http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1586521.html
Neighbors close in after sex charges
BY STANLEY B. CHAMBERS JR. - Staff Writer
Published: Sun, Jun. 28, 2009 02:00AMModified Sun, Jun. 28, 2009 07:05PM
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Sitting in a Durham County jail cell, Frank M. Lombard, the Duke University researcher accused of offering his adopted 5-year-old son for sex, awaits a trip to Washington, D.C., this week to face federal criminal charges.
After waiving an extradition hearing Friday morning, he was locked in the Durham jail Saturday without bail.
Federal authorities say Lombard, 42, of 24 Indigo Creek Trail, performed sexual acts on his son and invited an undercover investigator online to fly to North Carolina and do the same.
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Lombard owns the home with another man, according to Durham County property records. The pair bought the home, which sits at the end of a narrow path lined with trees and multicolored homes, in May 2007, the records show. The co-owner has not been accused of any wrongdoing.
A bag of baseball equipment, a pair of tennis rackets, a skateboard and a child's bike lay on the home's front porch Saturday. No one answered the door as a dog barked inside.
Lombard, associate director of Duke's Center for Health Policy, was arrested Wednesday evening at his home. Investigators seized two webcams, five computers and a sex toy, among other items, after searching his home.
The 5-year-old and another child in the home were placed in protective custody.
Lombard has not faced a criminal charge but has speeding infractions and other driving offenses.
Lombard, a licensed clinical social worker with a master's degree in social work, is a health-disparities researcher who studies HIV/AIDS in the rural South.
Neighbors of Lombard had nothing to say about him Saturday to a reporter who visited Eno Commons, a co-housing community in north Durham.
Residents ordered the reporter to leave the neighborhood, which emphasizes communal life.
A roadblock with a "no trespassing" sign and a Subaru greeted visitors Saturday to Indigo Creek Trail, a private street in the 22-home neighborhood.
Co-housing communities allow residents have a say in the area's design, and they manage and maintain the community together. Decisions are made through consensus, and residents share common space.
"We care deeply about our children and want them to grow up in a friendly and stimulating environment," a Web site about the neighborhood says.
stan.chambers@newsobserver.com or 919-932-2025
Keep NC out of the discussion-- makes it look like you mean UNC -- and they have not been implicated -- only Duke...
QUOTE
http://www.protect.org/Newswire/North-Caro...d-Sex-Case.html
Duke Official Charged in Child Sex Case
Monday, 29 June 2009 A Duke University official has been arrested and charged after offering his adopted 5 year-old son for sex, police say.
The offficial, who is associate director of Duke's Center for Health Policy, reportedly sexually assaulted the child on an internet webcam. He then encouraged an undercover investigator to travel to North Carolina to have sex with the boy.
An affidavit by the investigating officer implies a connection between the alleged crimes and financial donations the suspect made to a home that "assists needy families in making a transition out of homelessness, [which] maintains an onsite child care center. Volunteer opportunities with the organization include one-on-one tutoring of children and providing child care."
.
Duke Official Charged in Child Sex Case
Monday, 29 June 2009 A Duke University official has been arrested and charged after offering his adopted 5 year-old son for sex, police say.
The offficial, who is associate director of Duke's Center for Health Policy, reportedly sexually assaulted the child on an internet webcam. He then encouraged an undercover investigator to travel to North Carolina to have sex with the boy.
An affidavit by the investigating officer implies a connection between the alleged crimes and financial donations the suspect made to a home that "assists needy families in making a transition out of homelessness, [which] maintains an onsite child care center. Volunteer opportunities with the organization include one-on-one tutoring of children and providing child care."
.
This, taz, illustrates what issues remain for the public to grapple with their elected representatives over, in order for law enforcement to be able to protect the vulnerable.
(I have no control over the size of the map. The original is tiny and I don't know why this copy is so huge. Sorry)
(I have no control over the size of the map. The original is tiny and I don't know why this copy is so huge. Sorry)
QUOTE
http://www.protect.org/Newswire/Oklahoma/R...n-Oklahoma.html
Real outrage in Oklahoma?
Friday, 26 June 2009
Some Oklahoma politicians are calling for a judge's head after an outrageous child rape sentence, but how real is the outrage? Oklahoma State Representatives Mike Ritze and Mike Reynolds are seeking removal proceedings against Judge Thomas Bartheld. Bartheld suspended 19 years of a 20-year sentence against a man who raped a 4-year-old girl.
Bartheld and District Attorney Jim Bob Miller defend their decision to let David Earls, 64, walk, saying that the victim was too young to make a good witness in court.
"Plea bargains like this are done every day," Miller says in USA Today. "It's very difficult for young children to come into the judicial system to testify. There's no real good way around it."
Well, there might be one good way around it in thousands of Oklahoma cases.
Last year, PROTECT provided Oklahoma's U.S. Senator Tom Coburn with a law enforcement map plotting the location of thousands of Oklahoma child pornography traffickers (Below: dots represent concentrations of computers). Experts believe at least a third of these known criminals have local child sexual abuse victims. Prosecuting these cases requires a hard drive on the stand, not a fragile child, and getting serious sentences is a slam-dunk proposition.
Yet Oklahoma lawmakers--like federal lawmakers--have refused to give law enforcement the tools it needs to stop them and rescue their victims.
So, if Oklahoma legislators like Ritze and Reynolds want justice for child rape victims, there's a better way to prove it than going after one judge: give state and local law enforcement the resources it needs to attack Oklahoma's thriving child pornography trade.
There they are boys, hiding in plain sight, ready to take the measure of Oklahoma outrage. Predators and unprotected child rape victims. Talk tough or saddle up and go rescue children. That's the real man's choice in Oklahoma City.
.
Real outrage in Oklahoma?
Friday, 26 June 2009
Some Oklahoma politicians are calling for a judge's head after an outrageous child rape sentence, but how real is the outrage? Oklahoma State Representatives Mike Ritze and Mike Reynolds are seeking removal proceedings against Judge Thomas Bartheld. Bartheld suspended 19 years of a 20-year sentence against a man who raped a 4-year-old girl.
Bartheld and District Attorney Jim Bob Miller defend their decision to let David Earls, 64, walk, saying that the victim was too young to make a good witness in court.
"Plea bargains like this are done every day," Miller says in USA Today. "It's very difficult for young children to come into the judicial system to testify. There's no real good way around it."
Well, there might be one good way around it in thousands of Oklahoma cases.
Last year, PROTECT provided Oklahoma's U.S. Senator Tom Coburn with a law enforcement map plotting the location of thousands of Oklahoma child pornography traffickers (Below: dots represent concentrations of computers). Experts believe at least a third of these known criminals have local child sexual abuse victims. Prosecuting these cases requires a hard drive on the stand, not a fragile child, and getting serious sentences is a slam-dunk proposition.
Yet Oklahoma lawmakers--like federal lawmakers--have refused to give law enforcement the tools it needs to stop them and rescue their victims.
So, if Oklahoma legislators like Ritze and Reynolds want justice for child rape victims, there's a better way to prove it than going after one judge: give state and local law enforcement the resources it needs to attack Oklahoma's thriving child pornography trade.
There they are boys, hiding in plain sight, ready to take the measure of Oklahoma outrage. Predators and unprotected child rape victims. Talk tough or saddle up and go rescue children. That's the real man's choice in Oklahoma City.
.
"What is wrong with NC & Duke Univ? First the lacrosse team rapes, now this..., -what is in the NC water?"-G4A
Using child abuse/sexual abuse for political purposes stinks so high
as to define the promulgator. Is there less abuse in New Jersey?
Or Louisiana? Perhaps, perhaps not.
But, as one who has gained federal funding for a special investigative
unit under the OFFICE OF JUSTICE PROGRAMS, SEX OFFENDER SENTENCING,
MONITORING, APPREHENDING, REGISTERING AND TRACKING (SMART) OFFICE,
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE...I know it is not regional. We arrested an Illinois
university professor this past week while he was trying to meet a UC agent posing as a child
at a local McDonald's restaurant.
Those at Duke were cleared from a political crusade by a DA seeking minority votes.
How more can one pander to politics than at the risk of children? Shame.
You abuse the truth of the cause, and thus the cause itself. Serve, rather than rant, and gain place.
Using child abuse/sexual abuse for political purposes stinks so high
as to define the promulgator. Is there less abuse in New Jersey?
Or Louisiana? Perhaps, perhaps not.
But, as one who has gained federal funding for a special investigative
unit under the OFFICE OF JUSTICE PROGRAMS, SEX OFFENDER SENTENCING,
MONITORING, APPREHENDING, REGISTERING AND TRACKING (SMART) OFFICE,
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE...I know it is not regional. We arrested an Illinois
university professor this past week while he was trying to meet a UC agent posing as a child
at a local McDonald's restaurant.
Those at Duke were cleared from a political crusade by a DA seeking minority votes.
How more can one pander to politics than at the risk of children? Shame.
You abuse the truth of the cause, and thus the cause itself. Serve, rather than rant, and gain place.
Good points IH...but where was Graham politicizing this?
I want to tag this video, here's as good a place as any for it. Besides, it belongs here on this thread, taz, as an impetus to act and expression of gratitude - both.
QUOTE
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/21/o...e_n_189774.html
Obama's Inspirational Speech: What Starfish, Service, And Senator Ted Kennedy Have In Common
Huffington Post | Verena von Pfetten | 05/ 5/09 04:15 PM
On Tuesday afternoon, President Barack Obama signed a $5.7 billion national service bill that will triple the size of the AmeriCorps program over the next eight years.
Amid lauding the efforts of AmeriCorps founder Bill Clinton and service champion Senator Ted Kennedy, President Obama shared some inspiring thoughts on his own experience with service as well as recounting a little story that Sen. Kennedy likes to tell about a young man, an old man, and some starfish.
On the act of serving:
"People who love their country can change it."
"[That's] the beauty of service: anybody can do it. You don't need to be a community organizer, a senator, a Kennedy or even a president to bring changes to people's lives."
On his own experience:
"I wouldn't be standing here today if not for the service of others or for the purpose that service
gave my own life. "
"I wasn't just helping people, I was receiving something in return. Through service I found a community that embraced me, citizenship that was meaningful, the direction that I had been seeking."
And finally, the story that says it all:
Watch the whole speech, including Sen. Kennedy's opening remarks: VIDEO
.
Obama's Inspirational Speech: What Starfish, Service, And Senator Ted Kennedy Have In Common
Huffington Post | Verena von Pfetten | 05/ 5/09 04:15 PM
On Tuesday afternoon, President Barack Obama signed a $5.7 billion national service bill that will triple the size of the AmeriCorps program over the next eight years.
Amid lauding the efforts of AmeriCorps founder Bill Clinton and service champion Senator Ted Kennedy, President Obama shared some inspiring thoughts on his own experience with service as well as recounting a little story that Sen. Kennedy likes to tell about a young man, an old man, and some starfish.
On the act of serving:
"People who love their country can change it."
"[That's] the beauty of service: anybody can do it. You don't need to be a community organizer, a senator, a Kennedy or even a president to bring changes to people's lives."
On his own experience:
"I wouldn't be standing here today if not for the service of others or for the purpose that service
gave my own life. "
"I wasn't just helping people, I was receiving something in return. Through service I found a community that embraced me, citizenship that was meaningful, the direction that I had been seeking."
And finally, the story that says it all:
An old man walking along the beach at dawn sees a young man picking up the star fish and throwing them out to sea. "Why are you doing that?" The old man inquired. The young man explained that the starfish had been stranded on the beach by a receding tide. And would soon die in the daytime sun. "But the beach goes on for miles," the old man said. "And there's so many! How can your effort make any difference?" The young man looked at the starfish in his hand and without hesitating threw it to safety in the sea. He looked up at the old man, smiled and said, "It will make a difference to that one."
Watch the whole speech, including Sen. Kennedy's opening remarks: VIDEO
.
Great article...
An impetus to act (to do what?) and expression of gratitude for (what?)...
I loathe reading or posting about specific cases, but there is a severe ongoing crisis which needs to be publicized and remedied. I appreciate that graham posted the original article although, obviously, his editorializing via headline and extraneous comments were unnecessarily politicizing and these cases occur everyday in every state.
QUOTE
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/07/t...d_military.html
Head of Toms River faith-based military academy charged with possession and distribution of child pornography
by The Associated Press
Wednesday July 01, 2009, 3:01 PM
Facebook.com
Steven Baryla, who runs the Cedar Bridge Military Academy in Toms River, was charged with possession and distribution of child pornography.
TOMS RIVER -- The head of a faith-based military academy for children in New Jersey is facing child pornography charges.
Steven Baryla of Toms River is charged with possession and distribution of child pornography. Baryla is free on $200,000 bail, but must stay away from children and stay off the Internet. Baryla runs the Cedar Bridge Military Academy in Toms River, which admits children ages 11 to 17.
The Ocean County Prosecutor's Office said it began investigating after a tip from someone who had been in e-mail contact with Baryla.
Baryla, who has an unlisted home number, did not immediately return a message left on his office phone today.
.
Head of Toms River faith-based military academy charged with possession and distribution of child pornography
by The Associated Press
Wednesday July 01, 2009, 3:01 PM
Facebook.com
Steven Baryla, who runs the Cedar Bridge Military Academy in Toms River, was charged with possession and distribution of child pornography.
TOMS RIVER -- The head of a faith-based military academy for children in New Jersey is facing child pornography charges.
Steven Baryla of Toms River is charged with possession and distribution of child pornography. Baryla is free on $200,000 bail, but must stay away from children and stay off the Internet. Baryla runs the Cedar Bridge Military Academy in Toms River, which admits children ages 11 to 17.
The Ocean County Prosecutor's Office said it began investigating after a tip from someone who had been in e-mail contact with Baryla.
Baryla, who has an unlisted home number, did not immediately return a message left on his office phone today.
.
I abhor indianhead (and now believe_it does it to) saying this
I more than anyone has posted 100s of times about atrocities IN NEW JERSEY AND NEW YORK, especially about cops in MY AREA first, and then I post about them in other parts of the country.
It is the biggest strawman/red herring to start in on me to hide the atrocities in a different state.
These events should not happen. anywhere.
BTW believe_it, you posted on the Michael thread, I do need to ask what is your opinion of him, about the $20million dollar payout.
You put post after post to protect children, so don't you think a caveat about Michael is in order from you? (and others too). In the hype of the moment,
why the whitewashing of the official record? Yes the second trial with a different boy then the one MJ paid 20 million to, he was ruled not guilty, but then again, people here felt OJ was guilty even though he was ruled
innocent of all charges. A little consistency makes for common ground here.Shouldn't we put kids first here? And if it wasn't MJ, but your average person who was say a perv, would the opinion still be the same as for what went down?
I more than anyone has posted 100s of times about atrocities IN NEW JERSEY AND NEW YORK, especially about cops in MY AREA first, and then I post about them in other parts of the country.
It is the biggest strawman/red herring to start in on me to hide the atrocities in a different state.
These events should not happen. anywhere.
BTW believe_it, you posted on the Michael thread, I do need to ask what is your opinion of him, about the $20million dollar payout.
You put post after post to protect children, so don't you think a caveat about Michael is in order from you? (and others too). In the hype of the moment,
why the whitewashing of the official record? Yes the second trial with a different boy then the one MJ paid 20 million to, he was ruled not guilty, but then again, people here felt OJ was guilty even though he was ruled
innocent of all charges. A little consistency makes for common ground here.Shouldn't we put kids first here? And if it wasn't MJ, but your average person who was say a perv, would the opinion still be the same as for what went down?
Thank you, graham4anything, for starting this thread; thank you, Indianhead, for your work in this area. Common ground on this issue will help end the intolerable.
QUOTE
http://www.promisetoprotect.org/Child-Rescue.html
Promise to Protect's Child Exploitation Project
FOR THE FIRST TIME in human history, we have the technology to prevent child abuse on a massive scale. Our goal is to make sure this technology is used.
BACKGROUND
The rise of the Internet has facilitated an explosion of child exploitation. The ease with which child pornography can be created and shared in the Internet age has created a flourishing online marketplace for video and images of children being hurt.
But the same technology used by child predators can be used to find and stop them. Every crime committed in cyberspace leaves a trail of evidence, a trail that can be followed back through the Internet. And since 1 in 3 child pornography cases will lead to a suspect with local child sexual abuse victims, the technology can also be used to find and protect child victims.
THE OPPORTUNITY: A New Generation of Child Rescue Technology
The first generation of law enforcement Internet technology identified hundreds of thousands of criminals distributing child pornography online. Less than 2% of these cases are ever investigated, due to sheer lack of law enforcement resources.
Now a new generation of technology is emerging. These new tools enable law enforcement to use pattern recognition software to sort through mountains of leads and zero in on the highest-risk targets. By watching the type of child pornography being trafficked and patterns of behavior, investigators can predict with high degrees of success where to locate children in danger.
THE IMPACT: At Last, Real Prevention
Every year, Americans invest millions in child abuse prevention. Yet, it is nearly impossible to know if our best efforts work, or even how to measure success. A bold national campaign against child exploitation will change that. Child rescue, using new technologies to locate and protect children, is the new face of child abuse prevention.
WHAT WE'RE DOING
Promise to Protect has three main projects focused on child exploitation:
Promise to Protect's Child Exploitation Project
FOR THE FIRST TIME in human history, we have the technology to prevent child abuse on a massive scale. Our goal is to make sure this technology is used.
BACKGROUND
The rise of the Internet has facilitated an explosion of child exploitation. The ease with which child pornography can be created and shared in the Internet age has created a flourishing online marketplace for video and images of children being hurt.
But the same technology used by child predators can be used to find and stop them. Every crime committed in cyberspace leaves a trail of evidence, a trail that can be followed back through the Internet. And since 1 in 3 child pornography cases will lead to a suspect with local child sexual abuse victims, the technology can also be used to find and protect child victims.
THE OPPORTUNITY: A New Generation of Child Rescue Technology
The first generation of law enforcement Internet technology identified hundreds of thousands of criminals distributing child pornography online. Less than 2% of these cases are ever investigated, due to sheer lack of law enforcement resources.
Now a new generation of technology is emerging. These new tools enable law enforcement to use pattern recognition software to sort through mountains of leads and zero in on the highest-risk targets. By watching the type of child pornography being trafficked and patterns of behavior, investigators can predict with high degrees of success where to locate children in danger.
THE IMPACT: At Last, Real Prevention
Every year, Americans invest millions in child abuse prevention. Yet, it is nearly impossible to know if our best efforts work, or even how to measure success. A bold national campaign against child exploitation will change that. Child rescue, using new technologies to locate and protect children, is the new face of child abuse prevention.
WHAT WE'RE DOING
Promise to Protect has three main projects focused on child exploitation:
- Child Rescue Citizen Action
- Child Rescue Tracking
- Public Awareness (3 Minute Video)
QUOTE
http://www.promisetoprotect.org/Child-Rescue-Tracking.html
A HUMAN RIGHTS CRISIS is exploding in America, with children as its victims. From small towns to Washington, this crisis goes unseen. Promise to Protect is documenting this crisis and the national campaign to rescue children.
Tracking Child Rescues
Promise to Protect is monitoring news reports, government agencies, law enforcement press releases and other sources to track child pornography arrests nationwide. We are compiling a database of child rescues and arrests of persons with special access to children, establishing powerful proof that child sexual assault and exploitation victims can be located and protected. Many of these stories are included in our Child Rescue Wire.
Tracking Anti-Child Exploitation Efforts
We are also documenting the national law enforcement effort to combat child exploitation at the local, state and federal levels. The Promise to Protect website provides a state-by-state directory of Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task forces and contacts. In 2009 we will also bring online a list of local task force affiliate agencies, enabling citizens to see whether their local public safety agencies are on board, including the scope of their involvement.
Policy News
Promise to Protect's Policy News page fills an unmet need for news on Washington policy, federal funding, legislation, international cooperation, state trends, the courts and other information affecting the anti-child exploitation effort.
.
A HUMAN RIGHTS CRISIS is exploding in America, with children as its victims. From small towns to Washington, this crisis goes unseen. Promise to Protect is documenting this crisis and the national campaign to rescue children.
Tracking Child Rescues
Promise to Protect is monitoring news reports, government agencies, law enforcement press releases and other sources to track child pornography arrests nationwide. We are compiling a database of child rescues and arrests of persons with special access to children, establishing powerful proof that child sexual assault and exploitation victims can be located and protected. Many of these stories are included in our Child Rescue Wire.
Tracking Anti-Child Exploitation Efforts
We are also documenting the national law enforcement effort to combat child exploitation at the local, state and federal levels. The Promise to Protect website provides a state-by-state directory of Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task forces and contacts. In 2009 we will also bring online a list of local task force affiliate agencies, enabling citizens to see whether their local public safety agencies are on board, including the scope of their involvement.
Policy News
Promise to Protect's Policy News page fills an unmet need for news on Washington policy, federal funding, legislation, international cooperation, state trends, the courts and other information affecting the anti-child exploitation effort.
.
QUOTE
http://www.promisetoprotect.org/index.php
Tens of thousands of child sexual abuse victims have been located and could be rescued right now.
We have the technology to prevent child abuse
Interactive state maps
.
Tens of thousands of child sexual abuse victims have been located and could be rescued right now.
We have the technology to prevent child abuse
Interactive state maps
.
QUOTE
http://www.promisetoprotect.org/Sunshine-Project.html
The Issue:
All the well-intentioned laws in the world won't matter if they are not used, but nothing changes behavior like the sunshine of accountability.
What We Are Doing:
Investigating State Transparency and Accountability
Designing Model Legislation
TO THE AVERAGE VOTER, they're strangers.
Most Americans choose candidates for sheriff, district attorney or judge knowing almost nothing about their track record or where they really stand. Surveys show many voters decide who to support based on party affiliation, name recognition or even their location on the ballot.
But to a child who has been the victim of a serious crime, those with positions of power in the justice system hold the highest offices in the land. Now, for the first time, someone is watching. The Crimes Against Children Sunshine Project will provide an objective, nonpartisan source of information on how public servants in the justice system are doing when it comes to fighting crimes against children.
One of the best ways to protect the most children, right now, is to focus the bright sunshine of accountability on public servants in the child protection and justice system. In an environment where Americans are starved for information and outraged by daily news of child abuse, it's information guaranteed to motivate change.
.
The Issue:
All the well-intentioned laws in the world won't matter if they are not used, but nothing changes behavior like the sunshine of accountability.
What We Are Doing:
Investigating State Transparency and Accountability
Designing Model Legislation
TO THE AVERAGE VOTER, they're strangers.
Most Americans choose candidates for sheriff, district attorney or judge knowing almost nothing about their track record or where they really stand. Surveys show many voters decide who to support based on party affiliation, name recognition or even their location on the ballot.
But to a child who has been the victim of a serious crime, those with positions of power in the justice system hold the highest offices in the land. Now, for the first time, someone is watching. The Crimes Against Children Sunshine Project will provide an objective, nonpartisan source of information on how public servants in the justice system are doing when it comes to fighting crimes against children.
One of the best ways to protect the most children, right now, is to focus the bright sunshine of accountability on public servants in the child protection and justice system. In an environment where Americans are starved for information and outraged by daily news of child abuse, it's information guaranteed to motivate change.
.
Graham, I'm not fighting with you about this issue, period. I didn't follow the Michael Jackson cases, except superficially. You might be right, I don't know.
MUSIC BREAK
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4w8wEuqhf_8
Work To Do - Isley Brothers cover
MUSIC BREAK
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4w8wEuqhf_8
Work To Do - Isley Brothers cover
QUOTE
http://www.promisetoprotect.org/About-Us.html
About Us
Promise to Protect is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to the protection of children from abuse and neglect. We are recognized by the IRS as a tax-deductible, charitable organization, or 501©(3).
Promise to Protect was established as an outgrowth of the work of the National Association to Protect Children (PROTECT. Through PROTECT's work in the public arena for abused children, its founders and supporters saw an important unmet need: a "think tank" on child protection, offering real-world policy ideas, model legislation and citizen activism.
Promise to Protect does not take any government funding, but we welcome support from individuals, corporations and foundations.
.
About Us
Promise to Protect is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to the protection of children from abuse and neglect. We are recognized by the IRS as a tax-deductible, charitable organization, or 501©(3).
Promise to Protect was established as an outgrowth of the work of the National Association to Protect Children (PROTECT. Through PROTECT's work in the public arena for abused children, its founders and supporters saw an important unmet need: a "think tank" on child protection, offering real-world policy ideas, model legislation and citizen activism.
Promise to Protect does not take any government funding, but we welcome support from individuals, corporations and foundations.
.
QUOTE
http://www.protect.org/Newswire/National/A...n-coverage.html
And now this break from Michael Jackson coverage
Tuesday, 30 June 2009 Just when it seemed you needed a time machine to find Michael Jackson commentary worth reading, the New York Times has republished Andrew Vachss ' brilliant 2005 op-ed, "Unsafe at Any Age."
Excerpt:
"Whatever Michael Jackson may have done, the jury knew he didn't jump out of the back of a van wearing a ski mask and kidnap a victim. The child had been delivered to him. And whatever Michael Jackson may have done, he wasn't wearing a disguise. His most prominent public persona is not that of a musician. (Quick, name his last hit single; extra points for its decade.) Instead, he is best recognized as a bizarre, secretive, hyper-privileged human being who believes that sharing a bed with a little boy is something to which he is entitled.
"Michael Jackson has another reputation, too. It is a matter of record that he has paid many millions to settle allegations of child sexual abuse. The jury heard all about that. Did this convince them that Mr. Jackson was more likely to have committed crimes against the accuser in this case? Or that he was more likely to be the target of an extortionist using her own child as bait?
"So what have we learned? Inherent in American law is the "clean hands doctrine." You cannot commit a bank robbery and then sue your accomplice when he cheats you out of your share of the loot. This doctrine is applied in civil, not criminal, cases. But perhaps we have just witnessed the birth of a new form of jury nullification, one that demands not only innocent victims, but innocent motives for bringing the case."
Entire article archived here .
.
And now this break from Michael Jackson coverage
Tuesday, 30 June 2009 Just when it seemed you needed a time machine to find Michael Jackson commentary worth reading, the New York Times has republished Andrew Vachss ' brilliant 2005 op-ed, "Unsafe at Any Age."
Excerpt:
"Whatever Michael Jackson may have done, the jury knew he didn't jump out of the back of a van wearing a ski mask and kidnap a victim. The child had been delivered to him. And whatever Michael Jackson may have done, he wasn't wearing a disguise. His most prominent public persona is not that of a musician. (Quick, name his last hit single; extra points for its decade.) Instead, he is best recognized as a bizarre, secretive, hyper-privileged human being who believes that sharing a bed with a little boy is something to which he is entitled.
"Michael Jackson has another reputation, too. It is a matter of record that he has paid many millions to settle allegations of child sexual abuse. The jury heard all about that. Did this convince them that Mr. Jackson was more likely to have committed crimes against the accuser in this case? Or that he was more likely to be the target of an extortionist using her own child as bait?
"So what have we learned? Inherent in American law is the "clean hands doctrine." You cannot commit a bank robbery and then sue your accomplice when he cheats you out of your share of the loot. This doctrine is applied in civil, not criminal, cases. But perhaps we have just witnessed the birth of a new form of jury nullification, one that demands not only innocent victims, but innocent motives for bringing the case."
Entire article archived here .
.
QUOTE
http://www.nytimes.com/opinion/
From the Archive
Op-Classic, 2005: Unsafe at Any Age
The Michael Jackson child molesting trial, the novelist and lawyer Andrew Vachss wrote, has taught us nothing about protecting children.
From the Archive
Op-Classic, 2005: Unsafe at Any Age
The Michael Jackson child molesting trial, the novelist and lawyer Andrew Vachss wrote, has taught us nothing about protecting children.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08tYrBCgXlU
WORK TO DO - Isley Brothers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEEGU5U7Mac
WORK TO DO - Isley Brothers (live)
WORK TO DO - Isley Brothers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xEEGU5U7Mac
WORK TO DO - Isley Brothers (live)
Links here (copied via cut and paste) only work starting from original website.
Child Rescue Citizen Action
http://www.promisetoprotect.org/Child-Resc...zen-Action.html
Child Rescue Tracking
http://www.promisetoprotect.org/Child-Rescue-Tracking.html
Public Awareness (3 Minute Video)
http://www.promisetoprotect.org/Video.html
QUOTE
http://www.promisetoprotect.org/Child-Rescue.html
WHAT WE'RE DOING
Promise to Protect has three main projects focused on child exploitation:
WHAT WE'RE DOING
Promise to Protect has three main projects focused on child exploitation:
- Child Rescue Citizen Action
- Child Rescue Tracking
- Public Awareness (3 Minute Video)
Child Rescue Citizen Action
http://www.promisetoprotect.org/Child-Resc...zen-Action.html
Child Rescue Tracking
http://www.promisetoprotect.org/Child-Rescue-Tracking.html
Public Awareness (3 Minute Video)
http://www.promisetoprotect.org/Video.html
QUOTE(graham4anything @ Jul 1 2009, 05:24 PM) 
...BTW believe_it, you posted on the Michael thread, I do need to ask what is your opinion of him, about the $20million dollar payout...
.
.
QUOTE(believe_it @ Jul 1 2009, 06:08 PM)
I didn't follow the Michael Jackson cases, except superficially...
.
.
Tragic, all around, but the Vachss view is disputed here.
QUOTE
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/earl-ofari-h...t_b_228307.html
Bury the Never Ending Myth of Jackson as Child Molester
Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Political Analyst and Social Issues Commentator
Posted: July 8, 2009 08:11 PM
Websites, blogs and chatrooms pulsed with garish cracks about it. Legions of commentators and news reporters snuck it in every chance they got. More than a few of Michael Jackson's fervent admirers and supporters made a dismissive reference to it. Even President Barack Obama in a cautious acknowledgment of Jackson's towering contributions to American music and artistry still made reference to the "tragedy" in Jackson's life which was a subtle nod to it. And New York Congressman Pete King skipped the niceties and flatly said it.
The "it" is the never ending myth of Jackson the child molester. It still hangs as a damning indictment that feeds the gossip mills and gives an arsenal of ammunition to Jackson detractors. This is not a small point. In the coming weeks, there will be a push to bestow official commemorative monuments, honors on and a national stamp for Jackson. The taint of scandal could doom these efforts to permanently memorialize Jackson.
The child molester myth doesn't rest on Jackson's trial and clean acquittal on multiple child abuse charges in a Santa Maria courthouse in June 2005. Only the most rabid Jackson loathers still finger point to that to taint Jackson. The myth of Jackson as child abuser rests squarely on the charge by a 13 year old boy a decade before the trial and the multi-million dollar settlement out of court. The settlement, then and now, feeds the suspicion that Jackson must have done something unsavory and probably criminal, or else why settle?
Sixteen years later, though, the facts remain unchanged. The charge that Jackson molested the boy was brought by the boy's father. In interviews the boy repeatedly denied the charges. This changed only after he was administered sodium amytal, an invasive, mind altering drug that medical experts have frowned on and courts have disregarded in witness testimony.
Prosecutors, police departments and investigators in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara spent millions of dollars, convened two grand juries and probed nearly 200 witnesses that included 30 children, who knew Jackson to try to substantiate the charge. Not a single corroborating witness was found. Nonetheless, a motley group of disgruntled Jackson's former housekeepers, attendants and bodyguards still peddled the story to any media outlet willing to shell out the cash that Jackson had engaged in child sexual wrongdoing. Not one of the charges was confirmed. Typical was this exchange between one of Jackson's attorneys and one of the accusing bodyguards under oath:
When asked at the time about the charges against Jackson, child behavior experts and psychiatrists nearly all agreed that he did not fit the profile of a pedophile. They agreed that the disorder is progressive and there are generally not one but a trail of victims. The myth of Jackson as child molester never hinged on evidence or testimony to substantiate it, but solely on the settlement. Why then did Jackson agree to it?
No charge stirs more disgust, revulsion, and pricks more emotional hot buttons than the charge of child molestation. The accusation stamps the Scarlet letter of doubt, suspicion, shame and guilt on the accused. The accused can never fully expunge it. There is simply no defense against it. Under the hyper intense media glare and spotlight that Jackson remained under, the allegation no mater how bogus would have been endless fodder for the public gossip mill. This would have wreaked irreparable damage on Jackson's ever shifting musical career and personal life.
A trial in Los Angeles in the racially charged backdrop of the Rodney King beating, the L.A. riots, and pulsating racial tensions in the mid-1990s would have been risky business. A trial in staid, upscale, and majority white, Santa Barbara County would have been even more risky.
Jackson and his attorneys knew that when it came to the charge of child molestation the presumption of innocence, or even actual innocence, is tossed out the window. Though Jackson did nothing wrong, a trial would have left him, his reputation and his career in shambles. The settlement was the only pragmatic, logical and legal way to end the sordid issue.
The settlement under extreme duress must not sully his name and place as an honored American icon. The myth of Jackson as child molester must finally be buried.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, "The Hutchinson Report" can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and nationally on blogtalkradio.com.
Bury the Never Ending Myth of Jackson as Child Molester
Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Political Analyst and Social Issues Commentator
Posted: July 8, 2009 08:11 PM
Websites, blogs and chatrooms pulsed with garish cracks about it. Legions of commentators and news reporters snuck it in every chance they got. More than a few of Michael Jackson's fervent admirers and supporters made a dismissive reference to it. Even President Barack Obama in a cautious acknowledgment of Jackson's towering contributions to American music and artistry still made reference to the "tragedy" in Jackson's life which was a subtle nod to it. And New York Congressman Pete King skipped the niceties and flatly said it.
The "it" is the never ending myth of Jackson the child molester. It still hangs as a damning indictment that feeds the gossip mills and gives an arsenal of ammunition to Jackson detractors. This is not a small point. In the coming weeks, there will be a push to bestow official commemorative monuments, honors on and a national stamp for Jackson. The taint of scandal could doom these efforts to permanently memorialize Jackson.
The child molester myth doesn't rest on Jackson's trial and clean acquittal on multiple child abuse charges in a Santa Maria courthouse in June 2005. Only the most rabid Jackson loathers still finger point to that to taint Jackson. The myth of Jackson as child abuser rests squarely on the charge by a 13 year old boy a decade before the trial and the multi-million dollar settlement out of court. The settlement, then and now, feeds the suspicion that Jackson must have done something unsavory and probably criminal, or else why settle?
Sixteen years later, though, the facts remain unchanged. The charge that Jackson molested the boy was brought by the boy's father. In interviews the boy repeatedly denied the charges. This changed only after he was administered sodium amytal, an invasive, mind altering drug that medical experts have frowned on and courts have disregarded in witness testimony.
Prosecutors, police departments and investigators in Los Angeles and Santa Barbara spent millions of dollars, convened two grand juries and probed nearly 200 witnesses that included 30 children, who knew Jackson to try to substantiate the charge. Not a single corroborating witness was found. Nonetheless, a motley group of disgruntled Jackson's former housekeepers, attendants and bodyguards still peddled the story to any media outlet willing to shell out the cash that Jackson had engaged in child sexual wrongdoing. Not one of the charges was confirmed. Typical was this exchange between one of Jackson's attorneys and one of the accusing bodyguards under oath:
"So you don't know anything about Mr. Jackson and [the boy], do you?"
"All I know is from the sworn documents that other people have sworn to."
"But other than what someone else may have said, you have no firsthand knowledge about Mr. Jackson and [the boy], do you?"
"That's correct."
"Have you spoken to a child who has ever told you that Mr. Jackson did anything improper with the child?"
"No."
"Where did you get your impressions about Jackson's behavior?"
"Just what I've been hearing in the media and what I've experienced with my own eyes."
"Okay. That's the point. You experienced nothing with your own eyes, did you?"
"That's right, nothing."
When asked at the time about the charges against Jackson, child behavior experts and psychiatrists nearly all agreed that he did not fit the profile of a pedophile. They agreed that the disorder is progressive and there are generally not one but a trail of victims. The myth of Jackson as child molester never hinged on evidence or testimony to substantiate it, but solely on the settlement. Why then did Jackson agree to it?
No charge stirs more disgust, revulsion, and pricks more emotional hot buttons than the charge of child molestation. The accusation stamps the Scarlet letter of doubt, suspicion, shame and guilt on the accused. The accused can never fully expunge it. There is simply no defense against it. Under the hyper intense media glare and spotlight that Jackson remained under, the allegation no mater how bogus would have been endless fodder for the public gossip mill. This would have wreaked irreparable damage on Jackson's ever shifting musical career and personal life.
A trial in Los Angeles in the racially charged backdrop of the Rodney King beating, the L.A. riots, and pulsating racial tensions in the mid-1990s would have been risky business. A trial in staid, upscale, and majority white, Santa Barbara County would have been even more risky.
Jackson and his attorneys knew that when it came to the charge of child molestation the presumption of innocence, or even actual innocence, is tossed out the window. Though Jackson did nothing wrong, a trial would have left him, his reputation and his career in shambles. The settlement was the only pragmatic, logical and legal way to end the sordid issue.
The settlement under extreme duress must not sully his name and place as an honored American icon. The myth of Jackson as child molester must finally be buried.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His weekly radio show, "The Hutchinson Report" can be heard on weekly in Los Angeles on KTYM Radio 1460 AM and nationally on blogtalkradio.com.
QUOTE
http://www.promisetoprotect.org/Child-Resc...zen-Action.html
Child Rescue Citizen Action
WITH EVERY NEW RESOURCE we secure, more children are rescued and more predators stopped.
And we are measuring our success and proving it works.
Children Waiting for Help
Every day across America, anti-child exploitation agents spot thousands of online beacons signaling a child in need of help. In the vast majority of cases, those children are waiting for a rescue that will never come. There just aren't enough investigators, analysts and forensic experts. (see "Big Picture" for a more detailed explanation.)
A Simple Plan to Get Children Rescued
Promise to Protect knows that the single best way to protect the most children--and to prevent the most future child abuse from occurring--is to put more people to work investigating child exploitation.
Funding for law enforcement is a public, taxpayer responsibility. But convincing government to commit these resources is the job of citizens. By serving as the catalyst that makes child rescue a priority, we can ensure child victims are located and protected, while predators are removed from access to children.
Building on Success, Building Momentum in 2009
Promise to Protect has taken lessons learned from winning child rescue resources in several states and distilled them into a formula that can be used by citizens everywhere.
In 2009, Promise to Protect will be recruiting volunteers around the U.S. and providing them with the tools, information and training they need to become effective advocates in their own communities and states. We are also working with national law enforcement and government organizations to make child rescue a more urgent priority on their agendas.
With each new law enforcement officer assigned to work child exploitation cases... with each new forensic analyst hired... more cases will be worked, more predators stopped and more children rescued.
Then, working in close coordination with our Child Rescue Tracking project, we will document these success and build even greater momentum.
Child Rescue Citizen Action
WITH EVERY NEW RESOURCE we secure, more children are rescued and more predators stopped.
And we are measuring our success and proving it works.
Children Waiting for Help
Every day across America, anti-child exploitation agents spot thousands of online beacons signaling a child in need of help. In the vast majority of cases, those children are waiting for a rescue that will never come. There just aren't enough investigators, analysts and forensic experts. (see "Big Picture" for a more detailed explanation.)
A Simple Plan to Get Children Rescued
Promise to Protect knows that the single best way to protect the most children--and to prevent the most future child abuse from occurring--is to put more people to work investigating child exploitation.
Funding for law enforcement is a public, taxpayer responsibility. But convincing government to commit these resources is the job of citizens. By serving as the catalyst that makes child rescue a priority, we can ensure child victims are located and protected, while predators are removed from access to children.
Building on Success, Building Momentum in 2009
Promise to Protect has taken lessons learned from winning child rescue resources in several states and distilled them into a formula that can be used by citizens everywhere.
In 2009, Promise to Protect will be recruiting volunteers around the U.S. and providing them with the tools, information and training they need to become effective advocates in their own communities and states. We are also working with national law enforcement and government organizations to make child rescue a more urgent priority on their agendas.
With each new law enforcement officer assigned to work child exploitation cases... with each new forensic analyst hired... more cases will be worked, more predators stopped and more children rescued.
Then, working in close coordination with our Child Rescue Tracking project, we will document these success and build even greater momentum.
QUOTE
The Problem
The only way to locate and rescue these children is with more law enforcement agents. What does it take to make that happen now?
Promise to Protect's Citizen Action Strategy
1. Mount a grassroots campaign to get resources increased at the municipal, county, state and federal level
2. Advocate for these resources to be prioritized for child rescue
3. Track and document the child rescues and predator arrests that result
Under Development
Citizen Action Toolkit
New Multimedia Tools
50-State Plan
Child Rescue Tracking
The only way to locate and rescue these children is with more law enforcement agents. What does it take to make that happen now?
Promise to Protect's Citizen Action Strategy
1. Mount a grassroots campaign to get resources increased at the municipal, county, state and federal level
2. Advocate for these resources to be prioritized for child rescue
3. Track and document the child rescues and predator arrests that result
Under Development
Citizen Action Toolkit
New Multimedia Tools
50-State Plan
Child Rescue Tracking
QUOTE
http://www.protect.org/Newswire/District-o...t-1-victim.html
100 adults line up against 1 victim
Monday, 20 July 2009
An NPR editor caught with child rape videos has gotten probation, after more than 100 people sent letters vouching for him. On the other side: one child pornography victim.
David Malokoff, who resigned as a science editor from NPR after being arrested for child pornography, received just five years probation from U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle, according to the Washington Examiner.
Malakoff apparently claimed he possessed the videos of children being assaulted for therapeutic reasons, trying to "relive his own rape" at age nine. Judge Hevelle bought that defense, concluding that Malakoff would be punished enough by his the "stigma" of his conviction.
According to the Examiner, over 100 of Malakoff's friends rallied around him. Washington Post reporter Brigid Schulte wrote the court asking for leniency, reports the paper, saying "He is an extraordinary soul. Tormented, yes. But throughout the darkness, he radiates goodness.... he does not deserve to be punished so severely a second time."
Lining up against Malakoff's many friends and associates was a 19 year-old survivor of child pornography. "I wish I could grow out of the pain," the girl wrote in a victim impact statement. "I wish it could fade away with age, but just like those images are out there forever, those memories will always be with me.... I pray that that seeing justice done will bring me some closure."
The Examiner story also questions Malakoff's story of childhood abuse.
"Defense attorneys provided a letter that Malakoff wrote in 1996 to a childhood friend who Malakoff believed witnessed the rape," writes reporter Scott McCabe. "Malakoff said he remembered playing in Rock Creek Park with friends... when a strange man showed up and pulled him into the woods.
"The former neighbor wrote back that he recalled that the man abducted another boy, not Malakoff.
"'I can still hear the scream that followed his being led into the woods,' the friend wrote. 'I can still feel the confusion and fear the rest of us had as we looked on..."
Judge Huvelle is well-known in Washington for sentencing corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Congressman Bob Ney to prison. She sentenced a Maryland man to 14 years in prison in 2005 for identity theft crimes.
Another Beltway newsman faces a judge this week on child pornography charges. Aaron Bruns, 29, a former Fox News producer, is scheduled to be sentenced tomorrow. The law enforcement news blog Tickle the Wire has the Malkoff sentencing memorandum
.
100 adults line up against 1 victim
Monday, 20 July 2009
An NPR editor caught with child rape videos has gotten probation, after more than 100 people sent letters vouching for him. On the other side: one child pornography victim.
David Malokoff, who resigned as a science editor from NPR after being arrested for child pornography, received just five years probation from U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle, according to the Washington Examiner.
Malakoff apparently claimed he possessed the videos of children being assaulted for therapeutic reasons, trying to "relive his own rape" at age nine. Judge Hevelle bought that defense, concluding that Malakoff would be punished enough by his the "stigma" of his conviction.
According to the Examiner, over 100 of Malakoff's friends rallied around him. Washington Post reporter Brigid Schulte wrote the court asking for leniency, reports the paper, saying "He is an extraordinary soul. Tormented, yes. But throughout the darkness, he radiates goodness.... he does not deserve to be punished so severely a second time."
Lining up against Malakoff's many friends and associates was a 19 year-old survivor of child pornography. "I wish I could grow out of the pain," the girl wrote in a victim impact statement. "I wish it could fade away with age, but just like those images are out there forever, those memories will always be with me.... I pray that that seeing justice done will bring me some closure."
The Examiner story also questions Malakoff's story of childhood abuse.
"Defense attorneys provided a letter that Malakoff wrote in 1996 to a childhood friend who Malakoff believed witnessed the rape," writes reporter Scott McCabe. "Malakoff said he remembered playing in Rock Creek Park with friends... when a strange man showed up and pulled him into the woods.
"The former neighbor wrote back that he recalled that the man abducted another boy, not Malakoff.
"'I can still hear the scream that followed his being led into the woods,' the friend wrote. 'I can still feel the confusion and fear the rest of us had as we looked on..."
Judge Huvelle is well-known in Washington for sentencing corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff and Congressman Bob Ney to prison. She sentenced a Maryland man to 14 years in prison in 2005 for identity theft crimes.
Another Beltway newsman faces a judge this week on child pornography charges. Aaron Bruns, 29, a former Fox News producer, is scheduled to be sentenced tomorrow. The law enforcement news blog Tickle the Wire has the Malkoff sentencing memorandum
.
Sick stuff, but why make this a regionalist thing, when you Graham have always been perfectly willing to speak about evil in your own backyard? Seems like you are getting the worst of both worlds in being a jerk and being consistent.
And what lacrosse team rapes? Is this like those Salem witches so long ago?
And what lacrosse team rapes? Is this like those Salem witches so long ago?
QUOTE(Arneoker @ Jul 24 2009, 07:45 PM)
Sick stuff, but why make this a regionalist thing, when you Graham have always been perfectly willing to speak about evil in your own backyard? Seems like you are getting the worst of both worlds in being a jerk and being consistent.
And what lacrosse team rapes? Is this like those Salem witches so long ago?
And what lacrosse team rapes? Is this like those Salem witches so long ago?
Arne is correct. You must chose your fights carefully or you lose credibility.
Since October 2008 our agency has operated a SMART grant with USDOJ funds and (in cooperation
with the La. AG's Office, and Secret Service - New Orleans)) have put three dozen child predators in jail.
We have experienced computer forensic officers and those who pose as children in chat rooms.
It is certainly one of the most satisfying parts of the whole job. Sometimes grant writing is cool.
Let's see, socializes with CFR members, jointly raises funds for Beslan orphans, establishes trust wherever he goes, then allegedly organizes online underage sex trafficking site involving same children, arrested, pleads guilty only to sex with underage 'prostitutes,' preliminarily sentenced 6-8 years to be finalized July 30, 2009. Wow.
Stupid article title, should read - Andrew Mogilyansky Arrested On Child Rape and Sex Trafficking Charges.
http://fightforjustice.blogspot.com/2009/0...-rare-plea.html
Stupid article title, should read - Andrew Mogilyansky Arrested On Child Rape and Sex Trafficking Charges.
QUOTE
http://www.jrtelegraph.com/2008/12/andrew-...on-charges.html
December 13, 2008
Andrew Mogilyansky Arrested On Prostitution Charges
The Jewish Exponent
December 11, 2008
Bryan Schwartzman, Staff Writer
Andrew Mogilyansky
A Bucks County businessman and philanthropist allegedly has led a hidden life, in which he helped to run a Russian prostitution ring and engaged in sexual acts with teenage orphans, according to Laurie Magid, acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, which is based in Philadelphia. On Dec. 3, Magid announced that a grand jury had handed down an indictment against Andrew Mogilyansky, a 38-year-old father of three who lives in Richboro and holds dual Russian-American citizenship.
Mogilyansky, who was arrested on Dec. 2, is facing four counts related to engaging in sexual activity with children, charges that could carry up to 30 years in federal prison and a $1 million fine, according to the U.S. attorney's office.
"All of the victims in this case were young girls who were orphans. The defendant took what little they had -- their innocence and their dignity," said Magid in a press release. "As the indictment alleges, not only did he molest them for his own pleasure, but he treated these children as a commodity -- useful, marketable and ultimately disposable."
Mogilyansky's attorney, George Newman, could not be reached for comment.
A bail hearing began Dec. 8 and was scheduled to continue on Dec. 10. Prosecutors are asking for bail to be denied, according to Patty Hartman, spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office.
Mogilyansky is the publisher of the Russian Yellow Pages, and reportedly has a net worth of several million dollars. He is also the chairman and founder of the International Foundation for Terror Act Victims, which was started after rebels took 1,000 or so people hostage at a school in Beslan, Russia. In the ensuing standoff with Russian forces, more than 300 people were killed, including nearly 200 children.
According to its Web site, www.moscowhelp.org, the group has raised more than $1.2 million for the survivors.
While Mogilyansky was not known to be particularly active in Jewish causes, three years ago he ran to be a delegate to the 35th World Zionist Congress in Israel on the slate of RAJI: Russian American Jews for Israel. The group sent delegates; however, Mogilyansky was not among those elected.
In a 2005 interview with the Jewish Exponent, Mogilyansky said: "It's our goal to make sure that the Russian Jewish community stays Jewish."
According to the indictment, from 2002 to 2004, he conspired with a Russian man, Andrei Tarasov, and several others, to set up a prostitution ring that involved teenage orphan girls.
The business was established as a Web site, called "Berenika." The indictment alleges that Mogilyansky invested funds in the illicit venture. Tarasov and the other conspirators were convicted in Russia in 2004, according to Magid. Tarasov is currently serving a 10-year sentence.
Court documents reported that adult and teenage prostitutes were allegedly housed in a Moscow apartment and then moved to another apartment to rendezvous with clients.
According to the recent indictment -- from Dec. 1, 2003 to Jan. 31, 2004 -- Mogilyansky was in Russia, based in an apartment he owned in St. Petersburg. During that time, he allegedly recruited three girls, all under the age of 15, from a St. Petersburg orphanage, and brought them to his apartment for sex.
This was allegedly done as a way to initiate the girls -- whose names were not identified in the indictment -- into the prostitution ring, according to documents.
"Those individuals who commit these heinous crimes abroad and believe they will not be held accountable are sadly mistaken," said John P. Kelleghan, special agent in charge of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office of Investigations in Philadelphia.
Added Kelleghan: "As shown here today, ICE and our international law-enforcement partners around the world stand vigilant to protect the most vulnerable amount us, our children." [link]
December 13, 2008
Andrew Mogilyansky Arrested On Prostitution Charges
The Jewish Exponent
December 11, 2008
Bryan Schwartzman, Staff Writer
Andrew Mogilyansky
A Bucks County businessman and philanthropist allegedly has led a hidden life, in which he helped to run a Russian prostitution ring and engaged in sexual acts with teenage orphans, according to Laurie Magid, acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, which is based in Philadelphia. On Dec. 3, Magid announced that a grand jury had handed down an indictment against Andrew Mogilyansky, a 38-year-old father of three who lives in Richboro and holds dual Russian-American citizenship.
Mogilyansky, who was arrested on Dec. 2, is facing four counts related to engaging in sexual activity with children, charges that could carry up to 30 years in federal prison and a $1 million fine, according to the U.S. attorney's office.
"All of the victims in this case were young girls who were orphans. The defendant took what little they had -- their innocence and their dignity," said Magid in a press release. "As the indictment alleges, not only did he molest them for his own pleasure, but he treated these children as a commodity -- useful, marketable and ultimately disposable."
Mogilyansky's attorney, George Newman, could not be reached for comment.
A bail hearing began Dec. 8 and was scheduled to continue on Dec. 10. Prosecutors are asking for bail to be denied, according to Patty Hartman, spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office.
Mogilyansky is the publisher of the Russian Yellow Pages, and reportedly has a net worth of several million dollars. He is also the chairman and founder of the International Foundation for Terror Act Victims, which was started after rebels took 1,000 or so people hostage at a school in Beslan, Russia. In the ensuing standoff with Russian forces, more than 300 people were killed, including nearly 200 children.
According to its Web site, www.moscowhelp.org, the group has raised more than $1.2 million for the survivors.
While Mogilyansky was not known to be particularly active in Jewish causes, three years ago he ran to be a delegate to the 35th World Zionist Congress in Israel on the slate of RAJI: Russian American Jews for Israel. The group sent delegates; however, Mogilyansky was not among those elected.
In a 2005 interview with the Jewish Exponent, Mogilyansky said: "It's our goal to make sure that the Russian Jewish community stays Jewish."
According to the indictment, from 2002 to 2004, he conspired with a Russian man, Andrei Tarasov, and several others, to set up a prostitution ring that involved teenage orphan girls.
The business was established as a Web site, called "Berenika." The indictment alleges that Mogilyansky invested funds in the illicit venture. Tarasov and the other conspirators were convicted in Russia in 2004, according to Magid. Tarasov is currently serving a 10-year sentence.
Court documents reported that adult and teenage prostitutes were allegedly housed in a Moscow apartment and then moved to another apartment to rendezvous with clients.
According to the recent indictment -- from Dec. 1, 2003 to Jan. 31, 2004 -- Mogilyansky was in Russia, based in an apartment he owned in St. Petersburg. During that time, he allegedly recruited three girls, all under the age of 15, from a St. Petersburg orphanage, and brought them to his apartment for sex.
This was allegedly done as a way to initiate the girls -- whose names were not identified in the indictment -- into the prostitution ring, according to documents.
"Those individuals who commit these heinous crimes abroad and believe they will not be held accountable are sadly mistaken," said John P. Kelleghan, special agent in charge of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Office of Investigations in Philadelphia.
Added Kelleghan: "As shown here today, ICE and our international law-enforcement partners around the world stand vigilant to protect the most vulnerable amount us, our children." [link]
QUOTE
http://www.cdi.org/russia/johnson/2009-83-40.cfm
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:kAEDgP...=clnk&gl=us
Mogilyansky case example of successful U.S.-Russia cooperation -ambassador
MOSCOW. May 4 (Interfax) - The work of U.S. and Russian law enforcers to solve a recent 'sex tourism' case is an example of successful cooperation between the two countries, U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Beyrle said.
Between 2002 and 2004, Andrei Mogilyansky, a citizen of Russia and the United States, conspired with Russian citizen Andrei Tarasov and no less than three other persons to form a sex service ring in Russia, employing underage orphan girls as prostitutes. The illegal business, called Berenika, offered adult and underage girls to clients.
Mogilyansky confessed his guilt to a U.S. court. Tarasov and other accomplices were sentenced in Russia in 2004. Tarasov is serving ten years in a Russian penitentiary.
This is an exemplary case of successful cooperation between Russian and U.S. law enforcement, which shows what achievements both countries may have if they work together, the embassy cited the ambassador as saying.
The solution of this case is a result of an international inquiry supervised by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, the office of the immigration and customs attache at the U.S. embassy in Moscow, the Russian Prosecutor General's Investigation Committee and the St. Petersburg police, the embassy said.
The U.S. court will pass a sentence in the Mogilyansky case in late July.
.
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:kAEDgP...=clnk&gl=us
Mogilyansky case example of successful U.S.-Russia cooperation -ambassador
MOSCOW. May 4 (Interfax) - The work of U.S. and Russian law enforcers to solve a recent 'sex tourism' case is an example of successful cooperation between the two countries, U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Beyrle said.
Between 2002 and 2004, Andrei Mogilyansky, a citizen of Russia and the United States, conspired with Russian citizen Andrei Tarasov and no less than three other persons to form a sex service ring in Russia, employing underage orphan girls as prostitutes. The illegal business, called Berenika, offered adult and underage girls to clients.
Mogilyansky confessed his guilt to a U.S. court. Tarasov and other accomplices were sentenced in Russia in 2004. Tarasov is serving ten years in a Russian penitentiary.
This is an exemplary case of successful cooperation between Russian and U.S. law enforcement, which shows what achievements both countries may have if they work together, the embassy cited the ambassador as saying.
The solution of this case is a result of an international inquiry supervised by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, the office of the immigration and customs attache at the U.S. embassy in Moscow, the Russian Prosecutor General's Investigation Committee and the St. Petersburg police, the embassy said.
The U.S. court will pass a sentence in the Mogilyansky case in late July.
.
QUOTE
http://www.law.com/jsp/law/LawArticleFrien...d=1202430373841
Russian-American Millionaire's Guilty Plea Sets Table for Suit Over Teen Prostitution
Shannon P. Duffy
05-04-2009
A team of lawyers for Fox Rothschild sat patiently waiting in a federal courtroom on Thursday to hear a single word -- guilty -- before they headed to the clerk's office to file a lawsuit that is packed with tragedy and international intrigue.
Attorneys Ely Goldin, David A. Gradwohl and Lilian Nikolaevsky were in the courtroom to witness the entering of a guilty plea by Andrew Mogilyansky, a Russian-American millionaire from Bucks County, Pa., to charges of traveling to his native Russia to have sex with young teenagers who had been plucked from an orphanage and forced into prostitution.
Moments after the hearing ended, the Fox Rothschild lawyers filed an $8 million lawsuit on behalf of five of Mogilyansky's alleged victims.
In court papers, Mogilyansky's personal wealth has been estimated at $10 million. A Columbia University graduate, he owns a car export business based in suburban Philadelphia and other businesses that provide a salary of $750,000 a year or more.
Goldin, who was also born in Russia, said Fox Rothschild's work on the civil suit was a collaborative effort with a Russian law firm, Egorov Puginsky Afanasiev & Partners.
The suit alleges that Mogilyansky and cohorts in Russia developed plans for a business that advertised child prostitution services over the Internet through a Web site known as berenika.org.
Some of the details alleged in the suit are chilling.
"Mogilyansky, together with his U.S. and foreign accomplices, recruited underage girls between the ages of 13 and 15 -- some of whom were orphans living in an orphanage in St. Petersburg, Russia -- and lured them into child prostitution under false pretenses and through false promises of fame and wealth," the suit says.
"In certain cases, Mogilyansky personally had sex with the prospective recruits to determine their suitability as child prostitutes," the suit alleges.
Once a girl was "deemed adequate," the suit alleges, she would be "confined to an apartment and forced to have sex with Mogilyansky and with customers of the prostitution ring."
The suit accuses Mogilyansky of playing a key role in operating the ring, alleging that he "modernized the ring's operations by bringing in a professional management, 'improved' the ring's website by arranging to have it translated into English in order to attract a wealthier international clientele, and marketed and advertised the Ring's services as a 'Western' operation that was run professionally, much like a western business enterprise."
But that "Western" enterprise, the suit alleges, "was built on the backs of child prostitutes who were robbed of their innocence and who suffered terrible and permanent physical, emotional and psychological harm."
Mogilyansky's criminal defense counsel said the charges described in the civil suit are untrue.
In the suit plaintiffs seek compensatory damages of at least $1 million for each of the five plaintiffs, as well as punitive damages of at least $3 million.
In the guilty plea hearing Thursday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle Morgan-Kelly said Mogilyansky, 38, had sex with three girls brought to his St. Petersburg apartment from a nearby orphanage in late 2003 and early 2004.
The indictment, handed up last year, alleged that Mogilyansky then recruited the three girls -- two age 13 and one age 14 -- into an online-based child prostitution business in Moscow that he ran with several other people.
But in his guilty plea before U.S. District Judge Mary A. McLaughlin, Mogilyansky confessed to a narrower set of facts.
Mogilyansky's lawyer, Jack McMahon, told reporters before the hearing that his client was never involved in the running of the prostitution ring. Instead, he said, Mogilyansky was merely a customer who admits that he knew the ring's owners and "used their services."
The prosecutor, in her brief description of the crimes during the hearing, said nothing of Mogilyansky's role in recruiting the girls from the orphanage or his alleged role in running the ring.
Instead, Morgan-Kelly described only the facts necessary to prove the elements of the two federal crimes charged -- one count of traveling in foreign commerce for the purpose of engaging in illicit sexual conduct, and three counts of engaging in such conduct.
Under the terms of Mogilyansky's guilty plea, he faces a negotiated sentence in the range of 78 to 97 months in prison -- far less than the sentence of at least 188 months that he would have faced if he had gone to trial.
The deal also calls for Mogilyansky to pay restitution of $15,000, calculated as $5,000 for each of the three girls to reimburse them for mental health treatment.
After the hearing, McMahon said that he has not seen the civil suit and is not sure whether he will be representing Mogilyansky in that case.
But when asked about the accusations in the suit that Mogilyansky was a manager of the prostitution ring, McMahon said: "They can accuse him of that, but it's just not true."
.
Russian-American Millionaire's Guilty Plea Sets Table for Suit Over Teen Prostitution
Shannon P. Duffy
05-04-2009
A team of lawyers for Fox Rothschild sat patiently waiting in a federal courtroom on Thursday to hear a single word -- guilty -- before they headed to the clerk's office to file a lawsuit that is packed with tragedy and international intrigue.
Attorneys Ely Goldin, David A. Gradwohl and Lilian Nikolaevsky were in the courtroom to witness the entering of a guilty plea by Andrew Mogilyansky, a Russian-American millionaire from Bucks County, Pa., to charges of traveling to his native Russia to have sex with young teenagers who had been plucked from an orphanage and forced into prostitution.
Moments after the hearing ended, the Fox Rothschild lawyers filed an $8 million lawsuit on behalf of five of Mogilyansky's alleged victims.
In court papers, Mogilyansky's personal wealth has been estimated at $10 million. A Columbia University graduate, he owns a car export business based in suburban Philadelphia and other businesses that provide a salary of $750,000 a year or more.
Goldin, who was also born in Russia, said Fox Rothschild's work on the civil suit was a collaborative effort with a Russian law firm, Egorov Puginsky Afanasiev & Partners.
The suit alleges that Mogilyansky and cohorts in Russia developed plans for a business that advertised child prostitution services over the Internet through a Web site known as berenika.org.
Some of the details alleged in the suit are chilling.
"Mogilyansky, together with his U.S. and foreign accomplices, recruited underage girls between the ages of 13 and 15 -- some of whom were orphans living in an orphanage in St. Petersburg, Russia -- and lured them into child prostitution under false pretenses and through false promises of fame and wealth," the suit says.
"In certain cases, Mogilyansky personally had sex with the prospective recruits to determine their suitability as child prostitutes," the suit alleges.
Once a girl was "deemed adequate," the suit alleges, she would be "confined to an apartment and forced to have sex with Mogilyansky and with customers of the prostitution ring."
The suit accuses Mogilyansky of playing a key role in operating the ring, alleging that he "modernized the ring's operations by bringing in a professional management, 'improved' the ring's website by arranging to have it translated into English in order to attract a wealthier international clientele, and marketed and advertised the Ring's services as a 'Western' operation that was run professionally, much like a western business enterprise."
But that "Western" enterprise, the suit alleges, "was built on the backs of child prostitutes who were robbed of their innocence and who suffered terrible and permanent physical, emotional and psychological harm."
Mogilyansky's criminal defense counsel said the charges described in the civil suit are untrue.
In the suit plaintiffs seek compensatory damages of at least $1 million for each of the five plaintiffs, as well as punitive damages of at least $3 million.
In the guilty plea hearing Thursday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle Morgan-Kelly said Mogilyansky, 38, had sex with three girls brought to his St. Petersburg apartment from a nearby orphanage in late 2003 and early 2004.
The indictment, handed up last year, alleged that Mogilyansky then recruited the three girls -- two age 13 and one age 14 -- into an online-based child prostitution business in Moscow that he ran with several other people.
But in his guilty plea before U.S. District Judge Mary A. McLaughlin, Mogilyansky confessed to a narrower set of facts.
Mogilyansky's lawyer, Jack McMahon, told reporters before the hearing that his client was never involved in the running of the prostitution ring. Instead, he said, Mogilyansky was merely a customer who admits that he knew the ring's owners and "used their services."
The prosecutor, in her brief description of the crimes during the hearing, said nothing of Mogilyansky's role in recruiting the girls from the orphanage or his alleged role in running the ring.
Instead, Morgan-Kelly described only the facts necessary to prove the elements of the two federal crimes charged -- one count of traveling in foreign commerce for the purpose of engaging in illicit sexual conduct, and three counts of engaging in such conduct.
Under the terms of Mogilyansky's guilty plea, he faces a negotiated sentence in the range of 78 to 97 months in prison -- far less than the sentence of at least 188 months that he would have faced if he had gone to trial.
The deal also calls for Mogilyansky to pay restitution of $15,000, calculated as $5,000 for each of the three girls to reimburse them for mental health treatment.
After the hearing, McMahon said that he has not seen the civil suit and is not sure whether he will be representing Mogilyansky in that case.
But when asked about the accusations in the suit that Mogilyansky was a manager of the prostitution ring, McMahon said: "They can accuse him of that, but it's just not true."
.
http://fightforjustice.blogspot.com/2009/0...-rare-plea.html
QUOTE
http://www.protect.org/Newswire/National/P...scue-funds.html
PROTECT seeks answers, action on child rescue funds
Tuesday, 23 June 2009
The U.S. House passed a Justice Department spending bill late last week, setting the stage for competition over limited child rescue funds.
The House passed its Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations bill Thursday. Work on the bill now moves to the Senate. But House budget appropriators left one long-running problem unsolved: a fund it calls the Missing and Exploited Children's Budget.
That budget, often known as the MEC budget, mixes critically-important law enforcement funding with program money for smaller programs and the quasi-governmental charity, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).
In past years, the Senate has itemized MEC funding, specifically splitting out funding for the national Internet Crimes Against Children task force network, or ICACs. But the House has refused to break out ICAC funding in the MEC budget, leaving the decision on how to cut the pie to Department of Justice staffers.
That creates a "zero-sum" game that pits desperately-needed child rescue funds against other programs, like the better-funded NCMEC.
Last year, PROTECT fought successfully to win $30 million for the ICACs in the Senate, which would have doubled the size of the ICAC program. However, the House's failure to set aside money specifically for the ICACs allowed the Department of Justice to reduce that funding to $21 million.
Repeated efforts by PROTECT to learn where the remaining MEC budget went have been unsuccessful. PROTECT is seeking this information under a Freedom of Information Act Request.
Pitting the ICAC program against NCMEC and smaller DOJ-funded programs could cause even greater problems in 2010-2011. The 2009 MEC budget of $70 million could shrink to just $61 million in 2010 if the House budget prevails, leaving the ICAC network to fight for an even smaller pie.
House and Senate appropriators say the 2009 funding levels are defensible because the ICACs received an additional $50 million in Mikulski stimulus funding for 2009 and 2010 (a PROTECT victory ). While it's true this temporary funding will protect ICACs in tough times, new problems loom as the stimulus money runs out in 2010 and the MEC budget problem continues... and possibly worsens.
More updates soon. Click here for PROTECT Act - Full Funding, FY2010 Appropriations
.
PROTECT seeks answers, action on child rescue funds
Tuesday, 23 June 2009
The U.S. House passed a Justice Department spending bill late last week, setting the stage for competition over limited child rescue funds.
The House passed its Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations bill Thursday. Work on the bill now moves to the Senate. But House budget appropriators left one long-running problem unsolved: a fund it calls the Missing and Exploited Children's Budget.
That budget, often known as the MEC budget, mixes critically-important law enforcement funding with program money for smaller programs and the quasi-governmental charity, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC).
In past years, the Senate has itemized MEC funding, specifically splitting out funding for the national Internet Crimes Against Children task force network, or ICACs. But the House has refused to break out ICAC funding in the MEC budget, leaving the decision on how to cut the pie to Department of Justice staffers.
That creates a "zero-sum" game that pits desperately-needed child rescue funds against other programs, like the better-funded NCMEC.
Last year, PROTECT fought successfully to win $30 million for the ICACs in the Senate, which would have doubled the size of the ICAC program. However, the House's failure to set aside money specifically for the ICACs allowed the Department of Justice to reduce that funding to $21 million.
Repeated efforts by PROTECT to learn where the remaining MEC budget went have been unsuccessful. PROTECT is seeking this information under a Freedom of Information Act Request.
Pitting the ICAC program against NCMEC and smaller DOJ-funded programs could cause even greater problems in 2010-2011. The 2009 MEC budget of $70 million could shrink to just $61 million in 2010 if the House budget prevails, leaving the ICAC network to fight for an even smaller pie.
House and Senate appropriators say the 2009 funding levels are defensible because the ICACs received an additional $50 million in Mikulski stimulus funding for 2009 and 2010 (a PROTECT victory ). While it's true this temporary funding will protect ICACs in tough times, new problems loom as the stimulus money runs out in 2010 and the MEC budget problem continues... and possibly worsens.
More updates soon. Click here for PROTECT Act - Full Funding, FY2010 Appropriations
.
QUOTE
http://www.promisetoprotect.org/Florida/Fl...s-Children.html
Florida Investigation Arrests 77, Rescues Children
Thursday, 11 June 2009
Florida officials announced this week that they have conducted a 10-week operation against child pornography traffickers, arresting 77 suspects and rescuing at least five children.
The investigation, called "Operation Orange Tree," used cutting edge technology to sift through thousands of online child pornographers in a search for the most dangerous. According to a press release by Gov. Charlie Christ, investigators tracked down 17 suspects who had "how to" videos for child sexual predators.
Law enforcement officials say they have already identified five child victims. If police and child protective services investigators follow-up aggressively, many more children are certain to be identified and protected.
The basic technology in use by Florida authorities is being deployed now by law enforcement in every state. With adequate funding, 77 arrests could be made a day nationwide--and thousands of children rescued a year--without making a dent in the population of known child pornography traffickers.
However, law enforcement is drowning in leads, without the agents they need to locate and rescue those children.
.
Florida Investigation Arrests 77, Rescues Children
Thursday, 11 June 2009
Florida officials announced this week that they have conducted a 10-week operation against child pornography traffickers, arresting 77 suspects and rescuing at least five children.
The investigation, called "Operation Orange Tree," used cutting edge technology to sift through thousands of online child pornographers in a search for the most dangerous. According to a press release by Gov. Charlie Christ, investigators tracked down 17 suspects who had "how to" videos for child sexual predators.
Law enforcement officials say they have already identified five child victims. If police and child protective services investigators follow-up aggressively, many more children are certain to be identified and protected.
The basic technology in use by Florida authorities is being deployed now by law enforcement in every state. With adequate funding, 77 arrests could be made a day nationwide--and thousands of children rescued a year--without making a dent in the population of known child pornography traffickers.
However, law enforcement is drowning in leads, without the agents they need to locate and rescue those children.
.
Two cases wth same posting date; by way of contrast, successful/unsuccessful prosecutions in NY vs NJ? Ironically, the New Yorker is a lawyer.
QUOTE
http://www.promisetoprotect.org/New-Jersey...late-Court.html
AG Wins in Appellate Court - Defense Using TOGDI
July 15, 2009
A pediatric neurologist is free on bail after a 2005 arrest during a statewide child pornography investigation by New Jersey State Police. Thirty-nine suspects were arrested around the state. The issue in the doctor’s case is the identity of the person who downloaded the child pornography.
The Daily Record reports that prosecutors asked for a warrant covering one year of electronic records, but the judge limited the warrant to two weeks before the arrest. The state appealed, arguing that two weeks was insufficient to show the pattern of the suspect’s activity. The AG’s office won in appellate court, with the court saying a data warrant is not bound by the state’s wiretapping laws.
One of the IP addresses was registered to the doctor’s wife. During the initial search of the home, six computers were found, one containing child pornography. Court papers say that the defense is suggesting someone else in the household downloaded the child pornography, or ‘the other guy did it.’
The suspect has surrendered his licenses to practice medicine in New Jersey and New York.
.
AG Wins in Appellate Court - Defense Using TOGDI
July 15, 2009
A pediatric neurologist is free on bail after a 2005 arrest during a statewide child pornography investigation by New Jersey State Police. Thirty-nine suspects were arrested around the state. The issue in the doctor’s case is the identity of the person who downloaded the child pornography.
The Daily Record reports that prosecutors asked for a warrant covering one year of electronic records, but the judge limited the warrant to two weeks before the arrest. The state appealed, arguing that two weeks was insufficient to show the pattern of the suspect’s activity. The AG’s office won in appellate court, with the court saying a data warrant is not bound by the state’s wiretapping laws.
One of the IP addresses was registered to the doctor’s wife. During the initial search of the home, six computers were found, one containing child pornography. Court papers say that the defense is suggesting someone else in the household downloaded the child pornography, or ‘the other guy did it.’
The suspect has surrendered his licenses to practice medicine in New Jersey and New York.
.
QUOTE
http://www.promisetoprotect.org/New-York/F...ads-Guilty.html
Former Counsel to State Senator Pleads Guilty
July 15, 2009
A twenty year, part-time counsel to a Queen’s district New York state senator has pled guilty to one count of child pornography possession.
The suspect was arrested last October following a search of his home in September. The investigation began after the arrest of a California man for possessing child pornography.
LoHud.com reports that chat records and emails between the two men were discovered. The arrest was part of the wider ‘Operation Predator’ investigations. The suspect was fired by the senator after his arrest. (In November, the senator lost his re-election bid for an eleventh term.)
The sentencing hearing is set for October and the defendant is being held without bail. He faces a possible ten years in prison. The Federal guidelines will likely result in a sentence anywhere from 57 and 71 months.
.
Former Counsel to State Senator Pleads Guilty
July 15, 2009
A twenty year, part-time counsel to a Queen’s district New York state senator has pled guilty to one count of child pornography possession.
The suspect was arrested last October following a search of his home in September. The investigation began after the arrest of a California man for possessing child pornography.
LoHud.com reports that chat records and emails between the two men were discovered. The arrest was part of the wider ‘Operation Predator’ investigations. The suspect was fired by the senator after his arrest. (In November, the senator lost his re-election bid for an eleventh term.)
The sentencing hearing is set for October and the defendant is being held without bail. He faces a possible ten years in prison. The Federal guidelines will likely result in a sentence anywhere from 57 and 71 months.
.
I wish I could discern some mention of this category of crime here,
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/02/s...aul_fishma.html
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2009/02/s...aul_fishma.html
Here's a relevant film I can strongly recommend (sight unseen and without having read the book) solely based on the gripping trailer,
http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi2973237785/
Lovely Bones Trailer
Release Date 11 December 2009 (USA)
What a cast.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0380510/
Directed by: Peter Jackson
Writing credits: Fran Walsh (screenplay), Philippa Boyens (screenplay) & Peter Jackson (screenplay); Alice Sebold (novel)
http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi2973237785/
Lovely Bones Trailer
Release Date 11 December 2009 (USA)
What a cast.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0380510/
Directed by: Peter Jackson
Writing credits: Fran Walsh (screenplay), Philippa Boyens (screenplay) & Peter Jackson (screenplay); Alice Sebold (novel)
QUOTE
http://www.protect.org/Newswire/Pennsylvan...witch-hunt.html
No witch hunt
Thursday, 13 August 2009
Self-fashioned "debunkers" love to tell horror stories of "witch hunts" in day care centers. So imagine the decades of speculation and debate that would arise from the case of John Jackey Worman if there were not ironclad evidence.
Authorities say that incredible scene is exactly what happened outside Philadelphia for years. And there should be no circus of claims and counterclaims about "false allegations" and the unreliable testimony of child victims, because John Worman videotaped his crimes in detail.
Worman, of Corwyn, Pennsylvania, was sentenced to 120 years this month for manufacturing child pornography depicting his assaults on a series of children. Police found over 11,000 video clips of Worman's crimes, as well as 1.2 million other child pornography images.
Media reports do not say whether Worman's victims tried to make outcries and were not believed, whether they were frightened into silence or whether they repressed memories of what was done to them. But the years of horror did not come to light until a past victim, now 21 years-old, came forward.
Dorothy Prawdzik, a "girlfriend" of Worman, was sentenced to 30 years in April for her role in the crime ring. Another accomplice, Concetta Jackson, is awaiting sentencing.
Law enforcement knows where hundreds of thousands of child pornography producers and distributors are located in the U.S., yet less than 1% of these known suspects are being investigated, due to a lack of resources.
.
No witch hunt
Thursday, 13 August 2009
Self-fashioned "debunkers" love to tell horror stories of "witch hunts" in day care centers. So imagine the decades of speculation and debate that would arise from the case of John Jackey Worman if there were not ironclad evidence.
At least twelve children come forward with lurid claims of abuse... a six month-old baby is sexually assaulted... a child is locked in a wooden box in a basement... a female day care operator lures children and even participates in the sexual abuse...
Authorities say that incredible scene is exactly what happened outside Philadelphia for years. And there should be no circus of claims and counterclaims about "false allegations" and the unreliable testimony of child victims, because John Worman videotaped his crimes in detail.
Worman, of Corwyn, Pennsylvania, was sentenced to 120 years this month for manufacturing child pornography depicting his assaults on a series of children. Police found over 11,000 video clips of Worman's crimes, as well as 1.2 million other child pornography images.
Media reports do not say whether Worman's victims tried to make outcries and were not believed, whether they were frightened into silence or whether they repressed memories of what was done to them. But the years of horror did not come to light until a past victim, now 21 years-old, came forward.
Dorothy Prawdzik, a "girlfriend" of Worman, was sentenced to 30 years in April for her role in the crime ring. Another accomplice, Concetta Jackson, is awaiting sentencing.
Law enforcement knows where hundreds of thousands of child pornography producers and distributors are located in the U.S., yet less than 1% of these known suspects are being investigated, due to a lack of resources.
.
QUOTE
http://www.protect.org/Oak-Ridge-s-Manhattan-Project-II.html
Oak Ridge's Manhattan Project II
Tuesday, 11 August 2009
"Just imagine the smartest people in the world... put on the worst problem in the world."
--David Keith, PROTECT
OAK RIDGE, TENNESSEE (August 11, 2009)--With over 4,000 scientists and staff and the most powerful "open science" supercomputers in the world, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) says its mission is "to provide solutions to America’s grand scientific challenges."
Now, the Oak Ridge research community may be taking on its grandest, and most important, challenge since the legendary World War II "Manhattan Project."
Computer scientists from ORNL and the Y-12 National Security Complex are targeting hundreds of thousands of child pornography traffickers and their victims.
See the WBIR-TV story (video)
The Partnership
The Oak Ridge project was launched this spring, when PROTECT, Promise to Protect and the University of Tennessee's Law Enforcement Innovation Center (LEIC) brought together Oak Ridge scientists and anti-child exploitation investigators to talk about ways of working together. Bedford County, Virginia Sheriff Mike Brown, a board member of LEIC, made the first introductions. Knoxville Police Department (KPD) officers, led by Chief Sterling Owen IV, gave the scientists a detailed look into the technologicial challenges facing law enforcement. (As the Oak Ridge project picks up steam, the ICAC task force participants say they will be reaching out to colleagues across America, seeking input and partnership.)
The Oak Ridge scientists, led by ORNL's Tom Potok and Y-12's Steve Payne were galvanized. Within days, a delegation from Oak Ridge made the first of many visits to the KPD's Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force. Within weeks, a growing team of volunteer Oak Ridge developers began designing software and hardware for their friends on the law enforcement front lines. The project was off and running.
Enormous Potential
The Oak Ridge project's potential is enormous, says PROTECT Executive Director Grier Weeks. "Congress recognized the crucial importance of technology in the PROTECT Our Children Act of 2008, but federal progress on the technology front has not taken off.
"There's been a government-wide disconnect, where it is understood that cyber-security and economic crimes require serious resources, but it's somehow assumed that volunteers and micro grants are enough to drive child rescue technology. Our hope is that when Washington sees the inspiration and passion for rescuing children coming out of one of America's finest scientific research centers, a light will go on for many people. We can really do this, and this is the way."
Stay tuned for updates...
Oak Ridge's Manhattan Project II
Tuesday, 11 August 2009
"Just imagine the smartest people in the world... put on the worst problem in the world."
--David Keith, PROTECT
OAK RIDGE, TENNESSEE (August 11, 2009)--With over 4,000 scientists and staff and the most powerful "open science" supercomputers in the world, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) says its mission is "to provide solutions to America’s grand scientific challenges."
Now, the Oak Ridge research community may be taking on its grandest, and most important, challenge since the legendary World War II "Manhattan Project."
Computer scientists from ORNL and the Y-12 National Security Complex are targeting hundreds of thousands of child pornography traffickers and their victims.
See the WBIR-TV story (video)
The Partnership
The Oak Ridge project was launched this spring, when PROTECT, Promise to Protect and the University of Tennessee's Law Enforcement Innovation Center (LEIC) brought together Oak Ridge scientists and anti-child exploitation investigators to talk about ways of working together. Bedford County, Virginia Sheriff Mike Brown, a board member of LEIC, made the first introductions. Knoxville Police Department (KPD) officers, led by Chief Sterling Owen IV, gave the scientists a detailed look into the technologicial challenges facing law enforcement. (As the Oak Ridge project picks up steam, the ICAC task force participants say they will be reaching out to colleagues across America, seeking input and partnership.)
The Oak Ridge scientists, led by ORNL's Tom Potok and Y-12's Steve Payne were galvanized. Within days, a delegation from Oak Ridge made the first of many visits to the KPD's Internet Crimes Against Children (ICAC) task force. Within weeks, a growing team of volunteer Oak Ridge developers began designing software and hardware for their friends on the law enforcement front lines. The project was off and running.
Enormous Potential
The Oak Ridge project's potential is enormous, says PROTECT Executive Director Grier Weeks. "Congress recognized the crucial importance of technology in the PROTECT Our Children Act of 2008, but federal progress on the technology front has not taken off.
"There's been a government-wide disconnect, where it is understood that cyber-security and economic crimes require serious resources, but it's somehow assumed that volunteers and micro grants are enough to drive child rescue technology. Our hope is that when Washington sees the inspiration and passion for rescuing children coming out of one of America's finest scientific research centers, a light will go on for many people. We can really do this, and this is the way."
Stay tuned for updates...
QUOTE
http://www.protect.org/Newswire/National/W...-Childhood.html
What's up at Project Safe Childhood?
Monday, 31 August 2009
Radio silence at the Justice Department's child exploitation program...
No press release in 27 days.
http://www.projectsafechildhood.gov/press.htm
.
What's up at Project Safe Childhood?
Monday, 31 August 2009
Radio silence at the Justice Department's child exploitation program...
No press release in 27 days.
http://www.projectsafechildhood.gov/press.htm
.
QUOTE
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/ns/msn..._chris_matthews
VIDEO
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32674756/ns/ms...chris_matthews/
'Hardball with Chris Matthews' for Wednesday, September 2, 2009
TRANSCRIPT:
MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL. Of course, that harrowing story of an 11-year-old girl kidnapped and then held hostage for an amazing 18 years is even more harrowing because the man accused was a registered sex offender. More than that, he had regular visits from parole officers. So why wasn‘t he found out? Is our government doing enough to keep children safe from sex offenders?
Joining me right now is former prosecutor Wendy Murphy. Wendy, we‘re off our usual terrain here. I‘m talking national politics. But this is about politics. It‘s about the ability of government to protect us, to do the most basic thing in our society, keep us safe.
Why was a character like this out? He kidnapped someone, he raped someone, the same person. Then he got out. Then apparently, he was taken back in on a parole violation during the time he had been holding this young girl as sort of a white slave in the back of his house and having two children with her. How did he get away with that in America?
WENDY MURPHY, FORMER PROSECUTOR: First of all, you‘re absolutely right it‘s a political issue, and it takes leadership and a commitment to the equality of women and children as citizens in this country to actually do right in our legal system. And what I mean by “do right” is, make sure that when you‘re locking up, arresting, prosecuting, doing parole supervision around men who target women and children for violence, that you don‘t give out discounts because the people they pick on are somewhat politically marginalized. Look, Chris, this country...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: I want to ask a question here because I think it‘s different. Somebody who murders their spouse after a 20-year fight is a unique state of horror (INAUDIBLE) passion and we sort of understand that that‘s probably not a life of crime. It‘s something can be dealt with maybe a 10-year prison -- 20-year prison sentence. But there‘s a certain recidivism rate with these sex offenders, isn‘t there. It‘s something like 100 percent.
MURPHY: Yes, and I‘m...
MATTHEWS: Isn‘t it?
MURPHY: ... I‘m only for a moment going to give you a pass on the comment about the guy who kills his wife.
MATTHEWS: I‘m trying to explain it. There‘s a uniqueness to this crime.
MURPHY: I know, but I just can‘t let that go. I‘m sorry, Chris. I understand your point. But look, here‘s what sex offenders mean to us, and particularly to women and children. They are prolific. They are mobile. They are predatory. They are opportunistic. And studies show—and you can read this in Anna Salters (ph)‘s book “Predators.” It‘s all there. Studies show that the average sex offender has over 100 different victims during his lifetime, OK? That‘s why they need to go away forever.
And nonetheless, our legal system doles out such deep discounts. Joe Biden, when he was then a senator, submitted a report to Congress in the 1990s that said on average, rapists spend—less than 2 percent of rapists spend even one day behind bars. And on average, all sex offenders spend way less time behind bars than people who commit property crimes. That‘s how little respect we have for women and children in this country. You bet it‘s a political issue!
MATTHEWS: OK, let me—let me get back to the point. I‘m not going to let you take a free shot at me, either, here. If a woman knocks her husband off, kills her husband because after 20 years of beating her, she‘s had enough, and she kills the guy, she‘s not likely to kill again, OK? That‘s a crime in itself.
MURPHY: I understand that, but...
MATTHEWS: That‘s what I‘m saying.
MURPHY: But I‘m just saying...
MATTHEWS: No, that‘s the point I was making.
MURPHY: OK. Fine.
MATTHEWS: So don‘t jump on me on this stuff when I‘m trying to make a distinction here about predators who are relentless and recidivist. Don‘t jump on me...
MURPHY: I understand.
MATTHEWS: ... when I‘m trying to make a pint. I know what you‘re trying to do here.
MURPHY: I got your point.
MATTHEWS: Don‘t use me as your tackling dummy, OK? Let‘s get back to this case.
MURPHY: No, I didn‘t. I didn‘t. I just didn‘t agree with you, that‘s all.
MATTHEWS: You did! No, no. You jumped on me. OK, let‘s get back to this case here. What do we do with these people when they have a—when there‘s a track record, to use a terrible time, a sports reference—of course, I shouldn‘t do that, either. But what do we do with people like this? What do we do with them?
MURPHY: Well, number one, it would help if we actually punished them when they get caught the first time because then they‘d less of the opportunity to commit those other 99 offenses, number one. Number two...
MATTHEWS: But even then, how long do you—once you let them out after, say, five or ten years for a molestation case, which is not a capital case, it‘s not a rape case, it‘s a—it‘s a crime. So they get—how many years would they normally get for that, for some kind of child molestation? What would they normally get?
MURPHY: If what you mean by molestation is something not rape—a lot of states call molestation—mean rape when they say molestation.
MATTHEWS: Yes.
MURPHY: But if what you mean a pat on the fanny, and they‘re going to get out, and that‘s fine, let‘s at least make sure that the people monitoring them, the probation officers and the parole officers, are doing their job.
This guy was on parole in California. Regular visits from the parole officer. The neighbors knew there were kids in the backyard and a parole officer didn‘t? And they said he didn‘t have any parole violations during the time. We had him from 1999 until last month, he had no violations?
He had a big whopping violation going on in his backyard and they cared so much about the things he had done wrong and they were so unconcerned about what he had done wrong, they couldn‘t look in the backyard? That is a reflection of how little.
MATTHEWS: Yes, what about the judge.
MURPHY: . value was placed on the crime he committed.
MATTHEWS: Wendy, what about the judge—what about the judge who gave a rather lenient sentence for a fellow who was supposed to have served 50 years for kidnapping and rape across interstate lines, and he reduced it dramatically after the guy wrote a letter to him?
MURPHY: Yes. Another big fraud on the public that happens every day in this country. He got 50 years behind bars and everybody said, oh, isn‘t that terrific, that is what he deserved for what he did.
MATTHEWS: Yes.
MURPHY: But the fraud on the public is a few years later he filed for a reduction and he did 10 years, not 50. And guess what? There was no public disclosure. There was no, you know, front page news story about the big discount he got now was there? No.
And that gave him the chance to go grab that little girl, impregnate her, rape her, God knows what else he did in his own back yard where the neighbors knew it was going on, but no cop, no parole officer, are you kidding me? Why are we not marching in the streets?
Here is another political issue, where is the National Organization for Women on this? Where are the rape crisis centers? Where is the outrage that this guy was doing that under the nose of parole officers and no one saw?
Are you kidding me? I want the lawsuit. I will sue that parole department so fast. They will spend so much money paying that family for what they went through, they will never blow it again.
MATTHEWS: Wendy Murphy, that is why we had you on. Thank you very much for coming on (INAUDIBLE). And it is a big issue right now. Thank you very much for coming on.
.
VIDEO
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32674756/ns/ms...chris_matthews/
'Hardball with Chris Matthews' for Wednesday, September 2, 2009
TRANSCRIPT:
MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL. Of course, that harrowing story of an 11-year-old girl kidnapped and then held hostage for an amazing 18 years is even more harrowing because the man accused was a registered sex offender. More than that, he had regular visits from parole officers. So why wasn‘t he found out? Is our government doing enough to keep children safe from sex offenders?
Joining me right now is former prosecutor Wendy Murphy. Wendy, we‘re off our usual terrain here. I‘m talking national politics. But this is about politics. It‘s about the ability of government to protect us, to do the most basic thing in our society, keep us safe.
Why was a character like this out? He kidnapped someone, he raped someone, the same person. Then he got out. Then apparently, he was taken back in on a parole violation during the time he had been holding this young girl as sort of a white slave in the back of his house and having two children with her. How did he get away with that in America?
WENDY MURPHY, FORMER PROSECUTOR: First of all, you‘re absolutely right it‘s a political issue, and it takes leadership and a commitment to the equality of women and children as citizens in this country to actually do right in our legal system. And what I mean by “do right” is, make sure that when you‘re locking up, arresting, prosecuting, doing parole supervision around men who target women and children for violence, that you don‘t give out discounts because the people they pick on are somewhat politically marginalized. Look, Chris, this country...
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: I want to ask a question here because I think it‘s different. Somebody who murders their spouse after a 20-year fight is a unique state of horror (INAUDIBLE) passion and we sort of understand that that‘s probably not a life of crime. It‘s something can be dealt with maybe a 10-year prison -- 20-year prison sentence. But there‘s a certain recidivism rate with these sex offenders, isn‘t there. It‘s something like 100 percent.
MURPHY: Yes, and I‘m...
MATTHEWS: Isn‘t it?
MURPHY: ... I‘m only for a moment going to give you a pass on the comment about the guy who kills his wife.
MATTHEWS: I‘m trying to explain it. There‘s a uniqueness to this crime.
MURPHY: I know, but I just can‘t let that go. I‘m sorry, Chris. I understand your point. But look, here‘s what sex offenders mean to us, and particularly to women and children. They are prolific. They are mobile. They are predatory. They are opportunistic. And studies show—and you can read this in Anna Salters (ph)‘s book “Predators.” It‘s all there. Studies show that the average sex offender has over 100 different victims during his lifetime, OK? That‘s why they need to go away forever.
And nonetheless, our legal system doles out such deep discounts. Joe Biden, when he was then a senator, submitted a report to Congress in the 1990s that said on average, rapists spend—less than 2 percent of rapists spend even one day behind bars. And on average, all sex offenders spend way less time behind bars than people who commit property crimes. That‘s how little respect we have for women and children in this country. You bet it‘s a political issue!
MATTHEWS: OK, let me—let me get back to the point. I‘m not going to let you take a free shot at me, either, here. If a woman knocks her husband off, kills her husband because after 20 years of beating her, she‘s had enough, and she kills the guy, she‘s not likely to kill again, OK? That‘s a crime in itself.
MURPHY: I understand that, but...
MATTHEWS: That‘s what I‘m saying.
MURPHY: But I‘m just saying...
MATTHEWS: No, that‘s the point I was making.
MURPHY: OK. Fine.
MATTHEWS: So don‘t jump on me on this stuff when I‘m trying to make a distinction here about predators who are relentless and recidivist. Don‘t jump on me...
MURPHY: I understand.
MATTHEWS: ... when I‘m trying to make a pint. I know what you‘re trying to do here.
MURPHY: I got your point.
MATTHEWS: Don‘t use me as your tackling dummy, OK? Let‘s get back to this case.
MURPHY: No, I didn‘t. I didn‘t. I just didn‘t agree with you, that‘s all.
MATTHEWS: You did! No, no. You jumped on me. OK, let‘s get back to this case here. What do we do with these people when they have a—when there‘s a track record, to use a terrible time, a sports reference—of course, I shouldn‘t do that, either. But what do we do with people like this? What do we do with them?
MURPHY: Well, number one, it would help if we actually punished them when they get caught the first time because then they‘d less of the opportunity to commit those other 99 offenses, number one. Number two...
MATTHEWS: But even then, how long do you—once you let them out after, say, five or ten years for a molestation case, which is not a capital case, it‘s not a rape case, it‘s a—it‘s a crime. So they get—how many years would they normally get for that, for some kind of child molestation? What would they normally get?
MURPHY: If what you mean by molestation is something not rape—a lot of states call molestation—mean rape when they say molestation.
MATTHEWS: Yes.
MURPHY: But if what you mean a pat on the fanny, and they‘re going to get out, and that‘s fine, let‘s at least make sure that the people monitoring them, the probation officers and the parole officers, are doing their job.
This guy was on parole in California. Regular visits from the parole officer. The neighbors knew there were kids in the backyard and a parole officer didn‘t? And they said he didn‘t have any parole violations during the time. We had him from 1999 until last month, he had no violations?
He had a big whopping violation going on in his backyard and they cared so much about the things he had done wrong and they were so unconcerned about what he had done wrong, they couldn‘t look in the backyard? That is a reflection of how little.
MATTHEWS: Yes, what about the judge.
MURPHY: . value was placed on the crime he committed.
MATTHEWS: Wendy, what about the judge—what about the judge who gave a rather lenient sentence for a fellow who was supposed to have served 50 years for kidnapping and rape across interstate lines, and he reduced it dramatically after the guy wrote a letter to him?
MURPHY: Yes. Another big fraud on the public that happens every day in this country. He got 50 years behind bars and everybody said, oh, isn‘t that terrific, that is what he deserved for what he did.
MATTHEWS: Yes.
MURPHY: But the fraud on the public is a few years later he filed for a reduction and he did 10 years, not 50. And guess what? There was no public disclosure. There was no, you know, front page news story about the big discount he got now was there? No.
And that gave him the chance to go grab that little girl, impregnate her, rape her, God knows what else he did in his own back yard where the neighbors knew it was going on, but no cop, no parole officer, are you kidding me? Why are we not marching in the streets?
Here is another political issue, where is the National Organization for Women on this? Where are the rape crisis centers? Where is the outrage that this guy was doing that under the nose of parole officers and no one saw?
Are you kidding me? I want the lawsuit. I will sue that parole department so fast. They will spend so much money paying that family for what they went through, they will never blow it again.
MATTHEWS: Wendy Murphy, that is why we had you on. Thank you very much for coming on (INAUDIBLE). And it is a big issue right now. Thank you very much for coming on.
.
George Deukmejian
republican
gov. of California after being Attorney General
I would say it squarely is HIS fault.
then followed for 8 years by Pete Wilson
the two of them ruined California for alltime.
Hope beyond hope that Jerry Brown wins election next year.
republican
gov. of California after being Attorney General
I would say it squarely is HIS fault.
then followed for 8 years by Pete Wilson
the two of them ruined California for alltime.
Hope beyond hope that Jerry Brown wins election next year.
QUOTE
http://www.protect.org/Newswire/National/L...ority-list.html
Lower child porn sentences on "priority list"?
Thursday, 10 September 2009
At least three federal judges told the U.S. Sentencing Commission this week that they believe penalties for possession of child pornography are too high. One commissioner, Beryl Howell, responded that the issue "is on our priority list for the coming year," reports the National Law Journal.
"Chief Judge James Carr of the Northern District of Ohio and Chief Judge Gerald Rosen of the Eastern District of Michigan told the panel on Wednesday that sentencing for possession of child pornography, as opposed to manufacture or commercial distribution, may need to be changed," says the Journal.
A third judge, 7th Circuit Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook, agrees, says the Journal. "He said it gives him pause when he sifts through a stack of sentences that includes a bank robber getting a 10-month sentence and a person convicted of downloading child pornography receiving a 480-month sentence."
U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzerald, known nationally for his white collar crime investigations of the Valerie Plame and Rod Blogojevich cases, seemed to support reexamining sentencing. The Journal reports he will testify this week that he "respectfully suggest[s] that this is an area of sentencing that warrants further study and further education of all involved."
.
Lower child porn sentences on "priority list"?
Thursday, 10 September 2009
At least three federal judges told the U.S. Sentencing Commission this week that they believe penalties for possession of child pornography are too high. One commissioner, Beryl Howell, responded that the issue "is on our priority list for the coming year," reports the National Law Journal.
"Chief Judge James Carr of the Northern District of Ohio and Chief Judge Gerald Rosen of the Eastern District of Michigan told the panel on Wednesday that sentencing for possession of child pornography, as opposed to manufacture or commercial distribution, may need to be changed," says the Journal.
A third judge, 7th Circuit Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook, agrees, says the Journal. "He said it gives him pause when he sifts through a stack of sentences that includes a bank robber getting a 10-month sentence and a person convicted of downloading child pornography receiving a 480-month sentence."
U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzerald, known nationally for his white collar crime investigations of the Valerie Plame and Rod Blogojevich cases, seemed to support reexamining sentencing. The Journal reports he will testify this week that he "respectfully suggest[s] that this is an area of sentencing that warrants further study and further education of all involved."
.
QUOTE
http://www.protect.org/Newswire/Virginia/P...n-Virginia.html
Pro-Child, Anti-Crime in Virginia
Friday, 25 September 2009
Remember when PROTECT drove national attention to rampant child pornography trafficking in Virginia? Well, now a Virginia candidate for Attorney General is doing the same with an in-your-face ad promising to rescue children.
In 2006, PROTECT embarked on a campaign to "recode the cultural software " when it comes to child exploitation. One of the surest signs our campaign is succeeding is evidence that we are changing the public and political dialogue when it comes to crime and child protection.
If you want to see real pro-child, anti-crime politics in action -- a powerful, new politics that raises the stakes for what's truly important and for the promises elected officials should be held to -- sit down, fasten your seatbelt and take a look at this new television ad by Virginia Attorney General candidate Steve Shannon!
Ad Transcript:
"If you're trafficking in child pornography you should listen to what I am saying. We know who you are. Law enforcement has tracked child pornography to 19,357 specific computers across Virginia. I am Steve Shannon and when I am Attorney General we will use that information to track down exactly where you are. We will find you, and we will find those children and bring them to safety. Steve Shannon for Attorney General- A Prosecutor to Protect our Families"
View ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONKSANKIQgE...r_embedded#t=29
Pro-Child, Anti-Crime in Virginia
Friday, 25 September 2009
Remember when PROTECT drove national attention to rampant child pornography trafficking in Virginia? Well, now a Virginia candidate for Attorney General is doing the same with an in-your-face ad promising to rescue children.
In 2006, PROTECT embarked on a campaign to "recode the cultural software " when it comes to child exploitation. One of the surest signs our campaign is succeeding is evidence that we are changing the public and political dialogue when it comes to crime and child protection.
If you want to see real pro-child, anti-crime politics in action -- a powerful, new politics that raises the stakes for what's truly important and for the promises elected officials should be held to -- sit down, fasten your seatbelt and take a look at this new television ad by Virginia Attorney General candidate Steve Shannon!
Ad Transcript:
"If you're trafficking in child pornography you should listen to what I am saying. We know who you are. Law enforcement has tracked child pornography to 19,357 specific computers across Virginia. I am Steve Shannon and when I am Attorney General we will use that information to track down exactly where you are. We will find you, and we will find those children and bring them to safety. Steve Shannon for Attorney General- A Prosecutor to Protect our Families"
View ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONKSANKIQgE...r_embedded#t=29
Link for word 'rampant' above,
QUOTE
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...8040803930.html
Officials Find Child Pornography on 20,000 Va. Computers
Fourth-Highest Number Of Offenders in Herndon
By Chris L. Jenkins
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Law enforcement officials working undercover were sent child pornography files from nearly 20,000 private computers in the state over a 30-month period, according to a report by an expert on the distribution of Internet child porn.
Those computers accounted for 215,197 Internet child pornography transactions between October 2005 and February, according to a state report developed by Flint Waters, a special agent with the Wyoming attorney general's Division of Criminal Investigation. He has developed a national online system to track such activity.
Waters is part of a federal program, the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, which consists of 59 law enforcement agencies nationwide, including two in Virginia. Waters's report found that Herndon ranked fourth among Virginia localities in the number of computers known to possess child pornography statewide. The town of 23,000 is reported to have 1,058 known computers that sent hard-core child pornography to investigators. The task force helped analyze the data, which found that Alexandria had 657 such computers; Fairfax County, 507; Arlington County, 503; and Woodbridge, 467. The city with the most computers was Virginia Beach, followed by Norfolk and Richmond.
The recorded numbers are just a small percentage of the traffic generated by child pornography distributors, who use peer-to-peer file-sharing networks such as Lime Wire to peddle often violent and hard-core movies and images, Waters said. The program tallies only the files that were distributed to undercover officers. The tracking software investigators use, Operation Fairplay, does not tally files shared between private users.
"Right now there's no way that law enforcement can keep up with all this activity," Waters said, adding that such activity has increased steadily in the United States.
Operation Fairplay is being used by law enforcement agencies across the United States and in 18 other countries, including England, France and Sweden. The software allows investigators to download child pornography from a suspected computer that shares files with the investigators and then identify the machine's Internet protocol address. Officials can obtain a physical address from the sender's Internet service provider, which can lead to a search warrant.
Virginia has started to expand state efforts to track down such offenders. Lawmakers will add $1.5 million to the biannual budget approved last month by the General Assembly and Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) for the state's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. The task force's units, based in Fairfax and Bedford counties, are charged with helping police find Internet predators.
Virginia officials estimate that law enforcement officials are able to follow up on less than 2 percent of known cases, because of a lack of resources. The additional funding will enable departments to train more officers and provide more communities with the tracking software.
"The problem is expanding exponentially," said Del. Brian J. Moran (D-Alexandria), who pushed for the increase in state funding. He cited federal statistics that have shown that 55 percent of possessors of child pornography had committed contact offenses.
"The more you know about this stuff," Moran said, "the more you realize that every time you bring a computer into your home, you provide online predators with access to your children."
Officials Find Child Pornography on 20,000 Va. Computers
Fourth-Highest Number Of Offenders in Herndon
By Chris L. Jenkins
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Law enforcement officials working undercover were sent child pornography files from nearly 20,000 private computers in the state over a 30-month period, according to a report by an expert on the distribution of Internet child porn.
Those computers accounted for 215,197 Internet child pornography transactions between October 2005 and February, according to a state report developed by Flint Waters, a special agent with the Wyoming attorney general's Division of Criminal Investigation. He has developed a national online system to track such activity.
Waters is part of a federal program, the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, which consists of 59 law enforcement agencies nationwide, including two in Virginia. Waters's report found that Herndon ranked fourth among Virginia localities in the number of computers known to possess child pornography statewide. The town of 23,000 is reported to have 1,058 known computers that sent hard-core child pornography to investigators. The task force helped analyze the data, which found that Alexandria had 657 such computers; Fairfax County, 507; Arlington County, 503; and Woodbridge, 467. The city with the most computers was Virginia Beach, followed by Norfolk and Richmond.
The recorded numbers are just a small percentage of the traffic generated by child pornography distributors, who use peer-to-peer file-sharing networks such as Lime Wire to peddle often violent and hard-core movies and images, Waters said. The program tallies only the files that were distributed to undercover officers. The tracking software investigators use, Operation Fairplay, does not tally files shared between private users.
"Right now there's no way that law enforcement can keep up with all this activity," Waters said, adding that such activity has increased steadily in the United States.
Operation Fairplay is being used by law enforcement agencies across the United States and in 18 other countries, including England, France and Sweden. The software allows investigators to download child pornography from a suspected computer that shares files with the investigators and then identify the machine's Internet protocol address. Officials can obtain a physical address from the sender's Internet service provider, which can lead to a search warrant.
Virginia has started to expand state efforts to track down such offenders. Lawmakers will add $1.5 million to the biannual budget approved last month by the General Assembly and Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D) for the state's Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. The task force's units, based in Fairfax and Bedford counties, are charged with helping police find Internet predators.
Virginia officials estimate that law enforcement officials are able to follow up on less than 2 percent of known cases, because of a lack of resources. The additional funding will enable departments to train more officers and provide more communities with the tracking software.
"The problem is expanding exponentially," said Del. Brian J. Moran (D-Alexandria), who pushed for the increase in state funding. He cited federal statistics that have shown that 55 percent of possessors of child pornography had committed contact offenses.
"The more you know about this stuff," Moran said, "the more you realize that every time you bring a computer into your home, you provide online predators with access to your children."
QUOTE
http://www.venturacountystar.com/news/2009...ts-on-graphic/#
Justices to hear arguments on animal cruelty video law
By Michael Collins (Contact)
Friday, October 2, 2009
WASHINGTON — Investigators in Michael Bradbury’s office were in the midst of a routine investigation into child pornography years ago when they stumbled upon a bizarre and gruesome fetish.
Some people, they were horrified to learn, seek sexual gratification by watching graphic videos in which kittens, rabbits, hamsters and other small animals are stomped to death by women, usually with their bare feet or in high-heeled shoes.
“Once we started looking into it further, we determined it was much more than a regional problem; it was a national problem,” recalled Bradbury, the former Ventura County district attorney.
The discovery by Bradbury’s office eventually led to a federal law that is now the subject of a legal battle that involves questions about animal cruelty, free speech and the specter of censorship.
The 1999 law, pushed through Congress by Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Simi Valley, banned the production, possession and sale of videos depicting acts of animal cruelty for commercial gain.
In Washington, the Supreme Court will hear arguments Tuesday on whether the law should be overturned on the grounds that it threatens free speech.
Unlikely allies made
The legal case has caught the attention of the film industry, book publishers, news organizations and other opponents of censorship, all of which have filed legal briefs asking the court to strike down the statute.
It has even made unlikely allies out of disparate groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Rifle Association, which seldom agree on anything but have each filed legal briefs in support of overturning the law.
On the other side are animal rights groups and attorneys general from 26 states, including California, who argue the law should be upheld.
“This is not speech,” Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, said of the videos.
“This is commercial activity of a sickening and barbaric type,” Pacelle said, “and the peddlers of this smut should find no safe harbor for it in the First Amendment.”
The case that brought the matter before the high court doesn’t involve so-called animal “crush” videos like those Bradbury’s investigators came across years ago. Instead, the three tapes at the center of the legal proceedings show brutal, bloody scenes of pit bull fighting.
Pit bull videos spark suit
Robert Stevens, 69, an author and sometime film producer, was arrested and charged with three counts of violating the law after federal agents seized the tapes during a predawn raid of his rural Virginia home in 2003.
Stevens, who sold his books and videos over the Internet, wasn’t actually involved in the dogfighting shown in the films. He compiled the videos from footage he had obtained from other sources.
Some of the footage came from Japan, where dogfighting is legal.
In court documents, Stevens’ attorneys portray him as someone who opposes dogfighting, thinks it should be illegal and uses his books and videos to teach people how to care for and safely handle pit bills.
Regardless, Stevens was convicted and sentenced to 37 months in prison for selling the videos, a stiffer sentence, his attorneys wryly note, than what professional football player Michael Vick received for actually taking part in an interstate dogfighting ring.
Last year, Stevens scored a legal victory when the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia overturned his conviction and ruled that the federal law illegally restricts free speech.
Though the court said preventing cruelty to animals is a worthy goal, it rejected the government’s argument that the law is justified by a “compelling interest in protecting animals from wanton acts of cruelty.”
Intended to stop cruelty
The decision set the stage for Tuesday’s proceedings before the Supreme Court and infuriated animal rights groups and prosecutors, who say the law is needed not only because it targets animal brutality but also because it furthers the government’s interest in preventing harm to humans.
Notorious killers, such as Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy and “Son of Sam” killer David Berkowitz, all committed acts of violence against animals before moving on to human victims, the government says in court documents.
“If you can argue that killing animals, which is animal cruelty, is an expression of free speech, what’s to stop someone from killing a human being and saying the same thing?” Bradbury asked.
The law is not a threat to free speech, supporters argue, because it specifically exempted any speech with serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historic or artistic value.
Gallegly, who is co-chairman of the Congressional Animal Protection Caucus, said the intent was to stop “barbaric acts of cruelty” against animals. The law was reviewed by a number of constitutional experts, he said, and language was added before it finally passed Congress to address some potential free-speech concerns.
“We were very careful with the bill to ensure that it doesn’t affect constitutionally protected free speech,” Gallegly said.
Not far-fetched
However, free-speech advocates argue the law is so broad that it could apply to other works, such as hunting videos or photography, documentaries and even news footage showing animal cruelty.
The law may provide exemptions for “serious” works, but the problem is that, in the end, a jury will be the arbiter of what does or does not have “serious” merit, said Joan Bertin, executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship.
“People are supposed to know they can say, write, paint, draw or film things, and they shouldn’t have to be guessing about what’s legal and what’s not,” Bertin said. “If you leave that determination to a jury, then you really can have very little assurance that there is going to be any consistency in the law.”
Some great works of art have been judged obscene or garbage when they were first produced, only to be revered by future generations, Bertin said.
“If juries of the day had to decide whether Matisse’s ‘Blue Nude’ had serious value, they would have said no,” Bertin said. “So we know from the history of art censorship that this is not a far-fetched concern.”
Others argue the federal law banning the videos is unnecessary because all 50 states already have laws against animal cruelty.
But prosecutors say it would be difficult to use animal cruelty laws to go after the perpetrators because their faces are often obscured in the videos. At dogfighting events, participants often have scattered by the time police arrive on the scene.
Gallegly said his law allows authorities to stop animal brutality by targeting those who produce or sell such videos.
“If, in the course of prosecution, they can bring in the actual perpetrators (of animal cruelty) and get them convicted of a crime, great,” Gallegly said.
“But this (law) is a conduit to get there as well.”
.
Justices to hear arguments on animal cruelty video law
By Michael Collins (Contact)
Friday, October 2, 2009
WASHINGTON — Investigators in Michael Bradbury’s office were in the midst of a routine investigation into child pornography years ago when they stumbled upon a bizarre and gruesome fetish.
Some people, they were horrified to learn, seek sexual gratification by watching graphic videos in which kittens, rabbits, hamsters and other small animals are stomped to death by women, usually with their bare feet or in high-heeled shoes.
“Once we started looking into it further, we determined it was much more than a regional problem; it was a national problem,” recalled Bradbury, the former Ventura County district attorney.
The discovery by Bradbury’s office eventually led to a federal law that is now the subject of a legal battle that involves questions about animal cruelty, free speech and the specter of censorship.
The 1999 law, pushed through Congress by Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Simi Valley, banned the production, possession and sale of videos depicting acts of animal cruelty for commercial gain.
In Washington, the Supreme Court will hear arguments Tuesday on whether the law should be overturned on the grounds that it threatens free speech.
Unlikely allies made
The legal case has caught the attention of the film industry, book publishers, news organizations and other opponents of censorship, all of which have filed legal briefs asking the court to strike down the statute.
It has even made unlikely allies out of disparate groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Rifle Association, which seldom agree on anything but have each filed legal briefs in support of overturning the law.
On the other side are animal rights groups and attorneys general from 26 states, including California, who argue the law should be upheld.
“This is not speech,” Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, said of the videos.
“This is commercial activity of a sickening and barbaric type,” Pacelle said, “and the peddlers of this smut should find no safe harbor for it in the First Amendment.”
The case that brought the matter before the high court doesn’t involve so-called animal “crush” videos like those Bradbury’s investigators came across years ago. Instead, the three tapes at the center of the legal proceedings show brutal, bloody scenes of pit bull fighting.
Pit bull videos spark suit
Robert Stevens, 69, an author and sometime film producer, was arrested and charged with three counts of violating the law after federal agents seized the tapes during a predawn raid of his rural Virginia home in 2003.
Stevens, who sold his books and videos over the Internet, wasn’t actually involved in the dogfighting shown in the films. He compiled the videos from footage he had obtained from other sources.
Some of the footage came from Japan, where dogfighting is legal.
In court documents, Stevens’ attorneys portray him as someone who opposes dogfighting, thinks it should be illegal and uses his books and videos to teach people how to care for and safely handle pit bills.
Regardless, Stevens was convicted and sentenced to 37 months in prison for selling the videos, a stiffer sentence, his attorneys wryly note, than what professional football player Michael Vick received for actually taking part in an interstate dogfighting ring.
Last year, Stevens scored a legal victory when the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia overturned his conviction and ruled that the federal law illegally restricts free speech.
Though the court said preventing cruelty to animals is a worthy goal, it rejected the government’s argument that the law is justified by a “compelling interest in protecting animals from wanton acts of cruelty.”
Intended to stop cruelty
The decision set the stage for Tuesday’s proceedings before the Supreme Court and infuriated animal rights groups and prosecutors, who say the law is needed not only because it targets animal brutality but also because it furthers the government’s interest in preventing harm to humans.
Notorious killers, such as Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy and “Son of Sam” killer David Berkowitz, all committed acts of violence against animals before moving on to human victims, the government says in court documents.
“If you can argue that killing animals, which is animal cruelty, is an expression of free speech, what’s to stop someone from killing a human being and saying the same thing?” Bradbury asked.
The law is not a threat to free speech, supporters argue, because it specifically exempted any speech with serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historic or artistic value.
Gallegly, who is co-chairman of the Congressional Animal Protection Caucus, said the intent was to stop “barbaric acts of cruelty” against animals. The law was reviewed by a number of constitutional experts, he said, and language was added before it finally passed Congress to address some potential free-speech concerns.
“We were very careful with the bill to ensure that it doesn’t affect constitutionally protected free speech,” Gallegly said.
Not far-fetched
However, free-speech advocates argue the law is so broad that it could apply to other works, such as hunting videos or photography, documentaries and even news footage showing animal cruelty.
The law may provide exemptions for “serious” works, but the problem is that, in the end, a jury will be the arbiter of what does or does not have “serious” merit, said Joan Bertin, executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship.
“People are supposed to know they can say, write, paint, draw or film things, and they shouldn’t have to be guessing about what’s legal and what’s not,” Bertin said. “If you leave that determination to a jury, then you really can have very little assurance that there is going to be any consistency in the law.”
Some great works of art have been judged obscene or garbage when they were first produced, only to be revered by future generations, Bertin said.
“If juries of the day had to decide whether Matisse’s ‘Blue Nude’ had serious value, they would have said no,” Bertin said. “So we know from the history of art censorship that this is not a far-fetched concern.”
Others argue the federal law banning the videos is unnecessary because all 50 states already have laws against animal cruelty.
But prosecutors say it would be difficult to use animal cruelty laws to go after the perpetrators because their faces are often obscured in the videos. At dogfighting events, participants often have scattered by the time police arrive on the scene.
Gallegly said his law allows authorities to stop animal brutality by targeting those who produce or sell such videos.
“If, in the course of prosecution, they can bring in the actual perpetrators (of animal cruelty) and get them convicted of a crime, great,” Gallegly said.
“But this (law) is a conduit to get there as well.”
.
QUOTE
http://hsus.typepad.com/wayne/2009/09/crush-videos.html
September 15, 2009
"Crush Video" Investigation Evidence for Federal Law
Today, at an HSUS press conference previewing the U.S. Supreme Court’s examination of the federal Depiction of Animal Cruelty Act, I was brought to tears as I watched outtakes of several animal crush videos we obtained during an investigation earlier this year. I don’t think I’ll soon shake the images from my head.
Specifically, we released results of a month-long online and email investigation that uncovered the re-emergence of the animal crush video industry, in the wake of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit striking down the federal ban on the interstate sale of videos depicting extreme cruelty. The footage, which I will not post here because it is so deeply troubling, showed the burning of a kitten in a small cage and a rabbit and the stomping of kittens, rabbits, and mice. It was just a small sample of what our investigators obtained.
More than a decade ago, and before the Depiction of Animal Cruelty Act was enacted, there were an estimated 2,000 separately produced animal crush videos selling on the Internet, for $15 to $300 each. We recognized immediately that this had nothing to do with the expression of ideas, but it was instead a thriving underground industry built around the most extreme and unimaginable acts of cruelty. We worked hard in the Congress to pass legislation to attack the problem, and helped to enact a federal law in December 1999.
Because the videos typically do not show anyone’s face and do not reveal the names of the people who produce them, the perpetrators of these abhorrent acts were generally able to evade prosecution. The law was enacted to eliminate the financial incentive driving production of the videos.
With the new law in place, the industry withered, and all but vanished in the period of a couple of years, based on our monitoring efforts. The people who committed such vile acts apparently retreated into whatever darkened dens they live in. Dogfighters continued to peddle their videos, however, and there were several successful prosecutions under the federal law, including that of dogfighting impresario Robert Stevens, who was convicted in 2005 of violating this law. He challenged the constitutionality of the law before the Third Circuit, and that court overturned his conviction and struck down the entire law in July 2008. In December, the U.S. Solicitor General filed a cert petition requesting review of the Third Circuit’s decision. On April 20, the Supreme Court agreed to review that decision, and oral arguments are to be heard on Oct. 6—the first animal protection case before the nation’s highest court in 15 years.
With the Third Circuit's ill-considered ruling, the noxious crush video industry has revived and crawled back into view since last July, with crippling results for animals. The crushing videos uncovered proved to be readily available for purchase, and it’s all documented in a 28-page report we released today. The password-protected part of one website had a total of 118 videos for sale of small animals, including rabbits, hamsters, tortoises, quail, chicken, ducks, frogs, snakes, and even cats, being tortured (including being burned, drowned and having nails hammered into them) and crushed. Videos ranged in price from $20 to $100. Undercover investigators also established contact with another crush website and were offered for sale 12 crush videos featuring rabbits at an average price of $50.
This is not speech. This is commercial activity of a sickening and barbaric type, and the peddlers of this smut should find no safe harbor for it in the First Amendment.
The courts have recognized that “certain well defined and narrowly limited classes of speech” play “no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth” that they may be regulated based on their content consistent with the First Amendment. These classes of speech include fighting words, speech that incites imminent criminal activity, obscenity, offers/solicitation to engage in illegal activity, and child pornography. Video depictions of cruelty should be added to this limited set of activities that are not protected.
We are pleased that the Solicitor Generals for both the Bush and Obama Administrations have pushed this case forward. And we are heartened that 26 state Attorneys General have filed a friend of the court brief urging the Supreme Court to reverse the Third Circuit’s ruling, with not a single Attorney General taking the opposite stance. But it’s going to be a tough case, and groups ranging from the ACLU to the NRA and the Safari Club International have weighed in on the opposite side. Their attacks against this anti-cruelty law are ill-advised and unsound, and their work gives great comfort to animal-abuse industries that deserve only unflinching condemnation.
September 15, 2009
"Crush Video" Investigation Evidence for Federal Law
Today, at an HSUS press conference previewing the U.S. Supreme Court’s examination of the federal Depiction of Animal Cruelty Act, I was brought to tears as I watched outtakes of several animal crush videos we obtained during an investigation earlier this year. I don’t think I’ll soon shake the images from my head.
Specifically, we released results of a month-long online and email investigation that uncovered the re-emergence of the animal crush video industry, in the wake of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit striking down the federal ban on the interstate sale of videos depicting extreme cruelty. The footage, which I will not post here because it is so deeply troubling, showed the burning of a kitten in a small cage and a rabbit and the stomping of kittens, rabbits, and mice. It was just a small sample of what our investigators obtained.
More than a decade ago, and before the Depiction of Animal Cruelty Act was enacted, there were an estimated 2,000 separately produced animal crush videos selling on the Internet, for $15 to $300 each. We recognized immediately that this had nothing to do with the expression of ideas, but it was instead a thriving underground industry built around the most extreme and unimaginable acts of cruelty. We worked hard in the Congress to pass legislation to attack the problem, and helped to enact a federal law in December 1999.
Because the videos typically do not show anyone’s face and do not reveal the names of the people who produce them, the perpetrators of these abhorrent acts were generally able to evade prosecution. The law was enacted to eliminate the financial incentive driving production of the videos.
With the new law in place, the industry withered, and all but vanished in the period of a couple of years, based on our monitoring efforts. The people who committed such vile acts apparently retreated into whatever darkened dens they live in. Dogfighters continued to peddle their videos, however, and there were several successful prosecutions under the federal law, including that of dogfighting impresario Robert Stevens, who was convicted in 2005 of violating this law. He challenged the constitutionality of the law before the Third Circuit, and that court overturned his conviction and struck down the entire law in July 2008. In December, the U.S. Solicitor General filed a cert petition requesting review of the Third Circuit’s decision. On April 20, the Supreme Court agreed to review that decision, and oral arguments are to be heard on Oct. 6—the first animal protection case before the nation’s highest court in 15 years.
With the Third Circuit's ill-considered ruling, the noxious crush video industry has revived and crawled back into view since last July, with crippling results for animals. The crushing videos uncovered proved to be readily available for purchase, and it’s all documented in a 28-page report we released today. The password-protected part of one website had a total of 118 videos for sale of small animals, including rabbits, hamsters, tortoises, quail, chicken, ducks, frogs, snakes, and even cats, being tortured (including being burned, drowned and having nails hammered into them) and crushed. Videos ranged in price from $20 to $100. Undercover investigators also established contact with another crush website and were offered for sale 12 crush videos featuring rabbits at an average price of $50.
This is not speech. This is commercial activity of a sickening and barbaric type, and the peddlers of this smut should find no safe harbor for it in the First Amendment.
The courts have recognized that “certain well defined and narrowly limited classes of speech” play “no essential part of any exposition of ideas, and are of such slight social value as a step to truth” that they may be regulated based on their content consistent with the First Amendment. These classes of speech include fighting words, speech that incites imminent criminal activity, obscenity, offers/solicitation to engage in illegal activity, and child pornography. Video depictions of cruelty should be added to this limited set of activities that are not protected.
We are pleased that the Solicitor Generals for both the Bush and Obama Administrations have pushed this case forward. And we are heartened that 26 state Attorneys General have filed a friend of the court brief urging the Supreme Court to reverse the Third Circuit’s ruling, with not a single Attorney General taking the opposite stance. But it’s going to be a tough case, and groups ranging from the ACLU to the NRA and the Safari Club International have weighed in on the opposite side. Their attacks against this anti-cruelty law are ill-advised and unsound, and their work gives great comfort to animal-abuse industries that deserve only unflinching condemnation.
QUOTE
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/articl...g8IZuQD9B5MF380
...Justice Samuel Alito sounded the most receptive to the government's argument. Alito wondered whether the court should focus on the potential prosecution of hunters or, citing a Breyer example, someone who produces foie gras from a goose. "Or do we look at what's happening in the real world?" he asked Stevens' lawyer, Patricia Millett.
.
...Justice Samuel Alito sounded the most receptive to the government's argument. Alito wondered whether the court should focus on the potential prosecution of hunters or, citing a Breyer example, someone who produces foie gras from a goose. "Or do we look at what's happening in the real world?" he asked Stevens' lawyer, Patricia Millett.
.
QUOTE
http://www.hsus.org/press_and_publications...ief_061509.html
Florida Attorney General, The HSUS Ask U.S. Supreme Court to Uphold Federal Law Banning Depictions of Extreme Animal Cruelty
Attorneys General From Twenty-Five States Join Florida in Brief to Highest Court
June 15, 2009
WASHINGTON — Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum and The Humane Society of the United States, joined by half of the country's state Attorneys General, today filed "friend of the court" or amicus briefs urging the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate a crucial federal animal cruelty law struck down by the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals last year.
In 1999, the federal Depiction of Animal Cruelty Act banned the commercial sale of videos depicting extreme and illegal acts of animal cruelty. The federal law was prompted by an HSUS investigation that uncovered an underground subculture of "animal crush" videos that showed women, often in high-heeled shoes, impaling and crushing to death puppies, kittens and other small animals, catering to those with a fetish for this aberrant behavior. The law halted the proliferation of animal crushing operations, and has also been used to crack down on commercial dogfighting operations, in which the animals often fight to the death for the amusement of viewers.
"Animal fighting is a serious crime, violent and heinous in nature, and depictions of that and other extreme animal cruelty should indeed be prohibited under the federal law," said Attorney General McCollum. "I supported this law in Congress and I am honored to have the chance to do so again as Florida's Attorney General."
Last year, in U.S. v. Stevens, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the depictions for which Stevens was being prosecuted were "protected speech" and that preventing animal cruelty was "not a compelling state interest." The U.S. Solicitor General requested that the Supreme Court review of the Third Circuit's ruling and was granted certiorari.
The Attorney General's amicus brief on the merits states animal cruelty is often closely associated with other serious crimes such as gang activity, drug dealing, and violent felonies. The HSUS's amicus brief on the merits of the case emphasizes that videos of animals being tortured are not protected speech, and preventing animal cruelty is a compelling state interest — not only because our society values animals and their well-being, but also because people who perpetrate these acts of cruelty are often involved in other criminal behavior, including violence against people.
"The federal Depiction of Animal Cruelty Law is an essential complement to state anti-cruelty and animal fighting laws, which alone do not equip law enforcement with the tools needed to stamp out this horrific form of extreme animal cruelty," said Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States. "We wouldn't allow the sale of videos of actual child abuse or murder staged for the express purpose of selling videos of such criminal acts, and the same legal principles apply to despicable acts of animal cruelty."
The legislation was successfully championed in Congress by Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Calif., who said at the time that the law was needed to protect animals and "because numerous studies have found that people who commit violent acts on animals will later commit violent acts on people." As a U.S. Congressman, McCollum voted in favor of the legislation, which passed in 1999 and was signed into law by President Clinton.
Before the law was enacted, there were some 2,000 crush videos available in the marketplace, selling for $15 to $300 each. Over the last decade, that market all but disappeared. However, since last July, crush videos have re-proliferated on the internet in response to the appellate court's ruling.
As described in The HSUS' brief, some of the depictions criminalized by the act include a woman slowly crushing a small kitten to death as the kitten endures excruciating torture; an orchestrated fight to the death where tortured dogs and puppies rip the skin and ears off their opponents and bite through each other's ears, paws and neck; and brutalized dogs attacking a defenseless feral hog in a small pen with no escape.
Animal fighting, defined as fighting between roosters or other birds or between dogs, bears, or other animals, is a third-degree felony in Florida, punishable by up to five years in prison and up to $5,000 in fines per count. In May 2008, Attorney General McCollum and The HSUS teamed up to unveil a cooperative initiative to combat animal fighting in Florida by providing monetary rewards for information leading to the arrest and conviction of any person involved in illegal animal fighting. The reward program, which offers up to $5,000 for successful tips, is funded by The HSUS. In December, a toll-free tip line, 1-877-TIP-HSUS (847-4787), was established to further aid this initiative.
Copies of the filings from the Attorneys General and The HSUS are available upon request.
* The other states' Attorneys General joining the amicus brief are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia.
Florida Attorney General, The HSUS Ask U.S. Supreme Court to Uphold Federal Law Banning Depictions of Extreme Animal Cruelty
Attorneys General From Twenty-Five States Join Florida in Brief to Highest Court
June 15, 2009
WASHINGTON — Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum and The Humane Society of the United States, joined by half of the country's state Attorneys General, today filed "friend of the court" or amicus briefs urging the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate a crucial federal animal cruelty law struck down by the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals last year.
In 1999, the federal Depiction of Animal Cruelty Act banned the commercial sale of videos depicting extreme and illegal acts of animal cruelty. The federal law was prompted by an HSUS investigation that uncovered an underground subculture of "animal crush" videos that showed women, often in high-heeled shoes, impaling and crushing to death puppies, kittens and other small animals, catering to those with a fetish for this aberrant behavior. The law halted the proliferation of animal crushing operations, and has also been used to crack down on commercial dogfighting operations, in which the animals often fight to the death for the amusement of viewers.
"Animal fighting is a serious crime, violent and heinous in nature, and depictions of that and other extreme animal cruelty should indeed be prohibited under the federal law," said Attorney General McCollum. "I supported this law in Congress and I am honored to have the chance to do so again as Florida's Attorney General."
Last year, in U.S. v. Stevens, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the depictions for which Stevens was being prosecuted were "protected speech" and that preventing animal cruelty was "not a compelling state interest." The U.S. Solicitor General requested that the Supreme Court review of the Third Circuit's ruling and was granted certiorari.
The Attorney General's amicus brief on the merits states animal cruelty is often closely associated with other serious crimes such as gang activity, drug dealing, and violent felonies. The HSUS's amicus brief on the merits of the case emphasizes that videos of animals being tortured are not protected speech, and preventing animal cruelty is a compelling state interest — not only because our society values animals and their well-being, but also because people who perpetrate these acts of cruelty are often involved in other criminal behavior, including violence against people.
"The federal Depiction of Animal Cruelty Law is an essential complement to state anti-cruelty and animal fighting laws, which alone do not equip law enforcement with the tools needed to stamp out this horrific form of extreme animal cruelty," said Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States. "We wouldn't allow the sale of videos of actual child abuse or murder staged for the express purpose of selling videos of such criminal acts, and the same legal principles apply to despicable acts of animal cruelty."
The legislation was successfully championed in Congress by Rep. Elton Gallegly, R-Calif., who said at the time that the law was needed to protect animals and "because numerous studies have found that people who commit violent acts on animals will later commit violent acts on people." As a U.S. Congressman, McCollum voted in favor of the legislation, which passed in 1999 and was signed into law by President Clinton.
Before the law was enacted, there were some 2,000 crush videos available in the marketplace, selling for $15 to $300 each. Over the last decade, that market all but disappeared. However, since last July, crush videos have re-proliferated on the internet in response to the appellate court's ruling.
As described in The HSUS' brief, some of the depictions criminalized by the act include a woman slowly crushing a small kitten to death as the kitten endures excruciating torture; an orchestrated fight to the death where tortured dogs and puppies rip the skin and ears off their opponents and bite through each other's ears, paws and neck; and brutalized dogs attacking a defenseless feral hog in a small pen with no escape.
Animal fighting, defined as fighting between roosters or other birds or between dogs, bears, or other animals, is a third-degree felony in Florida, punishable by up to five years in prison and up to $5,000 in fines per count. In May 2008, Attorney General McCollum and The HSUS teamed up to unveil a cooperative initiative to combat animal fighting in Florida by providing monetary rewards for information leading to the arrest and conviction of any person involved in illegal animal fighting. The reward program, which offers up to $5,000 for successful tips, is funded by The HSUS. In December, a toll-free tip line, 1-877-TIP-HSUS (847-4787), was established to further aid this initiative.
Copies of the filings from the Attorneys General and The HSUS are available upon request.
* The other states' Attorneys General joining the amicus brief are Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia.
QUOTE
http://hsus.typepad.com/wayne/2009/10/stev...reme-court.html
October 05, 2009
Animal Torture Is Not Free Speech
...includes case details.
[...]The law caused the crush video industry to recede dramatically and no prosecutions of purveyors of crush videos have been needed in the decade that the law was in force. The law has never been used against documentary filmmakers, journalists or others engaging in legitimate speech—the only three prosecutions under the law have involved dogfighters who sold videos in interstate commerce for profit. Dogfighting is a federal felony and a felony in every state—making it the most widely and severely criminalized form of animal cruelty in the United States.
The case before the court tomorrow is U.S. v. Stevens, and it comes to the court after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit threw out the conviction of dogfighting impresario Robert Stevens that was handed down by a federal jury in Pennsylvania. Stevens peddled several videos—"Japan Pit Fights," "Pick a Winna," and "Catch Dogs and Country Living"—all of which showed grossly inhumane treatment of animals, including some staged in Japan. Stevens apparently shipped three dogs to Japan for the fights shown in one video. Some of the fights last for more than an hour, and the dogs are bloodied and suffering throughout.
The federal law has an exemption for materials with "serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical, or artistic value." After viewing the videos and hearing days of arguments on both sides, the jury found that Stevens’ videos had no such qualities and was an unvarnished dogfighting promotional video, showing acts of cruelty illegal in the United States...
October 05, 2009
Animal Torture Is Not Free Speech
...includes case details.
[...]The law caused the crush video industry to recede dramatically and no prosecutions of purveyors of crush videos have been needed in the decade that the law was in force. The law has never been used against documentary filmmakers, journalists or others engaging in legitimate speech—the only three prosecutions under the law have involved dogfighters who sold videos in interstate commerce for profit. Dogfighting is a federal felony and a felony in every state—making it the most widely and severely criminalized form of animal cruelty in the United States.
The case before the court tomorrow is U.S. v. Stevens, and it comes to the court after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit threw out the conviction of dogfighting impresario Robert Stevens that was handed down by a federal jury in Pennsylvania. Stevens peddled several videos—"Japan Pit Fights," "Pick a Winna," and "Catch Dogs and Country Living"—all of which showed grossly inhumane treatment of animals, including some staged in Japan. Stevens apparently shipped three dogs to Japan for the fights shown in one video. Some of the fights last for more than an hour, and the dogs are bloodied and suffering throughout.
The federal law has an exemption for materials with "serious religious, political, scientific, educational, journalistic, historical, or artistic value." After viewing the videos and hearing days of arguments on both sides, the jury found that Stevens’ videos had no such qualities and was an unvarnished dogfighting promotional video, showing acts of cruelty illegal in the United States...
QUOTE
http://hsus.typepad.com/wayne/2009/10/supreme-court.html
October 06, 2009
Supreme Court Hears Arguments on Animal Cruelty Law
Today, I was one of about 200 people in attendance as the U.S. Supreme Court heard from attorneys for the United States and for dogfighting impresario Robert Stevens in a case testing the constitutionality of the federal Depiction of Animal Cruelty Law. Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, representing the United States, argued passionately and persuasively for a ruling to uphold the law and stop the wanton cruelty spawned through the production of commercially available videos. The HSUS filed an amicus brief in the case, along with 26 state Attorneys General. A host of media organizations, the ACLU, the NRA, and the Safari Club International filed amicus briefs urging that the law be struck down.
I spoke to the press right after argument ended, and then issued the statement below.
October 06, 2009
Supreme Court Hears Arguments on Animal Cruelty Law
Today, I was one of about 200 people in attendance as the U.S. Supreme Court heard from attorneys for the United States and for dogfighting impresario Robert Stevens in a case testing the constitutionality of the federal Depiction of Animal Cruelty Law. Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal, representing the United States, argued passionately and persuasively for a ruling to uphold the law and stop the wanton cruelty spawned through the production of commercially available videos. The HSUS filed an amicus brief in the case, along with 26 state Attorneys General. A host of media organizations, the ACLU, the NRA, and the Safari Club International filed amicus briefs urging that the law be struck down.
I spoke to the press right after argument ended, and then issued the statement below.
"The Depiction of Animal Cruelty Law targets the sale of the most extreme and appalling abuses of animals—and these things only. This commercial conduct has no social or expressive value, and instead leaves a trail of suffering and misery that can be, for the most part, halted through a logical application of the law.
"At Tuesday’s hearing, all Justices acknowledged the critical societal importance of preventing animal cruelty, and allowed that Congress has an important role to play in drying up the market for these sordid products.
http://www.google.com/search?q=crush+video...id=ie7&rlz=
Google: crush videos dominatrix (I didn't click on any of the links myself)
Here are two recommended reviews for a relevant film the justices should view if resistant to the Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal's argument.
QUOTE
http://www.aintitcool.com/?q=node/35042
What THE FLOCK Is Richard Gere Doing With Andy Lau!?
Published on Thursday, December 13, 2007 - 9:37am
http://www.beyondhollywood.com/the-flock-2007-movie-review/
The Flock (2007) Movie Review
By Nix on December 12, 2007
What THE FLOCK Is Richard Gere Doing With Andy Lau!?
Published on Thursday, December 13, 2007 - 9:37am
http://www.beyondhollywood.com/the-flock-2007-movie-review/
The Flock (2007) Movie Review
By Nix on December 12, 2007
QUOTE
http://www.protect.org/Newswire/Virginia/Angry-editor.html
Angry editor
Thursday, 15 October 2009
"Sorry about your breakfast..." says editor Carol Capo. "We should all lose our appetites. And our tempers."
Capo is writing in the Newport News Daily Press about the flourishing trade in child abuse videos and images, and how little is being done about it.
She also takes aim at sentencing in her own area, York County, Virginia. Capo says two men there recently got no prison time after pleading guilty to possessing child pornography.
"Well, people of York County, there is a consolation," she says. "There are hundreds more right under your nose who are doing the same thing. Maybe your judges will step up."
Read Capo's column here: http://www.dailypress.com/news/opinion/dp-...,4053206.column
.
Angry editor
Thursday, 15 October 2009
"Sorry about your breakfast..." says editor Carol Capo. "We should all lose our appetites. And our tempers."
Capo is writing in the Newport News Daily Press about the flourishing trade in child abuse videos and images, and how little is being done about it.
She also takes aim at sentencing in her own area, York County, Virginia. Capo says two men there recently got no prison time after pleading guilty to possessing child pornography.
"Well, people of York County, there is a consolation," she says. "There are hundreds more right under your nose who are doing the same thing. Maybe your judges will step up."
Read Capo's column here: http://www.dailypress.com/news/opinion/dp-...,4053206.column
.
QUOTE
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/2...n-from-sextrade
700 arrests across country as FBI rescues children from sex trade
Chris McGreal in Washington
The Guardian, Tuesday 27 October 2009
The FBI says it rescued 52 children, one just 10 years old, from prostitution rings during nationwide raids that led to nearly 700 arrests. There were arrests in 36 cities after a surveillance operation of children sold for sex on the internet, on streets, in casinos and at truck stops.
Among those detained were 60 pimps, who face lengthy prison sentences for child trafficking. About 1,600 officers were involved in the three day operation.
"It is repugnant that children in these times could be subjected to the great pain, suffering and indignity of being forced into sexual slavery for someone else's profit," said the assistant attorney general, Lanny Breuer. "The scourge of child prostitution still exists on the streets of our cities."
Most of the children rescued during the operation – known as Cross Country IV – were teenage girls.
The investigation is part of the "innocence lost" national initiative launched six years ago to combat child sex trafficking.
The initiative has resulted in the conviction of 510 people for child sex related crimes, including pimping, and the rescue of nearly 900 children, according to the FBI. Some of those convicted were given multiple life sentences.
The FBI said: "Information gleaned from those arrested often uncovers organised efforts to prostitute women and children across many states."
Ernie Allen, who heads the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, which worked with the FBI on the operation, said: "Child trafficking for the purposes of prostitution is organised criminal activity using kids as commodities for sale or trade. This is 21st century slavery."
Child welfare groups estimate that around 2 million children a year run away from home in the US, and that many of them are lured into prostitution or pornography to survive.
The justice department says there is an "epidemic" of commercial sex activity among children living on the streets. It says more than half of street girls are engaged in prostitution, many of them beginning between 12 and 14 years old.
"Pimp-controlled commercial sexual exploitation of children is linked to escort and massage services, private dancing, drinking and photographic clubs, major sporting and recreational events, major cultural events, conventions, and tourist destinations," the department says.
"About one-fifth of these children become entangled in nationally organised crime networks and are trafficked nationally. They are transported around the United States by a variety of means – cars, buses, vans, trucks or planes – and are often provided counterfeit identification to use in the event of arrest."
Sergeant Nicole Donnelly of the Miami police said that several children freed in raids in the city would be taken into care. "We are hopefully recovering these juveniles and putting them in different types of programmes to get their life back on track where they should be," she said.
.
700 arrests across country as FBI rescues children from sex trade
Chris McGreal in Washington
The Guardian, Tuesday 27 October 2009
The FBI says it rescued 52 children, one just 10 years old, from prostitution rings during nationwide raids that led to nearly 700 arrests. There were arrests in 36 cities after a surveillance operation of children sold for sex on the internet, on streets, in casinos and at truck stops.
Among those detained were 60 pimps, who face lengthy prison sentences for child trafficking. About 1,600 officers were involved in the three day operation.
"It is repugnant that children in these times could be subjected to the great pain, suffering and indignity of being forced into sexual slavery for someone else's profit," said the assistant attorney general, Lanny Breuer. "The scourge of child prostitution still exists on the streets of our cities."
Most of the children rescued during the operation – known as Cross Country IV – were teenage girls.
The investigation is part of the "innocence lost" national initiative launched six years ago to combat child sex trafficking.
The initiative has resulted in the conviction of 510 people for child sex related crimes, including pimping, and the rescue of nearly 900 children, according to the FBI. Some of those convicted were given multiple life sentences.
The FBI said: "Information gleaned from those arrested often uncovers organised efforts to prostitute women and children across many states."
Ernie Allen, who heads the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, which worked with the FBI on the operation, said: "Child trafficking for the purposes of prostitution is organised criminal activity using kids as commodities for sale or trade. This is 21st century slavery."
Child welfare groups estimate that around 2 million children a year run away from home in the US, and that many of them are lured into prostitution or pornography to survive.
The justice department says there is an "epidemic" of commercial sex activity among children living on the streets. It says more than half of street girls are engaged in prostitution, many of them beginning between 12 and 14 years old.
"Pimp-controlled commercial sexual exploitation of children is linked to escort and massage services, private dancing, drinking and photographic clubs, major sporting and recreational events, major cultural events, conventions, and tourist destinations," the department says.
"About one-fifth of these children become entangled in nationally organised crime networks and are trafficked nationally. They are transported around the United States by a variety of means – cars, buses, vans, trucks or planes – and are often provided counterfeit identification to use in the event of arrest."
Sergeant Nicole Donnelly of the Miami police said that several children freed in raids in the city would be taken into care. "We are hopefully recovering these juveniles and putting them in different types of programmes to get their life back on track where they should be," she said.
.
Link from: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discu...ess=102x4120437
QUOTE
http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel09/cro...ntry_102609.htm
More Than 50 Children Rescued During Operation Cross Country IV
Over the past 72 hours, the FBI, its local and state law enforcement partners, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) concluded Operation Cross Country IV, a three-day national enforcement action as part of the Innocence Lost National Initiative. The operation included enforcement actions in 36 cities across 30 FBI divisions around the country and led to the recovery of 52 children who were being victimized through prostitution. Additionally, nearly 700 others, including 60 pimps, were arrested on state and local charges.
“Child prostitution continues to be a significant problem in our country, as evidenced by the number of children rescued through the continued efforts of our crimes against children task forces,” said Kevin Perkins, Assistant Director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division. “There is no work more important than protecting America’s children and freeing them from the cycle of victimization. Through our strategic partnerships with state and local law enforcement agencies, we are able to make a difference.”
Task Force operations usually begin as local actions, targeting such places as truck stops, casinos, street “tracks,” and Internet websites, based on intelligence gathered by officers working in their respective jurisdictions. Initial arrests are often violations of local and state laws relating to prostitution or solicitation. Information gleaned from those arrested often uncovers organized efforts to prostitute women and children across many states. FBI agents further develop this information in partnership with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) and file federal charges where appropriate.
To date, the 34 Innocence Lost Task Forces and Working Groups have recovered nearly 900 children from the streets. The investigations and subsequent 510 convictions have resulted in lengthy sentences, including multiple 25-years-to-life sentences and the seizure of more than $3.1 million in assets.
“It is repugnant that children in these times could be subjected to the great pain, suffering, and indignity of being forced into sexual slavery for someone else's profit,” said Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division, “but Cross Country IV has shown us that the scourge of child prostitution still exists on the streets of our cities. The FBI, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and all the state and local law enforcement agencies that contributed to this operation are to be commended for their dedication to this cause. We will all continue to work tirelessly to end the victimization of innocent children.”
In the spring of 2003, the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division, in partnership with the Department of Justice’s CEOS and NCMEC, formed the Innocence Lost National Initiative to address the growing problem of children forced into prostitution.
“Child trafficking for the purposes of prostitution is organized criminal activity using kids as commodities for sale or trade,” said Ernie Allen, President and CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. “These kids are victims. They lack the ability to walk away. This is 21st century slavery. We are proud to have worked hand-in-hand with the FBI and Justice Department in a partnership that is unprecedented, historic, and working.”
This program brings state and federal law enforcement agencies, prosecutors, and social service providers all from around the country to NCMEC, where the groups are trained together. In addition, CEOS has reinforced the training by assigning prosecutors to help bring cases in those cities plagued by child prostitution.
The FBI thanks the 1,599 local, state, and federal law enforcement officers representing 112 separate agencies who participated in Operation Cross Country and ongoing enforcement efforts.
The charges announced today are merely accusations, and all defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty in a court of law.
For more information on Operation Cross Country and the Innocence Lost National Initiative, visit www.fbi.gov, www.justice.gov or www.ncmec.org
*****Sign up for FBI e-mail alerts at http://www.fbi.gov/homepage.htm by clicking on the red envelopes.*****
Follow the FBI on Twitter @ FBIPressOffice
.
Press Release
For Immediate Release
October 26, 2009
For Immediate Release
October 26, 2009
More Than 50 Children Rescued During Operation Cross Country IV
Over the past 72 hours, the FBI, its local and state law enforcement partners, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) concluded Operation Cross Country IV, a three-day national enforcement action as part of the Innocence Lost National Initiative. The operation included enforcement actions in 36 cities across 30 FBI divisions around the country and led to the recovery of 52 children who were being victimized through prostitution. Additionally, nearly 700 others, including 60 pimps, were arrested on state and local charges.
“Child prostitution continues to be a significant problem in our country, as evidenced by the number of children rescued through the continued efforts of our crimes against children task forces,” said Kevin Perkins, Assistant Director of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division. “There is no work more important than protecting America’s children and freeing them from the cycle of victimization. Through our strategic partnerships with state and local law enforcement agencies, we are able to make a difference.”
Task Force operations usually begin as local actions, targeting such places as truck stops, casinos, street “tracks,” and Internet websites, based on intelligence gathered by officers working in their respective jurisdictions. Initial arrests are often violations of local and state laws relating to prostitution or solicitation. Information gleaned from those arrested often uncovers organized efforts to prostitute women and children across many states. FBI agents further develop this information in partnership with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) and file federal charges where appropriate.
To date, the 34 Innocence Lost Task Forces and Working Groups have recovered nearly 900 children from the streets. The investigations and subsequent 510 convictions have resulted in lengthy sentences, including multiple 25-years-to-life sentences and the seizure of more than $3.1 million in assets.
“It is repugnant that children in these times could be subjected to the great pain, suffering, and indignity of being forced into sexual slavery for someone else's profit,” said Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division, “but Cross Country IV has shown us that the scourge of child prostitution still exists on the streets of our cities. The FBI, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and all the state and local law enforcement agencies that contributed to this operation are to be commended for their dedication to this cause. We will all continue to work tirelessly to end the victimization of innocent children.”
In the spring of 2003, the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division, in partnership with the Department of Justice’s CEOS and NCMEC, formed the Innocence Lost National Initiative to address the growing problem of children forced into prostitution.
“Child trafficking for the purposes of prostitution is organized criminal activity using kids as commodities for sale or trade,” said Ernie Allen, President and CEO of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. “These kids are victims. They lack the ability to walk away. This is 21st century slavery. We are proud to have worked hand-in-hand with the FBI and Justice Department in a partnership that is unprecedented, historic, and working.”
This program brings state and federal law enforcement agencies, prosecutors, and social service providers all from around the country to NCMEC, where the groups are trained together. In addition, CEOS has reinforced the training by assigning prosecutors to help bring cases in those cities plagued by child prostitution.
The FBI thanks the 1,599 local, state, and federal law enforcement officers representing 112 separate agencies who participated in Operation Cross Country and ongoing enforcement efforts.
The charges announced today are merely accusations, and all defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty in a court of law.
For more information on Operation Cross Country and the Innocence Lost National Initiative, visit www.fbi.gov, www.justice.gov or www.ncmec.org
*****Sign up for FBI e-mail alerts at http://www.fbi.gov/homepage.htm by clicking on the red envelopes.*****
Follow the FBI on Twitter @ FBIPressOffice
.
QUOTE
http://www.ncmec.org/missingkids/servlet/N...amp;PageId=4145
Mr. Chairman, members of the Commission, I appreciate the opportunity to testify regarding the sentencing guidelines for child pornography offenses.
For the past nine months, this Commission has heard testimony from judges, prosecutors, defense counsel, and issue experts. Some have argued that the guidelines for child pornography offenses are baseless, excessive or too severe. In the aftermath of the Booker decision, we are seeing increasing examples of downward departures from the guidelines and token sentences for child pornography offenders.
I come before you today to make a simple point. Child pornography is a serious crime. It merits serious penalties. The guidelines are not the problem. The problem is the lack of understanding of the true nature and severity of this crime, and the harm caused by these offenders.
At the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, we have been battling this problem for a quarter century. The Center is a nonprofit organization working in partnership with the U.S. Department of Justice. In 1985 we launched the first child pornography tipline. In 1998 at the request of Congress, we created the CyberTipline, an online reporting mechanism for child sexual exploitation. To date, we have handled 744,000 reports from Internet Service Providers and the general public.
In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, we created the Child Victim Identification Program in 2003 to assist law enforcement and to identify, locate and rescue child victims. In the past six years we have reviewed 28 million child pornography images and videos, currently 250,000 per week.
Child pornography is misnamed and misunderstood. It is not pornography. It is not protected speech. It is not victimless crime. These are crime scene photos, images of the sexual abuse of a child. They are contraband, direct evidence of the sexual victimization of a child. The circulation of these images among offenders not only revictimizes the child, but it also drives the market for the production of new images.
Some have said, “child pornography, isn’t that just adult pornography, 20 year olds in pigtails made to look like they are 14?” Well, not exactly. From the millions of images we have reviewed and the thousands of children we have identified, we have learned that most of the victims are prepubescent, and that a growing number are infants and toddlers.
Many of these children are being abused violently in images depicting bondage, sadism, torture, vaginal, anal, and oral penetration, bestiality, and sexual humiliation. Offenders tell us that the growing demand for very young children is because they are pre-verbal.
Most offenders have not innocently or mistakenly downloaded a single image or even a handful of images. We find offenders who build libraries of child pornography images, collected and viewed for the offender’s personal sexual gratification and, more commonly, traded, shared, and/or sold online.
The Supreme Court has long recognized the harm.
In New York v. Ferber, the Court wrote, “pornography poses an even greater threat to the child victim than does sexual abuse or prostitution. Because the child’s actions are reduced to a recording, the pornography may haunt him in future years, long after the original misdeed took place. A child who has posed for a camera must go through life knowing that the recording is circulating within the mass distribution system for child pornography.”
The Supreme Court wrote those words in 1982 before the birth of the Internet.
In Osborne v. Ohio, the Court wrote that “the victimization of children does not end when the pornographer’s camera is put away. . . . The pornography’s continued existence causes the child victims continuing harm. . . .”)
In United States v. Norris, the Court said, “the sheer number of instances in which a child’s pornographic image may be possessed and distributed in the indelible context of the Internet is incalculable. Even after a single offender is prosecuted, the images they traded, sold, or posted online continue to circulate to ever widening circles of offenders.”
Each viewing, each possession, each redistribution of an image revictimizes that child anew. In a victim impact statement cited in US v. Ward, the victim said, “when I was told how many people have viewed these images and videos I thought my pulse would stop. Thinking about all those sick perverts viewing my body being ravished and hurt like that makes me feel like I was raped by each and every one of them.”
Like any other contraband, child pornography images are an illegal commodity that must be combated both at the point of production and at the point of distribution and possession.
In Ferber, the Court said, “the distribution network for child pornography must be closed if the production of material which requires the sexual exploitation of children is to be effectively controlled.”
In Osborne, the Court said, “it is surely reasonable for the State to conclude that it will decrease the production of child pornography if it penalizes those who possess and view the product, thereby decreasing demand.”
Some have argued that the sentences for many of these offenders are excessive because “they just look at the pictures.” Many judges today are sentencing offenders well below the guidelines because they are “mere possessors.”
We are deeply skeptical. In a 2009 article in the Journal of Family Violence, Michael Bourke and Dr. Andres Hernandez at the Federal Correctional Institution at Butner, North Carolina reported on a study comparing two groups of child pornography offenders.
The first group included men convicted of child pornography possession, receipt or distribution, but no “hands-on” sexual abuse. The second included men convicted of similar offenses but with documented histories of hands-on sexual offenses against children.
The researchers found that the Internet offenders in their sample were “significantly more likely than not to have sexually abused a child via a hands-on act.” And that these offenders tended to have multiple victims.
They found that, upon being discovered, these offenders tend to minimize their behavior. They accept responsibility, but only for those behaviors known to law enforcement. They hide contact sexual crimes to avoid prosecution and to avoid shame and humiliation.
The researchers also found that online criminal investigations, while targeting so-called “Internet sex offenders,” are resulting in the apprehension of child molesters who just happen to be using the Internet to access this content.
We don’t know with certainty whether the number of child pornography offenders who commit physical contact offenses against real children is 40%, 60% or 80% of the total offender population. However, we know that a large share of that population is not merely “looking at the pictures.”
We also know that the number is far greater than publicly recognized because few of the victims tell anybody. Researchers now estimate that 1 in 3 victims of child sexual abuse report it. That represents significant progress over even a decade ago. However, what we are seeing today is that when there is a photo or video that memorializes that abuse, reporting drops precipitously. These children don’t tell.
Even if the offender cannot be shown to have victimized a real child, he is revictimizing the child in that photo or video. Victims of online child pornography must deal with the permanency and circulation of the images of their sexual abuse. Once an image is on the Internet it can never be removed and becomes a permanent record of the abuse.
Researchers studying the harm caused to a child report that child victims experience depression, withdrawal, anger, and other psychological disorders that can continue well into adulthood. They frequently experience feelings of guilt and responsibility for their abuse as well as feelings of betrayal, powerlessness and low self-esteem.
For children whose images are circulated online, their abuse is repeated over and over through each new viewing. They feel there is nothing they can do to prevent others from viewing the images, and they express concern that images of their abuse may be used to entice or manipulate other children into sexually abusive acts.
Congress has long recognized the harm child pornography inflicts on its victims. In passing the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996, Congress found that “[t]he use of children as subjects of pornographic materials is harmful to the physiological, emotional and mental health of the child.” In 2006 Congress passed the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, which concluded that “technological advances have had the unfortunate result of greatly increasing the interstate market in child pornography”; and “every instance of viewing images of child pornography represents a renewed violation of the privacy of the victims and a repetition of their abuse.”
The Supreme Court, Congress and this Commission have recognized the extreme harm inflicted upon victims of child pornography, harm that is compounded when the images are recirculated. Yet, we are witnessing increasing instances of downward departures from the guidelines, or token sentences for offenders, simply because there is no proof of physical contact offenses against a child. Congress did not base its enactment of these laws on the assumption that all offenders must be abusers. The goal of these laws is to address this growing and deplorable form of child sexual exploitation, and stop it.
Weakening the guidelines will do irreparable damage to the goal of stopping child pornography and will put countless children at risk. It will also dilute the objective of deterrence at a time when technology is emboldening these offenders.
We urge the Commission to resist the clamor for change, and help us wake up the nation, its policy makers and its judges about the true nature and impact of this crime. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children is committed to doing everything in its power to eradicate child pornography, and is deeply grateful for this opportunity to share its views with the Commission.
.
ERNIE ALLEN
PRESIDENT & CEO
NATIONAL CENTER FOR MISSING & EXPLOITED CHILDREN
STATEMENT
ON
SENTENCING GUIDELINES FOR CHILD PORNOGRAPHY OFFENSES
UNITED STATES SENTENCING COMMISSION HEARING
ON THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE PASSAGE OF THE SENTENCING REFORM ACT OF 1984
DENVER, COLORADO
OCTOBER 20, 2009
PRESIDENT & CEO
NATIONAL CENTER FOR MISSING & EXPLOITED CHILDREN
STATEMENT
ON
SENTENCING GUIDELINES FOR CHILD PORNOGRAPHY OFFENSES
UNITED STATES SENTENCING COMMISSION HEARING
ON THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE PASSAGE OF THE SENTENCING REFORM ACT OF 1984
DENVER, COLORADO
OCTOBER 20, 2009
Mr. Chairman, members of the Commission, I appreciate the opportunity to testify regarding the sentencing guidelines for child pornography offenses.
For the past nine months, this Commission has heard testimony from judges, prosecutors, defense counsel, and issue experts. Some have argued that the guidelines for child pornography offenses are baseless, excessive or too severe. In the aftermath of the Booker decision, we are seeing increasing examples of downward departures from the guidelines and token sentences for child pornography offenders.
I come before you today to make a simple point. Child pornography is a serious crime. It merits serious penalties. The guidelines are not the problem. The problem is the lack of understanding of the true nature and severity of this crime, and the harm caused by these offenders.
At the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, we have been battling this problem for a quarter century. The Center is a nonprofit organization working in partnership with the U.S. Department of Justice. In 1985 we launched the first child pornography tipline. In 1998 at the request of Congress, we created the CyberTipline, an online reporting mechanism for child sexual exploitation. To date, we have handled 744,000 reports from Internet Service Providers and the general public.
In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision in Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, we created the Child Victim Identification Program in 2003 to assist law enforcement and to identify, locate and rescue child victims. In the past six years we have reviewed 28 million child pornography images and videos, currently 250,000 per week.
Child pornography is misnamed and misunderstood. It is not pornography. It is not protected speech. It is not victimless crime. These are crime scene photos, images of the sexual abuse of a child. They are contraband, direct evidence of the sexual victimization of a child. The circulation of these images among offenders not only revictimizes the child, but it also drives the market for the production of new images.
Some have said, “child pornography, isn’t that just adult pornography, 20 year olds in pigtails made to look like they are 14?” Well, not exactly. From the millions of images we have reviewed and the thousands of children we have identified, we have learned that most of the victims are prepubescent, and that a growing number are infants and toddlers.
Many of these children are being abused violently in images depicting bondage, sadism, torture, vaginal, anal, and oral penetration, bestiality, and sexual humiliation. Offenders tell us that the growing demand for very young children is because they are pre-verbal.
Most offenders have not innocently or mistakenly downloaded a single image or even a handful of images. We find offenders who build libraries of child pornography images, collected and viewed for the offender’s personal sexual gratification and, more commonly, traded, shared, and/or sold online.
The Supreme Court has long recognized the harm.
In New York v. Ferber, the Court wrote, “pornography poses an even greater threat to the child victim than does sexual abuse or prostitution. Because the child’s actions are reduced to a recording, the pornography may haunt him in future years, long after the original misdeed took place. A child who has posed for a camera must go through life knowing that the recording is circulating within the mass distribution system for child pornography.”
The Supreme Court wrote those words in 1982 before the birth of the Internet.
In Osborne v. Ohio, the Court wrote that “the victimization of children does not end when the pornographer’s camera is put away. . . . The pornography’s continued existence causes the child victims continuing harm. . . .”)
In United States v. Norris, the Court said, “the sheer number of instances in which a child’s pornographic image may be possessed and distributed in the indelible context of the Internet is incalculable. Even after a single offender is prosecuted, the images they traded, sold, or posted online continue to circulate to ever widening circles of offenders.”
Each viewing, each possession, each redistribution of an image revictimizes that child anew. In a victim impact statement cited in US v. Ward, the victim said, “when I was told how many people have viewed these images and videos I thought my pulse would stop. Thinking about all those sick perverts viewing my body being ravished and hurt like that makes me feel like I was raped by each and every one of them.”
Like any other contraband, child pornography images are an illegal commodity that must be combated both at the point of production and at the point of distribution and possession.
In Ferber, the Court said, “the distribution network for child pornography must be closed if the production of material which requires the sexual exploitation of children is to be effectively controlled.”
In Osborne, the Court said, “it is surely reasonable for the State to conclude that it will decrease the production of child pornography if it penalizes those who possess and view the product, thereby decreasing demand.”
Some have argued that the sentences for many of these offenders are excessive because “they just look at the pictures.” Many judges today are sentencing offenders well below the guidelines because they are “mere possessors.”
We are deeply skeptical. In a 2009 article in the Journal of Family Violence, Michael Bourke and Dr. Andres Hernandez at the Federal Correctional Institution at Butner, North Carolina reported on a study comparing two groups of child pornography offenders.
The first group included men convicted of child pornography possession, receipt or distribution, but no “hands-on” sexual abuse. The second included men convicted of similar offenses but with documented histories of hands-on sexual offenses against children.
The researchers found that the Internet offenders in their sample were “significantly more likely than not to have sexually abused a child via a hands-on act.” And that these offenders tended to have multiple victims.
They found that, upon being discovered, these offenders tend to minimize their behavior. They accept responsibility, but only for those behaviors known to law enforcement. They hide contact sexual crimes to avoid prosecution and to avoid shame and humiliation.
The researchers also found that online criminal investigations, while targeting so-called “Internet sex offenders,” are resulting in the apprehension of child molesters who just happen to be using the Internet to access this content.
We don’t know with certainty whether the number of child pornography offenders who commit physical contact offenses against real children is 40%, 60% or 80% of the total offender population. However, we know that a large share of that population is not merely “looking at the pictures.”
We also know that the number is far greater than publicly recognized because few of the victims tell anybody. Researchers now estimate that 1 in 3 victims of child sexual abuse report it. That represents significant progress over even a decade ago. However, what we are seeing today is that when there is a photo or video that memorializes that abuse, reporting drops precipitously. These children don’t tell.
Even if the offender cannot be shown to have victimized a real child, he is revictimizing the child in that photo or video. Victims of online child pornography must deal with the permanency and circulation of the images of their sexual abuse. Once an image is on the Internet it can never be removed and becomes a permanent record of the abuse.
Researchers studying the harm caused to a child report that child victims experience depression, withdrawal, anger, and other psychological disorders that can continue well into adulthood. They frequently experience feelings of guilt and responsibility for their abuse as well as feelings of betrayal, powerlessness and low self-esteem.
For children whose images are circulated online, their abuse is repeated over and over through each new viewing. They feel there is nothing they can do to prevent others from viewing the images, and they express concern that images of their abuse may be used to entice or manipulate other children into sexually abusive acts.
Congress has long recognized the harm child pornography inflicts on its victims. In passing the Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996, Congress found that “[t]he use of children as subjects of pornographic materials is harmful to the physiological, emotional and mental health of the child.” In 2006 Congress passed the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, which concluded that “technological advances have had the unfortunate result of greatly increasing the interstate market in child pornography”; and “every instance of viewing images of child pornography represents a renewed violation of the privacy of the victims and a repetition of their abuse.”
The Supreme Court, Congress and this Commission have recognized the extreme harm inflicted upon victims of child pornography, harm that is compounded when the images are recirculated. Yet, we are witnessing increasing instances of downward departures from the guidelines, or token sentences for offenders, simply because there is no proof of physical contact offenses against a child. Congress did not base its enactment of these laws on the assumption that all offenders must be abusers. The goal of these laws is to address this growing and deplorable form of child sexual exploitation, and stop it.
Weakening the guidelines will do irreparable damage to the goal of stopping child pornography and will put countless children at risk. It will also dilute the objective of deterrence at a time when technology is emboldening these offenders.
We urge the Commission to resist the clamor for change, and help us wake up the nation, its policy makers and its judges about the true nature and impact of this crime. The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children is committed to doing everything in its power to eradicate child pornography, and is deeply grateful for this opportunity to share its views with the Commission.
.
Local newspaper articles here:
http://news.google.com/news/story?q=Cross+...ved=0CAsQqgIwAA
Similar comments posted by readers all across the USA.
http://news.google.com/news/story?q=Cross+...ved=0CAsQqgIwAA
Similar comments posted by readers all across the USA.
QUOTE
http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/10/27/child....reed/index.html
Updated 2:28 p.m. EDT, Mon October 27, 2008
Operation frees dozens of children
By Kevin Bohn, CNN
FBI Deputy Director John Pistole says some of the alleged sex traffickers were working in networks of six to 10 pimps
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Dozens of juveniles have been freed from forced prostitution by a nationwide operation that resulted in the arrests of hundreds of other people, the FBI announced Monday. In the three-day operation, which began Thursday night, the FBI, along with local and state law enforcement agencies, took the 46 girls and one boy -- all of them U.S. citizens ages 13 to 17 -- into protective custody.
"Operation Cross Country II" involved efforts in 29 cities and resulted in the arrest of 73 pimps and 518 adult prostitutes, the FBI said. Those arrested could face federal or state charges, depending on their alleged activities.
FBI Deputy Director John Pistole said some of the alleged sex traffickers were working in networks of six to 10 pimps. "Sex trafficking of children remains one of our most violent and unconscionable crimes in this country," he told reporters.
Authorities said some of the alleged prostitutes were found at casinos and truck stops. Others were advertised on the Internet. Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, likened teen prostitution to "21st century slavery" and estimated that tens of thousands of teens may be involved. He said it is "happening on Main Street U.S.A. ... These people are moving kids city to city."
Information from last summer's first "Operation Cross Country" led agents to some of the targets identified in the latest initiative, the FBI said. When authorities received a tip about a possible juvenile prostitute, an agent would set up a sting operation to determine the person's age; anyone under age 18 was taken into custody. In all, the initiative has freed 576 child victims from forced prostitution, the FBI said.
.
Updated 2:28 p.m. EDT, Mon October 27, 2008
Operation frees dozens of children
By Kevin Bohn, CNN
FBI Deputy Director John Pistole says some of the alleged sex traffickers were working in networks of six to 10 pimps
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Dozens of juveniles have been freed from forced prostitution by a nationwide operation that resulted in the arrests of hundreds of other people, the FBI announced Monday. In the three-day operation, which began Thursday night, the FBI, along with local and state law enforcement agencies, took the 46 girls and one boy -- all of them U.S. citizens ages 13 to 17 -- into protective custody.
"Operation Cross Country II" involved efforts in 29 cities and resulted in the arrest of 73 pimps and 518 adult prostitutes, the FBI said. Those arrested could face federal or state charges, depending on their alleged activities.
FBI Deputy Director John Pistole said some of the alleged sex traffickers were working in networks of six to 10 pimps. "Sex trafficking of children remains one of our most violent and unconscionable crimes in this country," he told reporters.
Authorities said some of the alleged prostitutes were found at casinos and truck stops. Others were advertised on the Internet. Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, likened teen prostitution to "21st century slavery" and estimated that tens of thousands of teens may be involved. He said it is "happening on Main Street U.S.A. ... These people are moving kids city to city."
Information from last summer's first "Operation Cross Country" led agents to some of the targets identified in the latest initiative, the FBI said. When authorities received a tip about a possible juvenile prostitute, an agent would set up a sting operation to determine the person's age; anyone under age 18 was taken into custody. In all, the initiative has freed 576 child victims from forced prostitution, the FBI said.
.
I take the contrary view of this report, certainly for the CSI programs (and others), although reading the program synoposes for awareness and crime prevention may be sufficient.
http://www.parentstv.org/PTC/publications/...nPeril/main.asp
WOMEN IN PERIL: A Look at TV's Disturbing New Storyline Trend
One category of crime with an important educational fictional film,
and here's another,
True story, back in 2006 I saw someone's sick joke of a 'random' music playlist on a website I visited only a couple of times called pandagon.net (two posters here with numbers in their names have dropped references to that site, fortunately, now overhauled) and not saying it was typical:
Song 1. Dismemberment (... don't remember singer)
Song 2. Take me to the River (Talking Heads)
Song 3. How to Disappear (Radiohead)
Never forgot it. Maybe CSI screenwriters saw something similar and ran with it for this week's crossover trilogy.
(For wordplay fans, does pandagon sounds like a punk on the word pentagon? When John Edwards picked a blogger there to be his campaign's official blogger, he instantly lost my support for improperly vetting his advisors. A dark sense of humor doesn't excuse the offensiveness.)
http://www.parentstv.org/PTC/publications/...nPeril/main.asp
WOMEN IN PERIL: A Look at TV's Disturbing New Storyline Trend
One category of crime with an important educational fictional film,
QUOTE(believe_it @ Aug 13 2009, 01:16 PM)
Here's a relevant film I can strongly recommend (sight unseen and without having read the book) solely based on the gripping trailer,
http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi2973237785/
Lovely Bones Trailer
Release Date 11 December 2009 (USA)
What a cast.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0380510/
Directed by: Peter Jackson
Writing credits: Fran Walsh (screenplay), Philippa Boyens (screenplay) & Peter Jackson (screenplay); Alice Sebold (novel)
http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi2973237785/
Lovely Bones Trailer
Release Date 11 December 2009 (USA)
What a cast.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0380510/
Directed by: Peter Jackson
Writing credits: Fran Walsh (screenplay), Philippa Boyens (screenplay) & Peter Jackson (screenplay); Alice Sebold (novel)
and here's another,
QUOTE
http://www.bscreview.com/2009/10/csi-cross...trilogy-teaser/
The CSI Crossover Trilogy
...begins on November 9th (on CSI: Miami (episode titled “Bone Voyage”), continue in New York on “Hammer Down” to be aired on November 11th, and conclude in Vegas in “The Lost Girl” on the 12th.
The CSI Crossover Trilogy
...begins on November 9th (on CSI: Miami (episode titled “Bone Voyage”), continue in New York on “Hammer Down” to be aired on November 11th, and conclude in Vegas in “The Lost Girl” on the 12th.
True story, back in 2006 I saw someone's sick joke of a 'random' music playlist on a website I visited only a couple of times called pandagon.net (two posters here with numbers in their names have dropped references to that site, fortunately, now overhauled) and not saying it was typical:
Song 1. Dismemberment (... don't remember singer)
Song 2. Take me to the River (Talking Heads)
Song 3. How to Disappear (Radiohead)
Never forgot it. Maybe CSI screenwriters saw something similar and ran with it for this week's crossover trilogy.
(For wordplay fans, does pandagon sounds like a punk on the word pentagon? When John Edwards picked a blogger there to be his campaign's official blogger, he instantly lost my support for improperly vetting his advisors. A dark sense of humor doesn't excuse the offensiveness.)
The instinct that precedes awareness may eventually lead to knowledge through sustained observation (indirect) and learning. Here's a shortcut.
OUTSTANDING! STUPENDOUS! TRANSFORMATIONAL! A TREMENDOUS PUBLIC SERVICE!
A homerun with bases filled! Detail after detail exactly right! A voice for victims of the unspeakable. May you never bump up against even a hint of the shadow of that type of operation. And may law enforcement receive the resources it requires to win.
Related lnks here:
http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...howtopic=112262
http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...howtopic=111746
http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...t&p=1012141
OUTSTANDING! STUPENDOUS! TRANSFORMATIONAL! A TREMENDOUS PUBLIC SERVICE!
QUOTE
http://www.bscreview.com/2009/10/csi-cross...trilogy-teaser/
The CSI Crossover Trilogy
...begins on November 9th (on CSI: Miami (episode titled “Bone Voyage”), continue in New York on “Hammer Down” to be aired on November 11th, and conclude in Vegas in “The Lost Girl” on the 12th.
The CSI Crossover Trilogy
...begins on November 9th (on CSI: Miami (episode titled “Bone Voyage”), continue in New York on “Hammer Down” to be aired on November 11th, and conclude in Vegas in “The Lost Girl” on the 12th.
A homerun with bases filled! Detail after detail exactly right! A voice for victims of the unspeakable. May you never bump up against even a hint of the shadow of that type of operation. And may law enforcement receive the resources it requires to win.
Related lnks here:
http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...howtopic=112262
http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...howtopic=111746
http://www.commongroundcommonsense.org/for...t&p=1012141
Congratulations to Virginia for this important step!
QUOTE
http://www.protect.org/Newswire/Virginia/V...ght-Update.html
Virginia Sunlight Update
Tuesday, 17 November 2009
New rays of sunlight are visible in Virginia, now that PROTECT's 2009 Virginia Child Protection and Accountability System is law.
The system, designed to give citizens information they can use to hold their local public servants accountable, is in its infancy, with only partial data available in non-interactive form. But the Virginia Department of Social Services deserves credit for moving quickly to get some public information onto the Internet.
The results? Well, they're as eye-opening as we thought they'd be. PROTECT is just now digging into them. If you're curious too, take a look here .
.
Virginia Sunlight Update
Tuesday, 17 November 2009
New rays of sunlight are visible in Virginia, now that PROTECT's 2009 Virginia Child Protection and Accountability System is law.
The system, designed to give citizens information they can use to hold their local public servants accountable, is in its infancy, with only partial data available in non-interactive form. But the Virginia Department of Social Services deserves credit for moving quickly to get some public information onto the Internet.
The results? Well, they're as eye-opening as we thought they'd be. PROTECT is just now digging into them. If you're curious too, take a look here .
.
QUOTE
http://www.protect.org/Newswire/Virginia/V...-surprises.html
Virginia website surprises
Wednesday, 18 November 2009
Say County A and County B both get 45 child abuse and neglect reports. But while County A investigates 80% of its reports, County B investigates only 7%.
Will citizens and taxpayers demand answers?
As we reported yesterday, Virginia officials have begun putting data on the Internet, in compliance with the PROTECT-backed Virginia Child Protection Accountability System. The site is not yet in full compliance with the Act, and it's not the citizen-friendly site it needs to be. But it's an important start.
Here are a few samples, as reported by the Virginia Department of Social Services:
Norfolk County:
585 Referrals
104 Investigated
Chesterfield County:
658 Referrals
7 Investigated
Amherst County:
45 Referrals
36 Investigated
Fluvanna County:
45 Referrals
3 Investigated
Henry County:
213 Referrals
75 Investigated
Franklin County:
224 Referrals
9 Investigated
Update:
It is unclear when Virginia social services classifyies reports as "Investigated." Virginia uses a two-track assessment and investigation referral system to triage reports of abuse and neglect. We will report further as data becomes available.
,
Virginia website surprises
Wednesday, 18 November 2009
Say County A and County B both get 45 child abuse and neglect reports. But while County A investigates 80% of its reports, County B investigates only 7%.
Will citizens and taxpayers demand answers?
As we reported yesterday, Virginia officials have begun putting data on the Internet, in compliance with the PROTECT-backed Virginia Child Protection Accountability System. The site is not yet in full compliance with the Act, and it's not the citizen-friendly site it needs to be. But it's an important start.
Here are a few samples, as reported by the Virginia Department of Social Services:
Norfolk County:
585 Referrals
104 Investigated
Chesterfield County:
658 Referrals
7 Investigated
Amherst County:
45 Referrals
36 Investigated
Fluvanna County:
45 Referrals
3 Investigated
Henry County:
213 Referrals
75 Investigated
Franklin County:
224 Referrals
9 Investigated
Update:
It is unclear when Virginia social services classifyies reports as "Investigated." Virginia uses a two-track assessment and investigation referral system to triage reports of abuse and neglect. We will report further as data becomes available.
,
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