997 Flores Settlement, which requires authorities to detain undocumented children in the least restrictive environment possible and to generally favor a policy of releasing them. The government asked the judge last week to reconsider the ruling, arguing that it had improved its family detention policies but still wanted to detain migrant families for periods of roughly three weeks to screen their asylum claims.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/detainees-in-family-detention-file-for-10m-in-damage-claims_55ca5b85e4b0f73b20baf282

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Behaviors linked to adult crime differ in abused girls and boys, study finds

by Deborah Bach

The signs that an abused child might later commit crimes might not be obvious — that boisterous playground behavior from a third-grade boy, for example, or the 10-year-old girl who seems a little anxious or withdrawn.

But new research from the University of Washington suggests that troubling behaviors exhibited by abused children can be predictors of later criminal activity, and that those indicators differ between boys and girls.

The study, published Aug. 11 in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, found that elementary-aged boys who show “externalizing” behaviors such as arguing, disobedience and fighting are more likely to commit crimes as adults, but girls who similarly acted out were not. Instead, it found elementary-aged girls who exhibited signs of “internalizing” behaviors such as being depressed or withdrawn were more likely to commit crimes as adults, while boys who showed the same characteristics were less likely to.

The link between child abuse and crime, and abuse and problem behavior among children, has been documented in numerous studies. But less is known about how gender relates to problem behaviors among abused children and whether the likelihood of crime linked to those behaviors might vary between boys and girls.

In particular, the connection between internalized behavior and crime has been largely unexamined, said co-author Todd Herrenkohl, a UW social work professor.

“There's this sense that kids who are depressed and withdrawn and tend to isolate themselves from other people aren't necessarily at risk for engaging in criminal behavior later on,” Herrenkohl said.

Children who are abused, particularly girls, are at risk of becoming repeat victims of violence throughout their lives. Herrenkohl said abused girls who repeatedly internalize their feelings may eventually reach a threshold at which their repressed emotions turn outward and aggressive — perhaps pushing them to the point of criminal behavior.

Child abuse can be also predictive of relationship violence, Herrenkohl said, and women who were abused early in life may fall into relationships in which violence or criminal behavior is the norm.

“A woman who has been abused may end up partnering with somebody who is involved in criminal behavior, and that reinforcement in the context of that relationship might drive her to manifest other types of behaviors that wouldn't necessarily have come to the fore,” he said.

The findings, lead author Hyunzee Jung said, underscore the risk that problem signs in abused girls could be overlooked.

“People might think that they're just quiet girls and not causing any problems. Those internalizing behaviors really need to be paid attention to,” said Jung, a research scientist at the UW-based Social Development Research Group.

While previous studies have found that abused boys and girls exhibit different problem behaviors, the UW study found that abuse is linked to both externalizing and internalizing behaviors at elementary school age, regardless of gender. And while other research has pointed to adolescent problem behavior as a predictor of later crime, the UW study found no such connection. Instead, the research concludes that problem behavior in abused children of elementary school age was a stronger determinant of longer-term criminal behavior.

“We tend to think that adolescents who are involved in delinquent behavior have a higher risk for adult crime. And in some cases, that's true, but we really need to go back and look at what their childhoods were like,” Jung said.

The findings stem from a longitudinal study that started in 1976 and tracked abused children in two Pennsylvania counties from as young as 18 months to around age 18, in three separate assessments. The children's parents were asked about their children's behavior and about the physical and emotional disciplining strategies they used, which ranged from threatening to send the child away to slapping and kicking. The children were also surveyed in adolescence about their own behaviors.

In 2010, the UW researchers tracked down about 80 percent of the study's original participants, then 36 years old on average, and asked whether they had committed any crimes in the previous year.

Slightly more than one-quarter said they had; the most common offenses were hitting someone or threatening to do so, and stealing money or other items from family members. The researchers then compared the self-reported crime data to the earlier reports of abuse and related problem behaviors to reach their conclusions.

Herrenkohl said the findings, and the mixed results from prior studies, underscore the need for additional research to unravel the complex trajectory from problem behaviors in abused children to adult crime, particularly as they differ between genders. Deeper knowledge of that path could lead to more targeted and effective interventions, he said.

“We need to find ways of identifying these kids and wrapping services around them and their families so that we're reducing the likelihood that their behaviors are going to worsen over time,” he said.

The National Institute of Justice and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development provided funding for the research. Other co-authors are Martie Skinner at the Social Development Research Group, Jungeun Olivia Lee at the University of Southern California, and Sheryl Hemphill and Jessica Heerde at Australian Catholic University.

http://www.washington.edu/news/2015/08/11/behaviors-linked-to-adult-crime-differ-in-abused-girls-and-boys-study-finds/

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Kentucky

Ramey-Estep Home's Foster Care Program puts parents on right path

by Rachel Adkins

ASHLAND -- Ginny Anderson and Jenna Hill believe rigorous training is the key to successful foster parenting, and that's what potential foster parents receive through the Ramey-Estep Homes.

Anderson, REH chief operating officer, and Hill, who directs the agency's Foster Care Program, are on the lookout for more dedicated families to add to the 23 they work with and encourage.

The program provides treatment foster care that supports a child's individual situation, which includes emotional, behavioral or developmental problems that stem from traumatic experiences such as abuse and neglect.

To meet a child's emotional needs, foster parents are strategically trained in Partnering for Safety and Permanence-Model Approach to Partnerships in Parenting, coupled with Ramey-Estep's foster-parent training.

“The state requires 28 hours of training, but we go further and do a Ramey training that is specific to our policy and procedure and that's specific to the kind of kids that we treat in the five-county region (Boyd, Greenup, Carter, Elliott and Lawrence),” Anderson said.

“We will even do more training if needed. If there's a family that we know will be good with the kids, but we don't think are ready just yet, we will bring them in for more training until we feel like they are ready and that we feel confident.”

Although the training is stringent, Anderson believes it is necessary to ensure a child will be going to a nurturing home that can meet his or her needs. Proper training plays a major role in success for a child in the family setting and the future.

“We may start out with a class of 10 families and only end up with one,” Anderson said. “We don't look at quantity for our services. We're a nonprofit agency, so what we look at is the quality of care. The worse thing that could possibly happen is for a kid to come into care and be revictimized.”

Ramey-Estep works with the Department of Community Based Services to determine how to find permanency for a child. It's not uncommon for foster parents to adopt their foster children.

The REH adoption program has been available for about two years, with 12 children adopted and more expected.

“Termination of parental rights is what happens before an adoption occurs, and we've had five recently, with all five in adoptable homes,” Hill said. “We are just waiting to have the papers signed.

“Something awesome with the program at Ramey is that most of the kids have adoption goals, and all of these (five) are in adoptive homes. That's something that we work on when we get a referral; we try to make the best match possible so we can prevent the child being moved from home to home.”

Potential foster parents and their children are interviewed to ensure the family is ready to take on a child. It's also important that potential foster parents are aware of the culture the foster child.

“For example, if you live in a rural area like Greenup County, you may get a kid that's from Ashland. So we work with the families to talk about the cultures in our area. We also look at what kinds of kids fit in their home, because not all kids will,” Anderson said.

“We don't want a family that says it's not for them. We certainly don't want to place a child in a home in which a family says they can't handle it, so we work hard to find families that can handle it.“

Ramey-Estep provides 24/7 support for foster parents.

“If there is an issue at 2 in the morning, they can pick up the phone and call an on-call staff member and we can help them,” Hill said. “That's comforting for the parent to know that although they're doing their job 24/7, we are, too. It's not like they are on their own.”

Anderson said becoming a foster parent is a rewarding and ongoing process that will make a difference in a child's life. She encouraged area families to consider foster parenting through the REH program.

For more information about the program, visit rameyestep.com/foster-care or call (606) 928-6648.

http://www.dailyindependent.com/news/ramey-estep-home-s-foster-care-program-puts-parents-on/article_1dcfbe42-4063-11e5-8a17-0fb7f7a71cc3.html

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Canada

Ontario schools for the deaf named in class action lawsuit alleging abuse

by Liam Casey

TORONTO -- A Toronto man alleges he was abused for years at Ontario schools for the deaf and has launched a class action lawsuit on behalf of other former students against the provincial government.

The statement of claim, filed Monday in Ontario's Superior Court of Justice, alleges sexual, physical and mental abuse at four provincially run schools for the deaf over the course of decades.

None of the allegations have been proven in court.

Christopher Welsh, in his statment of claim, accuses the province of negligence in the establishment, funding, operation, management and supervision of schools in Ottawa, London, Belleville and Milton.

"Students have suffered sexual, physical and emotional abuse at the hands of teachers, residence counsellors, other students and employees of the schools," reads the statement of claim.

A spokesman for the province's Ministry of Education would not comment on the case as it is before the courts, but said the current government believes every child deserves high-quality education and a supportive learning environment.

"Over the years, we have been committed to ensuring students in our schools have access to the supports and resources they need to succeed," said Gary Wheeler.

"This includes our most vulnerable students."

Welsh went to two of the schools named in the class-action suit -- Ernest C. Drury School for the Deaf in Milton, Ont., where he lived from the time he was five years old in 1964, followed by Robarts School for the Deaf in London, Ont., according to the claim.

He said he was forced to wear hearing aids and was repeatedly struck across his ears, leaving him bloodied and in pain.

Welsh's claim also alleges he was hit with rolled up magazines across his hands and beaten with a stick and belt by teachers as "a form of punishment" for using sign language instead of speech when conversing with other students.

He alleges teachers and counsellors often snuck up behind him, taking advantage of his hearing problems, and would grab him at the urinal and slam him into a wall or rip the chair out from under him as he was sat doing homework.

Later, when he attended the Robarts School for the Deaf, the abuse continued, according to the claim.

A counsellor at Robarts, wearing leather boots with pointed toes, repeatedly ambushed Welsh and kicked him in the buttocks, leaving him bruised and in pain when sitting. The counsellor did the same thing to other students, the claim alleges.

Teachers and staff often called him "deaf and dumb."

The statement of claim suggests Welsh was not alone.

"Hundreds, if not thousands" of students may have been affected, said Welsh's lawyer, Robert Gain, with the firm Koskie Minsky.

Teachers hit students in the mouth to teach them how to talk, the claim charges.

If students didn't use speech to communicate, teachers would "forcefully hold students' arms and restrain them" so they couldn't use sign language.

The statement of claim alleges counsellors took advantage of the students' hearing problems by sneaking up, often under their beds, to grab their feet and pull them down. Other students would have to lie face down on their beds as counsellors spanked them repeatedly, causing injuries in many cases, according to the claim.

Gain said he has spoken with other survivors who shared similar stories of alleged abuse. Two other schools, Belleville's Sir James Whitney School for the Deaf and Ottawa's Centre Jules-Leger in Ottawa have also been named in the lawsuit.

Gain said Welsh "wanted to bring this case forward and shine a light on the problem so that others would have access to justice and could have their stories heard and the province held responsible and accountable for the misconduct."

"The province certainly had a duty to have proper procedures and oversight and they failed to live up to their obligations to these vulnerable students," he said, adding he believes there may be more former students who want to share their stories.

Gain said the next step is to seek certification -- the court's permission -- to continue the case.

The lawsuit is seeking $325 million in damages.

The Response to Child Abuse Trauma

by Tram Pham

CancerINCYTES

Child abuse (physical, mental, emotional, and/or sexual) and neglect encompasses lifelong consequences for men and women (survivors). Survivors don't realize until much later in life that the methods they developed and used to cope as children were carried forward into their adult lives.

When children are abused, they begin to question themselves and their world because it destroys two essential beliefs:

•  Their sense of trust, and

•  Their sense of control over their lives.

•  (“The Crime Victim's Book” by Morton Bard & Dawn Sandry, publisher Lyle Stuart, June 1986)

Most victims must deal with the physical and emotional shockwaves of what happened, but also with the sense of helplessness, powerlessness, and a loss of control—not to mention the fact that most perpetrators are the victim's own parents or caretakers! (“Child Abuse Facts”, SafeHorizon,http://www.safehorizon.org/page/child-abuse-facts-56.html)

Unlike the common response when victims are attacked by strangers—which is to retreat into a childlike state, and when the immediate danger has passed, to turn to an authority figure for help like a police officer or nurse—the child abuse victim lives with his/her perpetrator(s) and thus is silenced and receives no care. This is part of what makes child abuse so heinous.

What would help children and adult survivors is that when they finally do tell someone, the person hearing about the abuse should react in a normal fashion. That is, that the child's or survivor's reactions of anger, fear, frustration, guilt and grief are normal for what they experienced. Anyone would react that way to a criminal act against their bodies. And yet, sadly that is not the response the child or survivor receives. Instead, they are made to feel like something is wrong with them, the victims, instead of holding the perpetrators accountable.

Instead of blaming the victim, it is more helpful to say things like:

•  “You are safe now.”

•  “It wasn't your fault.”

•  “You didn't deserve what happened to you.”

In her ground breaking work, Dr. Judith Herman stated, “People who have endured horrible events suffer predictable psychological harm. There is a spectrum of traumatic disorders, ranging from the effects of a single overwhelming event to the more complicated effects of prolonged and repeated abuse. Established diagnostic concepts, especially the severe personality disorders diagnosed in women, have generally failed to recognize the impact of victimization. So have most Americans who have been lucky enough not to have been abused as children.” (“Trauma and Recovery,” by Judith Herman, Ph.D., Basic Books, 1992)

Dealing with child abuse trauma means that survivors have to come face-to-face with the knowledge of the evil perpetrated against them. The sad reality is that the American public doesn't want to know or doesn't care about this unspeakable truth that exists for tens of millions of survivors.

By speaking publicly and writing articles about America's denial and lack of support for survivors, I am trying to turn that behaviour around. We have to start a dialogue and support all survivors who work very hard to recover. I am committed to doing just that.

Diane Champé is retired from a Fortune 20 company where she was a Marketing/Sales Strategic Planner on the Regional Vice President's staff. She is a Subject Matter Expert (S.M.E.) on issues relating to child abuse and neglect. As a survivor herself, she dedicates her efforts toward working on behalf of adult survivors, publishing books/information and speaking publicly about the long-term effects of child abuse and neglect. Ms. Champé's nonprofit, the E Diane Champé Institute, will begin providing services in White Marsh, MD this year with a mission to provide survivors a safe haven, education, training and resources.

Tram Pham is an alumna from the Asian University for Women (AUW), Chittagong, Bangladesh. Her interests are diverse, ranging from economic development, migration, education, to public health. She has particular interest in issues such as child trafficking, sexual harassment, and gender inequality. She is a Research Assistant to the Editor-in-Chief at Cancer InCytes Magazine.

http://www.socialjusticesolutions.org/2015/08/10/response-child-abuse-trauma/

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California

RIVERSIDE: Artwork gives wings to kids' dreams

Artwork by at-risk children is on display at the Riverside District Attorney's office.

by AMY ZAHN

Lively colors and cartoonish doodles soften the once imposing and severe lobby of the Riverside County District Attorney's Office.

The pieces are part of Dreams Given Wings, a project envisioned by District Attorney Mike Hestrin and executed by Operation Safehouse, a Riverside organization that provides refuge for hundreds of at-risk youths every year. Children in the program were asked to create art pieces for the office that reflected the “dreams given wings” theme.

“Some of them went a little more abstract with the concepts, which was really neat to see. There's all different capabilities of art on the display,” said Safehouse marketing associate Caroline Sanchez, who also commented on the therapeutic nature of the project.

“They don't really get to express themselves or feel heard, so this lets them tell their story in a nonjudgmental way where others can appreciate what they've done,” she said.

The 25 paintings will be on display at Hestrin's downtown Riverside office for about three months, after which it will be rotated to a different office, possibly the one in Indio, and replaced with a mural by California Gang Reduction and Intervention. The exhibit is not open to the public.

Hestrin's staff plans on displaying four different exhibits throughout the year with local nonprofits.

Hestrin sees value in the display not only for the children who helped create it, but for the community at large.

“When you're talking about victims of crime, the prosecution of perpetrators is only one small part of it. We want to make sure that all aspects of the system are supported,” he said, adding that programs like Safehouse are a crucial part of bringing down crime rates.

Many of the children Operation Safehouse serves are survivors of physical and emotional abuse, including human trafficking, according to Jaime Cochrane, who has been a counselor there the past five years.

Safehouse has served more than 15,000 youths in crisis since its inception in 1990 and offers emergency shelter, counseling and an on-site school for teenagers and children who wouldn't otherwise have access to those resources.

The artwork's impact has been manifold.

“We've gotten several emails saying how moved our staff is,” said Hestrin, adding that the presence of the artwork helps employees not get lost in the daily grind.

The display has also generated public interest in Safehouse, according to district attorney information specialist Melody Hendrickson.

Sanchez wants projects like Dreams Given Wings to make a difference in the lives of troubled children.

“I'm hoping that by seeing this, people will be touched and be inspired to talk to the kids in their community, talk to their own kids … and just make sure we can all help raise these children into being wonderful adults,” she said.

http://www.pe.com/articles/children-776530-safehouse-hestrin.html

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Connecticut

First County Bank Foundation Donates to Support Sexual Assault Crisis Counseling, Advocacy, and Prevention Education Programs

The Center supports the communities of Weston, Darien, Greenwich, New Canaan, Norwalk, Stamford, Westport, and Wilton.

by Wendy Ann Mitchell

The Center for Sexual Assault Crisis Counseling & Education (The Center) announced Tuesday that the First County Bank Foundation has granted The Center $5000 to fuel its crisis counseling, advocacy, and prevention education programs. Over the last year alone, The Center served over 14,000 people in Lower Fairfield County.

“The First County Bank Foundation has partnered with The Center for over a decade,” shared Ivonne Zucco, The Center's Executive Director. “We are honored by this long-standing relationship and are grateful for their support.”

The Center's counseling, advocacy, and prevention education programs work together to create a safety net for Lower Fairfield County. The funding from the First County Bank Foundation will help ensure that the following programs of The Center remain available:

•  Free 24/7 Hotline Services, in both English and Spanish

•  Free individual crisis counseling and support groups for survivors and their families

•  Sexual violence prevention education to youth in kindergarten through college, and the community at large

•  The Center's participation on two teams that provide integrated, cross-disciplinary response to allegations of child sexual abuse.

The statistics around sexual assault are harrowing, and speak to the significant need for The Center's crisis counseling, advocacy and prevention education services. One in three girls and one in six boys will become a victim of sexual assault before the age of 18 (as reported by The National Center for Victims of Crime). Additionally, the risk of sexual assault is four times higher for women ages 16-24 than for any other age group, and both teenagers and young adults are the age group at greatest risk. Connecticut Sexual Assault Crisis Services shares that nearly one in five Connecticut residents have experienced a sexual assault in their lifetime and that 14% experienced childhood sexual assault.

Zucco commented: “In the 35 years of The Center's existence, progress has been made around the issue of sexual violence. There is still so much work to do, and the partnership of organizations like the First County Bank Foundation makes our continued efforts possible.

About The Center: Serving Lower Fairfield County since 1979, The Center for Sexual Assault Crisis Counseling and Education provides free, 24-hour confidential help to men, women and children who have experienced any form of sexual assault. Additionally, it provides age-appropriate personal safety classes for youth ages 5 – 21 to reduce their risk of becoming a victim, and education/awareness programs for the community at large. The Center supports the communities of Darien, Greenwich, New Canaan, Norwalk, Stamford, Weston, Westport, and Wilton.

About First County Bank Foundation : The First County Bank Foundation, which was established in 2001 to honor the bank's 150th anniversary, contributes generously to non-profit organizations that support community and economic development; increase the availability of affordable housing and programs that support quality of life and educational enrichment for families and children. As a mutual community bank with no shareholders, First County Bank considers contributions made by the Foundation a means of paying dividends back to the local communities it serves. Since 2001, the First County Bank Foundation has awarded over 1,000 individual grants, worth $6.4 million. The Foundation awarded over 100 grants totaling almost $600,000 in 2014.

http://patch.com/connecticut/weston-ct/first-county-bank-foundation-donates-support-sexual-assault-crisis-counseling-advocacy-prevention

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Texas

Online images linger long after sex abuse, speaker tells Dallas' Crimes Against Children Conference

by Danielle Grobmeier

Dr. Sharon Cooper is familiar with the permanence of the digital world. She's spent almost two decades tracking down predators who circulate sexually abusive images of children online, only to see those images continue to thrive long after the predator is caught and the victim is rescued.

Cooper, a developmental and forensic pediatrician from North Carolina, who contracts with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, spoke at a session on online abusive images at the annual Crimes Against Children Conference in downtown Dallas on Monday.

An estimated 100 million sexually abusive images of children circulate on the Internet, Cooper said — “but that's a severe underestimate.”

The 27th annual Crimes Against Children conference, sponsored by the Dallas Police Department and the Dallas Children's Advocacy Center, draws about 3,900 criminal justice professionals, and covers just about any topic relating to the investigation of child abuse.

This year's event features numerous sessions dedicated to cybercrime and to online strategies criminal justice professionals can use to track down perpetrators or victims.

She considers images of sexually abused children to be “digital crime scenes.” Cooper said evidence ranging from a word printed on a T-shirt to chipped nail polish can indicate where a victim is and how long they've been abused, respectively.

She said the publication of child sexual abuse images adds “insult to the injury” after the child has already been abused. Once a sexually explicit image of a child begins to circulate, it's almost certain to remain in the digital world for decades, if not forever.

The Internet, Cooper said, takes the offense beyond the original sexual crime.

“These are not just pictures,” she said.

The Dallas Police Department investigates about 2,500 cases of online child sex abuse each year, a number that continues to rise, said Lt. A.F. Diorio.

Diorio, commander of DPD's Crimes Against Children Unit, was among those who attended the conference Monday. He sees the number of sessions devoted to online sexual exploitation increase every year — a response to a digital world that has rapidly become more interactive.

“Everybody's got a device these days capable of transmitting images,” he said. “All that stuff, we have to keep pace with.”

Diorio said the ability to quickly circulate photos and videos has taken trafficking crimes from street corners to the Web classifieds and the dark corners of social networks.

“We have to have a very strong presence and aggressive enforcement on the Internet just like we do on public streets,” Diorio said.

Part of that aggressive enforcement relies on the speedy and thorough investigation of all tips Dallas police receive from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, he said.

Before the Internet made photos and videos more shareable, images of child abuse were limited to contraband magazines. Cooper said that those items were easier to control, that law enforcement believed they had a handle on preventing their widespread distribution.

“Just before the Internet, it was really felt that we had eradicated child abuse stills,” she said. “But then the Internet came out, and we started seeing videos.”

Even then, she said, Internet predators of the late 1990s and early 2000s were still somewhat conspicuous, lurking in chat rooms.

Now, “it's much easier” for them to engage in cyberstalking, as well as more covert methods of enticement, Cooper said.

Yet more recently, child abuse has been used to extort and intimidate its victims into silence, and not strictly for commercial purposes, Cooper said. The images are used for “revenge porn” or “sextortion.”

There's no definitive way to permanently delete an abusive image circulating online. Search engines and Internet providers have made efforts to flag and remove such images, but that doesn't guarantee the image won't be shared by other means.

“But that's for the future,” Cooper said. “Our bigger goal is to stop the images from existing in the first place.”

http://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/headlines/20150811-online-images-linger-long-after-sex-abuse-speaker-tells-dallas-crimes-against-children-conference.ece

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Google, Facebook and Twitter to remove millions of online images of child sexual abuse

by Tom Brooks-Pollock

Google, Facebook and Twitter are to remove millions of online images of child sexual abuse.

In the first scheme of its kind, anti-abuse campaigners from the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) are sharing lists of indecent images with the firms.

The aim is to quickly remove images of victims – identified by so-called “hash codes” – to prevent them from being repeatedly shared.

IWF workers search for child abuse images online and allocate them an individual hash code, akin to a digital fingerprint.

Campaigners reckon sharing the “Hash List” represents a “game changer” in the fight against online paedophilia.

The move will help prevent images of abuse from being uploaded to the internet in the first place, giving companies the power to stop people from sharing images on their services.

It will also protect people from accidentally stumbling across the images online.

But experts say that the Hash List will not block images found on the dark net, a restricted access network that hides users' identities.

Creating a hash of a single image allows it to be "plucked" from the internet, like finding a needle in a haystack, the IWF said.

Lists will be shared with internet companies that provide services such as the uploading, storage or search of images, filtering or hosting services and social media and chat services.

Susie Hargreaves, chief executive of the IWF, said: "Our Hash List could be a game-changer and really steps up the fight against child sexual abuse images online.”

The NSPCC said the scheme shows internet firms are taking a "more proactive role" but warned there was more to be done to "strangle the life out of this sordid trade".

David Cameron last year set up a new police unit to target “sickening” child abuse images being shared by paedophiles on the dark net.

Pennsylvania

Opinion

Perpetrators of child sexual abuse don't deserve leniency

by State Rep. Keith J. Greiner

Last week, a child sex offender from Lancaster County had his 23- to 46-year sentence overturned by the State Superior Court.

The Lancaster city man, Kevin Getchius, found guilty on counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, indecent assault, unlawful contact with a minor and corruption of a minor, is now likely to receive a lighter sentence. He argued that his sentence was excessive.

Think about that: A man convicted of raping and sexually abusing a 4-year-old girl believes that his sentence is too long. This is a shock to the senses and defies all reason. Even worse, he isn't alone in thinking he was treated unfairly. All across Pennsylvania, convicted child sex offenders are lining up in droves to appeal their sentences for the chance to serve less time behind bars.

The 2013 decision of the United States Supreme Court in Alleyne v. United States is the driving factor behind these overturned sentences. The Pennsylvania Superior Court has used this ruling to eliminate a multitude of mandatory minimum sentences for crimes, including heinous sexual crimes against children.

The Superior Court's actions are a devastating blow to the victims of these crimes, our communities and law enforcement officials.

Their decision will put child molesters back on our streets and neighborhoods sooner, where they will likely offend again, destroying another life of an innocent child and family.

With some studies suggesting recidivism rates in excess of 50 percent for child sex offenders, granting these criminals short sentences should weigh heavily on the members of our judiciary.

The good news is the state General Assembly can stop this from continuing. After working together with Lancaster County District Attorney Craig Stedman, I have introduced legislation in the House of Representatives to reinstate the mandatory minimum sentence language for child molesters. I have also been working with state Sen. Ryan Aument, who has introduced identical legislation in the Senate.

Since we announced the introduction of our legislation three months ago on the steps of the Lancaster County Courthouse, there have been several local stories detailing the horrific acts being committed against our children. There seems to be no end in sight.

These are crimes that we all can agree are despicable and are deserving of a punishment that matches their deplorable nature.

Mandatory minimum sentences are necessary to protect victims of these crimes. No child should grow up in a state of constant fear, knowing that his or her assailant is no longer behind bars. Yet this is exactly what is happening across the commonwealth.

Without mandatory minimum sentences in place, child molesters are being released before many of their victims graduate from high school. That is absolutely unacceptable. These traumatized children have already been through enough and deserve the peace of mind that comes from knowing they are free from harm during the remaining years of their childhood.

Opponents of mandatory minimum sentences would like judges to have greater flexibility in determining sentences. I do not necessarily disagree with this opinion; however, certain crimes rise above and beyond and demand a harsh minimum sentence. To me, rape and sexual assault of children are these kinds of crimes. I agree with DA Stedman, who recently said: “No sentence will be long enough to atone for these terrible crimes.”

As a civilized society, we have a responsibility to do everything we can to deter these crimes from happening and to ensure that when they do, they are not taken lightly. If one would-be child sex offender thinks twice about committing a crime because of the stiff penalties associated with it, this legislation would be successful. More importantly, this legislation would help prevent re-offenses, by making sure that these criminals stay behind bars for longer sentences.

One of the primary responsibilities of government is to ensure public safety, particularly protecting our children; however, our judicial system made it necessary for the Legislature to act when it eliminated these tough penalties.

We must continue to stand up for victims of these crimes. I will continue working to make sure that justice is delivered in the commonwealth and that criminals are given a punishment reflective of their unspeakable actions. My legislation is an attempt to do just that.

http://lancasteronline.com/opinion/columnists/perpetrators-of-child-sexual-abuse-don-t-deserve-leniency/article_177791fa-3d16-11e5-9741-7f09204aa363.html

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Washington

‘Best Starts for Kids' levy campaign launched in White Center

Though the August ballots are still being counted, the November campaigns are on, including a countywide levy that will be on your ballot: Best Starts for Kids, aka King County Proposition 1. The campaign for your “yes” vote began with a Thursday media event in White Center – here's the news release shared by the campaign afterward:

The proposed six-year levy would invest in prevention and early intervention strategies to increase the number of children in King County who reach adulthood healthy and ready to contribute to the region's prosperity

King County Executive Dow Constantine and other elected officials and community leaders from throughout King County urged voters to approve the Best Starts for Kids initiative that will appear on the November 3rd General Election ballot.

Best Starts for Kids is an initiative to improve the health and well-being of King County by investing in prevention and early intervention strategies based on the latest brain science that identifies key developmental milestones.

“Best Starts for Kids is our opportunity to transform the way we invest in our children's future by focusing on what works,” said Executive Constantine. “This is how we will transition to effective upstream solutions that can prevent negative outcomes, including mental illness, substance abuse, domestic violence, and incarceration – and put every child in King County on a path toward lifelong success.”

Executive Constantine was joined by King County Councilmember Joe McDermott, campaign co-chairs Matt Griffin and Michelle Sarju, and many more. The event was hosted at Educare School of Greater Seattle, an innovative Head Start program in the White Center neighborhood of unincorporated King County.

“Investing in children early in their lives provides the best opportunity to help them make the right choices and achieve their full potential,” said Auburn Mayor Nancy Backus. “The earlier the investment, the greater the return. Healthy kids are more likely to become productive adults, avoiding issues that can put them into the criminal justice system.”

Best Starts of Kids is informed by research by James Heckman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist who found that investing early in a person's development – starting with prenatal services – delivers the greatest return.

Heckman, Director of the Center for the Economics of Human Development at the University of Chicago, has devoted his professional life to understanding the origins of major social and economic problems related to inequality, social mobility, discrimination, skill formation and regulation, and to devising and evaluating alternative strategies for addressing those problems.

“The aim is to make the latest research and tools available to every parent and caregiver, and ultimately to produce talented, creative and successful adults who will help us remain a prosperous region,” said campaign co-chair Michelle Sarju.

The Metropolitan King County Council voted overwhelmingly across party lines to support Best Starts for Kids and place the issue before the voters this November. Approval of the initiative would make King County one of the first metropolitan areas in the nation to adopt a unified, comprehensive plan, based on science, to ensure all children can develop the cognitive, emotional, and social skills necessary to succeed in life.

“This is a great investment opportunity not only in kids but in our community,” Councilmember McDermott said. “Increasing the percentage of healthy children who become successful adults can help reduce spending on criminal justice, reduce homelessness and enable us to target mental-health and drug-treatment options to those who need them.”

Best Starts for Kids will complement Seattle's preschool program and similar efforts by increasing the number of children who arrive at school each day healthy and ready to learn.

Half the proceeds from the levy will be invested in early childhood development, from birth through age 5 when 92 percent of brain growth occurs. That includes early intervention services that can prevent developmental delays from becoming lifelong disabilities and nurse home visitations that help at-risk mothers deliver healthier babies.

Current community-based programs in King County that increase the likelihood a baby is born at a healthy weight and that help prevent developmental delays from becoming lifelong disabilities are limited in part because the vast majority of the County's General Fund budget must pay for the criminal justice system, including law enforcement, courts and jails.

The six-year levy, at 14 cents per $1,000 of assessed property value, would cost the average King County property owner an estimated $56 per year, or about $1 a week. The levy would be overseen by a citizen's oversight board and generate an estimated $58.3 million in 2016 for the following allocations:

• 50 percent to early childhood development, from birth through age 5, when research shows that 92 percent of brain growth occurs.

• 35 percent to sustain the gain by providing early intervention services to address problems such as depression and developmental disabilities as the brain continues to develop through age 24.

• 10 percent to reinforce a child's progress by improving the health, social, and economic outcomes in the communities where they live.

• 5 percent to pay for evaluation, data collection and program improvement.

The levy would immediately fund a program designed to help survivors of domestic violence from becoming homeless. It will be based on a successful pilot project created by the Gates Foundation.

“We all want to live in a place where every child has the chance to succeed,” said campaign co-chair Matt Griffin. “This is a chance to move our community forward and ensure that our children have the fair start to life that they deserve. It's just the right thing to do.”

http://whitecenternow.com/2015/08/09/best-starts-for-kids-levy-campaign-launched-in-white-center/

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Ireland

Opinion

Ireland is backward over supporting rape victims

One sex-abuse victim explains why she's angry at the treatment victims get and the public and official attitudes to them

A few weeks ago I read Niamh Ni Dhomhnaill's story about how she was raped by her then partner while she slept. It sickened me to the core. The headline in the Sunday Independent read: "It's time we put rape victims first". If that were my article, I would have headlined it "It's long overdue…"

It's yet another example of how backward Ireland is in supporting rape victims. The fact that there is a debate on the definition of rape disgusts me as much as the act of rape. To me, it's obvious.

It's when one person performs a sexual act on another person without their willingness, regardless of whether the two people are known to each other or not. Without knowing this, how can we even start to educate the next generation about sexual violence? There was no willingness on Ms Ni Dhomhnaill's part as she was asleep.

My first 800 to 1,000 sexual experiences were with my older brother, without my willingness. I said "stop" and "no". He held me down and said I wanted it and said no-one would believe me. Most of my family are aware of this now. He is married and his wife has knowledge of the abuse and they have children.

I reported him to the HSE two years ago and have rarely heard from them despite regular calls as to the progress on determining his children's safety. Tusla states on their website "Children First". How many years after reporting will they become first?

My family have told me the children are "fine", which is not reassuring when it comes to a child's safety. My family members are aware of what he did and they sit alongside him for dinners, Christmas, family get-togethers and they talk about normal things. I find this disturbing and very upsetting .

I told my parents about the abuse 25 years ago or so. I am still, on and off , in therapy. As far as I am aware, he never received therapy to ensure he doesn't abuse again. An abuser is not a creature recognisable in a crowd. He/she is a human, who chose to act in an inhumane manner towards another person.

In my case, it started when I was a child, and continued up to my early adult years. He was a couple of years older. I was a young innocent, naive, but kind and decent child.

I was given no logical reason as to why he hurt me. Now I am angry, stressed and still in therapy, when I can afford it, through Credit Union loans, and when I have emotional energy to undergo it.

A few years after I told my parents, I lived abroad to escape. While there, the infamous X Case occurred in Ireland. I had people of all nationalities verbally attack me and my other Irish friends in public for the Irish system's failure to both protect and support the girl raped in this case. Twenty-five years later and hardly anything has changed. Why haven't we progressed with victims' rights?

A lot has happened here since the Celtic Tiger was followed by the recession - a failing health system, water protests, etc.

I listen to these dramas and despite being affected by them, and having a few minor health issues, plus being overweight and, lonely because I don't have a partner, I feel I could cope better if I didn't have to deal with the lack of family and legal support for victims like myself.

I know I'm not alone, as I've heard it from many others in group counselling.

The fact is I'm not ashamed of what happened to me. But I am ashamed of my family. I know they're ashamed of me. They look at me and I remind them of their failings.

I know I'm lucky to have great friends. Even though they are all busy, I appreciate the time they make the effort to spend with me and I love them and their families for their ongoing love and support. On top of all that, they also donated generously to the Rape Crisis Centre when I recently completed a sporting event.

To prove I'm not ashamed, I'm supplying the newspaper with my name and details, but to openly name myself in this paper could hurt the few of the family I do actually care about, though why I should put them before me is another sad reflection of my life. But Ms Ni Dhomhnaill's point "that no abuse victim should have to waive anonymity" is another sad reflection that rape and abuse victims don't feel able to be open about their experiences. Why? I think we're an amazing bunch of people who have to work harder than anyone else in the country at healing ourselves.

I do understand that some of those victimised are unable to go to court. I have not yet gone to the gardai - I may yet - but there are many difficulties.

It's shocking, however, that suspended sentences are allowed for sexual crimes. And I am equally angry at the judges who impose these sentences. They listen to a rapist say they're sorry and will get help. The reality is that very few do, otherwise there wouldn't be so many angry victims in Ireland struggling to get on with their lives. They're in A&Es crippled with pain, they're the lonely child in the school, the bully in the workplace. Something happened to them and neglect after neglect is having a knock-on effect on this country.

I have a few bits of advice for rape and abuse victims reading this.

Find a friend who is willing to listen to your problems as you do theirs. If they can't, find a better friend.

Counselling helps. It's hard work, but it is worth it.

Do things you love - music, theatre, sport, or swim with dolphins, or travel.

Take care of yourself, exercise, eat well, meditate and have a small few treats a week. You deserve it.

Get a healthy balance between being on your own and being with people. You need some time to yourself to heal properly.

Say daily "I am proud of myself" out loud, say it until you believe it and then keep saying it.

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/ireland-is-backward-over-supporting-rape-victims-31437455.html

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Iowa

Caps raise awareness of child abuse

Hospital's goal is to knit 3,500 caps as part of campaign

by Kiran Sood

CEDAR RAPIDS — Denise Easeley says it's normal for parents to become frustrated with their babies.

However, there is a point where one needs to draw the line.

“Purple crying” is defined as a period when an infant is inconsolable. It also is a time when parents may feel like they are at their wits end.

The national Click for Babies campaign aims to raise awareness of the purple crying period and prevent child abuse from occurring. As part of the campaign in Cedar Rapids, UnityPoint Health — St. Luke's five years ago began hosting knit-ins.

“Our goal is to increase awareness for the period of purple crying program by educating parents and caregivers,” said Easley, a NICU nurse at UnityPoint Health — St. Luke's. “We don't want babies to be shaken or hurt.”

During the knit-ins, volunteers knit purple caps for babies, to symbolize purple crying.

St. Luke's will host two knit-ins from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sept. 4 and Oct. 3. There already were two knit-ins at the hospital in July and August.

Nine hundred caps were turned in after this year's first knit-in, Easley said, including some by those who previously participated.

At the knit-ins, participants look at patterns, teach each other and enjoy chatting, Easley said. Participants are asked to bring their own knitting needles and yarn. A limited supply of yarn and patterns will be available.

Yarn donations also are accepted.

The goal for the campaign is 3,500 caps, which will be distributed to birthing hospitals across the state.

Easley said most of Iowa's large hospitals teach new parents about purple crying.

“Parents get the education in the hospital and then they take it home. In November and December, after they've received their education, then they take home a purple cap.”

Easley said she wants the public to know that babies are supposed to cry.

“Crying is the No. 1 trigger for infant abuse,” she said. “Shaken baby syndrome is 100 percent preventable.”

http://thegazette.com/subject/news/health/caps-raise-awareness-of-child-abuse-20150810

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United Kingdom

Child abuse tool gets UK government data access

by Zoe Kleinman

For the first time, the UK government is sharing its own database of child abuse images with net charity the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF).

Each image has been given a unique "hash" number, which makes it traceable without being viewed.

It means the charity's partners, which include Facebook, Google and Twitter, will be able to remove images faster.

The Child Abuse Image Database (Caid), was launched by the prime minister in December 2014.

The images on Caid, collated by the Home Office, include those found on computers seized by police that may not have been uploaded online.

"Some of those images will have never yet been in circulation on the internet because perhaps the offender has taken them him/herself or someone has shared them peer-to-peer," IWF spokeswoman Emma Hardy told the BBC.

"For the victim - if they are aware images were taken but haven't made it onto the net, if their image is on this list we can now prevent it being uploaded in the first place."

The Caid list is part of a greater database being created by the IWF. It will also include images reported by the public and found by the charity's own analysts.

It is a list of hash numbers, not the images themselves, and will be made available to all of the charity's members.

'Disturbing'

The hash is a number generated algorithmically and, once assigned to an image based on its original source name, cannot be changed.

Hash lists were initially created as a tool for searching databases in the 1950s when computers worked very slowly, said internet security expert Professor Alan Woodward from Surrey University.

Hashing is also used to store passwords.

The hashing process involves using an algorithm to convert a plaintext password into an unrecognisable string of characters. Utilising the tool means a service does not need to keep a record of the password in its original form.

"The way [searches for illegal images] are done by law enforcement, you have people sitting there looking at 2,000 images a day, sometimes 2,000 an hour. People can only do this for so long because it's so disturbing," Prof Woodward said.

"This way, if the hash is on the prohibited list you know it's what you want but you don't actually see it."

Web giants Google and Microsoft have been using hash lists for some time in the fight against online illegal images.

The fight against illegal images

Last month Microsoft released a free tool that lets website owners spot when images of child abuse are being shared by users.

PhotoDNA creates a unique signature for each image, similar to a fingerprint, to help match pictures. This is done by converting the picture into black-and-white, resizing it and breaking it into a grid.

Each grid cell is then analysed to create a histogram describing how the colours change in intensity within it, and the information obtained becomes its "DNA".

The technique means that if a copy of a flagged photo appears in one of Microsoft's user accounts, the firm can be alerted to the fact without its staff having to look at the picture involved.

Because the amount of data involved in the "DNA" is small, Microsoft can process and compare images relatively quickly.

"The danger is that 90% of the web is not indexed by [the tech giants]," said Prof Woodward.

"Most people think of the web as what Google or Bing tell them it is - but most of it is not searched by Google. The so-called 'deep web' is not indexed or searchable, and the 'dark web' is hidden."

He added that while a hash number assigned to an image cannot be removed, modifying the image can alter the algorithm which created it.

"There is an arms race with this," he said.

"Criminals are very clever. They will work out how to get round being on the list by modifying the image - depending on the algorithm they are using it could radically change the hash."

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-33847308

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Texas

Child abuse conference seeks presenters by Sept. 1

by Teresa Tankersley

The 30th annual “Conference on Child Abuse” is Jan. 25-26 at the Westin Park Central in Dallas.

Keynote speakers are Dr. Bruce D. Perry, child trauma; Judge Cheryl Lee Shannon, 305th District Court; and Darlene Ellison, High Touch Alliances.

Applications to be a workshop presenter are due Sept. 1.

Conference offers training and information on child abuse prevention, social workers, counselors, educators, child care and youth workers, law enforcement personnel, medical and legal professionals, foster parents, child welfare board volunteers, elected officials and other interested child advocates.

Participants choose from a variety of workshops on child abuse and neglect prevention and educational programs or may select workshops for specialized training credits and professional development.

Businesses, organizations and individuals are invited to bring products, materials and services to the attention of those attending.