Sandusky “Victim One” Pulled From School Due to Bullying and Threats From Students and Staff
Don’t tell me the kind of things that happened in Nazi Germany could never happen in the USA … Ryan D. Buell reports in the Huffington Post:
Court records refer to him simply, as Victim One. Outside of a four-and-a-half page section about him in the grand jury indictment of ex-Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, little else has been discussed about him publicly.
Last week, his mother (whom I will refer to as “Mother One”) removed him from Central Mountain High School in Mill Hall, Pa., where he was a senior and an all-star athlete. In an interview conducted last week, she explained why she pulled him from the school.
“They were not helpful,” Mother One said of the school’s administrators. “They wanted me to go home and forget about it.”
Mother One also alleges that since the Sandusky scandal erupted, fellow students and the high school’s football coach (who also serves as…
Official Culture in America: A Natural State of Psychopathy?
Laura Knight-Jadczyk
Laura Knight-Jadczyk wrote back in 2003:
When I first moved abroad at the age of 21, I quickly realized that I was, like most Americans, abysmally ignorant with regard to politics. I discovered – to my great dismay – that in my host country, most of the average people around me – shopkeepers, hairdressers, taxi-drivers – knew more about what was going on in the USA and the rest of the world than I did; a LOT more! I had no IDEA of the things that were going on that were common knowledge to other peoples in the world. And here, it wasn’t simply a matter of having a different opinion than others. It was a matter of an almost complete lack of INFORMATION within the very country that promotes democracy as the rule of an “informed citizenry.” I realized with striking clarity exactly how ignorant I was at that…
World’s Largest Pedophile Ring Uncovered
Networking site from Netherlands featuring members from around the world.
BBC reports:
International police led by a UK team say they shut down the largest internet paedophile ring yet discovered.
The global forum had 70,000 followers at its height, leading to 4,000 intelligence reports being sent to police across 30 countries.
The operation has so far identified 670 suspects and 230 abused children.
Detectives say 184 people have been arrested – 121 of them were in the UK. Some 60 children have been protected in the UK.
The three-year investigation, Operation Rescue, was led by investigators from the UK’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (Ceop).
[Continues at BBC]
Are Republicans More Likely to Molest Children Than Democrats?
And if so, why?
Armchair Subversive posts a long list of Republicans who have been charged, arrested, or even pleaded guilty to molesting children or teenagers and related crimes:
- Republican aide, Alan David Berlin, was arrested on charges that he wanted to engage in sex acts with a 15 year old boy while dressed in a panda costume.
- Fox News producer Aaron Bruns pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 10 years for possessing child pornography.
- Republican activist and former presidential campaign chairman Jeffrey Claude Bartleson was arrested on charges of sexually molesting a 5-year old boy.
- Republican activist and former chairman of the Christian County Republicans Royce Fessenden pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree child molestation and one count of second-degree statutory sodomy.
- Republican parole board officer and former legislator George Christian (Chris) Ortloff pleaded guilty to attempting to lure 11- and 12-year-old girls to have sex with him.
Read the rest of the list here. Meanwhile, TripMarz555 posts a much…
Bipolar Christianity: How Torturing ‘Sinful’ Children Produced Holy Wars
Lloyd deMause
From Chapter 9 of Lloyd deMause’s The Origins of War in Child Abuse:
After half a century of primary source research into the history of childrearing, I and over a hundred other childhood historians have been unable to find a single mother who did not badly beat and torture their children prior to modern times. I have long offered a prize to anyone who could find actual evidence of just one mother prior to the 18th century who would not today be thrown into jail for badly abusing their children.
The occasional reformers, like Saint Anselm, who sometimes questioned whether whipping children “day and night” was wise, did not raise any children themselves because they were ascetic. Despite the fact that Jesus nowhere says children should be beaten, Christians taught that He wanted them to beat the sins out of them continuously, from birth. Actually, the main reference Jesus makes to children…
Was Alice Miller an Abusive Mother?
Daniel Mackler writes:
When asked to define abuse in an 2005 interview with Borut Jesenovec, Alice Miller stated: “Abuse means to me using a person for whatever I want from her, him, without asking for their agreement, without respecting their will and their interests. With children, it is very easy to do so, because they are loving, they trust their parents and most adults, and they don’t realize that they were abused, that their love had been exploited.” [from www.alice-miller.com].
Although this definition most obviously applies to extreme cases of abuse – such as overt sexual and physical abuse – I hold that it also applies to Alice Miller’s relationship with her daughter. How could it not, considering that she herself has explained that she had not even explored her childhood at all by the time she had her own children, and thus was not aware of what her own unresolved and unmet…
Liz Cheney’s Pro-Torture PAC Linked to Child Abusing “Boot Camp”
Joe Conason reported for Salon in February of last year:
The arrest of an Army sergeant (and Iraq veteran) who allegedly waterboarded his 4-year-old daughter for failing to recite the alphabet is sickening. Yet it may be the kind of news we must come to expect if, as a society, the United States determines that torture is an acceptable method of securing information and inducing obedience. Physical abuse of children is nothing new, of course, in certain right-wing quarters, as Max Blumenthal reminded us by exposing the pedagogical sadism of Focus on the Family in Republican Gomorrah.
For a sergeant who tortures his child, however, the relevant model probably comes from somewhere high in the chain of command. At the center of today’s propaganda promoting the torture state are former Vice President Dick Cheney, his family and many of his friends, working through an organization called Keeping America Safe that is run by his…
Climate Change and the 4000 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence
Matriarchy.info reviews Dr. James DeMeo’s book SAHARASIA: The 4000 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence, In the Deserts of the Old World:
A new geographical study on the ancient historical origins of human violence and warfare, drawing upon global archaeological and anthropological evidence, has just been published presenting substantial proof that our ancient ancestors were non-violent, and far more social and loving than are most humans today – moreover, the study points to a dramatic climate change in the Old World, the drying up of the vast Sahara and Asian Deserts, with attending famine, starvation and forced migrations which pushed the earliest humans into violent social patterns, a trauma from which we have not yet recovered in over 6000 years.
The study and book, titled SAHARASIA: The 4000 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence, In the Deserts of the Old World, by retired professor James…
Florida Mom Sells Baby To Buy Car
Stephanie Bigbee Fleming, left, and her mother, Patty Bigbee, right.
Hot on the heels of the mother who shook her baby to death so that she could play Farmville, a Florida woman wanted a car more than she wanted her baby, selling it for $9,000, according to Reuters:
A Florida woman was charged with trying to sell her infant son in order to pay for a new car, police said Tuesday.
The baby’s grandmother brokered the deal and initially demanded $75,000 but agreed to cut the price to $30,000 when told the prospective buyer could not get a bank loan, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) said.
The mother of the eight-week-old boy, Stephanie Bigbee Fleming, 22, of Bradenton, Florida, was to receive $9,000 of the proceeds, the FDLE said.
“Fleming planned to purchase a new vehicle from the money received,” an FDLE spokeswoman said.
Fleming also needed money to pay court costs for an…
Teacher Uses “Sexual Harassment Dice” To Punish Elementary School Students
Instead of determining a punishment based on the weight of the crime, a 59-year-old elementary school teacher left it to a throw of the dice. In replace of numbers, these dice read “kiss,” “forgive,” and “snot.” The Mainichi Daily News reports:
A sixth grade primary school teacher is in hot water with parents and the local school board after complaints that he was using kisses and snot to punish his students.
The 59-year-old teacher at Ogi Elementary School in Iruma, Saitama Prefecture, apparently had three dice, one with sides marked with the words “hug” and ” forgiven,” another marked with “kiss,” “snot” and “forgiven” among others, and the third marked with “snot” and “forgiven.” Students who forgot to bring something to class were forced to roll one of the dice. The teacher has apparently admitted to kissing one boy and acting as if he would put snot on one girl. He nicknamed the…
As More Bullying Victims Commit Suicide, Right-Wing Groups Decry Anti-Bullying Policies As ‘Gay Agenda’ Ploy
As a sort of follow up to my post yesterday, from Think Progress:
Many states across the country are taking laudable steps to enact measures that bolster administrators’ ability to protect students who face such harassment. However, despite the evidence supporting the need, right-wing lawmakers and activists insist that anti-bullying measures are nothing more than insidious tools of the “homosexual agenda”:
- The American Family Association of Michigan has spent years decrying a proposed anti-bullying measure as “a Trojan Horse to sneak [homosexual activists'] special rights agenda into law” and to “legitimize homosexual behavior” which is “a practice scientifically proven to result in a dramatically higher incidence of domestic violence, mental illness, illegal drug use, promiscuity, life-threatening disease, and premature death.” The bill “died in 2008 in the state Senate because senators could not agree” on whether to address bullying based on sexual orientation and gender identity in the measure.
- In Minnesota, Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer said he would not…
The Culling is Here: Is Abuse a Form of Social Control?
Amidst the recent spate of news stories about bullied youth committing suicide (at least nine in September), ScienceDaily reports:
Loners and antisocial kids who reject other children are often bullied at school — an accepted form of punishment from peers as they establish social order. Such peer victimization may be an extreme group response to control renegades, according to a new study from Concordia University published in the Journal of Early Adolescence.
“For groups to survive, they need to keep their members under control,” says author William M. Bukowski, a professor at the Concordia Department of Psychology and director of its Centre for Research in Human Development. “Withdrawn individuals threaten the strong social fabric of a group, so kids are victimized when they are too strong or too antisocial. Victimization is a reaction to anyone who threatens group harmony.”
Bukowski notes that the word victimization is related to the word for sacrifice and…
Woman Molested Own Grandson To Exorcise ‘A Sexual Demon’
John McCann writes in the Herald-Sun:
DURHAM, North Carolina — A grandmother who authorities say committed sexual acts with her grandson because she believed she needed to get a demon off him insisted she understood rejecting a plea offer could mean more than a decade in prison.
The woman made it clear she’d allow jurors to give thumbs up or down on what she did and didn’t do with her own child’s child. Toni Stowers-Moore wants a trial.
Addressing concern about the defendant’s sanity, Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens on Thursday ruled Stowers-Moore is competent to stand trial based on the findings of a certified forensic examiner. That trial is expected to start Monday.
Stowers-Moore, 52, is charged with statutory rape/sex offense in which the defendant is six years older than the victim, incest with a child and sexual battery. The crimes allegedly occurred between July 28, 2008 and Aug. 1, 2008, Durham Police…
Deaf Catholic Sex Abuse Victim Sues Pope
Father Lawrence C. Murphy
Why did he wait 50 years though? From CNN:
MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin – Terry Kohut has kept a dark secret for nearly 50 years. Now he is breaking his silence, becoming a key figure in the sex-abuse crisis in the Catholic Church and the growing controversy over what Pope Benedict XVI did about it.
When Kohut was barely a teen, and for years afterward, he says, he was sexually molested and assaulted by the headmaster and priest of the school where he lived, St. John’s School for the Deaf, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. What occurred there is one of the most notorious cases of sex abuse in the Catholic Church.
Kohut was not alone. From 1950 to 1974 the headmaster of St. Johns, Father Lawrence C. Murphy, raped and molested as many as 200 deaf boys, according to court and church documents.
Kohut has now filed the first sex-abuse lawsuit against the Vatican actually…
Childhood and Totalitarian Dictatorship
[disinfo editor's note: Alice Miller, PhD (12 January 1923, Lwow, Poland – 14 April 2010, Saint-Rémy de Provence, France) was a psychologist and author who is noted for her work on child abuse in its many forms, including physical abuse, emotional abuse and child sexual abuse.]
Alice Miller compares the rules of an abusive family with those of Nazi Germany and comes to some interesting, though not really surprising, conclusions:
The Führer once told his secretary that during one of the regular beatings given him by his father he was able to stop crying, to feel nothing, and even to count the thirty-two blows he received.
In this way, by totally denying his pain, his feelings of powerlessness, and his despair- in other words, by denying the truth – Hitler made himself into a master of violence and of contempt for human beings. The result was a very primitive person, incapable of any empathy for…
Texas City Reinstates Corporal Punishment In Public Schools
If there’s one thing Texans love besides barbecue, it’s paddling their kids. From the Washington Post:
“There are times when maybe a good crack might not be a bad idea,” said Robert Pippin, a custom home builder who sports a goatee and cowboy boots. His son graduated from Temple schools several years ago.
Corporal punishment remains legal in 20 states, mostly in the South, but its use is diminishing. Ohio ended it last year, and a movement for a federal ban is afoot. Most school districts across the country banned paddling of students long ago. Texas sat that trend out.
But even by Texas standards, Temple is unusual. The city, a compact railroad hub of 60,000 people, banned the practice and then revived it at the demand of parents who longed for the orderly schools of yesteryear. Since paddling was brought back to the city’s 14 schools by a unanimous board vote in…
Future Pope Stalled California Pedophile Priest Case
GILLIAN FLACCUS writes in the AP:
LOS ANGELES — Four years after a California priest and convicted child molester asked to be defrocked, his bishop pleaded with the future Pope Benedict XVI to remove the man from the priesthood. Then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger replied, urging caution.”
Consider the good of the Universal Church,” Ratzinger wrote in a 1985 letter to Oakland Bishop John Cummins. “It is necessary for this Congregation to submit incidents of this sort to very careful consideration, which necessitates a longer period of time.”
Two more years would pass before the Vatican acted on the Rev. Stephen Kiesle’s request to leave.
A copy of the letter, typewritten in Latin and signed by Ratzinger, was obtained by The Associated Press. It constitutes the strongest challenge yet to the Vatican’s insistence that Benedict played no role in blocking the removal of pedophile priests during his years as head of the Catholic Church’s doctrinal watchdog…
Legal Immunity Cannot Hold: The Vatican Should Feel the Full Weight of International Law
Geoffrey Robertson writes in the Guardian:
Well may the pope defy “the petty gossip of dominant opinion”. But the Holy See can no longer ignore international law, which now counts the widespread or systematic sexual abuse of children as a crime against humanity. The anomalous claim of the Vatican to be a state — and of the pope to be a head of state and hence immune from legal action — cannot stand up to scrutiny.
The truly shocking finding of Judge Murphy’s commission in Ireland was not merely that sexual abuse was “endemic” in boys’ institutions but that the church hierarchy protected the perpetrators and, despite knowledge of their propensity to reoffend, allowed them to take up new positions teaching other children after their victims had been sworn to secrecy.
