If you believe it is ok to deny registered sex offenders human rights or U.S. Constitutional rights. If you do not believe registered sex offenders are denied their human and constitutional rights or if you are against free speech.
Please leave this web page now. Thank you.
By remaining on this web page you here by acknowledge that you support human rights and United States constitutional rights for registered sex offenders and that you support freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech is understood to be fundamental in a democracy. The First Amendment (Amendment I) to the United States Constitution prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press, interfering with the right to peaceably assemble or prohibiting the petitioning for a governmental redress of grievances. It was adopted on December 15, 1791, as one of the ten amendments that comprise the Bill of Rights.
This blog is not for people to be critical of what is posted here and if the reader is critical of anything here than that means they did not read the disclaimer on the top of each of the pages here and are not welcome here and should stop reading and leave this blog upon my request and in the name of freedom of speech, and my rights as a American citizen.
No sexual abuse is ever acceptable. Sex offense laws and policies should be based on sound research and common sense, not fear, panic or paranoia. Current laws and policies that paint all sex offenders with one broad brush are counter- productive, wasteful, and cause needless harm. Each offense must be judged on its own merits with a punishment that fits the crime and does not waste taxpayer dollars. The public sex offender registry and residency restriction laws do not protect children but instead ostracize and dehumanize individuals and their families. Money spent on purely punitive measures would be better used for prevention, healing, and rehabilitation.
The author of SO FAQ does not affiliate with any other organization or people on the internet or the world for that matter. I have been saying this since I first logged on to the internet. Just because I like organizations like the ACLU; does not mean I believe in everything they believe in or stand for. Just like in our great country when we vote; we will never believe in everything the candidate we vote for; believes in or stands for. That doe not mean we are should not vote.
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Hey, this blog looks real nice on a cell phone; as I have recently discovered.
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Please ignore the official counter on this blog. Shortly after I put this counter on every page of my blog it became impossible to update with it in the html of this blog. I had to take it off all my blog pages. I just realized today it is still on my untouched SOFAQ homepage still and I believe it is true, counting not only computer hits but phone hits as well. I am pasting a copy of it here:
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| That's right; the home page of this blog registers 215,050 hits. check the bottom of this page to see for yourself: https://sexoffenderfaq.blogspot.com/ |
PA COURTS PUT MEGAN’S LAW IN LIMBO
Go Eagles!
January 10, 2018
http://www.altoonamirror.com/news/local-news/2018/01/pa-courts-put-megans-law-in-limbo/
[altoonamirror.com]
HOLLIDAYSBURG — Following the sentencing of an area man last month for indecent assault, Blair County District Attorney Richard A. Consiglio informed the judge that the next step in the process — a hearing to determine if the defendant was required to register as a sex offender — had to be delayed because of recent opinions by the Pennsylvania Supreme and Superior courts.
Under those opinions, questions arose as to the constitutionality of the state law requiring sexual offenders to register with state police and to periodically update their registration.
The constitutional challenges focused on individuals convicted of sexual offenses before Dec. 20, 2012, when the most recent Sexual Offender Registration and Notification Act, known as SORNA, took effect.
Also challenged was the information made available to the public about defendants that included private facts beyond the charges for which they were convicted and their addresses.
MA: WESTFIELD MOVES TO REPEAL UNCONSTITUTIONAL SEX OFFENDER ORDINANCE
January 13, 2018
http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2018/01/westfield_city_council_subcomm_1.html
By Hope E. Tremblay
Special to The Republican
WESTFIELD – The City Council’s legislative and ordinance subcommittee Thursday took the first step toward repealing a local ordinance that unconstitutionally restricts where registered sex offenders may live or visit.
The motion to repeal the ordinance was made by Chairman Ralph J. Figy, who said a decision by the state Supreme Judicial Court indicates the ordinance goes against the state constitution.
First Assistant City Solicitor Shanna R. Reed said Westfield has not received any notification from the state regarding the ordinance, but other cities have.
“There was a case against the city of Lynn that had a similar ordinance,” Reed said. “A lot of communities have them.”
Reed wrote Westfield’s ordinance in 2011. Forty other communities in the state had similar ordinances at the time, she said. She said town bylaws must be reviewed by the state attorney general. “So even the attorney general thought it was OK,” she said.
The state’s Sex Offender Registry, created in 1999, requires comprehensive data about registered sex offenders. The SJC ruled that was all any community needed, Reed said.
“They said it’s enough and we can’t go beyond that,” she said.
Westfield’s sex offender ordinance exceeded the state laws simply by existing, said Reed.
PROFESSOR CATHERINE CARPENTER: THE UNCONSTITUTIONALITY OF SEX OFFENSE LAWS [VIDEO]
January 14, 2018
http://www.sfc.edu/news-feed/~post/the-unconstitutionality-of-sex-offense-laws-20171006
[www.sfc.edu]
http://www.sfc.edu/news-feed/~post/the-unconstitutionality-of-sex-offense-laws-20171006
Professor Catherine Carpenter (Southwestern Law School), a nationally renowned criminal law scholar in the area of sex crimes and sex offender registration laws, came to St. Francis College on September 26 to talk about The Unconstitutionality of Sex Offense Laws.
Watch Catherine Carpenter on Sex Offender Laws
Her scholarship has been cited by numerous courts and used as a guide by attorneys; she is also one of the foremost authorities on law school curricula and accreditation. Among her important law review articles is, “Against Juvenile Sex Offender Registration.”
The lecture was organized by St. Francis College Professors Emily Horowitz and Athena Devlin as part of the Fall 2017 Senior Citizen Lecture Series: Perspectives on American Politics & Policies.
TX: SEX OFFENDER RESIDENCY RESTRICTIONS QUESTIONED IN SMALL CITIES
January 15, 2018
[floridaactioncommittee.org]
https://floridaactioncommittee.org/sex-offender-residency-restrictions-questioned-in-small-cities/
AUSTIN — Registered sex offenders in small Texas cities were until last year challenging residence restrictions, arguing that “general-law” municipalities lacked authority to control where they lived.
A new state law that took effect in September codified small cities’ legal standing to enact such ordinances, but now the attorney who in 2015 sued Krum over its ordinance is back in court, saying that the Denton County city’s newly enacted residence restriction, along with those of several other Texas cities, violates the statute.
“If they’ve passed a new ordinance and it doesn’t comply, they are very likely to be sued,” said Denton attorney Richard Gladden, who challenged Krum’s residency rules on behalf of a then-local male resident who is a registered sex offender. “If they have not complied with House Bill 1111 they are going to lose.”
FL: CLEARMYCASE SUIT DISMISSED!
January 22, 2018
https://floridaactioncommittee.org/clearmycase-suit-dismissed/
[floridaactioncommittee.org]
We are pleased to have learned that Judge Dimitrouleas DISMISSED the lawsuit filed against us by ClearMyCase.
For some time we’d been receiving complaints from FAC members and registrants from other states about a company out of Texas called ClearMyCase.com. The company had been using the State Sex Offender registries as a mailing list to solicit “fees” to help “de-register” people from the Sex Offender Registry.
PA: U.S. SUPREME COURT DENIES APPEAL OF SEX OFFENDER DECISION
January 22, 2018 ·204 Comments
http://cumberlink.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/u-s-supreme-court-denies-appeal-of-sex-offender-decision/article_6057d6e8-2e8d-59b2-ba4c-9d4cb053a6b0.html
The U.S. Supreme Court will not hear a challenge to a recent state court ruling that determined part of Pennsylvania’s sex offender registration law was unconstitutional. Full Article
The U.S. Supreme Court will not hear a challenge to a recent state court ruling that determined part of Pennsylvania’s sex offender registration law was unconstitutional.
Related
https://floridaactioncommittee.org/scotus-refuses-to-hear-pa-case-that-found-sex-offender-registry-punishment/
http://www.pacourts.us/assets/opinions/Supreme/out/J-121B-2016oajc%20-%2010317692521317667.pdf
MN: MINNESOTA SEX OFFENDERS CHALLENGE A CITY’S BAN
January 23, 2018 ·
http://www.startribune.com/minnesota-sex-offenders-challenge-a-city-s-ban/470718623/
[startribune.com]
Three convicted rapists awaiting release from state custody are suing the city of Dayton, Minn., over an ordinance that virtually bans them from living in the city, arguing that the measure violates their Constitutional rights and is trumped by state law.
The men are challenging a far-reaching 2016 ordinance that bars convicted sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of any school, day care center, park, playground, public bus stop — even a pumpkin patch or apple orchard — within the city of Dayton, a rural community of about 5,000 residents northwest of the Twin Cities.
Because of the ordinance, they argue, the three offenders remain unjustly confined at the Minnesota Sex Offender Program (MSOP) facility in St. Peter — more than a year after they were cleared for conditional release to a three-bedroom group home in Dayton, where they would have lived under 24-hour surveillance. The lawsuit was filed this month in Hennepin County District Court.
MI: SUPREME COURT RULES IN SEX OFFENDER REGISTRY CASE
January 24, 2018
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/michigan/articles/2018-01-24/michigan-supreme-court-rules-in-sex-offender-registry-case
Michigan’s Supreme Court says a Detroit-area man who served probation and community service after being charged with touching a girl’s breast when he was 19 can be removed from a sex offender registry. Full Article
NEW POTENTIAL SCAM “CORRECTIONAL SERVICES NETWORK OF AMERICA” TARGETING SEX OFFENDERS
January 24, 2018
https://floridaactioncommittee.org/new-potential-scam-correctional-services-network-of-america-targeting-sex-offenders/
[floridaactioncommittee.org]
Members are reporting receiving post cards from a Nevada based LLC called “Correctional Services Network of America” in the same style as “ClearMyCase”.
The company is using the Florida Sex Offender’s Registry as a marketing list to solicit vulnerable individuals, offering a “review” of their registration status for $299… a “savings” of $500 off their regular price of $899.00.
IML LAWSUIT FILED
January 11, 2018
http://all4consolaws.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Complaint-CONFORMED-11-Jan-2018.pdf
A lawsuit was filed today in the Central District of the U.S. District Court of California challenging regulations issued by the State Department that announced the addition of a “unique identifier” to the passports of some registrants. Addition of the identifier to passports could affect more than 500,000 Americans and their families.
“The State Department violated the requirements of the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) when it failed to provide the public with an opportunity to comment upon its regulations,” stated ACSOL Executive Director and attorney Janice Bellucci. “As a result of the State Department’s significant violations, we are asking the Court to order the agency to begin again its regulatory process.”
According to the lawsuit, the State Department issued the regulations in September 2016 and October 2017. The agency declared the first regulation to be a “final rule” and did not request public comment before taking effect. The agency issued the second regulation in the form of a press release which was later posted on the agency’s website.
In its regulations, the State Department also declared that it will not issue passport cards to some registrants. According to the lawsuit, Congress did not provide the State Department with this authority, but instead required the State Department to add a unique identifier to passport cards issued to some registrants.
The plaintiffs in the case include the Alliance for Constitutional Sex Offense Laws, a national non-profit organization, as well as two registrants who reside in the Central District. One of the registrants has an existing passport without an identifier and is concerned that his passport could be revoked while he is traveling overseas. The second registrant does not yet have a passport and is afraid to apply for one because it would include a unique identifier.
“The possibility of having a unique identifier added to their passports has had a dramatic chilling effect upon hundreds of thousands of American citizens,” stated Bellucci. “Due to this concern, they are choosing either not to travel overseas or not to apply for a passport.”
The United States, in the past, has not added a unique identifier to the passport of any American citizen. The only countries known to have done this in the past are Germany and Russia.
‘GLEE’ STAR MARK SALLING DEAD OF APPARENT SUICIDE
January 30, 2018
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/glee-star-mark-salling-dead-apparent-suicide-2-183521198.html
[yahoo.com]
Mark Salling has reportedly died in an apparent suicide weeks before being sentenced to prison for possession of child pornography. He was 35.
TMZ, The Blast and E! all reported his death. LAPD PIO told PEOPLE that officers responded to a death investigation at the 11900 block of Big Tujunga Cyn Road Tuesday morning at 8:50 a.m. but could not identify Salling.
The Glee star pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography involving a prepubescent minor Oct. 4, 2017. After striking a plea deal in December, he was due to be sentenced in March and expected to serve four to seven years in prison.
“Mark is focused on accepting responsibility and attempting to atone for his conduct,” Salling’s attorney Michael Proctor said in a statement to People at the time.
NE: CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT FILED ON BEHALF OF JUVENILES PLACED ON SEX OFFENDER LIST
January 31, 2018
http://journalstar.com/news/local/911/class-action-lawsuit-filed-on-behalf-of-juveniles-placed-on/article_8fe292fe-72e8-51e8-b9cc-0446f8267b58.html
The attorney who successfully sued to keep a 15-year-old boy’s name off the state’s Sex Offender Registry now is seeking to file a class-action lawsuit for those who the Nebraska State Patrol did list.
Attorney Joshua Weir said it ruined the lives of the seven — listed only as Johnny Doe I through VII — and dozens of others. Full Article
IL: ILLINOIS APPELLATE COURT RULES LIFETIME SEX OFFENDER REGISTRATION “GROSSLY DISPROPORTIONATE PUNISHMENT” FOR 21 YEAR OLD
February 2, 2018
https://floridaactioncommittee.org/illinois-appellate-court-rules-lifetime-sex-offender-registration-grossly-disproportionate-punishment-for-21-year-old/
[floridaactioncommittee.org]
The opinion in People v. Tetter, which came out a couple days ago, is another great decision to add to our growing list of cases where courts have found the registry to be “punishment” and conditions of the registry have crossed the line into irrational.
Kyle Tetter was 21 when he met a girl on an online social media app. Her profile said she was 18. Even though he later learned she was 16, they continued the consensual relationship and eventually she became pregnant and her mother reported him to the police.
Tetter was sentenced to 180 days in county jail, 4 years’ sex offender probation, and lifetime on the registry.
The appeal directly addresses the question, “Whether Sex Offender Statutes Constitute Punishment”
PROF. JANUS ESTABLISHES CENTER DEVOTED TO SEX-OFFENDER LITIGATION, POLICY
February 3, 2018
https://mitchellhamline.edu/news/2018/02/02/prof-janus-establishes-center-devoted-to-sex-offender-litigation-policy/
[mitchellhamline.edu]
Mitchell Hamline School of Law is pleased to announce the creation of a center devoted to tracking litigation and encouraging effective public policy related to sexual offenders.
Directed by Professor Eric Janus, a leading national expert on sexual violence law and policy, the Sex Offense Litigation and Policy Resource Center collects and disseminates information about cases related to sex-offender policy and laws. Supported by a grant from the Vital Projects Fund, the center seeks to facilitate communication, sharing, and the development of strategies among lawyers, advocates, and academics who seek a more sensible and effective public policy on sexual violence prevention.
“Our aim is to create a national network of lawyers and social scientists dedicated to holding our sexual violence policies accountable both to the Constitution and to the growing body of knowledge about effective prevention strategies,” said Janus, who has written extensively and participated in impact litigation on sex-offender laws. The former president and dean of William Mitchell College of Law, a predecessor to Mitchell Hamline, Janus is the author of two books on this subject: “Failure to Protect: America’s Sexual Predator Laws and the Rise of the Preventive State” and “Sexual Predators: Society, Risk, and the Law” (with Prentky and Barbaree).
IA: IOWA COURT: OFFENSIVE TEXT PHOTOS AREN’T INDECENT EXPOSURE
February 3, 2018
http://www.thestate.com/news/business/technology/article198123684.html
[thestate.com]
DES MOINES, Iowa
The Iowa Supreme Court ruled Friday that text messaging a photo of one’s genitals to another person is not indecent exposure under state law.
The court ruled found that to meet the definition of the Iowa law as written, such an offensive display must be done in the physical presence of the offended person.
“While we acknowledge that one can be offended by a sexually explicit image transmitted via text message, it is much easier to ‘look away’ from that image than it is to avoid an offensive in-person exposure,” the court said.
Sending an unwanted photo of one’s genitals to another adult who finds it offensive could still lead to a harassment charge, but that is a simple misdemeanor under Iowa law.
PA: STATE TO CONSIDER OVERHAUL TO SEX OFFENDER REGISTRATION LAW AGAIN
February 4, 2018
http://www.buckscountycouriertimes.com/news/20180202/state-to-consider-overhaul-to-sex-offender-registration-law-again
[buckscountycouriertimes.com]
The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on a bill Monday.
Nearly eight years ago, Bucks County resident Steve Gordon left state prison after completing a 10-year sentence for sexually assaulting a woman, but he was not quite a free man.
His conviction for aggravated indecent sexual assault meant that Pennsylvania State Police would be keeping tabs on him for another decade.
A little more than five years ago, though, Gordon, now 71, suddenly had state police monitoring him for the rest of his life, after state lawmakers replaced the previous Megan’s Law with a new tougher federal version.
The new law, known as the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, expanded and reclassified crimes requiring sex offender registration that was applied retroactively. It added an estimated 2,000 individuals to the sex offender registry and for roughly 4,500 ex-offenders, like Gordon, turned a 10-year registration into a lifetime obligation.
Then, last year, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that the Adam Walsh Act cannot be applied to individuals convicted before the law took effect on Dec. 20, 2012. But the high court did not provide any guidance for how the decision should be applied or what happens to the offenders retroactively added to the registry.
Now Pennsylvania lawmakers have proposed another overhaul of the sex offender law to prevent thousands of the roughly 22,000 ex-sex offenders currently on the Megan’s Law registry from being removed, including roughly half of the 500 Megan’s Law offenders in Bucks County. House lawmakers unanimously passed the bill in December and the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on it Monday.
The proposed legislation would turn back the clock for ex-offenders convicted before the 2012 law took effect, but still require they finish any original registration obligation under the old version of Megan’s Law, which was either 10 years or a lifetime. The bill also would loosen some burdensome requirements including giving offenders with lifetime registration obligations the ability to get off the registry.
New Blogs Part 9 Updated February 11 2018
I have a conscience: an inner feeling or voice viewed as acting as a guide to the rightness or wrongness of one's behavior.
If you are human you have a conscience. If you deny your conscience; that is futile. Futile: incapable of producing any useful result; pointless.
There two things I must post:
I watched some of the video this morning and you can really see the hatred this lady has for transgender people. She squints her eyes with hate; at the mere mention of the word transgender. This is a clear case of transphobia and that has got to be some kind of mental illness. It's like I always say all them that point their fingers at people for this or that are usually guilty of way worse.
Transphobia is a range of negative attitudes, feelings or actions toward transgender or transsexual people, or toward transsexuality. Transphobia can be emotional disgust, fear, violence, anger or discomfort felt or expressed towards people who do not conform to society's gender expectations.
Transphobia - Wikipedia
1) Readers find some amazing things including this video from November, 2017. The Slowly Boiled Frog is briefly mentioned at around 10:20. I did not queue it up because the entire thing — titled “Dr. Michelle Cretella on Transgenderism: A Mental Illness is Not a Civil Right” — is cringe-worthy. It was produced by the extreme right-wing and orthodox Catholic cult, TFP. Think John Birch Society combined with Opus Dei.
For the record, Dr. Cretella, my name is David Cary Hart and I write the Slowly Boiled Frog. Not that you get to approve pronouns but that was my name at birth. The use of my middle name is not a pretension. Rather it is a unique identifier for accountability. I mention that you are unlicensed, not to suggest anything nefarious but, rather, to evidence your apparent priorities given that you are an unpaid volunteer at American College of Pediatricians.
Moreover, practicing physicians are required to keep pace with current research and treatment advances. Not practicing for about three years is, in scientific terms, a very large period of time.
While I was at it I found what appears to be your 2012 divorce and a 2015 home foreclosure by Deutsche Bank. Of course there could be another Michelle Cretella in Connecticut. Feel free to contact me if you think that I have the facts wrong.
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As for the video, it is a defense of the Catholic faith. There is no such thing as “transgender ideology.” Cretella is unable to differentiate between faith and science. According to the science, there is no known intervention that addresses gender dysphoria. Cretella's insistence on talk therapy to address gender dysphoria is not supported by any peer-reviewed research published to a scholarly journal.
Some patients with gender dysphoria, including children, find considerable relief from the symptoms through gender affirmation. Those symptoms often include severe depression and anxiety which can lead to self-harm. These religious crackpots are playing with children's lives in an attempt to conform the world to their faith — or superstitions depending upon your point of view.
In the video, Cretella makes the absurd claim that left-leaning physicians (plural) call to thank her. For what? Intentionally misinforming them in service to Christianity? Or is that a lie? I don't know know who the fuck Michelle Cretella thinks she is but she is the unpaid head of a tiny SPLC-designated hate group with an annual budget under $100,000. The real peer group, the American Academy of Pediatrics has an annual budget greater than $121,000,000.
Michelle Cretella is a menace! She previously served on the board of NARTH and is a proponent of thoroughly discredited conversion therapy in spite of a dearth of scientific evidence that it is either safe or effective (it is neither). NARTH is a conservative Christian endeavor. Its purpose is to excuse discrimination on the basis that being gay or trans is some kind of choice.
American College of Pediatricians is also a conservative Christian operation. It is essentially a political organization that exists to oppose LGBT acceptance and equality for religious reasons. It also opposes reproductive choice. It doesn't seem to do anything in service to children. It produces no peer-reviewed research.
Oh, it has one other purpose. Prior president Denslow Trumbull has a profile at Jackson Hospital in Alabama. It includes:
Den Trumbull is board certified in pediatrics and a Fellow of the American College of Pediatricians.
I will bet that Trumbull has a pretentious plaque on the wall from American College of Pediatricians. Would the average patient know that it is a minuscule hate group or are they more likely to confuse it with a real peer organization? “Fellow?”
ACPeds has removed a directory of physicians from its website. Furthermore, to get a referral one has to make the request by email. Proud folks.
2) I am just going to post links to this one:
I hope this Intel gets sorted out; until then we can at least be puzzled. At least being puzzled; is sometime better than nothing.
New Blogs Part 9 Updated February 12 2018
On a Saturday morning in 2013 in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood, an 18-year-old recycling worker, Luis Camarillo, was loading materials into a truck when the vehicle’s compactor crushed him. He was rushed to a hospital, where he died.
Mr. Camarillo’s death, while seemingly a freak accident, was in fact not unusual.
The hazards facing people in this line of work have a long history — they inspired the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike of 1968. That walkout was set off in part by the deaths of two Memphis sanitation workers, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, who were crushed to death by the hydraulic press of the truck they were riding on one rainy winter evening.
The strike, whose organizers demanded higher pay, the recognition of the workers’ union and safer working conditions, is often associated with the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Memphis the day after delivering his “Mountaintop” speech in support of striking sanitation workers. But when we think about the strike, we should also remember that half a century after his death, the work Dr. King was focused on in the last days of his life remains unfinished. A ProPublica investigation published in January detailed the grueling and unsafe working conditions faced by many of today’s private waste-management workers, who risk their lives daily for very little pay.
The investigation focused on New York City, but the conditions it uncovered aren’t at all unlike those in Memphis in 1968. There, the mostly African-American men who handled garbage did work that was dangerous, brutal and poorly paid. Aside from the hazards the trucks posed, sanitation workers had to handle materials like tree limbs, broken glass and biological waste that could infect, poison or otherwise injure them. They endured this in temperatures regularly exceeding 90 degrees, often without breaks. Crippling injuries were common.
The strike against those conditions quickly became a national focal point for labor activism and civil rights. For Memphis’s churches and N.A.A.C.P. chapter, drawing attention to the treatment of African-American sanitation workers was a vehicle to address the ills of segregation. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees saw the strike as an opportunity to organize workers in a city that had resisted unionization. For Dr. King, it was aligned with the aims of the Poor People’s Campaign, which advocated economic opportunity as crucial to the realization of civil rights.
In the speech delivered the night before his death, Dr. King declared: “The issue is injustice. The issue is the refusal of Memphis to be fair and honest in its dealings with its public servants, who happen to be sanitation workers.” While a deal was reached in Memphis after his death — recognizing the workers’ union and guaranteeing better wages — many workers across the country still face unacceptable conditions.
Nationwide, sanitation and recycling work remains more dangerous than policing or firefighting; in 2016, only loggers, fishermen, airplane pilots and roofers suffered a higher rate of job-related fatalities in the United States than did waste workers.
In New York City, conditions are especially difficult for employees of the private waste haulers who collect trash from the city’s businesses each night. While workers employed by the Department of Sanitation — which collects residential trash — are unionized and offered health care, pensions and a median base pay of $69,000, those who work for private companies are paid as little as $80 a shift, with no overtime or health or retirement benefits, ProPublica reported. This means it’s common for the nonunion employees of private companies — 60 percent of whom are members of racial minority groups — to earn less than $35,000 annually.
In 2016, over 80 percent of waste-work deaths nationwide occurred in the private sector. And in New York City over all, municipal sanitation trucks haven’t caused a death since 2014, but private trucks killed seven people in 2017 alone. When ProPublica interviewed workers from five of New York City’s private haulers, 71 percent reported having been injured on the job, 93 percent reported that their employer provided no health and safety training, and 62 percent said that their work vehicles were sometimes unsafe. Some said they hesitated to complain about the conditions, worrying that their employers would simply assign them fewer shifts if they did so.
Fifty years after the Memphis strike, workers continue to risk their lives across the United States to handle garbage and recycling. The solution in 1968 was collective bargaining, and it is the solution today as well. The higher wages, safer equipment and health coverage provided to the employees in the public garbage hauling sector show what is possible. Negotiating collective bargaining agreements will reduce the risks that killed Mr. Camarillo, and Mr. Cole and Mr. Walker before him.
At the conclusion of his final speech, Dr. King asked, “If I do not stop to help the sanitation workers, what will happen to them?” It’s time to ask that question again.
Correction: February 10, 2018
A previous version of this article misstated the number of sanitation workers killed on the job annually. It was 31 in 2016, not approximately 365, or one a day. However, 431 people in the broader waste and remediation field were killed on the job in 2016. The article also misstated the type of people killed by sanitation in trucks each year. The seven people killed by trucks include civilians, not just workers.
We've all heard the statement dozens of times or more: "Police officers put their lives on the line every day." And it's true, in the same sense that construction workers or taxi drivers or bartenders put their lives on the line every day, all of whom perish on the job at roughly similar rates as police officers.
Sanitation workers, who tend to die on the job at more than double the rate of police officers.
The people picking up your trash put their lives on the line every day and are more likely not to make it home at night than their brethren in blue. But one suspects we won't any time soon see a New York Times headline memorializing their sacrifice."
New Blogs Part 9 Updated February 24 2018
From: Grits for Breakfast
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2018
Don't make excuses for bad choices by Harris County judges
The truth about Harris County judges misleading the courts and intentionally violating the constitutional rights of defendants before them is finally coming out.
When Texas state Sen. John Whitmire filed a complaint with the State Commission on Judicial Conduct against Harris County's magistrate judges, they defended themselves by saying the elected judges directed them to deny personal bonds, which the judges themselves at first denied. The magistrates were sanctioned anyway, and sources in this must-read Houston Chronicle story by Gabrielle Banks suggested that the Commission is likely now investigating the judges who gave those orders, which is basically all of them.
During the case before Judge Rosenthal, the county claimed they could come up with no evidence that judges directed magistrates. But when the magistrates were accused of misconduct, they produced 600 pages of evidence in that regard that implicated many current and former judges.
Now we know for certain the policies were explicit, widespread, and top-down. This wasn't a case of rogue magistrates denying bond without the knowledge of the judges. This is a case of magistrates serving as dependent vassals with no capacity for independent decision making whatsoever. And they obviously weren't too keen on revealing that truth to the federal judge presiding over the case, who justifiably felt blind-sided when representations made in the magistrate's disciplinary case flat-out contradicted those made in her court.
Finally, I couldn't disagree more with Grits contributing writer Sandra Guerra Thompson, who was quoted in the story thusly:
"I'm not sure the judges intended to do anything inappropriate in giving those instructions," said Sandra Guerra Thompson, director of the Criminal Justice Institute at the University of Houston Law Center. "I think this is part of the history - misunderstanding that magistrates are not the clerks of the judges. They are themselves hired to be independent judges."
That's giving them way too much credit, and cover. Since Grits first focused on bail questions in Houston back in 2005, the failure to grant personal bonds has been the central problem and it's been patently obvious for years that local elected judges were the culprits behind it. There's no "misunderstanding," it was intentional, and an abuse of power. That's why it took the federal courts to change things.
The idea that there was a structural, "cant get there from here" problem was always a lie. There's really no reason now for the press or advocates to pretend otherwise.
MORE: I should have called out Judge Michael McSpadden's comments from the story, too, and the more I look at them the more I think they deserve an addendum:
State District Judge Michael McSpadden, a long-serving jurist in Harris County, said he also had a no-bond policy for magistrates for at least a dozen years because he didn't trust the lower-level jurists not to make errors.
"Almost everybody we see here has been tainted in some way before we see them," he said. "They're not good risks."
The judge said he was concerned defendants would be released on bond only to be arrested on another offense. Many had casual attitudes about showing up for court, he said.
"The young black men - and it's primarily young black men rather than young black women - charged with felony offenses, they're not getting good advice from their parents," he said. "Who do they get advice from? Rag-tag organizations like Black Lives Matter, which tell you, 'Resist police,' which is the worst thing in the world you could tell a young black man ... They teach contempt for the police, for the whole justice system."
Let's be clear: A) This was happening for DECADES before Black Lives Matter was on the scene, and B) the county NOT letting defendants be advised by lawyers at bail hearings was a big part of the suit! In fact, the county has now begun providing lawyers at bail hearings, so this is the first time they're being advised by anybody.
It wasn't Black Lives Matter or defendants' families causing their dilemma, it was people like Judge McSpadden, who clearly has lost the ability to make individualized judgments in these cases, if he ever possessed it.
New Blogs Part 9 Updated March 01 2018
I will sign petitions like this every chance I get. Nothing justifies murder of human beings; period.
The state of Tennessee has not had an execution in almost a decade. But now, they are planning to execute up to 11 people over the next four months.
Tennessee’s Republican Attorney General Herbert Slatery III requested execution dates for eight men on death row, asking that they all occur before June 1, 2018. Three more executions have already been scheduled.
Slatery's office says the rush is due to "the ongoing difficulty in obtaining the necessary lethal injection chemicals." Manufacturers have largely stopped providing the drug for use in executions because they may put inmates in horrific pain before they die.
Since 2000, three men have been released from Tennessee's death row after evidence of their innocence came to light. With 11 possible executions within four months, another innocent person could be put to death in an unimaginably cruel manner. When a human life is at stake, there is simply no room for error.
The death penalty is ineffective, unfair, and inaccurate. It is applied in an unjust manner, largely dependent on the accused's race, income, ability and whether the victim is white. For the families of victims, it's a painful, protracted process. For all of these reasons and more, public approval of capital punishment continues to decline.
Daily Kos has joined Equal Justice USA, Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, and a wide coalition to help stop these executions.
New Blogs Part 9 Updated March 05 2018
THOUSANDS OF USERS SHARED A CHILD PORNOGRAPHY VIDEO ON FACEBOOK MESSENGER
February 7, 2018
Police departments and local news stations across the nation are reporting that a child pornography video depicting a young girl and adult man began spreading to thousands of Facebook messenger inboxes late last week, BuzzFeed reports. The disturbing pornography’s wide circulation on the platform was propelled by a message accompanying the video entreating people to forward it to others as part of a campaign to find the perpetrator and his victim. Full Article: https://slate.com/technology/2018/02/child-pornography-video-spread-throughout-country-on-facebook-messenger.html
CA: SACRAMENTO JUDGE RULES SOME OF CDCR’S PROP. 57 REGULATIONS ARE VOID
February 9, 2018 ·26
CA Proposition 57 tentative Ruling – 8 Feb 2018 (PDF)
[ACSOL]
A Superior Court Judge in Sacramento has ruled that provisions in emergency regulations issued by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) regarding registrants are void and therefore cannot be enforced. The regulation provisions at issue deny anyone convicted of a sex offense eligibility for parole consideration under Proposition 57.
The judge’s preliminary decision was issued in a tentative ruling dated February 8, 2018, and was the subject of a hearing conducted in Sacramento Superior Court this morning.
During today’s hearing, CDCR’s legal representative argued that Prop. 57 gives the agency discretion to determine who is and who is not eligible for parole consideration. She also argued that CDCR’s discretion extends to individuals who are currently incarcerated for a non-sex offense, but who were previously incarcerated for a sex offense. The tentative ruling does not support CDCR’s position, but does allow the agency to revise its regulations in order to be consistent with the language of Prop. 57.
“We will closely review any Prop. 57 regulations issued by CDCR in the future,” stated ACSOL Executive Director Janice Bellucci. “If we believe the new regulations are inconsistent with Prop. 57, we will file a new lawsuit.”
The focus of the pending lawsuit is how the term “non-violent felony” is to be defined. Although Prop. 57 does not include a definition of “non-violent felony”, petitioners argued that current state law which defines “violent felony” should be used in CDCR’s regulations. If CDCR used that law (Penal Code Section 667.5), only 9 out of more than 100 sex offenses would be excluded from early parole consideration. The judge did not agree with this argument because he said there is insufficient evidence to identify the voters’ intent regarding use of that current law.
At the conclusion of today’s hearing, the judge stated that he will finalize his tentative ruling soon. After the final ruling is issued, the next step in the process is to draft a writ for the judge’s consideration. The draft writ could be challenged by CDCR in the future.
Related:
Added 2/13
https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/california/San-Jose-Police-Chief-In-Shock-473849443.html
VA: IT’S TIME TO REDUCE, RECONSTRUCT, RECLASSIFY, RETHINK AND REFORM THE VIRGINIA SEX OFFENDER REGISTRY
February 11, 2018
[restoringintegritytovirginiaregistry.blogspot.com]
Action Item for EVRYONE! A Virginia Court of Appeals Ruling was Based on One Word in Virginia Code § 9.1-903. that Virginia Has Never Implemented, So the Ruling is Incorrect.
Almost a week and a half ago the Court of Appeals of Virginia made a ruling that a Virginia Sex Offender Registry mandate/requirement is NOT punitive.
I only learned of this ruling yesterday when I found an article on VA Lawyers Weekly that I was unable to read because I don’t have a subscription.
Sex offender registry law not punitive https://valawyersweekly.com/2018/02/08/sex-offender-registry-law-not-punitive/
Here is the ruling http://www.courts.state.va.us/opinions/opncavwp/0152172.pdf it’s only 13 pages long, it’s easy to read and I suggest EVERY RSO and the loved one of an RSO read it.
It’s about the Virginia law that mandates Registered Sex Offenders have only 30 minutes to register any changes in their email addresses in-person.
Why do I want you to read it?
Because on page 12 it says VA Code states an offender can update their email address either in person or electronically so the 2011 Snyder decision from Michigan does not apply to Baugh.
This is false.
Read more: http://restoringintegritytovirginiaregistry.blogspot.com/2018/02/action-item-for-evry-one-virginia-court.html
SHOULD THE SEX OFFENDER REGISTRY BE ABOLISHED? A LIVE DEBATE.
February 13, 2018
Should the sex offender registry be abolished? Watch a live debate at the Soho Forum between Emily Horowitz, a sociologist at St. Francis College, and Marci Hamilton from the University of Pennsylvania and CHILD USA. Video: http://reason.com/blog/2018/02/12/should-the-sex-offender-registry-be-abol#comment
ID: SCAMS TARGETING REGISTERED SEX OFFENDERS
February 13, 2018
[kpvi.com]
The Idaho Central Sex Offender Registry, administered by the Idaho State Police, has been made aware of several attempted scams targeting registered sex offenders in at least one Idaho county and six Florida counties.
One scam involves a caller posing as a law enforcement officer who tells the sex offender that they have missing or out-of-date registration information. The caller then threatens that, in order to avoid arrest for failure to register, the registrant must bring a gift/money card to a specified location (other than the registration office).
Read more: https://www.kpvi.com/news/local_news/scams-targeting-registered-sex-offenders/article_9f45c3b2-1104-11e8-9fae-9bce2c028996.html
CA: CHANGES ARE COMING TO CALIFORNIA SEX OFFENDER REGISTRY
February 15, 2018
[independent.com]
Fifty-four sex offenders live within two miles of the Santa Barbara Independent’s Figueroa Street offices. Their mugshots, height, weight, ethnicity, eye color, home addresses, criminal charges, and date they were released from jail are listed on the Megan’s Law website. That is about to change.
California lawmakers voted last year to reduce the length of time required for sex-offender registration. This means a sizeable number of Santa Barbara County registrants will no longer be tracked or publicly identified.
“It’s like putting a GPS on every shark in the ocean because one might attack a swimmer,” said Laura Arnold, a deputy public defender in Riverside and expert on sex offender registration laws. “Does it make the public safer? Probably not,” said Arnold, who was in Santa Barbara this week for a law seminar.
Read more: https://www.independent.com/news/2018/feb/15/changes-are-coming-california-sex-offender-registr/
MN: CONVICTED RAPIST WINS THE RIGHT TO LIVE IN WEST ST. PAUL
February 19, 2018
[citypages.com]
Thomas Evenstad was convicted in 1999 of raping an 18-year-old woman. In 2014, he picked up more convictions for stalking and harassing the victim, her family, investigators, and the judges involved in his prosecution.
When he finally got out of jail last August, he moved in to a friend’s apartment in West St. Paul. Three days later, police told his landlord that Evenstad couldn’t stay, threatening them both with criminal charges if he didn’t vacate.
That’s because West St. Paul doesn’t allow sex offenders to live within 1,200 feet of any school, daycare, or group home. Those restrictions cover about 95 percent of the residential area of the city. The rest of the available units either don’t rent to felons or are way too expensive for Evenstad.
So HE SUID, alleging that West St. Paul’s ordinance was thinly veiled “banishment” — a punishment on top of the punishment he’d already served.
“The ordinance was ostensibly aimed at protecting children, but they’ve applied it to people who never committed an offense against a child, like Tom,” said Chicago civil rights attorney Adele Nicholas. “We also objected to the city’s inclusion of this amorphous category of group homes in the list of prohibited locations. We don’t even know what that referred to, but that’s what resulted in almost the entire city being off limits.”
Read more: http://www.citypages.com/news/thomas-evenstad-convicted-rapist-wins-the-right-to-live-in-west-st-paul/474402543
TX: CONTENTIOUS 331ST DISTRICT RACE PITS LONGTIME JUDGE AGAINST ATTORNEY
February 19, 2018
[mystatesman.com]
The only contested judicial race in Travis County’s criminal district courts has gotten contentious, with challenger Chantal Eldridge saying taxpayers have been underserved by the incumbent while Eldridge faces questions of her own about the registered sex offender she employs in her law firm and intends to bring on as a judicial aide if she wins.
Eldridge, a 53-year-old career defense lawyer who narrowly lost a judicial race in 2016, is running against state District Judge David Crain, who has presided over the felony 331st District Court since 2010 and has been a judge in Travis County for 32 years. He said his experience sets him apart in this race, suggesting “you wouldn’t want a novice to sit and try to conduct a jury trial for a murder case, child sexual assault, bank robbery or something like that.”
Read more: http://www.mystatesman.com/news/local-govt--politics/contentious-331st-district-race-pits-longtime-judge-against-attorney/nFlg33eD3DZyMlFb85hHkI/
KS: CAN REGISTRIES COVER TOO MANY CRIMES? KANSAS LEGISLATION SUGGESTS A ROLLBACK
February 21, 2018
Junkie logic brought an addict to the doorsteps of a Topeka woman once convicted of selling cocaine.
The addict was looking to buy, and Kansas’ online database of criminal offenders has a handy geographic search tool that lets users pull up the names, crimes and addresses of people who live within a few miles of their homes.
It’s meant to boost public safety, but the Kansas Sentencing Commission says other consequences come with publishing the past transgressions of nearly 20,000 Kansans. Full Article: http://kcur.org/post/can-registries-cover-too-many-crimes-kansas-legislation-suggests-rollback
MO: MISSOURI GOV. ERIC GREITENS INDICTED FOR FELONY INVASION OF PRIVACY
February 23, 2018 ·11 Comments
[stltoday.com]
ST. LOUIS • Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, who was swept into office in 2016 with a vow to clean up a corrupt state government, was indicted and booked Thursday on a felony invasion of privacy charge for allegedly taking and transmitting a non-consensual photo of his partly nude lover shortly before that campaign started.
It stems from a scandal that broke last month, in which Greitens was accused of threatening his lover with the photo — an allegation that isn’t mentioned in the indictment. Greitens has admitted having an extramarital affair, but has denied the rest.
Read more: http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/missouri-gov-eric-greitens-indicted-for-felony-invasion-of-privacy/article_3599554f-fcc4-551e-a0ae-b83368208a30.html
ACSOL BOARD MEMBERS UNRAVEL SEX OFFENSE POLICIES, OFFER HOPE FOR REGISTRANTS
February 26, 2018
[ACSOL]
In the form of new scholarly articles, two ACSOL board members discuss the large gap between sex offense realities and sex offense policies as well as offer hope for registrants and their families. In the first of the articles, sociologist Emily Horowitz uses a timeline of key political events, legal milestones and research findings to identity how and why there is a gap between sex offense realities and sex offense policies. In the second of the articles, law professor Catherine Carpenter provides hope to registrants and their families by highlighting recent state and federal court decisions that recognize that sex offender registration laws constitute punishment.
“We are pleased to share with the public the scholarly works of two key members of the ACSOL board,” stated ACSOL President Chance Oberstein. “Both of these board members will supplement their scholarly works at this year’s ACSOL conference on June 15 and 16 in Los Angeles.”
Horowitz is Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at St. Francis College in Brooklyn, New York. Carpenter is the Honorable Arleigh M. Woods and William T. Woods Professor of Law, Southwestern Law School in Los Angeles, California.
Moral Panic – Emily Horowitz – Dec 2017 : http://all4consolaws.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Moral-Panic-Emily-Horowitz-Dec-2017.pdf
Signs of Hope – Catherine Carpenter – Dec 2017: http://all4consolaws.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Signs-of-Hope-Catherine-Carpenter-Dec-2017.pdf
PA: NAMES BEING REMOVED FROM SEX OFFENDER REGISTRY
February 26, 2018
[theintell.com]
Pennsylvania State Police have started the process for removing as many as 5,000 ex-offenders from the Megan’s Law registry under a state supreme court mandate and a new law.
Shaquana Green appeared at a Pennsylvania State Police barracks last month to update her information as a registered sex offender. It’s an annual chore she has done for the last five years, having landed on the Megan’s Law list after disappearing with her daughter for three hours in violation of a custody order.
As of this month, though, the name of the 26-year-old Northampton County resident no longer appears on the registry, under a state Supreme Court ruling and a new exemption for parents who had been charged with interfering with custody of children, but no sex crime.
“I get to have my life,” Green said last week. “This is more than a blessing.”
Last year, the state Supreme Court ruled retroactive application of the state’s version of the new, tougher Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act was unconstitutional. In response, state lawmakers passed House Bill 631, a stop-gap measure to keep up to 12,000 individuals on the registry, but that included an exemption for legal guardians charged with interference with custody of children. Gov. Tom Wolf signed the bill into law Feb. 21. The exemption applies to only legal guardians of children, though another bill in the state Senate would remove interference with custody of children as a Megan’s Law offense; Pennsylvania and Louisiana are the only states where the crime is considered a violent sex offense even when no sexual contact occurred.
Read more: http://www.theintell.com/news/20180226/names-being-removed-from-sex-offender-registry
NEW LAWSUIT MAY PROVIDE ACCESS TO SOCIAL MEDIA
February 26, 2018 ·40 Comments
[floridaactioncommittee.org]
Although the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that States cannot restrict a registered sex offender’s access to social media (Packingham v. North Carolina, 582 U.S. ___ (2017)), nothing has stopped social media companies, such as Facebook or Twitter, from restricting sex offenders from their platforms. A lawsuit filed last week may change that!
Jared Taylor is the founder of the Virginia-based New Century Foundation – a white supremacist organization that was banned from Twitter because of new rules aimed at reducing abusive content. Although we don’t agree with the viewpoints of the Plaintiff, this lawsuit is certainly one in which we hope the Plaintiff prevails.
Taylor is suing California-based Twitter in California Superior Court, alleging that Twitter’s policy of banning him and his organization from their social media platform is unconstitutional and violates Twitter’s own founding principle; to ““[g]ive everyone the power to create and share ideas instantly, without barriers.”
Read more: https://floridaactioncommittee.org/new-lawsuit-may-provide-access-to-social-media/
AK: ANCHORAGE MAN WHO ATTACKED SEX OFFENDERS SENTENCED TO 23 YEARS IN PRISON
February 27, 2018
At an Anchorage Superior Court hearing for Jason Vukovich, who was sentenced Monday for attacking three registered sex offenders, his older brother Joel Fulton said that despite counseling, he has not yet recovered from what the two men experienced as children. …
But the prosecutor, Patrick McKay, argued that there was no excuse for Vukovich to target and attack three strangers, beating one man so badly with a hammer that he fractured his skull and knocked him unconscious.
“We’re lucky we’re not dealing with a murder charge,” Assistant District Attorney Patrick McKay told the judge. “People do not get to take the law into their own hands just because they don’t like a particular group of people or a particular person.” Full Article: https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/crime-courts/2018/02/26/anchorage-man-who-attacked-sex-offenders-sentenced-to-23-years-in-prison/
AL: FEDERAL JURY FINDS MAN CAUGHT IN COLUMBUS CHILD SEX STING NOT GUILTY
February 28, 2018
It took a federal jury slightly more than an hour Wednesday to find an Auburn, Ala., man accused of being a child sexual predator not guilty. Full Article: http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/news/local/crime/article202687419.html
THE SEX OFFENDER REGISTRY: VENGEFUL, UNCONSTITUTIONAL AND DUE FOR FULL REPEAL
March 5, 2018
The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that at least 95 percent of all state prisoners will be released from prison at some point. However, convicted sex-offenders almost exclusively face the vengeful, additional punishment of registration under the Sex Offender Registry and Notification Act (SORNA). Full Opinion Piece: http://thehill.com/opinion/criminal-justice/376668-the-sex-offender-registry-vengeful-unconstitutional-and-due-for-full?amp&__twitter_impression=true
New Blogs Part 9 Updated March 05 2018
I am lucky I got this link in a email. I do not get any emails fro ACLU any more. I think because I unsubscribed from the email list of the New York ACLU it unsubscribed me to all ACLU emails.
WE ARE IN SUPPORT OF EQUALITY
In 2012, a store in Colorado refused to sell two men a cake for their wedding reception just because they were gay. In the near future/coming months, the Supreme Court will announce its decision in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case – a case that will decide whether businesses that are open to the public can refuse to serve LGBT people in violation of laws that protect all of us from discrimination.
When deciding cases, Supreme Court Justices don’t only listen to the attorneys’ arguments. They also take statements of support into account. We’re joining with many other organizations to launch a sign-on letter in support of equality for all – will you add your name?
Here's the letter:
On Dec. 5, 2017, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, a case that has the potential to shatter longstanding non-discrimination laws. Protecting people from discrimination is part of our country’s promise of equal treatment under the law for everyone. As a nation, we decided decades ago that businesses open to the public should be open to everyone on the same terms, and that no one should be turned away simply because of who they are.
This case isn’t about the cake. It’s about whether businesses can, in effect, post signs reading “we don’t serve your kind here.”
A ruling that our Constitution gives businesses the right to refuse service to customers based on religious beliefs or so-called artistic freedom would be an unprecedented setback for civil rights in our country. It would say there is a constitutional right to discriminate—which could be used not only against LGBTQ people but also against people of color and religious minorities, unmarried couples, single mothers, young people, people with disabilities and many, many others.
We, the undersigned, are in solidarity with the plaintiffs in this case, Charlie Craig and Dave Mullins, who are simply seeking to be treated like everyone else.
I hope this recent activity get more people to sign this important petition:
In December 2017, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission was argued in front of the Supreme Court. The case involves a business—one that is open to the public—that refused to sell a cake to a same-sex couple. A loss in Masterpiece would open the door to not only much wider ranging forms of discrimination, but also a much wider array of people facing discrimination—including people of color, women, LGBT people, minority faiths, people with disabilities, and more. As we near the Court’s decision—expected between now and June—we are elevating additional examples of how hurtful this kind of discrimination can be. Even Jimmy Kimmel is helping us out!
Movement Advancement Project has released an ad called Funeral Home that depicts a devastating scenario in which a grieving widow and her family are turned away from a funeral home and refused burial services for her wife. Discrimination like this shouldn’t happen, but it does. In 2016, a funeral home in Mississippi refused service to Jack Zawadski, after learning his deceased spouse was a man. The couple had been together for more than 50 years and were legally married in 2015. And while Jack recently passed away, Lambda Legal is representing his family in court in Mississippi.
New Blogs Part 9 Updated March 07 2018
Did you see my colleague Kelli’s last email? We still have a shot at saving Net Neutrality in the Senate!
Click here to sign a petition to the U.S. Senate to demanding that they use the Congresional Review Act to overrule the FCC's decision to gut Net Neutrality!
SIGN PETITION NOW 400,000 signatures so far
FCC Chairman Pai did exactly what Trump appointed him to do; ignore the American people and make decisions that will benefit corporate interests. Pai’s decision to throw out all of the progress President Obama made for Net Neutrality will negatively impact all of us!
An end to Net Neutrality could mean higher prices for streaming and gives Internet Service Providers the ability to block or slow down whatever content they choose. This will make it more difficult and expensive for regular Americans and small businesses to conduct current operations or start new ones.
We must do everything we can to save the open internet as we know it by demanding the Senate use the power given to them by the Congressional Review Act to overrule the FCC's decision.
‘Family values’ group’s new fight is for old men’s right to marry 13-year-old's
From : click here
Groups like the Kentucky Family Foundation have been fighting the scourge of marriage equality for same-sex couples for years now. Now they’re fighting a different battle; they’re determined to allow 50-year-old men to marry 13-year-old girls.
Even more shocking? They’re winning the battle according to Kentucky Republican state representative Julie Raque Adams, the sponsor of a bill to raise the legal age to marry in the state. Kentucky has the third highest rate of child marriages in the nation.
Related: Kim Davis’ illegal refusal to issue marriage licenses will cost Kentucky taxpayers big bucks
“It is disgusting that lobbying organizations would embrace kids marrying adults. We see evidence of parents who are addicted, abusive, neglectful pushing their children into predatory arms. Appalling,” Adams said in a tweet after the bill was yanked hours before a crucial vote. It was the second time the bill had been pulled.
Current law allows 16 and 17-year-olds to marry with their parents’ permission. Pregnant teens under the age of 16 can get married with a judge’s permission, despite the obvious proof that the girl has been sexually abused by the adult.
A proposed new law would update the state’s marriage laws to set 18 as the age to be married. 17-year-olds would be able to get married with a judge’s permission if the two would-be spouses are within four years of age.
“This is legalized rape of children,” she said. “We cannot allow that to continue in Kentucky, and I cannot believe we are even debating this is the year 2018 in the United States,” Eileen Recktenwald, the executive director of the Kentucky Association of Sexual Assault Programs, told USA Today.
Related: Report: Roy Moore was banned from the local mall for badgering teenage girls
While Adams wouldn’t divulge who the group lobbying for child rape is, advocate Donna Pollard told the Courier Journal that it is the Kentucky Family Foundation. The group refused to comment on the allegation.
Lawmakers also won’t confirm the conservative “family values” organization is behind the pushback, saying instead that they are concerned that a judge will decide the fate of the marriage instead of the child’s parent.
The group, however, has now admitted they are behind the consistent delays in passing the legislation.
State senator John Schickel, a Republican, is one of those using the pitiful excuse to continue allowing child sexual assault.
“I had some problems with the bill,” he said. “Decisions involving a minor child should be made by a parent, not the court.”
Related: Senate urged to increase protection for teen pages if Roy Moore is elected
Former Alabama Republican senate candidate Roy Moore lost his campaign following multiple allegations of sexual assault and misconduct with underage girls. Ironically enough, Moore also leads a Christian “values” organization and is the former chief justice of the Alabama State Supreme Court.
New Blogs Part 9 Updated March 16 2018
I am posting this article to prove for the thousandth time that I am against big religions; interfering with American politics. I post this even though I am sure they will always fail more and more into the future. I stand as strong as when I first started this blog for separation of church and state.
Study finds a link between brain damage & religious fundamentalism
Jordan Grafman of Northwestern University and his team of researchers studied a group of Vietnam War veterans. 119 had experienced brain trauma, and 30 had not. Most were Christians, but about a third of them said they had no religion.
Grafman believed that damage to the prefrontal cortex would make someone more prone to fundamentalism. This brain region contains two specific areas associated with cognitive flexibility, the ability to update one’s beliefs based on new information.
Fundamentalism discourages critical thinking and asking questions, so Grafman hypothesized that people whose prefrontal cortex suffered some sort of trauma – and therefore have less cognitive flexibility – would be more likely to accept fundamentalist messages.
Which is what he found. Participants with lesions to the parts of the prefrontal cortex important in cognitive flexibility scored higher on a survey that assessed religious fundamentalism.
In further testing, the participants with brain damage scored lower on a psychological test that measures cognitive flexibility and a test that measures open-mindedness.
The results are not just about the effects of brain trauma, but also to a possible neurological origin of some people’s fundamentalism. Neuroscientist Bobby Azarian writes at Raw Story that there are other reasons these parts of the brain might not function like they do in others, like substance abuse or genetics, and even suggests that “extreme religious indoctrination” could hinder the development of the prefrontal cortex.
The study needs to be repeated and brain trauma was only able to explain 20% of the variance in fundamentalism the researchers found, so it’s not proof that every fundamentalist you argue with on Facebook was dropped as a baby.
Instead, it’s another piece of the puzzle that explains why some people are able to accept indoctrination and resist contradictory information, while others can’t help but question what they’ve been taught.
I am posting this to show how self righteous people are:
Richard Simmons sued a tabloid for calling him trans. Now he has to pay their legal fees.
A judge has ordered Richard Simmons must pay the publishing company American Media, owner of tabloids the National Enquirer and Radar Online, nearly $130,000.
Simmons sued the company for defamation after it reported he was transgender, and had “undergone shocking sex surgery to change from a man to a woman,” which the fitness instructor and actor has denied. He has said that the false information came from a former assistant, Mauro Oliveira.
I signed a petition like this yesterday for a email AARP sent me. They did not provide a link I could post here but I have this:
SIGN NOW: Demand Congress pass emergency legislation to break up Big Pharma’s drug monopoly
We pay more per capita on prescription drugs than other high-income countries. This tragedy has led to families experiencing bankruptcy, a devastating opioid crisis, and sick and elderly people cutting pills in half or doing without.
Only by coming together and demanding action will we overpower Big Pharma’s money with our collective voice and make change happen.
Will you join Jonathan Lewis and sign this petition demanding Congress pass emergency legislation to break up Big Pharma’s drug monopoly and bring down drug prices?
I am thinking of attending this:
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| These people are my favorite people who stand for separation form church and state in Texas. |
New Blogs Part 9 Updated March 23 2018
Kind of ironic, I go from posting a article, I doubt is true, about fundamentalists and brain damage to; posting a article about religious freedom, after receiving cool pray flags in the mail on display in my house now.
Maybe it might be true about religeous fanatics having brain damage; I don't know. I do feel a little bad about posting that article, but I did it for a reason I believe in: separation of church and state.
I just sent this email this morning to: https://www.savetibet.org/ :
Thank you for the cool pray flags. I have them on display. I wish you all well. I believe in freedom of religion very much so. It is what makes American so prosperous and great.
About this post:
I do not know if there is a way to help Tibet with out talking bad about China; but there should be.
China has been allot more open and I believe they are on the way to being more democratic.
I would not mind visiting there myself and trying out their sport-bike racing and skateboard spots.
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| from: http://www.skateboardingmagazine.com/the-worlds-largest-skatepark-new-jiangwan-city-shanghai-china/ |
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| from: https://www.motorcyclenews.com/sport/motogp/2008/may/may0308chinamotogpbradleysmithtakesthirdpoleoftheseason/ |
I got this link for you to sign for now. I like the letter:
Thank John Oliver for speaking out on the crisis in Tibet!
Dear John,
I wanted to thank you for traveling 14 hours to talk to His Holiness the Dalai Lama about an issue I care about greatly – the crisis in Tibet at the hands of the Chinese authorities.
Our progress in defending the culture and religious freedom of the people of Tibet depends on the bravery and honesty of journalists and truth-tellers like you.
Keep up the good work.
New Blogs Part 9 Updated March 24 2018
This is a great example why we need separation of church and state.
Why do so called Christians want to allow this weird practice of so called conversion therapy; unless they are homophobic and need psychiatric help for that.
Christian legal hate group says conversion therapy bans are unconstitutional
A conservative organization is implying that it will sue if California passes a conversion therapy ban that it’s considering.
At issue is a bill that would add “sexual orientation change efforts” to the state’s list of fraudulent goods and services in its consumer protection law.
It’s a straightforward idea: quacks are telling LGBT people that they can become straight if they buy their product or undergo therapy with them. They’re not just spreading self-hate, they’re also cheating people out of their money with false promises. The government has an interest in protecting consumers by banning fraud.
Of course, that’s not how the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) sees it. The organization is a SPLC designated hate group and represented anti-gay baker Jack Phillips in front of the Supreme Court in his bid to be allowed to discriminate against gay couples.
In an interview with the Baptist Press, Matt Sharp of the ADF said that the bill “burdens free speech and the free exercise of religion.” While the California law can only be enforced when people purchase a good or service – not when a pastor says something in church – Sharp says that religious leaders could be prosecuted anyway.
“It could be a violation if a pastor encourages a congregant to visit the church bookstore to purchase books that help people address sexual issues, perhaps including the Bible itself, which teaches about the importance of sexual purity within the confines of marriage between a man and woman,” said Sharp.
The comment about the Bible is overwrought – it says nothing about conversion therapy. And about other books… well, why are pastors hawking their wares from the pulpit?
The law is about advertising, a form of speech that the Supreme Court has long said could be regulated if it’s false or misleading. If a pastor’s sermon is so commercial that the state government considers it more of an advertisement than a religious practice, then something has already gone very wrong in that church.
Because these people cannot stop comparing homosexuality to pedophilia, ADF also said that therapists will be banned from treating pedophiles who go after boys (but not pedophiles who go after girls), as well as victims of sexual abuse by someone of the same sex (but not the opposite sex):
Under the ban, victims of sexual abuse can only receive therapy for “unwanted emotional and sexual ties to their abuser” if the abuser is the opposite sex. Men who struggle with the desire to have sex with little girls can receive counseling, but not those who want to have sex with little boys.
They don’t explain how any of that could be interpreted as a “sexual orientation change effort” under California law.
If the bill passes and ADF files a lawsuit, they would have an uphill battle before them. Conservatives challenged California’s 2012 ban on conversion therapy for minors, and they lost. The Supreme Court refused to hear their appeal, effectively affirming the 9th Circuit Court’s ruling that the ban was constitutional because it only applied to licensed mental health professionals, not ministers.
There’s no reason to believe that courts would see this bill differently since it’s specifically about commercial practices.
It’s like how California bans stores from labeling products as “Made in California” unless they’re actually made in California. That’s technically a restriction on speech, but it doesn’t violate the First Amendment.
In order for ADF to even file a suit, the state would have to use the law against someone so that ADF would have a case. That case will probably not be a minister telling people about a book. Instead, it will probably be a therapist charging people for a couple sessions a week with the promise that they’ll be straight one day.
And, in that case, the ADF would have to prove that conversion therapy isn’t fraudulent, that it really can change someone’s sexual orientation.
The lawsuit wouldn’t stand a chance.
It’s still disheartening that conservatives are defending conversion therapy at all. And it would be good if conservatives like Mike Pence – who claims to oppose the practice despite endorsing it previously – would say something about their fellow conservatives who want to keep it legal.
AFRICATECHFEBRUARY 8, 2018 / 9:34 AM / 2 MONTHS AGO
FEATURE-Gays in Ecuador raped and beaten in rehab clinics to "cure" them
6 MIN READ
BOGOTA, Feb 8 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Gay people in Ecuador are forced to undergo “conversion therapy” in secret clinics where they are raped and beaten, even though homosexuality is legal, said campaigners calling for courts to deliver justice to end more than a decade of abuse.
Scores of unlicensed rehabilitation clinics in the Andean nation offer illegal “treatments” for gay people based on the idea that homosexuality is a mental illness that needs to be “cured”, local rights groups said.
“Corrective therapy, in mostly private and clandestine alcohol and drug addiction clinics, continues in Ecuador,” said Cayetana Salao, of Taller de Comunicacion Mujer, a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights group.
“It’s a reality.”
Ecuador’s health ministry said no “conversion therapy” was found in the more than 60 clinics it has shut since mid-2016 for insanitary conditions or operating without a licence.
None of the closures were due to human rights violations, said Maria Jose Espin, head of technical management at the health ministry’s regulatory agency, ACESS.
“We frequently verify with our teams that these types of establishments do not exist, where rights violations can take place,” Espin told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
“There are no de-homosexualization clinics. They shouldn’t exist,” she said, adding that homosexuality was not a disease.
The World Health Organization (WHO) removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses in 1990 but conversion therapy still takes place across the world, from China to South Africa and the United States.
Ecuador, Brazil and Malta are the only countries that have banned the controversial treatment, according to the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA).
But hate crimes and human rights violations against LGBT people have taken place in more than 100 clinics across Ecuador since 2012, said Salao, a project coordinator, as evangelical groups gain influence in the Catholic-majority nation.
Ecuador legalised homosexuality in 1997 and allowed same-sex civil unions a decade ago.
“TORTURE”
Gay people, mostly lesbians, are typically admitted to clinics by their parents or other relatives and held against their will for at least three months, with therapy costing up to $1,500 a month, campaigners say.
Taller de Comunicacion Mujer documented testimonies of four victims who said they were locked up against their will and underwent conversion therapy from 2014 to 2016.
This included psychological and physical abuse - beatings, solitary confinement, being chained to a bed for days, force-feeding of medicine and being made to wear makeup and high heels.
Victims also reported “corrective rape” by fellow patients and staff with the aim of changing their sexual orientation.
“A morbid creativity for torture exists,” said Ane Barragan, coordinator at Causana Foundation, which has been campaigning to stop conversion therapy for more than a decade.
About 200 unlicensed clinics are operating across Ecuador, rights groups estimate.
“No one regulates or monitors them,” said Barragan.
The Pan American Health Organization, the WHO’s regional office, said in 2011 that conversion therapy was “a serious threat to the health and well-being of affected people”.
But the Catholic Church and most Christian evangelicals view homosexuality as a sin and say sex should only take place in marriage between a man and a woman.
ECONOMIC INTERESTS
State prosecutors have investigated six cases involving alleged human rights violations against LGBT people in rehabilitation clinics since 2012, Salao said.
“No one has been found guilty or punished,” she said.
“We call on the judiciary to move these cases forward and hold those people responsible to account.”
Carina Vance, Ecuador’s former health minister who is openly gay and spearheaded a crackdown on the clinics, said she has no doubt that conversion therapy continues in the country.
Vance said police and prosecutors carried out 116 raids during her tenure as health minister from 2012 to 2015, resulting in the closure of more than 100 clinics.
But some received tip-offs and many re-opened under different names within months of being closed, Vance said.
“This business is very lucrative,” said Vance, who now heads the South American Institute of Government in Health (ISAGS), a regional health think tank.
“These clinics have a lot of power, there are a lot of economic interests behind this.”
Although Ecuador passed a law in 2016 allowing people to choose their preferred gender on their identity cards and its first transgender lawmaker took office last year, socially conservative attitudes are entrenched, she said.
“There are families using these so-called services and this has to do with a prevalent, a very homophobic ... a sexist society,” Vance said.
"Cultural change is very difficult to produce." (Reporting by Anastasia Moloney @anastasiabogota, Editing by Katy Migiro. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit news.trust.org)
FEBRUARY 20, 2018 / 9:09 AM / A MONTH AGO
FACTBOX - Despite debunking, conversion therapy persists around globe
3 MIN READ
NEW YORK, Feb 20 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Conversion therapy is making headlines, reigniting calls for banning the treatments claiming to cure gay people.
Here is the status of conversion therapy in various locations around the world.
- Conversion therapy is banned nationwide in Brazil, Ecuador and Malta.
- While it is illegal in Ecuador, gay people, particularly lesbians, are forced to undergo conversion therapy in secret clinics, campaigners say.
Typically admitted to clinics by their families, they are forced to undergo beatings, solitary confinement, force-feeding of medicine and even “corrective rape” aimed at changing their sexual orientation.
- Although there is no federal ban in Canada, nearly half the population lives in regions with local laws prohibiting the practice.
- In the U.S. state of Washington, a bill is pending that would ban healthcare professionals from trying to convert the sexuality of a minor.
In Maine, a public hearing was held last week on a bill to ban such therapy, while in New Hampshire a similar bill is pending again after a narrow defeat last month.
- Brutal and extreme conversion methods including torture, forced internment, electroshock therapy and sexual violence have been documented in Ecuador, South Africa, the Dominican Republic and China.
- Laws in Argentina, Fiji and Samoa do not specifically ban conversion therapy but prohibit any medical diagnosis based exclusively on a person’s sexual orientation.
- Britain’s state-run National Health Service has signed a memorandum of understanding that opposes conversion therapy.
- Australia’s state of Victoria has set up a watchdog to crack down on conversion therapy providers.
Sources: International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association, LGBT Rights Program at Human Rights Watch in New York, and Taller de Comunicacion Mujer of Ecuador (Reporting by Ellen Wulfhorst, Editing by Robert Carmichael and Katy Migiro. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit news.trust.org)
Rape and Murder of Teen Shows Lack of Justice for LGBT Malaysians
A young man killed because he was deemed insufficiently masculine is the latest casualty of Malaysia's anti-LGBT culture.
JULY 06 2017 11:33 AM EDT
Before a group of T. Nhaveen’s classmates viciously beat and burned the 18-year-old student, they called him a “pondan.”
That word, an extremely derogatory term in Malaysian culture, is often synonymous with “faggot” and sometimes “transvestite.” Although U.S. news outlets have referred to the victim as gay, to be a “pondan” is more than about one’s gender identity or sexuality. The term is used to describe men who are effeminate, especially teenage boys who don’t exhibit stereotypically masculine traits. Soft-spoken and gentle, Nhaveen hoped to be a composer after finishing school. His attackers wanted to make him into a “real man.” When the boy arrived at Penang Hospital after the assualt, which took place between 11 p.m. and midnight June 9, he was declared brain-dead.
ADVERTISING
Nhaveen died six days later.
Little is known about the deceased’s sexuality, but his death speaks volumes about the stigma of being perceived to be gay — or even a little bit feminine — in a country where homosexuality is effectively illegal. Anti-LGBT tensions have been rising in Malaysia in recent years as its conservative government cracked down on the country’s queer and transgender population. The brutal killing, in which Nhaveen was repeatedly sodomized with unidentified objects, is merely the most horrific in a string of attacks on LGBT Malaysians in the cross hairs.
•••
The past year has been a horrifically violent and deadly one for LGBT people across the globe.
A record number of queer and trans folks were murdered in bias-related attacks in the United States in 2016, according to a recent report from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs. Even excluding the 49 people gunned down in the attack on Pulse nightclub, a Florida gay bar, anti-LGBT murders shot up 17 percent from the previous year prior. Countries like Russia and Indonesia, where men in the country’s Aceh province are caned if found guilty of homosexual activity, have witnessed an unprecedented backlash to LGBT rights. And in the semiautonomous Russian republic of Chechnya, reports say at least 100 men have been incarcerated and tortured for being gay or bisexual, and several have died as a result.
Things have never been great for LGBT people in Malaysia, a Muslim-majority nation, but activists told The Advocate the situation has gotten much worse in the past two months.
In June, the Malaysian Ministry of Health offered cash prizes of up to $930 in a contest in which hopefuls between the ages of 13 and 24 were asked to submit videos on how to “prevent” and “control” homosexuality and “help” LGBT people. Lokman Hakim Sulaiman, the deputy director-general of health, claimed the campaign’s goal was to help young people to lead a “healthy lifestyle.” He said it was not intended to encourage discrimination.
This wasn’t the first such incident, though. In 2013, the government funded an anti-LGBT musical — called Abnormal Desire — that tours Malaysia’s schools. The stage show, in which LGBT people who refuse to repent are struck dead in a lightning storm, has echoes of Reefer Madness, the 1930s propaganda film about the perils of marijuana.
“Children need to recognize that men are for women, and women are for men,” Abnormal Desire director Rahman Adam told The Guardian at the time. He claimed LGBT activists were “going into schools and influencing the children.”
But it was clear something had changed this time around. Around the same time that the anti-LGBT video contest elicited international outrage, a three-day conference scheduled to be held at Taylor’s University was abruptly canceled by college administrators. Called “Courage in the Face of Adversity,” it was intended to feature workshops on LGBT issues, movie screenings, and open-mike events, capped off with a Pride parade. Pelangi Campaign, a local LGBT rights group, held a buka puasa — a meal marking the end of daily fasting during Ramadan — in place of the canceled march.
After media picked up on the Pelangi Campaign event, the organization has been surveilled by federal authorities, said its cofounder, a man named Declan.
“It got picked up by local news and got bigger and bigger,” said Declan, who cited Malaysia’s Communications and Multimedia Act, a 1998 law that gives the government broad powers to curtail free speech on digital platforms. “They monitor our tweets and reported one of our party events.” The federal government's Islamic Affairs ministry also said in a separate report that the country’s LGBT groups are being surveilled.
These incidents have ignited long-simmering tensions between the LGBT population and forces of social repression. Pang Khee Teik, cofounder of the advocacy group Seksualiti Merdeka, said the comment sections of news articles about the Pride event were filled with death threats. On Facebook, trolls called for the extermination of LGBT people, and activists have been terrified about reprisal. The Malaysian government and police forces have done nothing, activists said.
“It’s one thing to be receiving death threats,” Pang said. “It’s another thing when your leaders are silent on these threats. It’s a tacit endorsement of this violence.”
This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone familiar with Prime Minister Najib Razak’s record on LGBT rights — it's one of opposition. While signing a declaration of human rights at the 2012 Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit, he refused to endorse even basic protections for queer and trans people. Three years later, Najib claimed that LGBT rights weren’t compatible with the “context of Islam.”
That 2015 speech, delivered at an Islamic seminar, speaks volumes about the disdain with which the government views its LGBT citizens. The prime minister compared the country’s queer and trans population to the Islamic State, the militant religious group responsible for countless acts of international terror. Najib alleged that “extremist and liberal groups … are trying to dominate the majority of the country’s population,” as Malaysian newspaper The Sun reported.
“These groups are hiding behind the facade of human rights to approve their acts which deviate from Islamic teaching,” the leader said.
Human Rights Watch, the international advocacy organization, has called the South Asian country — with a population of 28 million — one of the worst for LGBT people to live in. In a 2014 report, the group detailed the routine abuse of trans people in the country, who face “arbitrary arrest, physical and sexual assault, imprisonment, discriminatory denial of health care and employment.” One transgender interviewee told Human Rights Watch that when she was arrested in 2011, police photographed her and stripped her naked.
“One of them squeezed my breasts,” she said. “One of them took a police baton and poked at my genitals.”
Malaysia is one of at least 70 countries that criminalize homosexuality — others include Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia. The country has both civil and Sharia law;, the latter are drafted state by state. Although the religious codes technically only apply to Muslims, they are frequently used to target the general population. These laws, as Pang explained, forbid “anal sex, lesbianism, cross-dressing, and a whole range of similar behaviors.” He said police often look for parked cars to harass gay men violating the sexual ordinances.
Although many of these laws result from the legacy of British imperialism, Neela Ghoshal, senior researcher in the LGBT Rights Program at Human Rights Watch, said local governments began to pass harsher legislation targeting LGBT people in the 1980s and '90s. During that time, the federal government became Islamized and moved toward a “more fundamentalist” rule, she said.
“This relates to the increasing feeling on behalf of the ruling coalition that they need to appease hard-line Islamists in Malaysia,” she said.
Prior to the country’s extremist turn, the '60s and 7'0s marked an era of relative tolerance. Thilaga Sulathireh, an organizer with the trans advocacy group Justice for Sisters, told The Advocate that gender-confirmation surgeries and affirming health care were available at Malaysian hospitals until 1982, when a series of fatwas “forcibly terminated” these services. Traditionally, transgender women held a special place in Malaysian society, playing a sacred role in weddings and the court system.
“These social roles were eliminated and stigma began to increase as they became used as a political pawn,” Ghoshal said.
This stigma has had disastrous effects, not only on trans women but the wider LGBT population in the country. Hate crimes against transgender people have skyrocketed in recent years, Thilaga said, but many of these incidents aren’t reported by local news media. Just this year, she said, two trans women were murdered — a phenomenon familiar to the United States. Fourteen transgender people have been killed in the U.S. so far this year, most recently 17-year-old Ava Le’Ray Barrin.
As anti-LGBT violence escalates in Malaysia, Najib’s government has continued to endorse conversion therapy to “cure” the country’s queer and trans population.
Six years ago, Pang said, government ministers began identifying gender-nonconforming students and sending them to camps to “toughen them up.” More than 60 young people were sent to these four-day religious education seminars, which included a boot camp. Pang said that camp activities included hiking to “teach kids to be more masculine” and workshops on how to find one’s “true self” — or rather, how not to be a homosexual. The recent video competition, for which the Ministry of Health has since apologized, indicatesthat the government’s position has changed little since 2011.
“These actions send a pretty clear message — both to LGBT people and to anyone who has homophobic leanings,” Ghoshal said. “It says, ‘Well, maybe I can take the law into my own hands to get rid of these people who are not wanted in this country.’”
Even despite the immense challenges that Malaysia’s LGBT population faces, there have been small signs of progress in recent years.
After 16 transgender women were arrested for celebrating a birthday party in 2014, three of the those charged with violating the Sharia ban on “cross-dressing” challenged the law. They said the religious codes violated constitutional protections mandating equality. In November of that year, the Putrajaya Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, stating in a 33-page ruling that the law “deprives” the country’s LGBT people “their right to live with dignity.” The court further called the ordinance “degrading, oppressive, and inhuman.”
The excitement over that groundbreaking court victory would be short-lived. The decision was thrown out on a technicality in the Federal Court the following year, erasing a nearly four-year court battle.
Even though Nhaveen’s sexuality is unclear, a lot is riding on his case. For many LGBT people, punishment of his attackers will represent the justice that has eluded them for so long — as they continue to be forced back down into the shadows. The four teenagers accused of beating him to death are currently on trial for murder, pictured holding their shirts over their faces as they were brought in for testimony. News reports say two of the accused, who have pleaded not guilty to the charge, broke down crying as they saw their family members in court. If they are convicted, the maximum sentence is the death penalty.
A full recognition of the pain Nhaveen suffered prior to his death, though, will continue to be an impossibility under current law. Jessica Stern, executive director of OutRight International, told The Advocate that because sodomy is illegal, the legal codes don’t make a distinction between between same-sex intercourse and rape. This means that men who are victims of sexual assault cannot bring charges their assailants.
“When we don’t have that clear legal distinction, consensual homosexuality and rape are confused with one another,” Stern said. “All LGBT people could be seen as sexual predators — because there’s no context in which homosexual acts are permissible.”
OutRight International, which advocates for LGBT rights around the world, has called on Malaysia to repeal its sodomy laws. That will likely take decades. But in the meantime, advocates will continue to build community wherever they can. Community groups frequently hold lectures and education seminars in bookstores, tucked away behind the stacks. Although these events are open to the public, they are publicized quietly to avoid government scrutiny. There are queer dance parties and private Facebook groups, if you know where to look for them.
But as Stern argued, LGBT people can’t afford to keep waiting for society to come around.
“There are some silver linings as a result of this crisis, but no one wants to wait for the murder of another 18-year-old,” Stern said. “As this brutal killing shows, change can’t come soon enough. They need justice now.”
TAGS: WORLD, CRIME, HATE CRIMES
New Blogs Part 9 Updated March 24 2018
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2017
A brief primer on forensic hypnosis
In the November Reasonably Suspicious podcast, my colleague Amanda Marzullo and I discussed a capital case out of Dallas - Ex Parte Flores - in which the Dallas PD used hypnosis on the primary witness, who ultimately switched her story. She at first said a long-haired white man was the perpetrator before identifying a short-haired Hispanic man (Mr. Flores) at trial.
On the podcast, we marveled that DPD had access to an on-staff hypnotist, wondering whether DPD might also consult Tarot card experts or palm readers? But Grits underestimated the level of official status that "forensic hypnosis" has achieved in Texas, by quite a bit! I'm putting these links up mostly for my own purposes, but thought Grits readers may also be interested, so here you go:
For starters, to be clear, most states (28) do not allow hypnosis-influenced testimony to be admitted into evidence at all. Of the states that do, Texas has over the years had one of the more robust programs. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals approved the use of hypnosis in a case called Zani v. State from 1988, the year after the Texas Legislature via SB 992 ordered what was then the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education (TCLEOSE) to create an "Investigative Hypnosis certificate." (See a 2015 synopsis of their 50-hour training course, and here's the relevant section of the Occupations Code.)
The CCA reaffirmed the use of hypnotically induced testimony in a 2004 case, State v. Medrano.
The best journalism on this topic that your correspondent has seen came from Andy East at Reporting Texas in December 2014, in a story I'd missed when it came out. According to Mr. East:
Texas and 21 other states allow court testimony by witnesses who previously were hypnotized to enhance their memories, according to a study by Steven Lynn, a professor of psychology at Binghamton University in New York. The Texas Rangers have used hypnosis 66 times since 2009, according to the state Department of Public Safety. Most law enforcement agencies in Texas don’t keep statistics on hypnosis.
Further:
Investigative hypnotists in Texas must be certified by the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement. That requires taking a 50-hour course and passing an exam. Since licensing was mandated in 1987, commission records show that 858 law enforcement officers have been certified . Four officers have been certified in the past two years. In October 2013, the commission began requiring licensed investigative hypnotists to take a refresher course every two years.
According to an article by a former DPS trooper and prominent forensic hypnotist (touting the "Texas model" and outlining a "Road Map to Admissibility" for hypnotically enhanced witness testimony), some 80 police officers participated in the first TCLEOSE training once the official certification was created.
There is actually a Texas Association of Investigative Hypnosis, and regrettably we just missed their annual conference! That would have been a hoot. Here's a website of a prominent practitioner and former DPS trooper.
American Public Media in 2016 took on the story from a national perspective. They warned that:
Especially if done poorly, the process - basically a means of trying to induce a more focused state of mind — can plant memories or skew existing memories. It can also make witnesses or victims more certain of what they saw, even if the recollections turn out to be false. Today, hypnosis is a rare feature in police work and even rarer in the courtroom, partly because so many courts have ruled "hypnotically induced" testimony inadmissible. The process is viewed as roughly on par with another quasi-scientific investigative tool, the polygraph test.
They noted that, "Minnesota was one of the first to restrict such testimony when the state Supreme Court ruled in State v. Mack, in 1980, to bar testimony recalled for the first time under hypnosis." Here's a Candadian case from 2007 declaring post-hypnosis witness identifications inadmissible.
Over the years, scientific support for the technique has eroded significantly. These days, a 2016 academic analysis concluded, "Scientific research ... suggests, fairly overwhelmingly, that hypnosis does not reliably increase the accuracy of eyewitness recall and recognition; rather, the research shows that when effects do occur, hypnosis can produce an increase in false, distorted, or manufactured memories."
Further, said the same source: "it is not only the distortion of memory which is at issue, but also the sincerity with which people believe their distorted memories to be accurate. Because hypnotically recovered memories are remembered in such detail and with such emotion, subjects often develop and false confidence in it."
According to this academic analysis (FN 35), there are at least five DNA exonerees who were convicted after information about hypnosis-induced testimony was concealed from their juries!
A DOJ manual for US Attorneys informs practitioners, "The information obtained from a person while in a hypnotic trance cannot be assumed to be accurate."
Memory expert Elizabeth Loftus has shown that hypnosis can be used to implant memories of things that never occurred.
Most academic papers I've found on forensic hypnosis are behind paywalls. The abstract to this 2015 academic paper suggests that hypnosis poses more risks of error than other memory recall methods. Another academic paper suggested more errors occur from hypnosis when the contents of memories are very emotional.
As far as Grits can tell, this is junk science at its worst. In Zani, ironically, the CCA already understood that proponent's claims had been seriously challenged: The majority opinion observed that:
Proponents of the use of hypnosis to restore a crime victim's memory to facilitate his trial testimony, most notable of whom is Dr. Martin Reiser, a psychologist and forensic hypnotist with the Los Angeles Police Department, advocate a "videotape recorder" theory of human memory. By this theory the human mind is thought to receive and store in the subconscious every bit of data taken in by the senses. Hypnosis is regarded as a legitimate vehicle for tapping the subconscious to retrieve data recorded therein which has proven to be inaccessible to the subject's conscious memory. "The assumption, however, that a process analogous to a multichannel videotape recorder inside the head records all sensory impressions and stores them in their pristine form indefinitely is not consistent with research findings or with current theories of memory."
Today, thanks to research with fMRIs and other modern neuroscience advancements, we know conclusively that the "videotape recorder" theory is hoakum. It can't even be said to be a disputed question anymore. And that's the main basis upon which proponents rested their arguments for using hypnosis on witnesses.
It's hard to understand how "forensic hypnosis" is still a thing in 2017. Further evidence, if any were needed, that judges in general make rotten forensic gatekeepers. This is just embarrassing.
POSTED BY GRITSFORBREAKFAST AT 3:09 PM
New Blogs Part 9 Updated March 30 2018
Another tidbit from Grits for Breakfast:
Open records review should include criminal justice
The House Committee on Government Transparency meets next week in part to discuss updating open records laws (see coverage from the Caller Times). The push to do so doesn't involve criminal justice, but transparency laws in that area need serious attention. See this Grits commentary from 2016 regarding aspects of the Public Information Act related to the justice system which have been gutted in favor of opacity over the last three decades.
Why do all my gay rights posts; seem Identical to my sex offender posts? And why do all my gay rights posts remind me of civil rights posts. I watched a movie recently that compared gay rights to civil rights. The movie "The Shape of Water" has a most excellent scene. I could not have said it better that this web site says:
From:
Del Toro also overplays his hand in characterizing the heroes. Midway into the film, he reveals that Giles is gay when the character makes a pass at a friendly restaurant owner; the latter promptly kicks Giles out of the restaurant, along with a black couple who want to eat there. Though superfluous to the story, the scene reflects the movie's mission, to inspire sympathy with outsiders and anger toward anyone who would prevent them from experiencing love.
I don't know why but this reminds me of a Bible verse: Mark 10:9 What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
And that leads to my next post that totally resembles a sex offender post about the ACLU or the like:
This is another of copy and paste from this great web page: From Here
Washington has become the tenth state to pass a ban on conversion therapy on minors.
Gov. Jay Inslee signed the legislation banning the debunked and dangerous practice on Wednesday. The law takes effect in June, and will deem any therapy attempting to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of any person under the age of 18.
The law defines conversion therapy as “a regime that seeks to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity, including efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions, or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same sex.”
“Conversion therapy does not include counseling or psychotherapies that provide acceptance, support, and understanding of clients or facilitation of client’s coping, social support, and identity exploration and development that do not seek to change sexual orientation or gender identity,” it continues.
There does remain a religious exemption, saying “non-licensed counselors acting under the auspices of a religious denomination, church, or organization may not be construed to be unprofessional conduct.”
“Conversion therapy is not so much therapy, it’s abuse, and we are today prohibiting the abuse of our children,” said Inslee. “Conversion therapy, which has caused scars for decades across the country, is something that is inhumane and not acceptable in the state of Washington. We know today there are nationwide efforts to strip away the protections of our LGBTQ youth, and to prevent them from living safe, stable, and confident lives. As many of our friends, neighbors, and children today live in fear, we need to step up for them to protect them from conversion therapy, and we’re doing that today.”
“No child should be put through the dangerous and abusive practice of conversion therapy,” said Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin in a statement. “Medical professionals agree this harmful and discredited practice not only doesn’t work, but can also have life-threatening consequences. We thank the many advocates, allies, parents, and survivors who spoke out against conversion therapy and urged their elected officials to adopt these crucial protections. We also thank Governor Inslee and the Washington State Legislature for enacting this legislation to protect LGBTQ youth.”
“Today we applaud Washington state Governor Jay Inslee’s decision to sign into law SB 5722. We are heartened by the progress made by legislators to uphold the safety, health, and well-being of LGBTQ individuals in Washington state,” said National Center for Lesbian Rights Youth Policy Counsel and Born Perfect Campaign Coordinator Carolyn Reyes. “We know that few practices hurt LGBTQ youth more than attempts to change their sexual orientation or gender identity through the debunked practice of ‘conversion therapy.’ Washington state sets an example for the rest of the country in ensuring every child knows they are born perfect.”
New Blogs Part 9 Updated April 01 2018
This article says it all:
From: Here
Pastor Matthew Dennis Patterson of Nolensville Road Baptist Church in Tennessee, which “cites the Bible as the only authority for faith and practice, belief in the sinful nature of man, biblical family roles and local church autonomy,” was arrested for molesting at least 8 children over a period of 20 years.
The Tennessean reports:
Children at the church told adult members that Patterson had asked them to sit on his face and stomach, sometimes in their underwear, according to a police statement.
Detectives John Thomas and Jacob Masteller from the department’s Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation Unit led the six-month investigation into the complaints.
After interviewing multiple church and staff members, police said the detectives identified multiple victims, most of them boys, who were molested from 1998-2017. Police did not say how old the children were at the time of the alleged abuse.
Patterson has been indicted on eight counts of aggravated sexual battery. Each count is linked to a different child, according to police.
Police said more charges relating to additional victims “are anticipated” as the investigation continues.
Patterson was a “vocal opponent” of Tennessee anti-discrimination bills designed to protect LGBT people from bias in housing and employment.
Bond has been set at $100,000.
New Blogs Part 9 Updated April 02 2018
We're making the news for all the wrong reasons on this one:
SUNDAY, APRIL 01, 2018
NY Times story on Galveston indigent defense ripe for other reporters to localize
In the New York Times last week (March 29), former Austin Statesman editor Richard Oppell authored an article that could resonate throughout Texas indigent defense systems, as it describes a practice that's widespread, not remotely limited to the judge or attorney in Galveston at the center of the story. Here's the heart of the allegations:
A criminal defense lawyer in Galveston, Tex., says he was pulled off cases defending poor clients because he spent too much time on them and requested funds to have their charges investigated.
Needless to say, his clients were not the ones complaining. Instead, it was the judge, Jack Ewing, who appoints lawyers for those in his courtroom who cannot afford them. “You overwork cases,” Judge Ewing told the lawyer, Drew Willey, according to excerpts from a recorded conversation cited in the lawsuit.
Though an estimated four of every five criminal defendants in the United States use court-appointed lawyers or public defenders, many of the nation’s indigent defense systems have been criticized as desperately inadequate, leading to false guilty pleas and overincarceration.
Lawyers who represent the poor can be required to juggle hundreds of cases at a time, accept pay far lower than the market rate, or take cases for which they have little experience.
This new case, though, exposes another potential problem: Indigent defense lawyers often get their assignments from the judges in whose courtroom they appear. This discourages a robust defense, experts say, and leads to an emphasis on resolving cases quickly.
The tensions may be familiar to lawyers, but they are rarely so candidly aired as in this lawsuit, filed in federal court last week and bolstered by parts of a recorded conversation with the judge.
Grits has heard similar stories from defense attorneys for as long as I've paid attention to the Texas justice system, including attorneys stiffed not just for time worked but also for investigators' fees or even forensic services.
Which brings me to this observation for Texas-based reporters: This is a national story which can be localized. This isn't the only Texas jurisdiction, by any stretch, in which judges reduced pay requests from lawyers as excessive when they tried to put on a zealous defense. There are also stories out there of lawyers losing out on appointments because judges considered them a tad too zealous. Attorneys who make a living representing indigent clients must routinely take on caseloads well beyond bar-association-recommended guidelines in order to pay for a mortgage, middle-class lifestyle, and law-school debts. This story explains why, and it's not just happening in Galveston.
So, for my reporter friends on the local courthouse beat: There's a courthouse paper trail on cases where judges reduce attorneys' fees, which a local attorney who takes indigent cases or the court coordinator can help you identify. Then, one simply calls up the attorneys to ask why they requested the additional pay. Follow up with calls to the judges in question to get their side of the story; the county judge so s/he can lodge a complaint about unfunded mandates from the state; then make a call to indigent defense experts like the Texas Fair Defense Project or Civil Rights Corps (the two nonprofits that sued over Harris County's unconstitutional bail practices), and you've just localized a national story.
Indeed, there's a small mountain of data, including lawyer-specific payment information, available from the Texas Indigent Defense Commission. Once you dig into these topics, there's a lot of material for an enterprising reporter with which to work.
So thanks, Richard Oppell, for exposing a statewide problem in the form of this Galveston anecdote. Now it's up to Texas reporters to pick up the baton and expose the same practices in their own jurisdictions. The story's there to be had, and "It would make some local judges mad" isn't a good enough reason not to report it.
New Blogs Part 9 Updated April 06 2018
WILL FIGHT A JUDGE’S RULING ORDERING THE STATE TO CONSIDER EARLIER PAROLE FOR SEX OFFENDERS
March 6, 2018
[Time.com] (SACRAMENTO) — California said Monday that it will fight a judge’s ruling ordering the state to consider earlier parole for potentially thousands of sex offenders, such as those convicted…
PA: STATE SUPREME COURT REMANDING CASES AFTER MUNIZ
March 7, 2018
[floridaactioncommittee.org] Sex offender cases in Pennsylvania are being remanded in the wake of Commonwealth v. Muniz, the PA case which found their registry unconstitutional under the ex post facto clauses…
TX: TARRANT COUNTY JUDGE USED ELECTRIC SHOCKS TO PUNISH SEX OFFENDER, WHO IS GETTING A NEW TRIAL
[star-telegram.com]
FORT WORTH
State District Judge George Gallagher of Tarrant County told a bailiff on three occasions to punish an uncooperative defendant with electric shocks, and now the sex offender’s conviction has been overturned and a new trial ordered.
Stun belts can be strapped around the legs of some defendants and used to deliver thousands of volts of electric shock in the instance a defendant turns violent or attempts to escape the courtroom. However, in the case of _______, who was convicted in 2014 of charges of soliciting sexual performance from a 15-year-old girl, an appeals court found that Gallagher used electric shocks as punishment after ____ failed to answer the judge’s questions properly.
MN: WEST ST. PAUL VOTES TO LOOSEN RULES ON WHERE SEX OFFENDERS CAN LIVE
March 13, 2018
West St. Paul loosened its rules on where sex offenders can live Monday night, after struggling to strike a balance between residents’ concerns and possible legal repercussions of its highly restrictive policy. Full Article
FL: A NATIONAL PUSH FOR VICTIMS’ RIGHTS IS NOW HITTING FLORIDA. BUT CRITICS ARE FIGHTING BACK
March 13, 2018
[injusticetoday.com] Voters in Florida may soon get to decide whether to give victims of crime a bigger say in the criminal justice system. A proposed amendment to the state constitution…
MA: SEX OFFENDER REGISTRY CHANGES SOUGHT
March 13, 2018
The lowest level of convicted sex offenders would be required to register with local police and face increased scrutiny under plans to expand the state’s registry. A proposal by Senate…
IL: SEX OFFENDER FACING CHARGES IN TROY SUES, SAYS BURDEN TO PROVE INNOCENCE IS TOO HIGH
March 14, 2018
A Florida man facing child sex assault charges has filed a lawsuit against the state of Illinois alleging that the burden of proof placed on him to prove his innocence…
NATIONAL REGISTRY OF EXONERATIONS 2017 REPORT [DOCUMENT]
March 15, 2018
[law.umich.edu]
The National Registry of Exonerations recently issued its 2017 report. Of the 139 exonerations they added to the registry in 2017, 21% were for sex crimes, not counting the two for registration crimes.
About half of all the exonerations were based on the conclusion that no crime had been committed (as opposed to the finding that the exoneree was not the perpetrator). Eleven of these were child sexual abuse convictions.
NJ: OPPOSITION TO BLANKET COMMUNITY NOTIFICATION IN NEW JERSEY
March 17, 2018
[sexlawandpolicy.org] Today, SLAP Center delivered a letter to Assemblywoman Amy Handlin and Senator Christopher Bateman outlining our opposition to their proposal to allow for community notification of New Jersey’s Tier…
WV: STATE SUPREME COURT RULES PROBATION INTERNET RESTRICTIONS VIOLATE FIRST AMENDMENT
March 19, 2018
[UPDATED LINKS 3/20/18] [floridaactioncommittee.org] The West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals has ruled that completely restricting a person’s access to the internet as a condition of their parole from prison…
MI: FELONY CHARGES DROPPED AGAINST CLINTON TOWNSHIP SEX OFFENDER IN FERNDALE
March 20, 2018
[macombdaily.com] Felony charges have been dismissed in Ferndale against a convicted sex offender accused of failing to give his correct address and vehicle information under the state’s Sex Offender Registration…
NATIONAL
FL: FT. LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA SEX OFFENDER RESIDENCY RESTRICTION DECLARED UNCONSTITUTIONAL
March 26, 2018
[floridaactioncommittee.org] The Ft Lauderdale Sex Offender Residency Restriction was declared unconstitutional. Wait… what?!?! A Florida SORR was declared unconstitutional? YES! The municipal ordinance in the City of Ft. Lauderdale that…
CT: SUIT TARGETS WL BAN ON SEX OFFENDERS IN PUBLIC PLACES
April 6, 2018
An anonymous resident and an advocacy group that represents accused and convicted sex offenders have filed a federal lawsuit seeking to strike down the town’s 10-year-old policy barring people on Connecticut’s sex offender registry from a number of public places. Full Article:
http://www.journalinquirer.com/connecticut_and_region/suit-targets-wl-ban-on-sex-offenders-in-public-places/article_35268b7a-38ea-11e8-a80a-e3b77213783e.html
April 6, 2018
An anonymous resident and an advocacy group that represents accused and convicted sex offenders have filed a federal lawsuit seeking to strike down the town’s 10-year-old policy barring people on Connecticut’s sex offender registry from a number of public places. Full Article:
http://www.journalinquirer.com/connecticut_and_region/suit-targets-wl-ban-on-sex-offenders-in-public-places/article_35268b7a-38ea-11e8-a80a-e3b77213783e.html
New Blogs Part 9 Updated April 07 2018
I have been complaining about these ads; since I first logged on to the internet around 1994. As recent as my college years around 2004; I would complain about trying to get references for my artwork, by entering cowboy; and get gay porn links in Google images. I would never click on those links but still it was irritating.
There is never a excuse; for people doing a simple innocent search and having to deal with pop up ads of porn. This should be and can be stopped. I used to complain about it in 1994 and ever since then. Back in 1994 to about 2000's people would be so prejudice of the internet saying all it was , was porn. I would say; all they have to do is stop the porn pop ups, for instance, to end this bad impression people have of the internet.
I have a sneaky suspension these folks from Arizona may have something to do with listing peoples police records online for the whole world to see. Don't forget how that Arizona company was shut down for listing police records online. Listing police records online for profit; is a absolute disgrace and a disgrace of our whole country.
My wife reads me the news every morning and I thought she said pop up ads. I just read the article hours after posting this and found out it was not pop up ads. I am still leaving the article posted because it is out of Arizona because of the possible connection of the police records people.
Sex ads platform Backpage.com seized by FBI
from: http://www.patriotledger.com/zz/news/20180406/sex-ads-platform-backpagecom-seized-by-fbi
Sex ads platform Backpage.com seized by FBI
By Wire Reports
Posted Apr 6, 2018 at 8:48 PM
Updated Apr 6, 2018 at 9:20 PM
Law enforcement authorities raid founder’s home, release few details after post on sites known for adult escort services
PHOENIX — Sex ads platform Backpage.com was seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation Friday hours after its founder’s Phoenix home was raided.
Visitors to the site landed on a notice from the federal government announcing its seizure.
“Backpage.com and affiliated websites have been seized as part of an enforcement action by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division, with analytical assistance from the Joint Regional Intelligence Center,” the announcement read.
Founder Michael Lacey’s Sedona home was raided by the FBI Friday morning, Evan Wyloge, of the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, tweeted. He said Lacey’s neighbors witnessed the raid, reporting that “about 20 undercover cops” swarmed the property.
Phoenix FBI told The New York Daily News that “law enforcement activity is occurring.”
The U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Other agencies were also involved in the enforcement action, with more information forthcoming, the FBI said.
The Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act, known as SESTA, passed both houses of Congress last month as part of a push to crack down on Backpage.com and other sites accused of facilitating human trafficking.
It awaits President Donald Trump’s signature.
Some sex workers argued that the legislation hamstrings their ability to safely earn a living.
Backpage.com lets users create posts to sell items, seek a roommate, participate in forums, list upcoming events or post job openings. It also known for listing adult escorts and other sexual services, and authorities say advertising related to those services has been extremely lucrative.
Last year, the creators of the website were charged with money laundering in California.
State prosecutors in California have said the website’s chief executive Carl Ferrer and founders Lacey and James Larkin illegally funneled money through multiple companies and created various websites to get around banks that refused to process transactions. They have pleaded not guilty.
Lacey and Larkin are former owners of the Village Voice and the Phoenix New Times, but retained ownership of Backpage.com.
A decade ago, they were arrested by then-Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s office in 2007 for publishing information about a secret grand jury subpoena demanding information on its stories and online readers.
They won a $3.75 million settlement from county government as a result of their now-discredited arrests.
also see:
Or just look it up on Google News
New Blogs Part 9 Updated April 08 2018
I found this page by accident this morning, after searching for the reelection campaign in Iowa.
1990–1999
Arlan Stangeland (R-MN) U.S. House of Representatives (1977 – 1991). He lost his campaign for re-election in 1990, largely because of a scandal, having made several hundred long-distance phone calls on his House credit card to a female lobbyist from Virginia. He admitted that he had made the calls, but denied having a romantic relationship with the woman. After his loss he subsequently retired from politics.(1990)[63][64]
Austin J. Murphy, Representative (D-PA), acknowledged fathering a child out of wedlock after a political opponent came forward with video of Murphy leaving the home of his mistress.[65] (1990)
Charles S. Robb Senator (D-VA) while married to Lynda Bird Johnson, Robb acknowledged drinking champagne and having a nude massage with Miss Virginia Tai Collins denying an affair, though he admitted an "indiscreet friendship." Collins claimed it was an 18-month affair. Soon after, Collins appeared nude in Playboy.[66] (1991)
Brock Adams, Senator (D-WA), was accused by eight women of committing various acts of sexual misconduct, ranging from sexual harassment to rape.[67] Adams denied the accusations, there was no criminal prosecution, and he did not run for re-election.[68] (1992)
Robert Packwood, Senator (R-OR), resigned his office after 29 women came forward with claims of sexual harassment, abuse, and assaults. His denials of any wrongdoing were eventually contradicted by his own diaries boasting of his sexual conquests. (1995)[69]
Ken Calvert, Representative (R-CA), was involved with a prostitute, but claimed that no money was involved, and he was not arrested.[70] Calvert apologized: "My conduct that evening was inappropriate....it violated the values of the person I strive to be."[70] (1993)
Helen Chenoweth-Hage, Representative (R-ID), called for the resignation of Bill Clinton, and then admitted in 1998 to having had a six-year affair with a married rancher before she entered government.[71] Chenoweth said: "Fourteen years ago, when I was a private citizen and a single woman, I was involved in a relationship that I came to regret, that I'm not proud of....I only wish I could have learned the lessons sooner."[72] (1998)
Bob Barr, Representative (R-GA), had an affair while married to his second wife. Barr was the first lawmaker in either chamber to call for Clinton's resignation due to the Lewinsky scandal. Barr lost a primary challenge less than three years after the impeachment proceedings. (1999)[73]
Dan Burton, Representative (R-IN): In 1995 speaking of the then-recent affairs of Republican Robert Packwood and the unfolding affair of Democrat Bill Clinton Burton stated "No one, regardless of what party they serve, no one, regardless of what branch of government they serve, should be allowed to get away with these alleged sexual improprieties...." In 1998 Vanity Fair printed an article detailing an affair which Burton himself had in 1983 which produced a child. Before publication Burton admitted to fathering a son with a former state employee.[74][75]
Robert Livingston, Representative (R-LA), called for the resignation of Bill Clinton and when his own extramarital affairs were leaked, his wife urged him to resign and urge Clinton to do likewise. (1998)[76][77]
Newt Gingrich, Representative (R-GA) and leader of the Republican Revolution of 1994,[78] resigned from the House after admitting in 1998 to having had an affair with a staffer while he was married to his second wife, and at the same time he was leading the impeachment of Bill Clinton for perjury regarding an affair with his intern Monica Lewinsky. (1998)[79][80]
Henry Hyde, Representative (R-IL): in 1998, Salon.com stated that from 1965 to 1969 (before Hyde won federal office), he conducted an extramarital sexual affair with a married woman who had three children from her marriage. Hyde, who was 41 years old and married when the affair occurred, admitted to the affair in 1998, describing the relationship as a "youthful indiscretion".The revelation of this affair took place as Hyde was spearheading the impeachment hearings of President Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky scandal.[81]
Pete Domenici Senator (R-NM) voted for the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1998 after his affair with Monica Lewinsky. In 2013 he confessed that in 1978 he fathered a son, Adam Laxalt, outside of his marriage; Adam Laxalt's mother is Michelle Laxalt, the daughter of Senator Paul Laxalt and a prominent Republican lobbyist.[82][83]
Bill Clinton, President (D) Revelations that White House intern Monica Lewinsky had oral sex with Clinton in the Oval Office leading him to famously declare on TV on January 26, 1998, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." The scandal led to impeachment by the House for perjury, for lying about the affair under oath. He was acquitted in the Senate with 55 senators voting Not Guilty to 45 senators voting Guilty (falling 22 votes short of the two-thirds necessary to convict). (1998)[84][85] In a plea bargain to avoid another trial alleging charges of impeding the initial investigation, Clinton's law license was suspended by the state of Arkansas for five years.[86] Additionally, Clinton was accused by Juanita Broadrrick for sexual assault.[170]
Mel Reynolds, Representative (D-IL), resigned from Congress in 1995 after a conviction for statutory rape. In August 1994, he was indicted for sexual assault and criminal sexual abuse for engaging in a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old campaign volunteer that began during the 1992 campaign.[87] Despite the charges, he continued his campaign and was re-elected that November; he had no opposition.[87] Reynolds initially denied the charges, which he claimed were racially motivated. On August 22, 1995, he was convicted on 12 counts of sexual assault, obstruction of justice and solicitation of child pornography. He resigned his seat on October 1 of that year.[88]
2000–2009
Gary Condit, Representative (D-CA): his affair with 23-year-old intern Chandra Levy was exposed after Levy disappeared. Her body was found a year later and in 2008, an illegal immigrant with no relation to Condit was charged with her murder.[89] Condit had often demanded that Bill Clinton "come clean" about his affair with Monica Lewinsky. (2001)[90]
Ed Schrock, Representative (R-VA), announced he would abort his 2004 attempt for a third term in Congress after allegedly being caught on tape soliciting sex from a male prostitute after having aggressively opposed various gay-rights issues in Congress, such as same-sex marriage and gays in the military.[91]
Strom Thurmond, Senator (R-SC), noted segregationist, fathered a child, Essie Mae Washington-Williams, with a 15-year-old African American in 1925 who was employed by the Thurmond family. (2003)[92]
Steven C. LaTourette, Representative (R-OH), was elected in 1994 and had voted to impeach Bill Clinton for the Lewinsky scandal. He himself had a long-term affair with his chief of staff, Jennifer Laptook, while he was married. He married Laptook after his divorce. (2003)[93]
David Dreier, Representative (R-CA), voted against a number of gay rights proposals, but was outed concerning his relationship with his chief of staff. (2004)[94] He is featured in the 2009 documentary film Outrage.
Don Sherwood, Representative (R-PA), failed to win re-election following revelations of a five-year extramarital affair with Cynthia Ore, who accused him of physically abusing her. (2004)[95]
Mark Foley, Representative (R-FL), resigned his House seat when accused of sending sexually explicit e-mails to teenage male congressional pages. He was replaced by Tim Mahoney. (2006)[96]
David Vitter, Senator (R-LA), took over the House seat of former Congressman Robert Livingston, who resigned in 1999 following revelations of an extramarital affair. At the time, Vitter stated, "I think Livingston's stepping down makes a very powerful argument that (Bill) Clinton should resign as well...."[97] Vitter's name was then discovered in the address book of the Deborah Jeane Palfrey (the "D.C. Madam"). (2007)[98]
Randall L. Tobias (R), Deputy Secretary of State and former "AIDS Czar" appointed by George W. Bush, stated that U.S. funds should be denied to countries that permitted prostitution.[99] He resigned on April 27, 2007, after confirming that he had been a customer of Deborah Jeane Palfrey (the "D.C. Madam").[100]
Larry Craig (R-ID), a U.S. Senator for 18 years, was arrested on June 11, 2007 and charged with lewd conduct arising from his behavior in a men's restroom at the Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Airport.[101][102][103] Craig pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of disorderly conduct; he later unsuccessfully sought to withdraw his guilty plea.[104][105][106] He announced his resignation three months later on September 1, 2007, but changed his mind again, although he did not seek re-election in 2008. (2007) [107][108][109][110][111][112][113]
Tim Mahoney, Representative (D-FL), was elected to the seat of Mark Foley, who had resigned following sexual harassment charges from his congressional interns. Mahoney ran on a campaign promise to make "a world that is safer, more moral". In October 2008, he admitted he placed his mistress on his staff and then fired her, saying, "You work at my pleasure." He then admitted to multiple other affairs.[114]
Vito Fossella, Representative (R-NY), was arrested for drunken driving. Under questioning, the married Congressman and father of three admitted to an affair with Laura Fay that produced a daughter. (2008)[115]
John Edwards, Senator (D-NC), admitted to an extramarital affair with actress and film producer Rielle Hunter, which produced a child, seriously undercutting his 2008 presidential campaign.[116] (see federal political scandals)
John Ensign, Senator (R-NV), resigned his position as chairman of the Senate Republican Policy Committee on June 16, 2009, after admitting he had an affair with the wife of a close friend, both of whom were working on his campaign.[117] Under investigation, he then resigned his Senate seat 20 months early in 2011[118] In 1998, Senator Ensign had called for President Bill Clinton (D) to resign after admitting to sexual acts with Monica Lewinsky. (2009)[119]
Chip Pickering, Representative (R-MS): on July 16, 2009, it was announced that his wife had filed an alienation of affection lawsuit against a woman with whom Chip allegedly had an affair.[120] The lawsuit claimed the adulterous relationship ruined the Pickerings' marriage and his political career. (2009)[121]
2010–2018
Eric Massa, Representative (D-NY), resigned to avoid an ethics investigation into his admitted groping and tickling of multiple male staffers. He later stated on Fox News, "not only did I grope [a staffer], I tickled him until he couldn't breathe," (2010)[122][123]
Mark Souder, Representative (R-IN), a staunch advocate of abstinence and family values,[124][125] resigned to avoid an ethics investigation into his admitted extramarital affair with a female staffer. (2010)[126][127][128]
Chris Lee, Representative (R-NY), resigned hours after a news report that he had sent a shirtless picture of himself flexing his muscles to a woman via Craigslist, along with flirtatious e-mails.[129] He did not rely on a pseudonym or a false e-mail address but used his official Congressional e-mail for all communication. Lee said: "I regret the harm that my actions have caused my family, my staff and my constituents.... I have made profound mistakes and I promise to work as hard as I can to seek their forgiveness.”[130] (2011)
Anthony Weiner, Representative (D-NY), admitted to sending sexually explicit photos of himself to several women through his Twitter account.[131] He resigned from Congress on June 16, 2011,[132] but kept sexting after his resignation.[133] (2011)
Scott DesJarlais, Representative (R-TN), admitted under oath to at least six affairs, including two affairs with his patients and staffers while he was a physician at Grandview Medical Center in Jasper, TN. Additionally, while running on a pro-life platform, DesJarlais made his ex-wife have two abortions, and tried to persuade a mistress who was his patient, into an abortion as well.[134][135][136]
David Wu, Representative (D-OR), resigned from the House of Representatives after being accused of making unwanted sexual advances toward a fundraiser's daughter. July 26, 2011.[137][138]
Herman Cain (R) 2012 Republican presidential candidate, was accused of sexual harassment by several women. These accusations eventually caused him to suspend his run for the presidential nomination (2012)[139][140] including Sharon Bialek, Karen Kraushaar, and having a 13-year affair with Ginger White.[141][142] Donna Donella also reported possible inappropriate behavior.[143][144][145]
Vance McAllister, Representative (R-LA), who is married and the father of five, was caught on surveillance camera deeply kissing a married staffer. Several prominent Republicans asked McAllister to resign. In response, he stated he would not seek re-election in 2016.[146][147] McCallister said: "There's no doubt I've fallen short and I'm asking for forgiveness. I’m asking for forgiveness from God, my wife, my kids, my staff, and my constituents who elected me to serve". (2014)[148]
Matthew P. Pennell (R) staff for US Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) of the Tea Party, was arrested on 17 counts of alleged child sex crimes. He was sentenced to 12 months in prison (2015)[149][150][151][152]
Blake Farenthold, US Representative (R-TX) was reported to have paid $84,000 of taxpayer money, via the House of Representatives Office of Compliance, to settle a sexual harassment complaint from a former staffer. Farenthold's former communications director Lauren Greene sued the congressman in December 2014,[153] and a settlement was reached in 2015. The identity of Farenthold with respect to taxpayer involvement was made public in 2017. This was the first documented case of taxpayer funds being used to settle sexual harassment complaints against a member of Congress. (2014)[154]
Dennis Hastert, former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives (R-IL), pled guilty to structuring bank withdrawals in order to conceal deliberately-unspecified misconduct by Hastert against an unnamed individual years earlier.[155] At a sentencing hearing in October 2015, Hastert admitted that he had sexually abused boys while he worked as a high school wrestling coach decades earlier. (2015)[156][157]
Donald Trump (R), the 45th President of the United States, was accused of sexual assault by 13 women during the 2016 election and he denied the allegations.[158] The allegations arose after The Washington Post released a 2005 video of Trump, recorded on a hot microphone by Access Hollywood, in which he brags about groping women.[159] In the video, Trump said, "I’ll admit it. I did try and fuck her. She was married. ... You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. I just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything."[160] The tape was released two days before a televised debate against Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton, at which he dismissed the video as "locker room talk."[161] Trump himself renewed the controversy a year later by alleging that the video was fake,[162] to which Access Hollywood replied, "Let us make this perfectly clear — the tape is very real. Remember his excuse at the time was 'locker-room talk.' He said every one of those words."[163][164]
Tim Murphy, Representative (R-PA), had an extramarital affair with Shannon Edwards, a 32-year-old forensic psychologist. The pro-life Murphy asked Edwards to have an abortion after she became pregnant. The information was revealed as part of Murphy's divorce proceedings and published by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette after it fought in Pennsylvania state court to have the documents unsealed. Murphy resigned his seat in Congress.
Roy Moore U.S. Senate candidate in Alabama (R) was been accused by nine women[165] of sexual misconduct with them when they were in their teens. The first of his accusers said that at the time, she was 14 years old, while he was 32.[166]. Moore lost a special election for Alabama Senate following these accusations.
Al Franken Senator (D-MN), was accused by radio newscaster Leeann Tweeden of forcibly kissing her and later groping her without consent during a U.S.O. tour in 2006. Tweeden produced photo evidence of the grope, taken by Franken when Tweeden was asleep. Franken admitted to the allegations and apologized for his actions and then resigned.[167]
Joe Barton (R-TX) US Representative, acknowledged he took and emailed nude photos of himself in 2015, following their leak in November 2017.[168]
John Conyers Jr. US Congressman(D-MI), A former staffer for Rep. John Conyers Jr. of Michigan accused the Detroit Democrat of unwanted sexual advances. A woman who had settled a sexual harassment claim against him stated that the lawmaker had “violated” her body, repeatedly propositioned her for sex and asked her to touch his genitals. He then resigned.(2017)[169][170][171]
Pat Meehan (R-PA) US Representative used tax payer funds to settle a sexual harassment claim by a female staffer. He was removed from the House Ethics Committee, but remains in office(2018)[172] [173]
Clint Reed, CoS for US Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) was fired for allegations of “improper conduct” with an unnamed subordinate(2018)[174][175][176][177]
David Sorensen (R) White House Speechwriter, resigned as a result of allegations by his ex-wife, that he was violent and emotionally abusive during their turbulent 2½ -year marriage. Sorenson denied the charges, but resigned his position.(2018)[178][179]
New Blogs Part 9 Updated April 09 2018
I found another page in our history as a result of yesterdays accidental find (above).
The reason I am posting this; is because one of the first things I have ever posted on the internet about sex offences, like this.: If we rounded up every single person that has committed any type of sex offence like mooning someone or urinating in public. With that many people as RSO's; we would have to treat sex offenders with human rights and constitutional rights, unlike our present day.
My only complaint is; this list is way too small, because it does not go back in the past, of recorded history, enough.
Entertainment
By late October 2017, cases included, in the entertainment industry, Screen Junkies co-creator Andy Signore,[14][15] Amazon Studios director Roy Price,[16] Agency for the Performing Arts talent agent Tyler Grasham,[17] Nickelodeon's The Loud House creator Chris Savino,[18] and actor Andy Dick.[19][20][9]
Over 300 women accused filmmaker James Toback of sexual harassment.[6] As of November 23, 2017, the Beverly Hills Police Department has opened 12 sexual assault cases in the entertainment industry, including cases against Weinstein and Toback.[21]
By early November, the number of accusations compounded exponentially:
On October 10, actor Terry Crews revealed that he had been groped by an unnamed Hollywood executive at a party in 2016, declining to speak out earlier for fear of retaliation.[22][23]
On November 15, Crews identified his attacker as Adam Venit, head of the motion picture department of the talent company William Morris Endeavor.[24] Venit was suspended for a one-month period before returning to work.[25] Crews has filed a lawsuit against Venit and WME for sexual assault.[26]
On November 1, 2017, Six women accused filmmaker Brett Ratner of sexual harassment, canceling his work with Warner Bros. and Playboy, although he has denied the claims.[27]
On November 2, actor Corey Feldman announced that former assistant and actor Jon Grissom had sexually abused both Feldman and the late Corey Haim, Feldman's former close friend and costar.[28]
Actor Kevin Spacey was accused of sexual misconduct or assault by over a dozen men (some of whom were underaged at the time, one as young as 14) and announced that he was entering unspecified treatment; all but one of his projects were cancelled as a result; the one which was not cancelled saw Spacey replaced by actor Christopher Plummer.[29]
Actors Jeremy Piven, Steven Seagal, and Ed Westwick were each accused by varying numbers of women; all three denied the claims.[30]
Actor Robert Knepper and Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner each received a single accusation of sexual misconduct, which both denied.[31][32][33] Four more women came forward to accuse Knepper the next month; he denied those allegations as well.[34]
Actor Dustin Hoffman was accused by actress Kathryn Rossetter of having repeatedly groped her during the 1983 Broadway revival of Death of a Salesman.[35] Two other women accused Hoffman of sexually assaulting them and one of exposing himself to a 17 year old on the 1985 television version of Death of a Salesman, two years after the stage version cited by Rossetter.[36][37] Actress Meryl Streep, who co-starred with Hoffman in the film Kramer vs. Kramer, in a 1979 interview with Time magazine described meeting him for the first time at an audition for a play he directed several years earlier: "He came up to me and said, 'I'm Dustin—burp—Hoffman,' and he put his hand on my breast. What an obnoxious pig, I thought."[38] In November 2017, a Streep representative told E! News this was not "an accurate rendering of that meeting", adding, "there was an offense and it is something for which Dustin apologized. And Meryl accepted that."[39]
Director Oliver Stone was accused, by Patricia Arquette and Melissa Gilbert, separately, of acting inappropriately towards both of them.[40][41]
Comedian Louis C.K. confirmed multiple allegations of sexual misconduct and apologized; he was also dropped from his projects.[42][43]
Brand New frontman Jesse Lacey was accused of sexual misconduct by two women. The allegations include soliciting nude photos of them while they were underage.[44]
On November 10, 2017, former actor and model Scott R. Brunton told The Hollywood Reporter that actor and LGBT activist George Takei sexually assaulted him in 1981; Takei has denied this.[45]
As of November 10, 2017, chef John Besh was removed from his company after accusations of sexual misconduct from 25 women.[27]
E!'s The Royals creator, executive producer and director Mark Schwahn was accused of sexual harassment by cast members and crew of his former series, One Tree Hill, on November 13, 2017.[46] On December 22, 2017, Schwahn was fired from The Royals.[47]
Entrepreneur Russell Simmons was accused by Keri Claussen Khalighi of sexually assaulting her in 1991, when she was 17 and he was 33 or 34.[48] Simmons denies that the encounter was non-consensual.[49]
On November 13, 2017, actor James Woods was mentioned on a #MeToo sign held by actress Elizabeth Perkins.[50]
Writer Jessica Teich accused Richard Dreyfuss of exposing himself to her and attempting to force her to perform fellatio on him; Dreyfuss denied the allegation.[51]
On November 15, 2017, over a dozen women accused pornographic actor Ron Jeremy of rape and sexual assault.[52] Jeremy has denied all the allegations, though he was banned from the 35th AVN Award because of the accusations.[53]
On November 17, 2017, it was reported Ryan Seacrest was under investigation for sexual harassment allegations by a former E! wardrobe stylist.[54]
Actress Aurora Perrineau filed a police report with the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department accusing Girls scriptwriter Murray Miller of sexual assault in 2012, when she was seventeen.[55]
On November 19, 2017, Jeffrey Tambor announced he would leave his role on Transparent after Van Barnes, a transgender actress and former Tambor assistant, and co-star Trace Lysette, also transgender, both accused him of sexual harassment. The show's creator Jill Soloway would not discuss the details of the scandal directly, instead advocating anti-harassment on-set rules.[56] Days later, makeup artist Tamara Delbridge, a cisgender woman, accused Tambor of sexual improprieties on the set of the 2001 film Never Again. Tambor said he did not recall the incident, but apologized "for any discomfort or offense I may have inadvertently caused her."[57] On February 15, 2018, Tambor was officially fired from Transparent.[58]
John Lasseter, Chief Creative Officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar, and Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering, announced on November 21, 2017 he would be taking a leave of absence from Disney and Pixar after acknowledging "painful" conversations and unspecified "missteps".[59]
Pinegrove cancelled their 2017–18 North American tour dates following accusations of "sexual coercion" against lead singer Evan Stephens Hall.[60]
On November 22, 2017, actress and singer Melissa Schuman accused Nick Carter of the Backstreet Boys of raping her when she was 18, an accusation which Carter denied.[61]
On December 3, 2017, the Metropolitan Opera suspended conductor James Levine over sexual abuse claims that date back over several decades.[62][63] On March 12, 2018, Levine was fired following the investigation.[64]
On December 4, 2017, a woman by the name of Timothy Heller claimed former The Voice contestant Melanie Martinez had raped and sexually assaulted her during multiple sleepovers over the course of two days.[65][66][67]
The following day, December 5, 2017, actor Danny Masterson was fired from the Netflix series The Ranch after being accused of rape. Masterson's character was then written out of the series.[68] A Netflix executive was also fired after reportedly having told a woman that people at the company did not believe the allegations against Masterson; the woman was, unbeknownst to him, one of several who had come forward to accuse Masterson.[69]
Lee Trull, the Dallas Theater Center's Director of New Play Development, has been fired from his position after sexual misconduct allegations.[70]
On December 7, 2017, Bryan Singer was sued for allegedly sexually assaulting a 17-year-old boy during a yacht party in the Seattle area in 2003 and promising the teenager acting roles if he would keep silent.[71]
On December 9, 2017, celebrity chef Johnny Iuzzini was accused of sexual harassment by four of his former employees.[72]
On December 11, 2017, chef Mario Batali announced he was taking leave from his businesses after he was accused of sexual misconduct by four women.[73]
On December 14, 2017, Morgan Spurlock admitted to sexual harassment and 'being part of the problem'; he was not publicly accused of any wrongdoing.[74]
On December 19, 2017, an unnamed woman accused Silicon Valley actor T.J. Miller of sexually assaulting and punching her while both attended George Washington University in 2001.[75] Later that day, Comedy Central cancelled Miller's The Gorburger Show after one season.[76]
On December 21, 2017, the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony severed their ties with conductor Charles Dutoit after four women, including two-time Grammy Award-winning soprano Sylvia McNair, reported incidents of sexual harassment on his part between 1985 and 2010. Dutoit cancelled concerts scheduled for 2018 with the New York Philharmonic and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.[77][78]
Veteran ballet dancer Marcelo Gomes resigned from the American Ballet Theatre on December 21, 2017, after the company began investigating a report of sexual misconduct levied against him.[79]
On December 22, 2017, Max Landis was accused of sexual misconduct by former co-worker Anna Akana. Other Hollywood personalities also accused him of similar behavior towards colleagues or themselves. MAD Magazine Editor Allie Goertz was among them and commented she "couldn't imagine someone more scared in a post-Harvey Weinstein world." Among the accusers were Zoë Quinn, Siobhan Thompson, Lexi Alexander, Anthony Burch, Mike Drucker, and others.[80][81][82][83]
On January 2, 2018, Community and Rick and Morty creator Dan Harmon alluded to misconduct from himself towards other people including Megan Ganz, a writer who worked with Harmon on Community. After the exchange, Harmon made a lengthy apology on his podcast Harmontown where he went into detail about his wrongdoings which included making advances on her and then mistreating her after she turned him down. Ganz said that she felt vindicated by the admission and accepted his apology, saying "Dan Harmon, I forgive you".[84][85]
On January 5, 2018, Ben Vereen was accused of sexual assault by several women who were a part of the 2015 production of Hair.[86]
During the first week of January 2018, screenwriter, film producer and director Paul Haggis was accused by four women of sexual misconduct; two accusing him of rape.[87] Haggis denied the claims and said he believed the Church of Scientology, of which he was a member for 36 years before leaving, was behind the accusations.[88]
Actress and writer Deborah Rennard (Haggis' ex-wife), actress and author Leah Remini and former senior executive of the Church of Scientology International and the Sea Organization Mike Rinder (Haggis' personal friends and anti-Scientology activists, hosts of the documentary series Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath, which Haggis has participated) defended Haggis of the accusations. The Church of Scientology denied any involvement in what it called an "absurd, paranoid and bigoted conspiracy theory."[89][90]
After the 75th Golden Globe Awards ceremony on January 7, 2018, accusations of sexual misconduct against James Franco came to light.[91][92] Franco won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy at the ceremony.[93]
Actor and producer Michael Douglas said on January 10, 2018 he had heard from his lawyer the previous month (December 2017) that a woman was planning to bring to light at that time a sole allegation of misconduct against Douglas. Douglas denied the purported claim.[94]
In January 19, 2018, journalist and author Susan Braudy accussed Douglas of sexual misconduct while working for Douglas in 1989, claiming that Douglas asked her to sign a confidentiality agreement soon after, and when she refused, she lost her job 6 months later. Douglas admitted to "coarse language" but denied wrongdoing in a statement.[95][96]
Three days earlier, during and after the 75th Golden Globe Awards telecast at which Douglas's father, actor Kirk Douglas (aged 101), was honored, posts on Twitter were disseminated that pointed to a series of blog comments, initiated apparently by actor Robert Downey Jr., with claims that the elder Douglas had been accused in the past of having sexually assaulted actress Natalie Wood when she was 16 years old (c. 1954).[97]
Actor and comedian Aziz Ansari was accused of sexual assault by an anonymous photographer who described events that occurred after the 2017 Emmy Awards. The Babe.net article in which the accusations were levied was met with mixed response among commentators and the public and disagreement over whether the described incident constituted as sexual misconduct. Critics have stated that Ansari's actions were misogynist, lacked affirmative consent, and spoke to a larger culture of harmful male expectations, while some charged his accuser with trivializing the larger movement against forms of sexual abuse and writing revenge porn.[98][99][100][101][102][103][104][105][106][107]
In January 13, 2018, actress Eliza Dushku alleged that she had been assaulted by a stunt coordinator, Joel Kramer, on the set of the feature film True Lies.[108] This was followed by two additional allegations of sexual misconduct.[109]
In January 2018, WWE wrestler Eric Arndt, known for ring name Enzo Amore, was accused by Philomena Sheahan of rape, allegedly committed in October 2017 at The Clarendon Hotel & Spa in Phoenix, Arizona; a police investigation is underway. On January 22, 2018, Arndt was initially suspended by WWE,[110][111][112] before being released from the company the next day.[113][114] In a statement, Arndt "fully and unequivocally" denied the accusation.[115]
On January 28, 2018, Scott Baio was accused by his Charles in Charge co-star Nicole Eggert of sexual abuse during the show's run more than 30 years earlier. She alleged she was only 14 years old. Baio strongly denied this, acknowledging the two had a relationship but not until she was 18 years old and the show had ended, accusing her of lying about the details.[116] On February 13, another co-star from the same television show, former child actor Alexander Polinsky, accused Baio of having called him a "faggot" after he once jokingly jumped into Baio's lap.[117]
In February 2018, American singer and musician Marilyn Manson was accused of sexual harassment and racist remarks by actress Charlyne Yi.[118]
In February 2018, Philip Berk, former President of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, was accused of sexual harassment by actor Brendan Fraser.[119]
On February 21, 2018, Thomas Schumacher, President of Disney Theatrical Productions, was the subject of an internal investigation at Disney into inappropriate behavior, with eyewitness accounts detailing aggressive sexual language and intimidation.[120]
On March 16, 2018, it was reported that John Bailey, the President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, was under investigation following multiple allegations of sexual harassment.[121][122]
On March 17, 2018, American actress and producer Ellen Barkin accused former Monty Python member Terry Gilliam of sexual misconduct on Twitter, following the director's condemnation of the #MeToo movement and defense of Matt Damon.[123]
On March 21, 2018, Fred Savage was sued by costume designer Youngjoo Hwang, for alleged harassment during production of the TV series The Grinder. Savage has strongly denied ever doing this.[124]
On March 29, 2018, animator and voice actor John Kricfalusi, best known as the creator of the animated TV series The Ren & Stimpy Show, was accused of preying on two aspiring animators named Robyn Byrd and Katie Rice (both of whom were 13 and 14, respectively), along with sexual harassment, statutory rape and possession of child pornography.[125]
Production
On October 17, The Mist producer Amanda Segel accused Bob Weinstein (Harvey's brother) of sexual harassment during the production of the series. His lawyer Bert Fields has denied the allegation.[126]
Actor Anthony Edwards wrote an essay on the website Medium alleging producer Gary Goddard molested him and raped his best friend "for years" starting when they were 12 years old;[127][128][129][130] Goddard's publicist denied the allegations.[131]
On November 29, 2017, Warner Bros. Television announced it had fired Andrew Kreisberg, executive producer on Supergirl, The Flash, Arrow, and Legends of Tomorrow, following allegations of sexual harassment against him.[132]
On February 28, 2018, Variety reported that creator Jeff Franklin was fired from Warner Bros. Television and the series Fuller House after complaints from staff members about inappropriate sexual remarks and verbal abuse. No sexual harassment reports were included in the complaints.[133]
On March 26, 2018, Nickelodeon announced that it had ended its relationship with longtime producer Dan Schneider after staff members accused him of abusive behavior.[134]
In March, 2018, the online production company Channel Awesome was accused of abusing and mistreating its content creators (most notably a former content creator named Allison Pregler), and an unnamed producer was accused of sexual harassment and grooming.[135][136]
Literature and journalism
In literature and journalism, multiple men were accused of sexual misconduct and subject to firing or suspension.[27]
Vox Media editorial director Lockhart Steele was removed in October.[9] Two additional employees resigned after an internal investigation.[137]
Glenn Thrush, a political reporter for The New York Times, was suspended for allegedly groping three women.[138]
Ken Baker was pulled from the air by E! News while they investigated claims of sexual harassment.[139][140][141]
NPR news chief Michael Oreskes resigned at the request of NPR's president and chief executive after multiple women said that Oreskes had made unwanted sexual advances to them when Oreskes was Washington bureau chief at the New York Times in the 1990s, and after a current NPR employee made a similar complaint in 2015.[142]
New Republic editor Leon Wieseltier apologized following multiple accusations and was removed from The Atlantic's masthead.[27] He lost funding for his upcoming magazine venture.[6]
After television host Charlie Rose was accused by eight women of sexual misconduct and harassment, the networks CBS and PBS suspended him. He was later fired, on November 21, 2017.[143][144]
On November 21, 2017, Dylan Byers posted a tweet saying that the sexual harassment scandals in media and entertainment were draining those industries "of talent". The tweet was later deleted.[145][146]
On November 28, 2017, NPR's chief editor David Sweeney separated from the company after three female journalists made formal complaints against him for sexual harassment. NPR did not provide the full details of the allegations but revealed he'd unexpectedly kissed one of the women in a company car, tried to kiss another woman while out for drinks to talk about her career, and NPR editor Lauren Hodges said he repeatedly sent her gifts and gave her unwanted attention when he was her supervisor. NPR said Sweeney was let go after a formal internal review.[147]
Playwright Israel Horovitz was accused of sexual misconduct by nine women, beginning November 30, 2017.[148]
Radio host John Hockenberry was accused of harassment, unwanted touching and bullying by several female colleagues.[149][150]
On November 29, 2017, Matt Lauer was fired from The Today Show after an accusation of "inappropriate sexual behavior".[151]
On November 29, 2017, Garrison Keillor was fired from Minnesota Public Radio after being accused of "inappropriate behavior",[152] which MPR later characterized as "dozens of sexually inappropriate incidents".[153]
Jann Wenner, co-founder of Rolling Stone, was accused of sexual harassment.[154]
On December 6, 2017, Lorin Stein, editor of The Paris Review resigned after an internal investigation was opened about unwanted sexual behavior at work including inappropriate touching. He acknowledged he had abused his position and had several inappropriate relations with subordinates including interns and writers for the magazine, however he maintains that all sexual relations and contact was consensual.[155] He resigned from Farrar, Straus and Giroux.[156]
On December 11, 2017, journalist Ryan Lizza's employment was terminated by The New Yorker. Lizza said he had been in a "respectful relationship" with the accuser, but the newspaper and the accuser's lawyer rejected that characterization.[157]
On December 11, 2017, Tom Ashbrook, the host of NPR's show On Point was placed on leave by WBUR and Boston University after allegations of "creepy" sex talks and unwanted contact with 11 mostly young women and men.[158]
On December 11, 2017, Los Angeles TV station KTTV fired Steve Edwards, longtime co-host of the station’s morning show Good Day L.A., after he was accused of inappropriate sexual behavior by several current and former co-workers.[159]
On December 13, 2017, author and talk host Tavis Smiley was suspended by PBS for allegations regarding sex with employees and creating a hostile work environment.[160]
On December 22, 2017, Fox News confirmed the departure of its chief Washington correspondent, James Rosen. While no reason was given for his departure, NPR reported that it was due to a pattern of sexual harassment and misconduct.[161]
On January 30, 2018, Vice Media released its chief digital officer, Mike Germano, after he was alleged to refuse a woman he wanted sex from a job. He claimed he wasn't fired, but already planned to leave six months ago.[162]
On February 13, 2018, Thirteen Reasons Why author Jay Asher was accused of sexual harassment.[163] He denied these allegations.[164]
Judiciary
On December 8, 2017, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit judge Alex Kozinski was accused of misconduct by six women including former clerks and junior staffers.[155] A week later, the Washington Post published a story with nine more allegations against him, including prominent accusers such as a professor and a former judge.[165] Four of the women say he touched or kissed them without permission. He announced his immediate retirement a few days later.[166]
Politics
Main article: 2017–18 United States political sexual scandals
Numerous elected officials and politicians also faced allegations.
Longtime Democratic U.S. Representative John Conyers, dean of the Michigan delegation, was discovered to have settled a wrongful dismissal complaint in 2015, leveled by a former staffer who said she was fired for refusing his sexual advances. The complainant received a $27,000 settlement paid from Conyers' office budget.[167] Several other women have come forward with allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct by Conyers.[168][169] Conyers stepped down from his position as the ranking Minority member of the House Committee on the Judiciary following the allegations,[170] and later resigned.[171]
Democratic U.S. Representative Ruben Kihuen of Nevada was accused by his former campaign finance director of repeated and unwanted sexual advances to the point she resigned her position; Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called on Kihuen to resign.[172] After a second woman accused him of sexual harassment Kihuen announced that he would not seek re-election in 2018.[173] On or around March 7, 2018, Kihuen declared that he was reconsidering his decision to resign.[174]
Radio newscaster Leeann Tweeden accused Democratic U.S. Senator Al Franken of Minnesota of forcibly kissing her in 2006 and presented a photo that appeared to show him groping her breasts as she slept; Franken issued an apology.[175] Three other women came forward to accuse Franken of inappropriately touching them at political fundraisers in 2007 and 2008, and at the Minnesota State Fair 2010.[176][177] On December 7, Franken announced his intention to resign from the Senate, later giving January 2 as the effective date of his resignation from office.[178] Minnesota's Lieutenant Governor Tina Smith was named to succeed Franken, effective January 2, 2018, until a new election is held.[179]
On November 9, multiple women alleged that Roy Moore, a Republican candidate for the December 2017 Senate special election in Alabama, had made unwanted advances or sexual assaults on them. The alleged incidents occurred when Moore was in his early thirties and they were in their teens. One girl had been younger than 16 (the age of consent in Alabama) at the time.[180] Moore initially admitted he had known two of the accusers but otherwise denied the allegations.[181]
Republican Congressman Blake Farenthold has said he won't run for re-election and has been pressured to retire early after it was revealed he'd used $84,000 of tax money to settle a 2014 claim for sexual harassment and a hostile work environment. His former communications director alleged he made unwanted sexual advances toward her, and also made sexual comments to others about her including talking to her coworkers about his "sexual fantasies" and "wet dreams" about her. When she complained about chief of staff Bob Haueter creating a hostile work environment, she was informed that was just his nature. She was fired a month after making the complaint, although no action was taken against Haueter. There is a current House Ethics Committee investigation into the event.[182]
Republican Congressman Trent Franks resigned after it was reported he repeatedly asked two female employees to bear his children as surrogates.[155]
Former Democratic Congressman Harold Ford Jr. was fired from Morgan Stanley after an accusation of harassment was made against him.[40] A later investigation by Morgan Stanley found no proof of harassment.[183]
On December 4, 2017, California Democratic state assemblyman Matt Dababneh was accused of pushing Pamela Lopez into a Las Vegas hotel bathroom, exposing his penis and masturbating in front of her. Another woman accused him of creating a sexually demeaning work environment by regularly making derogatory remarks. A few days after the allegations went public, Lopez said she'd heard from other women with allegations against Dababneh that ranged from sexual harassment to assault. Soon after, he announced he would resign at the end of the year. He said it wasn't about the allegations, for which he maintains his innocence, but he said he simply no longer felt passionate about lawmaking.[184]
In mid-December, Andrea Ramsey, a Kansas Democratic candidate for the US Congress, dropped out of a race after being confronted by a local journal about a 2005 sexual harassment case where Ramsey was accused of harassing a male subordinate and firing him after he rejected her advances.[185]
Sports
On October 18, 2017, Former Olympic gymnast McKayla Maroney, using the #MeToo hashtag, became one of the first gymnasts since the start of the movement to accuse former Olympic doctor Larry Nassar of sexual abuse. Other gymnasts, including fellow Olympic gymnasts Aly Raisman, Simone Biles and Gabby Douglas, along with nearly 250 other female gymnasts would accuse him of molesting gymnasts as young as 6 years old during treatment. Nassar pleaded guilty to all charges on January 24, 2018, and was sentenced to 40-175 years in the United States Penitentiary in Tucson, Arizona.
On November 17, 2017, Tampa Bay Buccaneers QB Jameis Winston was accused by a female Uber driver of groping her in a 2016 incident. Winston denied the allegations, and was defended by former college teammate Ronald Darby, who said he was there with Winston.
On December 6, 2017, a woman who worked for a sports marketing firm led by NFL Hall of Fame QB Warren Moon filed a lawsuit claiming sexual harassment when he told her to wear thong underwear and share his bed during business trips.[186]
On December 11, 2017, the NFL Network and ESPN suspended five on-air commentators and a senior executive after allegations of sexual harassment. Jami Cantor, a former NFL Network employee, accused NFL Network analysts Marshall Faulk, Ike Taylor and Heath Evans of sexually harassing and groping her.[187] ESPN suspended Donovan McNabb and Eric Davis for sending inappropriate comments to Cantor.[188] McNabb and Davis were officially fired on January 5, 2018.[189]
On December 17, 2017, Sports Illustrated reported that "at least four former Panthers employees have received ‘significant’ monetary settlements due to inappropriate workplace comments and conduct by Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson, including sexually suggestive language and behavior, and on at least one occasion directing a racial slur at an African-American Panthers scout." According to the article, Richardson regularly asked women in the team offices to "turn around so he could admire their backsides" on Casual Friday, among other "disturbing" office behavior.[190] Later that day, it was announced that Richardson intended to sell the Panthers franchise at the conclusion of the 2017 season.
On December 29, 2017, a Twin Cities photographer accused Minnesota Twins third baseman Miguel Sanó of sexually assaulting her in 2015 after an autograph session.[191] Sano denied the allegation.[192]
On December 29, 2017, TMZ Sports reported that Detroit Pistons guard Avery Bradley had settled a confidentiality agreement with a reality TV star who accused him of a sexual assault incident during the 2017 Eastern Conference Finals in Cleveland while he was with the Boston Celtics, claiming she was passed out when the incident occurred. Bradley denied the allegation against him.[193]
On January 2, 2018, Rich Rodriguez was fired as Arizona football head coach after a former administrative assistant at the school's Department of Athletics accused him of multiple instances of sexual harassment, which she first reported in a claim to Arizona in October the previous year before filing again to the Arizona attorney general's office on December 29, and also accused him of creating a hostile work environment for years. Rodriguez admitted that he had a "consensual extramarital affair with a woman who is not affiliated with the University," but denied the allegation of harassment against him.[194] Two weeks later on January 21, the same accuser filed a second claim against him, his wife and the university, seeking $8.5 million in damages and also accusing him of "slander, defamation and false light, invasion of privacy and intentional infliction of emotional distress."[195]
On February 1, 2018, ESPN Outside the Lines reporter Paula Lavigne reported that there was a widespread attempt to hide allegations of sexual assault at Michigan State University and it's athletics department dating back several years in the wake of the Larry Nassar scandal. Among notable MSU stars involved in the case were several former football and basketball players who played at the school, including NBA G-League guard Adreian Payne and former player turned student assistant coach Travis Walton. MSU President Lou Anna Simon and athletic director Mark Hollis had both resigned prior to the release of the report. Several investigations have been conducted against the school since.[196]
On February 2, 2018, former Houston Texans employee Kristen Grimes sued the team alleging sexual harassment from former director of football operations Jason Lowery, in which she claimed he continuously pursued a relationship with her when she was hired until she left the franchise. The Texans stable later admitted it did not investigate the situation properly when it was first reported to them in November of 2016.[197]
On February 13, 2018, a 2016 lawsuit from former Bad Things drummer Lena Zawaideh against guitarist and snowboarder/skateboarder Shaun White regarding sexual harassment began resurfacing on social media while he competed for his third Olympic gold medal in the Men's Snowboard Superpipe event at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang in South Korea. White dismissed this in a press conference after his victory as "gossip" before apologizing in an interview with NBC's Today show the next morning.[198]
On February 16, 2018, a report by The Orange County Register revealed that USA Swimming hid hundreds of sexual assault allegations against multiple female swimmers.[199] As a result, two program directors Susan Woessner and Pat Hogan resigned a week later as investigations continued. [200]
On February 20, 2018, several former Dallas Mavericks employees revealed in a Sports Illustrated report of sexual misconduct involving former President and CEO David Ussery and Mavs.com beat writer Earl Sneed, calling the workplace "hostile". Mavericks owner and Shark Tank personality Mark Cuban revealed that the team will investigate the matter, but Ussery and Sneed both denied the allegations.[201] However, it was later revealed two weeks later on March 6, 2018 in a report from the Willamette Week that Cuban himself was investigated for a sexual assault incident that took place in April of 2011, where a female patron said he groped her while taking a picture with him in a Portland bar called the Barrel Room.[202] Despite seven photographs submitted to Portland police, two of which Portland Police Detective Brendan McGuire called "significant", authorities ended the investigation as there wasn't enough evidence to prosecute Cuban for the incident. Cuban denied the allegation, but the NBA revealed two days later that they were investigating the incident.[203]
On March 9, 2018, US Figure Skating suspended coach Richard Callaghan, who coached Tara Lipinski to an Olympic gold medal at the 1998 Winter Olympics, after several male figure skaters accused him of sexual assault within the last two decades.[204]
On March 12, 2018, the Korea Ski Association banned mogul skiers Choi Jae-woo and Kim Ji-hyon for life after fellow female athletes accused them of sexual harassment during a World Cup event in Japan. Choi and Kim had both recently competed at the 2018 Winter Olympics, where Choi made it to the finals in the men's mogul competition while Kim was eliminated during qualifications for the event.[205]
On March 14, 2018, Baylor University suspended three football players as a result of sexual assault on two members of the school's women's equestrian team. The victims said the incident took place on November 12 in an apartment complex in Waco, Texas after Baylor had lost to Texas Tech in a football game the previous night. Baylor head coach Matt Rhule defended the handling of the investigation.[206]
On March 28, 2018, former University of Cincinnati volleyball player Shalom Ifeanyi filed a lawsuit against the school alleging she was kicked off the team because head coach Molly Alvey told her she didn't meet the "biased image," and claimed she was racially and sexually harassed from her because she called her Instagram photos "too sexy."[207]
On April 3, 2018, Idaho University placed athletic director Rob Spear on administrative leave amid multiple investigations into the leadership of the university when it comes to the handling of a botched sexual harassment complaint. The announcement came after he and Vandals football coach Paul Petrino were under fire for a mishandling of a complaint from former diver Mairin Jameson and long distance runner Maggie Miller of harassment against former wide receiver Jahrie Level in April of 2013.[208]
On April 4, 2018, water polo coach Bahram Hojreh, who ran a club affiliated with USA Water Polo, was charged with sexual abuse of seven underage players during one on one coaching sessions, with the incidents occurring between 2014 and January this past year, with four of his accusers 15 or younger. Hojreh was recently suspended by the Southern California regional board of USA Water Polo and had his membership in the national program revoked when allegations of his misconduct began to surface earlier that year.[209]
On April 4, 2018, former USA Taekwondo coach Jean Lopez was banned permanently after the U.S. Center for SafeSport found him guilty of a "decades long pattern of sexual misconduct." Three women, including Heidi Gilbert, who was coached by Lopez to a gold medal at the Pan American Games in 2002, had accused him prior of sexual assault dating as far back as 1997, with one of them filing a report in 2006. Gilbert said that her incident with him happened on the same night after she had won her weight class.[210]
Other
On October 21, 2017, following a sexual harassment scandal involving Tyler Malka, owner of NeoGAF, most of its moderation staff resigned. The website went offline soon after.[211]
Fashion photographer Terry Richardson was banned by Condé Nast.[6]
Steve Jurvetson stepped down from his role at DFJ Venture Capital after the firm conducted an investigation into allegations of sexual harassment.[212]
Benjamin Genocchio, executive director of The Armory Show, was relieved of his position after longstanding allegations of inappropriate behavior were published in November 2017.[213][214]
On November 2017, Daniela Soleri published an account of sexual abuse committed by her late father Paolo Soleri, an Italian architect known for the concept of "Arcology" and as the lead architect of the experimental community Arcosanti in Arizona. Daniela Soleri alleged that her father persistently molested her during her childhood and attempted to rape her when she was 17 years old.[215] Paolo Soleri had been dead for five years at the time Daniela came forward. The Cosanti Foundation Board responded with an official statement, noting that Daniela's "decision to speak out about her father's behavior towards her helps us confront Paolo Soleri's flaws, and compels us to reconsider his legacy."[215]
Peter Martins, the choreographer for the New York City Ballet was suspended following allegations of sexual misconduct.[216][217] Martins announced his retirement on January 1, 2018.[218]
On December 20, 2017, artist Chuck Close apologized in The New York Times after two models accused him of sexual harassment.[219]
On January 10, 2018, 95-year old Marvel Comics writer Stan Lee was accused of sexually harassing his nurses, which he has denied.[220]
On January 11, 2018, Samantha Ainsley alleged that in 2012 University of California, Berkeley Professor James F. O'Brien had made lewd comments to her and groped her in a night club in Singapore. O'Brien has denied the allegations.[221][222]
On January 15, 2018, Vogue dropped photographers Mario Testino and Bruce Weber after both were accused of sexual harassment. Testino was accused by 13 male assistants and models who worked with him; Weber was accused by 15 men.[223]
On January 28, 2018, real estate businessman Steve Wynn resigns as finance chairman of the Republican National Committee after he was accused by dozens of people of sexual misconduct in which he denies the allegations.[224] On February 6, 2018, he was stepped down as CEO of Wynn Resorts.[225]
On January 29, 2018, Republic Records president Charlie Walk was accused of sexual harassment by a former employee named Tristan Coopersmith, while Walk was still working at Epic Records.[226] Walk resigned from his position as a judge on Fox's talent show The Four: Battle For Stardom, and Universal Music Group (which owns Republic) suspended him.[227] Walk has hired attorney Patty Glaser, who also represented Harvey Weinstein, to fight his sexual misconduct claims.[228] Walk officially exited Republic Records on March 28, 2018.[229]
On January 31, 2018, model Kate Upton accused Guess founder and fashion designer Paul Marciano of sexual misconduct during a fashion shoot in 2010.[230]
Other countries
The Weinstein effect was felt across the world.
In the United Kingdom, allegations of sexual misconduct against many British politicians became a public scandal involving dozens of women accusers across decades and political parties. It led to the resignations of Defense Secretary Michael Fallon and Welsh minister Carl Sargeant (who took his own life, four days after his dismissal).[231] In January 2018, reports of sexual harassment at the high-society Presidents Club charity dinner caused another scandal.
In Canada, accusations against Just for Laughs comedy festival founder Gilbert Rozon led to his resignation, and 15 people accused Quebec radio host Éric Salvail of sexual misconduct. Broadcaster and former baseball player Gregg Zaun was fired.[232]
Canadian actor and director Albert Schultz was accused of sexual misconduct by four professional actresses who worked with him at the Soulpepper Theatre Company, where he was founder and artistic director. Those who accused him were Kristin Booth, Diana Bentley, Hannah Miller and Patricia Fagan. Schultz resigned his position as artistic director on January 4, 2018.[233]
At the end of October 2017, prominent Hungarian theater director and former head of the Comedy Theatre of Budapest, László Marton was accused with sexual assault by multiple actresses. Subsequently, the theater initiated the termination of Marton's employment.[234] In November 2017, Miklós Gábor Kerényi, the artistic director of the Budapest Operetta and Musical Theatre was accused of sexual harassment by former students and actors, and was dismissed from his position.[235]
Hong Kong-based British movie executive Bey Logan was accused by a number of women of sexual misconduct. Logan, an associate of Harvey Weinstein, denied all allegations.[236]
On December 2, 2017, actor Geoffrey Rush stepped down as President of the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts following allegations of "inappropriate behavior" during an Australian stage production of the Shakespeare play King Lear.[237][33] Rush claims the allegations are untrue and sued The Daily Telegraph for making false accusations.[238]
New Zealand actor Rene Naufahu pleaded guilty to six charges of indecent assault relating to six women who attended private acting lessons conducted by him in Auckland between 2011 and 2013.[239][240][241] In January 2018 he was sentenced to one year of home detention. Naufahu had an earlier conviction for common assault and wilful damage arising from an altercation in a Christchurch bar in 2001, for which he was fined by the court.[242][243][244]
Australian television presenter Don Burke was accused of sexual misconduct by several women. He denied these and said, "The Harvey Weinstein saga in Hollywood started a witch hunt."[245]
The allegations against Weinstein prompted Björk to accuse Lars von Trier of sexually harassing her during the production of Dancer in the Dark. von Trier said "That was not the case. But that we were definitely not friends, that's a fact.”[246]
In Australia around late October, barrister, author and producer Charles Waterstreet (whose life and career was the inspiration for the drama-comedy series Rake[247]) was accused of sexually harassing law student Tina Ni Huang during a job interview in August 2017.[248] Waterstreet has denied these accusations.[249]
In November 2017, 2,000 women working in the Swedish music industry signed an open letter claiming that they had been sexually abused during their careers. The signatories included singers Robyn and Zara Larsson and the folk duo First Aid Kit.[250]
In the Philippines, artists and online personalities expressed messages of support to Weinstein's victims.[251] Several netizens came forward to share their experiences with artists and local band members who allegedly committed sexual misconduct.[252]
Ramin Gray, artistic director of the ATC Theatre, was accused of sexual harassment by eight women after calling the search for "the Weinstein of British theatre" an honourable one.[253]
In France,[254] political organizations close to the Socialist Party, in particular the Union Nationale des Étudiants de France (UNEF), were accused of systemic sexual harassment. The French daily newspaper Le Monde published in late 2017 two articles on alleged sexual harassment and predation supported by former UNEF presidents, Jean-Baptiste Prévost and Emmanuel Zemmour.[255][256] In an editorial, more than 80 UNEF female members and militants came forward to accuse the Union of "sexual violence".[257]
In Norway, Trond Giske, the deputy leader of the Norwegian Labour Party, resigned from his political positions on 7 January 2018 after being accused of an extensive pattern of sexual assault and sexual harassment of young women, and of taking advantage of his political positions to make unwanted sexual advances.[258] The accusations came in the context of the international debate in the aftermath of the Weinstein affair, and dominated Norwegian media for several weeks from December 2017.[259]
In India, law student Raya Sarkar set up a Google Docs, accepting anonymous testimonials to sexual abuse taking place within universities in India. Up to 59 academics from 29 colleges were named, some of whom were prominent figures.[260] Sarkar's list sparked a debate on whether anonymous testimonials recollecting campaigns were fair, and on whether due process could be subverted. Several prominent academics, including Ayesha Kidwai and Nivedita Menon, issued a letter of response to Sarkar's list.[261]
In Australia, on January 8, 2018, stage and screen actor Craig McLachlan was accused of sexually assaulting Christie Whelan Browne, Erika Heynatz and Angela Scundi in 2014 during an Australian tour of The Rocky Horror Show.[262] The revelations forced McLachlan to drop out of a current tour of Rocky Horror.[263]
In January 2018, preliminary charges were filed against Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan in two cases of rape alleged by women who sought his counsel. Ramadan denies any wrongdoing and has filed his own counter-suit asserting false allegations against the two alleged victims.[264]
In February 2018, several women, including Josefina Pouso, Mariela Anchipi, Karina Mazzoco, Virginia Godoy, Ursula Vargues and Emilia Claudeville, accused Argentine television presenter Roberto Pettinato for sexual harassment and abuse. They stated that he would "suck" their necks without their permission until he made them cry, and humiliate them in front of other people with whom they worked.[265][266][267][268] Pettinato refused to talk to Argentine media about the accusations, and afterwards left Argentina for Paraguay, alleging that he was going to start a television show in the country, but reports from both countries summarized that Pettinato left Argentina to become a "media exile" due to the accusations.[269]
In March 2018, Ahn Hee-jung, a prominent South Korean politician was accused of multiple rapes by his aide. He announced resignation afterwards.[270]
On March 9, 2018, after being accused of sexually assaulting eight women, Korean actor Jo Min-ki was found dead in an underground parking lot.[271]
In March 2018, Dubstep DJ Datsik was accused of sexual assault spanning multiple years, resulting in public backlash and cancellation of all Datsik appearances at upcoming shows and festivals. He officially stepped down from his label Firepower Records.[272]
New Blogs Part 9 Updated April 09 2018
This page and list; seems very small, compared to the other two, aforementioned, above.
Just like women criminals and any sex offence, the media loves to exploit religious leaders who commit sex offences.
Violent crimes
Tony Alamo - Headed a Santa Clarita commune. Convicted of tax evasion in 1994 and then resided in a halfway house in Texarkana.[1] In 2009, he was convicted of ten federal counts of taking minors across state lines for sex, and sentenced to 150 years in federal prison.[2]
Shoko Asahara - Founder of Aum Shinrikyo sentenced to death by hanging under Japanese law for involvement in the 1995 Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway.[3]
Wayne Bent (aka: Michael Travesser) - Founder of Lord Our Righteousness Church, sometimes called Strong City. Was convicted of one count of criminal sexual contact of a minor and two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor in 2008.[4] Was sentenced to 18 years with eight years suspended.[5]
Graham Capill - former leader of Christian Heritage New Zealand. Sentenced to nine-year imprisonment term in 2005 after multiple charges of child sexual abuse against girls younger than twelve.[6]
Matthew F. Hale - Former leader of Creativity Movement sentenced to a 40-year prison term for soliciting an undercover FBI informant to kill a federal judge.[7]
Warren Jeffs - Once President of Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (a polygamist Mormon sect), convicted of rape as an accomplice (overturned in 2010). Jeffs also awaits trial in other states and in the federal court system.[8]
Jung Myung Seok - South Korean religious sect leader and founder of Providence. Convicted for raping several of his followers.[9]
William Kamm - An Australian religious sect leader and self-styled Pope Peter II who was sentenced to prison in October 2005 for a string of sexual attacks on a 15-year-old girl. In August 2007 his sentence was increased after being found guilty for a series of sexual abuses against another teenage girl over a five-year period.[10]
Ervil LeBaron - Led a small sect of polygamous Mormon fundamentalists, and was convicted of involvement in the murder of two people and plotting to kill another person in 1981.[11]
Alice Lenshina - Zambian head and founder of the Lumpa Church. Conflicts with the government over the sect's rejection of taxes led to a violent confrontation and her subsequent imprisonment.[12]
Jeffrey Lundgren - Headed splinter group from Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, executed October 24, 2006, for multiple murders.[13]
Charles Manson - Leader of the Manson Family who served life in prison for first degree murder until his death in 2017.[14]
Shukri Mustafa - Egyptian leader of Takfir wal-Hijra who was captured and executed for the kidnap murder of an Egyptian ex-government minister.[15]
Fred Phelps - Leader of anti-gay Westboro Baptist Church. Convicted for disorderly conduct and battery.[16][17]
Swami Premananda of Tiruchirapalli - Indian religious leader convicted and sentenced to two life sentences for the rape of 13 girls and murder in 2005.[18]
Theodore Rinaldo - Leader of a religious group in Snohomish, Washington convicted of third-degree statutory rape for having sexual intercourse with one minor girl and of taking indecent liberties with another.[19]
Paul Schäfer - Former head of Chile-based Colonia Dignidad, was convicted of sexually abusing 25 children.[20]
Roch Thériault - Former head of "Ant Hill Kids commune" served a life sentence in Canada for the murder of Solange Boislard.[21]
Yahweh Ben Yahweh - Head of Nation of Yahweh, convicted for Federal racketeering charges and conspiracy involving 14 murders.[22]
Dwight York - Head of Nuwaubianism, convicted in 2004 of multiple RICO, child molestation, and financial reporting charges and sentenced to 135 years in prison.[23]
Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh -an Indian guru, music producer, singer-songwriter, actor, and filmmaker. He has been the head of the social group Dera Sacha Sauda since 1990. On 28 August 2017, Singh was sentenced to 20 years in jail for rape.[24] He has also faced prosecution for murder and ordering forced castrations. He is also alleged to have committed sexual assaults on many of his followers. He is also involved in murder of a journalist[25]
Non-violent crimes
Jim Bakker - Created the PTL organization. Convicted of fraud and conspiracy charges after illegally soliciting millions of dollars from his followers.[26]
Hogen Fukunaga - Founder of Ho No Hana who was given a twelve-year jail sentence for fraudulently gaining 150 million yen from his followers.[27]
Kent Hovind (Dr. Dino) - founder of the Creation Science Evangelism ministry. Willful failure to collect, account for, and pay over Federal income taxes, knowingly structuring transactions in Federally-insured financial institutions to evade the reporting requirements, and obstructing and impeding the administration of the internal revenue laws.[28][29]
L. Ron Hubbard - Founder of Scientology. He was convicted of petty theft and ordered to pay a $25 fine in San Luis Obispo, California 1948[30] and in 1978 was convicted of illegal business practices, namely, making false claims about his ability to cure physical illnesses in France. He was sentenced to four years in prison, which was never served.[31][32][33][34][35]
Jesus - A first century preacher central to Christianity.[36] Sentenced to death by crucifixion on the orders of Pontius Pilate.[37]
Luc Jouret - A founder of the Order of the Solar Temple. He was convicted in Canadian Federal Court of conspiring to buy illegal handguns.[38]
Henry Lyons - Former President of National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. Convicted for racketeering and grand theft.[39]
Barry Minkow - Head pastor of San Diego's Community Bible Church, and founder of the Fraud Discovery Institute, who had turned to religion and entered the ministry after release from prison for the notorious ZZZZ Best fraud, returned to prison in 2011 for further acts of securities fraud while serving as a clergyman.[40]
Sun Myung Moon - Leader of Unification Church, imprisoned for criminal tax fraud in the 1980s.[41]
Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh – later called Osho. Fined $400,000 and given a 10-year suspended sentence following a plea bargain agreement in which he made an Alford plea to (1) a charge of having concealed his intent to remain permanently in the U.S. at the time he applied for his visa extension and (2) a charge of having conspired to have followers stay illegally in the country by having them enter into sham marriages.[42] Deported from the United States.[43][44][45][46][47]
David Yonggi Cho - Founder of Yoido Full Gospel Church. Sentenced to three years in prison for embezzling 13 billion won (US$12 million) in church funds, in 2014. See http://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2014/february/founder-of-worlds-largest-megachurch-convicted-cho-yoido.html
Kong Hee - Founder of City Harvest Church. Original sentence of eight years, reduced to three and a half years for misappropriation of church funds amounting to SGD50million, in 2016. See City Harvest Church Criminal Breach of Trust Case
New Blogs Part 9 Updated April 11 2018
The only way the unconstitutional, inhuman, registered sex offender laws and all of these types of perverted sex offence laws, are going to change in our present day; is if people sue in court.
Something people like this should be doing:
 |
| The (incomplete) list of powerful men accused of sexual harassment after Harvey Weinstein from: https://www.cnn.com/2017/10/25/us/list-of-accused-after-weinstein-scandal-trnd/index.html |
From: Grits for Breakfast
TUESDAY, APRIL 10, 2018
On indigent defense and 'unfunded mandates'
Grits is broadly sympathetic to the much-ballyhooed claim (championed most prominently by the Texas Association of Counties) that Texas state government unfairly cost shifts to county and municipal governments via "unfunded mandates." But critics of unfunded mandates are wrong to include indigent defense in the "unfunded mandate" critique and are only doing so by ignoring the real and much more costly "unfunded mandates" running in the other direction.
In the Waco Tribune Herald, McLennan County Precinct 4 Commissioner Ben Perry articulated the oft-heard complaint:
Indigent defenses expenses are a good example of an unfunded mandate forced on counties, Perry said.
The state once covered the costs of providing legal representation for people accused of crimes who cannot afford adequate defense, as required by the U.S. Constitution. But the state has been reducing its contribution for years.
The county has almost $4.7 million budgeted for indigent defense this year, up from $4.1 million in 2014.
That includes $270,000 in state money this year, down from $532,000 in 2014.
The Texas Fair Defense Act of 2001 does not include a way to pay for its requirements, shifting the expenses to county taxpayers, the county’s resolution states. Statewide spending on indigent defense in 2016 was more than 2.7 times as much as it was when the act passed, according to the Texas Association of Counties.
The state spent $247.4 million in 2016, up from $91.4 million in 2001.
The second paragraph in that pull quote is just a lie. There has never been a time when the state paid for all indigent defense costs in Texas; it was entirely a county-level responsibility until after the new millenium. The article itself includes a graphic demonstrating that claim is false:
Notice the state contribution in 2001 was $0. The state began to put in MORE money after the Fair Defense Act, not less. Moreover, the majority of the increase at the county level may be accounted for by inflation and population growth.
The big (unstated above) problem is that, before the Fair Defense Act, counties simply didn't comply with their obligations to appoint counsel, especially in misdemeanor cases. That was, indeed, cheaper. In many counties, when the Fair Defense Act passed, no misdemeanor defendants were appointed counsel - zero, zilch, nada. Now, appointment rates often approach 50 percent, not great but better. You can blame the state for making the locals comply with the constitution, if you prefer to deprive defendants of their 6th Amendment right to counsel to save a buck. But that doesn't make this an unfunded mandate, any more than it's an unfunded mandate to require counties to pay for local prosecutors.
The volume of indigent defense services required is largely a function of local priorities, so if the DA's office is still prosecuting lots of penny ante cases even after crime has declined for two decades, locals should foot the bill for those defense costs.
The flip side of this "unfunded mandate" argument are the un-discussed unfunded mandates to the state. McLennan County has a reputation for securing tougher-than-typical plea bargains, but state taxpayers must pick up the tab for high incarceration rates and longer sentences. And those costs are FAR greater than the costs for those prisoners' lawyers.
Grits has long believed the Lege should offer the Texas Association of Counties a deal on indigent defense: The state picks up the full indigent defense tab, and counties pay to incarcerate every defendant they send to TDCJ for the whole time they're inside. Then everything would be "fair."
Except that "fair," as I frequently tell my granddaughter, is a place where they judge pigs. It doesn't generally have much to do with the Texas justice system, and certainly not with how it's financed.
New Blogs Part 9 Updated April 17 2018
I know I have said this before, but it is worth repeating. Homosexual behavior in the Bible is described basically; as equal to adultery.
28 But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
Now that we have established that most men and some women commit adultery allot....
John 8:3 And the scribes and Pharisees brought unto him a woman taken in adultery; and when they had set her in the midst,
John 8:7 So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
John 8:9 And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one, beginning at the eldest, even unto the last
That leads to this story, from two days ago:
Police Seek Three Assailants Seen Viciously Beating Gay Men in D.C. – VIDEO
Police are seeking three assailants seen on video beating two gay men early Sunday morning in what is being investigated as a homophobic hate crime.
Watch ABC7’s report above.
The Washington Post reports:
Police said the victims were assaulted by three men about 12:30 a.m. in the 2000 block of 10th Street NW, near the U Street Metro station.
The victims were hospitalized with injuries that were not thought to be life-threatening — though little more was known about the attack. A D.C. police incident report was not ready for release Sunday afternoon, police said.
Authorities are investigating the attack as “potentially being motivated by hate or bias,” the department said in a statement. The incident was categorized as an aggravated assault.
D.C. police released a video of the attack: “The Metropolitan Police Department seeks the public’s assistance in identifying three persons of interest in reference to an Aggravated Assault incident which occurred in the 2000 block of 10th Street, NW, on Sunday, April 15, 2018, at approximately 12:31 AM. The subjects were captured by a nearby camera. Anyone who can identify these individuals or who has knowledge of this incident should take no action but call police at (202) 727-9099 or text your tip to the Department’s TEXT TIP LINE to 50411”
New Blogs Part 9 Updated April 19 2018
Go to Grits or Breakfast for all the links and such concerning these stories: Click Here
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 18, 2018
An undocumented necropolis at the (former) Central Unit, TX Supreme Court Chief Justice inspired by the Ferguson report, and other stories:
Here are a few odds and ends that merit Grits' readers attention:
Galveston sued over bail schedule
ACLU has sued Galveston County over its bail schedule, adding that county to Harris and Dallas as bail litigation sites. If your county still operates under a bail schedule, they'll soon have to change. Better to do it now before you're successfully sued. Ask the judges in Harris County.
Central Unit property an undocumented necropolis
Here's a postscript to the closure of TDCJ's Central Unit in Sugar Land, which long-time readers will recall was the first prison unit closed in the Lone Star State since the founding of the (Texan) Republic. When Fort Bend ISD began preparing a portion of the sight for a construction project, they began unearthing bodies. Lots of them - 22 as of when this Houston Chronicle story was written. These were inmates from the convict leasing era and later who worked for the Imperial Sugar Company as de facto slave labor through the early part of the 20th century. A cemetery on the prison site included only white inmates' remains, which led activist Reginald Moore to believe that black prisoners were buried in unmarked sites elsewhere on the grounds. Turns out, he was right. See related, earlier coverage from Texas Monthly and commentary from Grits.
TX courts limit pretext stop searches
Following a reversal by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the First Court of Appeals issued a ruling limiting the scope of searches incident to arrest. The First Court ruling limits law enforcement's authority to arrest drivers for Class C misdemeanors as a pretext for searching their car. The case involved a driver arrested for failure to signal a lane change. Police found drugs in his car trunk, but the courts have now ruled they had no reason to search there: "What police officers may not do, even when they conduct a search incident to a lawful custodial arrest of a recent occupant of a vehicle, is to search the vehicle when the arrestee is secured and not within reaching distance of the passenger compartment," according to the new opinion. See coverage from TheNewspaper.com and all the relevant court documents.
Looks like pot to me!
A Harris County crime lab employee was fired for drylabbing marijuana samples.
Is fast track a death-trap for innocents?
Check out an innocence-based argument against Texas' petition to fast-track death-penalty appeals. Anthony Graves has rightly pointed out that he would have been executed before he ever could have been exonerated under the new rules.
Ferguson report inspired TX debtors-prison push
Marc Levin of the Texas Public Policy Foundation interviewed Texas Supreme Court Justice Nathan Hecht about his decision to champion debtors-prison and bail reform issues. See also a related blog post. Hecht was introduced to the debtors prison issue thanks to the USDOJ's report on overreliance on fine revenue out of Ferguson, Missouri, he told Levin.
Murder-insurance program notches LWOP verdict
The Regional Capital Public Defenders Office, which provides representation in capital cases for counties that participate in its so-called "murder insurance" program, won a life-without-parole verdict recently in a case involving the murder of a San Antonio Police officer - the first such trial verdict in their ten-year history.
SAPD to county: We hate your new jail intake facility
Grits doesn't know enough yet to tell who is right about the dispute between San Antonio PD and the Bexar County commissioners court over whether SAPD should use the new intake center built at the jail. But my gut leans toward the county: the redundancy makes little sense for taxpayers, and Chief McManus sounds like he's more worried about the officers' convenience than enacting best practices at the jail.
Ombudsman report tallies inmate complaints
Check out the TDCJ Ombudsman report for 2017. Visitation remains the perennial main source of complaints (6,389), with another 1,424 prisoners complaining they weren't being housed in accordance with medical restrictions (48 were reassigned). But 955 offenders complained of threats or intimidation by other inmates (offenders were reassigned in 140 cases), while inmates complained 720 times of physical abuse or threats by staff (26 of those cases were referred to the Office of Inspector General). In related non-news, we're still waiting for the TDCJ Annual Statistical Report for FY 2017, which ended in August of last year.
New Houston rules aim to limit offender services
Charles Blain from Empower Texans has an item up on new Houston zoning rules aimed at excluding facilities for ex-offenders. Wrote Blain:
Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner and City Council passed an ordinance that bans alternative housing and correctional facilities, including reentry homes, from opening within 1,000 feet of schools, parks, or other facilities. The new ordinance also requires reentry facilities, approved by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, to apply for a city permit. The permit will identify the type of facility so local officials can “monitor” the locations of ex-offenders living in private reentry homes across the city, allegedly in the name of public safety.
Houston’s 99 currently operating facilities will be grandfathered in under the new provision. But once the owner sells the facility or passes away and wills it to an heir, the facility must come into compliance with all of the new regulations, including the distance requirement. So, as facilities inevitably change hands over time, many will be forced to close or open elsewhere.
Supporters claim that the regulation will improve “public safety,” but like in many other zoning disputes, it evolved from small contingents of people who felt uncomfortable with the homes in their neighborhoods.
Comments made during the public hearing for this regulation centered largely on a fear of ex-offenders, rather than statistical public safety data.
Tuff-on-crime cluelessness
Former Texas Democratic Congressman Sylvestre Reyes has a column in the Austin Statesman decrying "How fentanyl got its grip on Texas." This commentary ignores the best research out there which says Texas has mostly avoided the fentanyl-driven opiod death spike because the cartels that sell in Texas' market distribute "black tar heroin," which is less pure and not easily combined with fentanyl. See related Grits commentary on the same hearing Reyes is discussing.
Suicides among cops continue to outpace line-of-duty deaths
A recent spate of reporting reiterated that suicides among police far outpace line-of-duty deaths in shootouts with bad guys. This has been true for a long time, and is exacerbated by a lack of suicide-related treatment services for police.
New Blogs Part 9 Updated April 22 2018
Just got this cool email this morning, felt compelled to share it:
Click here to send message: https://e-activist.com/page/22752/-/1
Tell TDCJ to budget for fewer, safer prisons!
Crime in Texas dropped precipitously over more than two decades. We now have more prisons than we need, and many of them are hard to staff or require millions in repairs. THIS MONTH Texas agencies are building their new budget requests. Tell Executive Director Bryan Collier to budget for fewer, safer prisons.
Taxpayers can have a prison system that costs less and is also better, by consolidating the shrinking inmate population and shuttering two prisons. The remaining system will be better staffed and safer for everyone. But government won't shrink itself. You have to demand a smaller system or TDCJ will try and solve its problems by asking for even MORE money.
An understaffed prison is an unsafe prison -- unsafe for the guards, unsafe for the inmates, unsafe for the surrounding community. Last year, staff turnover in the Texas prison system hit 28%. Some units lost half their staff in a single year. Prisons struggle to fill those open positions and the state has thousands of open guard jobs right now.
Because the jobs are located in distant rural areas or the facilities have serious safety issues, these are often jobs no one wants. Texans would rather dig an oil well, haul off trash, or change bedpans than live in temporary housing far from family in order to guard inmates four days out of seven.
Some of the prisons that are located close enough to population centers to hire staff are also among the oldest facilities in the state and need millions of tax dollars invested to make them safe for both guards and inmates. Last session, Collier asked lawmakers for more than $50 million in repair costs alone.
Tell Collier to present lawmakers with a budget that shrinks the size of our prison system, closing at least two prisons and consolidating populations among facilities that can be staffed more effectively.
We've made it easy to send a message to the head of the prison system! Executive Director Collier doesn't get a lot of email from the public. He will notice and he will need to respond. He is building his new budget request NOW. Help him do the right thing!
Tell TDCJ to budget for fewer, safer prisons!
Click here to send message: https://e-activist.com/page/22752/-/1
New Blogs Part 9 Updated April 23 2018
I get these emails all the time. Almost every time I read these emails; I want to post something in it like the following. I absolutely believe this article is one hundred percent true, beyond a shadow of a doubt.:
Religion can make gay youth more likely to commit suicide
A study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine last month found a link between religiosity and suicide among gay and questioning participants.
The study used data from the 2011 University of Texas at Austin’s Research Consortium, which surveyed 21,247 18- to 30-year-olds. 2.3% identified as gay or lesbian, 3.3% as bi, and 1.1% were questioning.
LGBQ youth reported that they had attempted suicide at least once in their lives at a higher rate than straight people. 5% of straight people said that they had attempted suicide, while the rates for LGBQ youth ranged from 14% to 20%.
While studies have already shown that queer youth are more likely to have attempted suicide, this study went a step further and asked participants to rate the importance of religion in their lives.
Gay and lesbian youth who said that religion was important to them were 38% more likely to report recent suicidal thoughts compared to gays and lesbians who said that religion wasn’t important to them.
The difference was more stark for questioning youth – they were three times more likely to report recent suicidal thoughts if they were religious.
Religiosity was not correlated with suicidal thoughts among bi youth, who reported high rates of suicidal thoughts no matter their religiosity.
For straight people, the correlation was the opposite: they were less likely to report suicidal thoughts if they were religious.
“Religion has typically been seen as something that would protect somebody from thoughts of suicide or trying to kill themselves, and in our study our evidence suggests that may not be the case for everyone, particularly for those we refer to as sexual minority people,” said John Blosnich of West Virginia University, one of the study’s authors.
“It can be very scary to be caught in a space where your religion tells you that you are a ‘sinner’ just for being who you are,” he said. “Sexual minority people may feel abandoned, they may experience deep sadness and anger, and they may worry what this means for their families ― especially if their families are very religious too.”
The study did not ask participants what their religion was, so there isn’t any data to show whether more supportive religions were less correlated with suicidal thoughts.
The authors conclude that faith-based suicide prevention services “should be willing and equipped to assist all people who seek their services, regardless of sexual orientation.”
The problem is that the “gay condemning” parts of a religion cannot be separated from the “suicide preventing” parts. Religious conservatives often say that they are appalled by suicide and want to help queer people, and they imagine that they can be supportive of LGBQ people while still condemning homosexuality.
That’s not how it works, but a lot of religious people aren’t willing to change their opinions, even when people’s lives literally depend on it.
New Blogs Part 9 Updated May 04 2018
Tell Congress: End predatory phone rates for families of incarcerated people
71% We've reached 53,449 of our goal of 75,000.
Sign the petition
The petition to Congress reads:
"Charging exploitative phone rates to incarcerated people and their families is wrong. Pass the Inmate Calling Technical Corrections Act."
You'll receive periodic updates on offers and activism opportunities.
Tell Congress: End predatory phone rates for families of incarcerated people
When seven people died during an outbreak of violence in a South Carolina prison in April, state officials didn't blame prison conditions or the lack of adequate guard staffing – they blamed cell phones. In a press conference about the horrific event, their response was to call for cell phone-jamming technology in prisons.1
Meanwhile, the same companies that make cell phone jammers are charging incarcerated people and their families predatory rates for phone calls on approved phones – even local calls. Families can pay up to $17 for a 15-minute local call to an incarcerated parent, child or loved one.2
Charging exploitative phone rates to incarcerated people and their families is wrong. But prisons get a percentage of companies' profits as a kickback, so they have no incentive to act. If states won't step in to protect against these predatory practices, then Congress must.
Tell Congress: End predatory phone rates for incarcerated people and their families.
Phone calls are a lifeline for families to stay in touch with incarcerated loved ones. A 2015 survey found that more than one in three families of incarcerated people go into debt simply to pay for phone calls and visits.3 Staying in touch helps children connect with their parents and helps incarcerated people maintain ties that help them rejoin society when they are free.
President Obama's Federal Communications Commission set a limit on how much prison phone companies could charge inmates and families. But Donald Trump's FCC refused to defend the rule from a legal challenge, so now, there is again no upper limit to exploitative charges.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth, along with cosponsors Sens. Booker, Schatz and Portman, recently introduced legislation that would limit the sky-high rates that companies can charge for prison phone calls.4 The bill would apply to all inmate communications regardless of technology, so video visitation services and other advanced communications services would be covered as well.
The U.S. prison phone industry is big business worth $1.2 billion, and it will be fighting back. So will the prisons getting kickbacks. To end predatory prison phone rates once and for all, we need to speak out against this abusive system.
Tell Congress: End predatory phone rates for incarcerated people and their families.
References:
Teddy Kulmala, "'Cellphones didn't kill 7': SC prison warden should step down after riot, group says, The State, April 17, 2018.
Sam Gustin, "A new bill could finally ban predatory inmate phone costs," The Verge, March 13, 2018.
Ella Baker Center, "Who pays? The true cost of incarceration on families," Sept. 2015.
Gustin, "A new bill could finally ban predatory inmate phone costs."
Ibid.
New Blogs Part 9 Updated May 05 2018
Habeas corpus is a good option for any sex offender; in these days of religious persecution. Glade to see it is still not one of the many perverted law's against sex offenders. We keep perverting laws in our country like; indefinite incarceration, and indefinite sex offender registration is constitutional; we will be a perverted country. I would hate to see what a perverted country reaps what it has sowed.
incarseration meaning:
the state of being confined in prison; imprisonment.
"the public would not be served by her incarceration"
synonyms: imprisonment, internment, confinement, detention, custody, captivity, restraint; informaltime; archaicdurance, duress
"eight years of incarceration"
Galatians 6:7-9
7 Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.
NARSOL supports man who won rare constitutional challenge
April 9, 2018
The United States District Court granted habeas corpus relief (set aside his conviction) in Stephen May’s case, finding that his counsel’s failure to challenge the Arizona statute on constitutional grounds violated his right to effective representation. It based its decision on the obvious constitutional flaws in the statute and the Holle court’s decision upholding the requirement that the accused charged with child molestation prove to the jury that he did not act with any sexual intent when coming in contact with a child under the age of fifteen years. The District Court found that the current approach upheld in Holle was inconsistent with the history of Arizona sexual offense laws, which required the prosecution to prove that the defendant’s actions were motivated by sexual interest.
Federal Courts Examining Constitutionality of Sex Offender Registries #crime #news
April 20, 2018
Back before the judicial system became a sprawling monster of inefficiency and inequity, justice was served in America. The punishment fit the crime, and once you got out of prison, ALL of your rights were returned, including gun ownership and voting rights.
Not so much in America today. In the “kinder, gentler” America as GHW Bush would have called it, sentences do not match the crimes, and convicted felons are released according to their sentences, but there’s a catch.
If you’re a sex offender, your sentence doesn’t end at the prison gates, you must then register with the County you reside once you’re out of jail.
Trending: Teenager Killed In Gruesome Accident Seconds After Removing Seatbelt For Selfie #news #selfie
If the same were done with those who write hot checks, the law would be slapped down in a New York minute for violating Constitutional rights.
As much as we may not like it, sex offenders have rights guaranteed by the Constitution.
Colorado’s sex offender registry still hangs in limbo seven months after a judge said it violated the constitutional rights of former offenders, subjecting them to an extended punishment and public shaming.
U.S. District Judge Richard P. Matsch’s ruling is the latest to reject states that are reaching for more stringent controls on sex offenders even after they have served their sentences.
Criminal justice reformers say it’s about time the courts strike back. The lifelong punishments that sexual offenders face beyond the courtroom and prison conflict with the country’s tradition of rehabilitation and second chances, they say.
But with federal appeals courts now involved in scrutinizing laws in Colorado, Alabama and Michigan, state attorneys general say they are worried that their legislatures’ work to keep communities safe may be undermined.
“For the national database to work, the states and federal data need to be knitted together, and for one state to be exempted from the registry puts citizens of all states in danger,” Michael Hunter, Oklahoma’s attorney general, told The Washington Times.
He filed a brief defending Colorado’s sex offender registry at the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Kansas, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming, which are also part of the 10th Circuit, signed on with Oklahoma.
Mr. Hunter said one 8-year-old girl wouldn’t be alive today if it weren’t for his state’s requirements for sex offenders.
Oklahoma requires a sex offender’s driver’s license to be designated with a mark. In 2014, that mark led to the apprehension of a sex offender who had kidnapped and raped the girl.
The offender was caught because a store clerk noticed his driver’s license designation when he went to purchase crayons and coloring books. She noted that an Amber Alert had been issued, ultimately leading to his arrest.
“This little girl in Oklahoma wouldn’t be alive right now if it weren’t for the fact that we have driver’s license designation in the state,” Mr. Hunter said.
In their legal brief, the states argue that the sex offender registries are needed because convicted sex offenders are more likely to commit sex crimes than any other group of people. They say sex offenders’ recidivism rates are 40 percent to 52 percent.
Catherine Carpenter, a professor at Southwestern Law School and an advocate for former offenders, disputes the numbers.
“This myth starts to develop that they [relapse] at a very high rate. … It gave state legislatures this green light,” she said.
Ms. Carpenter said state legislatures have been piling on requirements for former sex offenders since 2003, when the Supreme Court upheld Alaska’s online sex offender registry.
The requirements went from registering with state officials to restrictive housing and curfews on nights like Halloween, when children are out trick-or-treating.
Colorado’s law specifically deems that sexual offenders don’t have the same privacy rights as other released convicts. The state posts lengthy descriptions and photographs of those on its registry.
David Millard, the man challenging Colorado’s law after a 1999 guilty plea for sexual assault on a minor, said in the court case that his job at a supermarket is in constant jeopardy because the company, which he had to tell about his past, has said he can continue working as long as his conviction doesn’t become known.
He was transferred from one store to another after a customer discovered his record. He also struggled to find housing. He was ousted from one apartment after a local news report on sex offenders identified him.
He eventually bought a home and is subject to periodic visits by police. When he is not home at the time of the check-in, police post brightly colored “registered sex offender” tags on his door, Judge Matsch wrote. His neighbors, who used to be friendly, have started avoiding him and making pointed remarks, the judge said.
He ruled that the state’s registry law amounted to ongoing punishment for behavior beyond the normal prison sentences prescribed by law, with no consideration for an offender’s risk.
He cataloged other abuses, such as a teacher who was in danger of losing her job at a Catholic school after a parent saw her husband’s name on the registry. In that case, the archdiocese questioned whether she was wrong to remain married to her husband, the judge said.
One of the other plaintiffs in the Colorado case, Eugene Knight, convicted of attempted sexual assault on a child when he was 18, is barred from bringing his children into their school and must turn them over to a school employee on the sidewalk outside.
States’ differing rules can snare some convicts.
Michael McGuire served time in Colorado for raping his girlfriend in 1985. He went on to have a career as a hairstylist and jazz musician in the District of Columbia. In 2010, he and his wife moved to Alabama to care for his elderly mother.
When he arrived in Montgomery, Alabama, he was required to register as a sex offender under what a judge called the “most comprehensive, debilitating sex-offender scheme in the land.”
His wife lives in a house she rents from a family member, but sex offenders are prohibited in the area. One expert said during the case that 80 percent of Montgomery is out of bounds for those on the registry.
Unable to find a place, Mr. McGuire ended up homeless. He listed his residence in the sex offender registry as under a bridge. He has to check in personally each week with the Montgomery police and sheriff’s departments and must get approval from both departments before traveling outside the jurisdiction.
Judge W. Keith Watkins upheld most of Alabama’s law, saying the legislature had valid reasons for its restrictions. But he struck down the duplication for weekly check-ins and travel permits, saying it was overkill.
The case was sent to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals recently dealt a blow to Michigan’s sex offender registry.
The court ruled last year that Michigan couldn’t apply its sex offender registration law to those convicted before the state created its registry requirement.
The appeals court ruled that even people convicted of nonsexual offenses were ending up on the registry, forced into “years, if not a lifetime, of existence on the margins, not only of society but often, as the record in this case makes painfully evident, from their own families.”
The U.S. Supreme Court in October declined to take the case, and reform advocates said the state would have to rewrite its law. The state legislature is considering the matter, but no legislation has been introduced.
“We have begun to see positive incremental change in the last few years,” said Ms. Carpenter. “I think this last year has been a leap because of these federal court cases.”
Derek Logue, a former offender living in Ohio who runs the website OnceFallen.com, said the court victories have been slow in coming for those who are affected by the laws every day.
“We are living under laws that nobody else in America has to live under — not a murderer, not a terrorist, not an illegal immigrant, nobody else society hates or fears, just us,” he said.
Come on Texas! Give this guy his home. Do the right thing Texas! I am sending this to the governor.
TX: HOW A CHARITY FOR DISABLED VETS ALMOST GAVE A SEX OFFENDER A FREE HOME
April 27, 2018
____ ____, 37, a war veteran and double amputee, was receiving the home mortgage-free, courtesy of the Military Warriors Support Foundation’s “Homes 4 Wounded Heroes” program. The charity worked in conjunction with the home’s most recent owner, Wells Fargo bank.
Getting a house is no small deal. Getting one for free, in a settled and safe neighborhood in small-town America, is even bigger.
____, 14 years after he was maimed by a landmine in Iraq, was ready to begin the next chapter of his life among the families of Stuarts Draft. Television news covered the event. Press releases went to area media.
But after researching a detail about the press release, The News Leader quickly learned via Google something that neither the non-profit nor Wells Fargo had discovered. The man they were about to permanently embed in a neighborhood full of families and children was a convicted sex offender who had sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl, according to Wisconsin court records.
That revelation set in motion a process that led the charity to rescind the home offer.
New Blogs Part 9 Updated May 05 2018
I just made these:
If you know your history you know the pilgrims were persecuted by the church's in England; just like the LGBT folks are today. The first Americans were persecuted and now the viscous circle has come back around.
New Blogs Part 9 Updated May 07 2018
Like I have said before on this blog I support gay marriage, because we have put so many people through the prison system that we have helped create a unstoppable gay culture. We as a nation have to take responsibility for our hand in perpetuating a gay USA. I just got these articles in my email and had to post them:
Here are the 6 worst states for gay & lesbian couples
More and more Americans favor same-sex marriage — upwards of 61% in 2017. Yet support still lags in certain states, namely in the South.
The 2017 American Values Atlas, from the nonprofit, non-partisan Public Religion Research Institute, notes that much of the increased support has come in the last five years, timed with the 2015 Supreme Court decision that granted the constitutional right.
“Strength of support for same-sex marriage has increased dramatically over the past decade, while strength of opposition has fallen in nearly equal measure,” the survey’s report said.
Which states show the least support for LGBTQ couples? Six of them show less than 50 percent:
•Alabama 41%
•Mississippi 42%
•Tennessee 46%
•West Virginia 48%
•Louisiana 48%
•North Carolina 49%
Three more southern states have a slim majority in support of same-sex marriage; Kentucky at 51% and Arkansas and Georgia, both holding at 52%.
In sharp contrast, northeastern states — Vermont, Massachusetts and Rhode Island — exceeded 70% in support.
Even worse for LGBTQ Alabamians, theirs is the only state in which a majority of residents oppose same-sex marriage. And, ironically, American Muslims — at 51% — support same-sex marriage at a higher rate than Alabamians do.
As for other religious groups, support continues to grow among all of them, the survey reported. Almost two-thirds of white mainline Protestants, white Catholics, Orthodox Christians and Hispanic Catholics now support same-sex marriage.
Opposition is even dropping significantly among black Protestants. Just five years ago, 57% of them opposed. In the 2017 survey, only 43% opposed.
White evangelical Protestants still have a ways to go. Only about a third of them support it, and of the 58% opposed, 30% strongly opposed. Just 40% of Mormons support it.
Those two groups are also the only religious groups in favor of service refusals based upon religion. Both white evangelicals and Mormons — at 53% —supported denial of service to LGBTQ people based upon religion.
Among all other religious groups, however, strong majorities disagree with denial of service. And, overall, Americans oppose such discrimination by a wide margin — 60% opposed to 33% in favor.
Through the lens of politics, 73% of Democrats and 60% of independents oppose denial of service. Among Republicans, a slim majority, 52%, approves. Moderate and liberal Republicans strongly oppose, at 55 and 63% opposition.
Beyond denial of service, looking at nondiscrimination protections, support for LGBTQ people continues to climb — by race and by religious group. The survey said 73% of all women and 65% of all men favor laws that protect LGBTQ people.
Majorities in every major religious group also support legal protections against discrimination for LGBTQ people.
The survey data came from 40,017 telephone interviews, including 23,903 cell-phone interviews, between April 5 and December 23, 2017, by professional interviewers. Landline and cell numbers were dialed randomly.
‘Execute the gays’ minister is hosting a Bible conference in DC
Wednesday, May 2, 2018
Radical anti-LGBTQ preacher Kevin Swanson is bringing his brand of bigotry to Washington, DC, with his Bible conference this summer.
Swanson’s Bible Family Conference will take place August 10 – 11, in Washington, DC. Rep. Mike Johnson (R, La.) was initially listed as a keynote speaker, but his name no longer appears on the conference website.
Swanson’s gone on the record numerous times to suggest that all gays should be summarily executed.
The rest of his “greatest hits” are equally shocking.
•Swanson dedicated a broadcast of his radio program to calling for the execution of Girl Scout leaders for supporting LGBTQ rights and women’s rights.
•Swanson also warned that the Boy Scouts would soon have a “sodomy merit badge” after deciding to allow openly gay scouts to join.
•Swanson condemned Highlights magazine as no better than ISIS for including a story about two gay dads to “encourage the support for the sin of homosexuality among kids.”
•Swanson said on his radio program that the Supreme Court needed to overturn marriage equality to avoid Hurricane Irma.
•Swanson blamed LGBT people for California’s wildfires, because of the 2011 FAIR Education Act, which added LGBT people and disabled people to the list of minorities whose contributions to the state should be mentioned in textbooks. Swanson described it as a “bill that encouraged homosexual indoctrination in California public schools for six-, seven-, eight-, nine- and 10-year-olds.”
•Swanson declared on his “Generations Radio” program that Hillary Clinton would lead “tremendous majorities of American kids” down “the track towards homosexuality.”
•He told his listeners that the LGBTQ community is “the catalyst by which nations are destroyed.”
•Swanson also warned his listeners that the goal of public schools is “for your children is that your kids be transgendered and communist by 20 years of age.”
•On a broadcast of his radio program, Swanson said that God created HIV/AIDS to punish gays and that the disease is a sign of “God’s kindness,” because it gives them a chance to repent and avoid hell.
That’s just a sample of the insanity, and Swanson is bringing to Washington this summer. For the moment, at least, it doesn’t look like any members of Congress are willing to take the stage at Swanson’s conference.
But someone should see if Mike Pence is busy. After all, Trump says he “wants to hang” gay people.
I redid my graphics:
New Blogs Part 9 Updated May 07 2018
I first heard about this on GAYUSA about 2 years ago: http://gayusatv.org/
I wrote Andy a email and told him; New Hope was not far from where I live. I said this can not be right, you need to keep a eye on this story. He actually wrote me back and thanked me. I also got this email this morning:
Dallas Morning News, TX, USA
May 5, 2018
Transgender mayor ousted in small Collin County town election
Lauren McGaughy, Texas Government Reporter
Residents in the tiny town of New Hope voted out Mayor Jess Herbst on Saturday, crushing her dreams of holding on to the job and becoming the first openly transgender elected official in Texas.
Herbst, 59, lost to Angel Hamm, the widow of the former mayor who died suddenly before the 2016 election. Hamm, 42, is from McKinney and works there as the office manager at Bewley Electric. She ran on a platform of balancing the town's budget and "negotiating the best deals possible to ensure we are getting the best value for our money."
"I want to express my heartfelt thank you to the voters of New Hope for electing me as your mayor," Hamm said Saturday in a written statement. "I am honored and blessed that you have placed your trust in me. ... I will work on your behalf to help address challenges, and to secure lasting and meaningful improvements to our quality of life in New Hope."
A former alderman and road commissioner, Herbst was chosen to serve in the late mayor's stead and came out as transgender shortly after her appointment in 2016. She re-established the town's permits and zoning board and hired a code enforcement officer, and she was featured in newspapers and magazines across the world.
"I want to congratulate Angel Hamm on her win and express how proud I am of New Hope for a record voter turnout," Herbst said Saturday in a written statement. "Democracies live by voter engagement or die by voter apathy, and democracy is alive and well in New Hope today."
Hamm did not publicly bring up the mayor's transgender identity during her campaign. But the race got personal for Herbst in the weeks leading up to the election when voters received an anonymous mailer featuring her social media posts. Residents argued on websites like Nextdoor.com over the mailer and the media attention Herbst's transition brought to town.
Herbst said regardless of the division, she's glad her candidacy brought people to the polls. As of Wednesday, 38 percent of the town's 480 registered voters had cast ballots. Now, she hopes the town continues to move forward under its new leadership.
Melissa Brown, a 42-year-old account manager working in the semiconductor industry, finished second in the race. She ran on a platform to prepare and repel the city of McKinney's attempts to annex land around New Hope, which she said could pose environmental and traffic for the town.
"I was privileged to take part in our democratic process and to meet so many new friends and neighbors," Brown said Saturday in a written statement. "I'm humbled by the support I received and am looking forward to staying involved in the community. Best wishes to Mayor Elect Angel Hamm, she can count on my support."
This was a separate email:
OutSmart, TX, USA
Texas Transgender Mayor Ousted After Anonymous Mailer
Jess Herbst defeated in conservative Collin County.
By John Wright
Posted On 06 May 2018
[Photo: New Hope Mayor Jess Herbst]
Can't stop making graphics; it is just too much fun:
New Blogs Part 9 Updated May 08 2018
I also got this email about this yesterday:
Chelsea Manning: Insurgent bid for U.S. Senate is genuine
May 7, 2018 10:21 Am
Associated Press
Chelsea Manning is no longer living as a transgender woman in a male military prison, serving the lengthiest sentence ever for revealing U.S. government secrets. She's free to grow out her hair, travel the world, and spend time with whomever she likes.
But a year since former President Barack Obama commuted Manning's 35-year sentence, America's most famous convicted leaker isn't taking an extended vacation. Far from it: The Oklahoma native has decided to make an unlikely bid for the U.S. Senate in her adopted state of Maryland.
Manning, 30, filed to run in January and has been registered to vote in Maryland since August. She lives in North Bethesda, not far from where she stayed with an aunt while awaiting trial. Her aim is to unseat Sen. Ben Cardin, a 74-year-old Maryland Democrat who is seeking his third Senate term and previously served 10 terms in the U.S. House.
Manning, who also has become an internationally recognized transgender activist, said she's motivated by a desire to fight what she sees as a shadowy surveillance state and a rising tide of nightmarish repression.
"The rise of authoritarianism is encroaching in every aspect of life, whether it's government or corporate or technological," Manning told The Associated Press during an interview at her home in an upscale apartment tower. On the walls of her barely furnished living room hang Obama's commutation order, and photos of U.S. anarchist Emma Goldman and British playwright Oscar Wilde.
Manning's longshot campaign for the June 26 primary would appear to be one of the more unorthodox U.S. Senate bids in recent memory, and the candidate is operating well outside the party's playbook. She says she doesn't, in fact, even consider herself a Democrat, but is motivated by a desire to shake up establishment Democrats who are "caving in" to President Donald Trump's administration. She vows she won't run as an independent if her primary bid fails.
She's certainly got an eye-catching platform: Close prisons and free inmates; eliminate national borders; restructure the criminal justice system; provide universal health care and basic income. The top of her agenda? Abolish the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a federal agency created in 2003 that Manning asserts is preparing for an "ethnic cleansing."
Manning ticks off life experiences she believes would make her an effective senator: a stint being homeless in Chicago, her wartime experiences as a U.S. Army intelligence analyst in Iraq — even her seven years in prison. She asserts she's got a "bigger vision" than establishment politicians.
But political analysts suspect the convicted felon is not running to win.
"Manning is running as a protest candidate, which has a long lineage in American history, to shine light on American empire," said Daniel Schlozman, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University. "That's a very different goal, with a very different campaign, than if she wanted to beat Ben Cardin."
Manning's insurgent candidacy thus far has been a decidedly stripped-down affair, with few appearances and a campaign website that just went up. In recent days, she approached an anti-fracking rally in Baltimore almost furtively, keeping to herself for much of the demonstration. But when it was her turn to address the small group, her celebrity status was evident. People who never met her called her by her first name and eagerly took photos.
Manning has acknowledged leaking more than 700,000 military and State Department documents to anti-secrecy site WikiLeaks in 2010. She said her motivation was a desire to spark debate about U.S. foreign policy, and she has been portrayed as both a hero and a traitor.
Known as Bradley Manning at the time of her arrest, she came out as transgender after her 2013 court-martial. She was barred from growing her hair long in prison, and was approved for hormone therapy only after litigation. She spent long stints in solitary confinement, and twice tried to kill herself.
The Pentagon, which has repeatedly declined to discuss Manning's treatment in military prison, is also staying mum about her political ambitions. Democratic Party officials say they have no comment, citing a policy not to weigh in on primaries. Republican operatives are quiet.
In Maryland, a blue state that's home to tens of thousands of federal employees and defense contractors, it appears Manning's main supporters are independents or anti-politics, making them unlikely to coalesce politically. She recently reported contributions of $72,000 on this year's first quarterly finance statement, compared with Cardin's $336,000.
The candidate has barely made an effort at tapping sources of grassroots enthusiasm outside of activism circles. And it's easy to find Democrats who feel her candidacy is just a vehicle to boost her profile.
"It feels to me almost like it's part of a book tour — that this is her moment after being released from prison," said Dana Beyer, a transgender woman who leads the Gender Rights Maryland nonprofit and is a Democratic candidate for state senate. "I don't think this is a serious effort."
Manning is indeed working on a book about her dramatic life. For now, she says she supports herself with income from speaking engagements. She's spoken at various U.S. colleges and is due to take the stage at a Montreal conference later this month.
Last week, she appeared at a tech conference in Germany's capital of Berlin, arriving to cheers from the audience of several thousand people. She told attendees she's still struggling to adjust to life after prison and hasn't gotten used to her celebrity status yet.
"There's been a kind of cult of personality that is really intimidating and that is overwhelming for me," she said in Berlin.
At her Maryland apartment, Manning told the AP she occasionally wakes up panicked that she's back in the cage in Kuwait where she was first jailed, or incarcerated at the Marine base at Quantico, Virginia, where a U.N. official concluded she'd been subjected to "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment." She works hard to overcome anxiety, centering herself with yoga, breathing exercises, and reading.
"I've been out for almost a year now and it's becoming increasingly clear to me just how deep the wounds are," she said in her Spartan living room.
Asked how she would define success, Manning responded with passionate intensity: "Success for me is survival."
New Blogs Part 9 Updated May 08 2018
There are three things I’m proudest of in my life … and their names are Peter, Eli and Sam. My remarkable sons.
As most parents will tell you, few things are as rewarding as seeing your child grow into the person they’re meant to be. Each of my boys had their own way of getting there, of course, but it was my Sam whose journey came with a few extra hurdles.
At 20, Sam came out proudly as a gay man: to us and to a world where some still hate you just for being different. Ten years later and that hate seems to have only gotten stronger.
But with you, we can help stop hate in its tracks.
Each year, hundreds of thousands of LGBTQ youth face homelessness. For many, it’s at the hands of their own parents. Others face higher rates of suicide than their peers and struggle with bullying and mental health.
Their crime? Living authentically.
No child should live in fear of revealing their sexuality or gender identity. It is just plain common sense — but it won’t change until people speak out. That’s why I’m raising my voice with HRC. Will you join me?
Whether you are LGBTQ yourself, a mother, a father, or just a great person with strong convictions about what’s fair and right, I hope I've convinced you to stand with HRC and all the Moms for Equality.
Sincerely,
Sally Field
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| This is the image that came with this email. |
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| I added this favorite image; from the Movie Smoky and the Bandit. |
New Blogs Part 9 Updated May 18 2018
UNCATEGORIZED
This is a good one to right your representatives about:
Media focus should be on Really Dangerous People
by Robert Wolf • May 8, 2018
It seems like Sex cases always go viral. But an extremely high number of children die even more horrible deaths from other non-sex related criminal acts and you never even see a blip on the radar screen, and then something like what happened to Sierra Newbold happens and the radar screens light up like the 4th of July.
A friend of mine, let’s call him John for his own safety, related a story to me. He said that he had a vivid memory of an example of just this set of circumstances that happened to him and his family back in 2004, it was about six months before he was charged with his offense, he and his family were living in a rural area at the time.
His sister witnessed a horrible drunken driving accident that cost her some good friends and killed an entire family. They were all on their way home from the kids soccer game, the mom and dad and three kids were all in their mini-van out on the rural gravel roads leading to home. His sister wasn’t much further behind them because she was going over to visit, she was the soccer coach for their team. The family was going thru an intersection where they had the right of way, the corn was grown up way high so they never saw the big old 2 ton work truck coming that ran the stop sign and broadsided their mini-van. The driver of the truck was a three time DUI offender this was his fourth, he was knocked unconscious and in a coma for awhile but survived.
John’s sister got to the scene shortly after the accident, she had seen it happen from a half a mile or so back and called 911. The mom and one of the kids had been killed instantly. The dad was still barely alive but died before the ambulance arrived. The van was so mangled there was no way to get any of them out. So all she could do was hold the dads hand while he was alive thru the broken out drivers side window and watched helplessly as the other two kids gurgled blood as they were breathing their last breaths. John was sitting there choking back tears just remembering all his sister told him about it and the little article he read about it in the paper. He said that he couldn’t imagine what it was like for her to witness that and for their other extended familys’ and friends to go thru, and this incident wasn’t even mentioned on the TV, just in a local newspaper.
John told me it’s just as hard to not have tears in your eyes when you hear about a little girl getting raped and murdered and then tossed in a ditch like a piece of garbage and then imagining what if that was my little girl this happened to. John said his little girl is now 16 and he is not a part of his daughter’s life now, but hearing about cases like this still make him scared to death for her, regardless of whether or not these cases are rare.
John said he can completely understand the outrage and even how hard it may be for some legislators to not want to pass emotional legislation after something like this, but regardless of that they have a trusted position and a responsibility and need to simmer down and think level headed about these things before reacting.
Later that same year after that drunk driving accident that didn’t even make a blip on the radar, after John had been charged for his sex offense he was sitting in jail watching the TV when he heard about Roger Bentley brutally raping and killing 10 year old Jetseta Gage in Cedar Rapids Iowa. Within 2 days it was on TV all over the country and Iowa was preparing emergency legislation which was passed within a month.. Now what would’ve happened if this drunk driving issue would’ve prompted the legislature to act so quickly in creating a registration and community notification for people with DUI’s and this farmer would’ve been on that registry , would that have saved this family’s life? Probably not.
The standing re-offense rate for people that drink and drive is now, and has always been, over 50% in comparison to that of registered citizens at 1%. About one-third of all drivers arrested or convicted of drunk driving are repeat offenders, 31% of fatal crashes during the weekend involve a drunk driver, every day in America 28 people die as a result of a drunken driver and every 90 seconds someone will be injured by a drunk driver. Some where between 50 and 75% of convicted drunk drivers continue to drive on suspended licenses. This would seem to be a section of the population that is even more dangerous to children and communities, yet there is no registration, and there is no community notification. In fact, while sex offender laws have been an passed at a rate of 100% per year, laws involving drunken drivers are only enacted at 18% to 24% per year. Considerable discrepancy when compared to sex offender laws, considering drunk drivers are over 20 times more likely to re-offend and kill someone including children.
Understand I do not agree with the victimization of any child or adult, but I have to ask this question. Who do you think is more traumatized a person who sees someone urinating along the road or for that matter is exposed to a flasher or streaker or someone who is caught viewing CP with no in contact victim. How about the person who have consensual sex under age Does this compare to that of a child or adult in a vehicle that has been hit by a drunk driver, who sits helplessly and watches people that they love and care about dying. If were talking about the trauma of a act I would say that people who survive drunk driver accidents are far more traumatize physically, mentally and emotionally than what happened to a person that has caused somebody else to be added to the registry. yes of course there are extreme cases of sexual victimization. But a drunken driver accident affects not only the crash victims and their family, but the people that respond to it and any innocent bystander that sees it.. The number of victims cause by a drunk driver is incredible.
So if we are to have a registry that is to help protect people especially children then it needs to include everyone, that is an actual danger to the public. (you would think that people would want to know that the soccer mom that is driving 4 extra children to games has a high tendency to drink or use drugs and drive). And of these registries and community notifications should include anyone convicted of a DUI, DWI, selling and distribution of drugs, domestic violence and physical assault. Now if our legislators are unable to justify requiring the same requirements and restrictions that are now placed on sex offenders than they are admitting that the only reason for these laws have been passed are to re-punish people that have paid their debt to society because of some peoples hate and bigotry and the justification that these political terrorists use of public safety kind of of that evaporates when you realize that registered citizens re-offense rate is less than 1%. the lowest of any criminal class.
The question becomes if legislators can’t place these same restrictions on the truly dangerous people in our society who have a re-offenses rate of over 50% per year. Then how do they justify placing those restrictions on the group that has a re-offense rate of less than 1% in a year?
Sex offenders laws
in 2010— 80 bills were proposed in 28 states—– 80 bills enacted in 28 states – (100%)
in 2009 — 130 bills were proposed in 41 states ——130 bills in 41 different states (100%)
Drunk driving / impaired driving laws
in 2010 — 309 bills in 43 different states —— 60 bills enacted in 28 states (19.4%)
in 2009 — 242 bills in 47 different states——- 59 bills enacted in 29 states (24.4%)
in 2008 — 315 bills in 42 different states——- 59 bills in 24 different states (18.7%)
CO: OWNER OF POLYGRAPHY FIRM WOULD HAVE TO QUIT SEX-OFFENDER MANAGEMENT BOARD OR GIVE UP $1.9M CONTRACT UNDER MEASURE HEADING TO COLORADO GOVERNOR
May 9, 2018
[denverpost.com 5/9/18]
Members of the Colorado board that decides how the state’s sex offenders are managed no longer will be able to profit from multimillion-dollar state contracts related to their work with sex offenders under a law legislators passed Wednesday.
House Bill 1427 bars members of the Sex Offender Management Board from having direct financial benefits from the standards and guidelines adopted by that board. The legislation, which passed 27-8 in a final Senate vote, now goes to Gov. John Hickenlooper for consideration.
Legislators reacted in part to a report in The Denver Post on how professional polygrapher Jeff Jenks played an influential role last year as a member of the 25-person board in writing the rules for how often his profession administers polygraphs to sex offenders.
from: https://www.denverpost.com/2018/05/09/colorado-bill-sex-offender-management-board-financial-benefit/
AMERICA NEEDS A NATIONAL TERRORIST REGISTRY TO KEEP US SAFE
May 11, 2018
[foxnews.com 5/10/18]
Domestic terrorist Herman Bell is a free man, walking the streets. And if a New York judge has his way, fellow terrorist Judith Clarke will be free as well.
This raises an increasingly important question: How many more convicted terrorists are already out there? It is impossible to answer accurately.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, more than 500 people have been convicted in the U.S. of terrorist crimes. That number increases when you add in people, who – although investigated for terrorism – were allowed to plead guilty to a non-terrorism offenses such as wire fraud or illegal possession of a weapon.
For example, Edwin Lemmons was arrested by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force after he traveled overseas for jihadist training, yet he was only charged with possession of an assault rifle.
What happens when a terrorist is incarcerated is important. We know that there is currently no adequate prison program in place that deals specifically with rehabilitating terrorists. The federal Bureau of Prisons response to that alarming fact is to inform us that it “offers the same re-entry opportunities for all inmates.”
Does a convicted jihadist really need to learn how to make license plates? Or in the case of bomber Ahmad Khan Rahimi, does it help for him to take drama classes?
While these failures are troubling, what happens when terrorists are released from prison is exponentially more important.
Without a viable post-release program, terrorists who complete their sentences could just be dropped off at a gas station and told to take a bus somewhere. That’s exactly what happen to Shaker Masri after serving seven years in prison for attempting to travel to Somalia and join al-Shabaab, an Al Qaeda affiliate.
The recent case of Casey Charles Spain is an example of why we need a national registry for convicted terrorists.
OH: JUDGE REMOVES FORMER STEUBENVILLE FOOTBALL PLAYER FROM SEX OFFENDER LIST
May 11, 2018
[10tv.com 5/11/18]
COLUMBUS, Ohio
A judge on Friday ordered that an ex-Ohio high school football player convicted of rape be removed from the state’s sex offender registry for juveniles, as allowed by law.
The ruling by Judge Thomas Lipps came in the case of Ma’Lik Richmond, a former Steubenville High School football player who in 2013 was convicted of raping a 16-year-old West Virginia girl at a party that followed a football scrimmage the previous year.
Richmond served a one-year sentence and later rejoined the Steubenville football team. Now 21, he plays for Youngstown State University.
After his conviction, Richmond was ordered to register his address every six months for the next 20 years. In 2014, Lipps agreed to reclassify him so that he had to register only once a year for the next decade. Ohio law allows juveniles to request removal altogether.
A second juvenile convicted in the crime served a two-year sentence. His attorneys plan a similar request in the future.
A message was left with Richmond’s attorney seeking comment. In a November filing, state public defender Brooke Burns argued that Richmond had served his punishment, completed all sex offender programming, and is now a successful college student. He has a strong family support system and is hard-working and remorseful, the filing said.
Richmond’s “court history demonstrates his rehabilitation and commitment to leading an offense-free future,” Burns said on Nov. 9.
From: https://www.10tv.com/article/judge-removes-former-steubenville-football-player-sex-offender-list
MS: SOME PEOPLE TO BE REMOVED FROM MISSISSIPPI SEX OFFENDER LIST
May 12, 2018
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — About 30 people will be removed from Mississippi’s sex offender list after the state agreed that people convicted under a Louisiana law no longer have to register.
However, the legal challenge continues for at least one man who’s on the registry because of convictions under Mississippi’s own statute banning consensual oral and anal sex.
KS: GOV. JEFF COLYER SIGNS BILL TO COMPENSATE WRONGFULLY CONVICTED IN KANSAS
May 15, 2018
[hutchnews.com 5/15/18]
KANSAS CITY, Kan. — Gov. Jeff Colyer stood on Tuesday in the modest sanctuary of Mount Zion Church of God in Christ to belatedly draw the hands of justice closer to Lamonte McIntyre, Richard Jones, Floyd Bledsoe and any other Kansan wrongfully convicted of a crime.
Bledsoe, of Burrton, along with the other men spent a minimum of 16 years in institutions operated by the Kansas Department of Corrections for serious offenses they didn’t commit. Each was part of a coordinated effort to build bipartisan support in the 2018 Legislature for a law signed by Colyer to financially compensate the unjustly convicted and extend to each health insurance, college tuition, housing assistance and other social services helpful to rebuilding a life.
“A great injustice was done to these three gentlemen,” Colyer said. “These three men showed compassion, they showed courage and they showed concern for other Kansans. These men stood up, and as Kansans, they were wise and gracious.”
Colyer, a surgeon from Johnson County who ascended to the governorship early this year, said the 16 years served by Jones and Bledsoe and the 23 years that McIntyre spent behind bars would have left most people defeated, consumed by anger or shattered inside.
“It would have turned us to madness,” the Republican said. “What I want to say to Lamonte McIntyre, to Floyd Bledsoe, to Richard Jones: We apologize to you, we love you and we will make it right.”
His signature on House Bill 2579 made Kansas the 33rd state to enact a wrongful conviction compensation statute. It was described by advocates as the “gold standard” for the nation. Individuals found by a court to meet the definition of wrongfully convicted would receive $65,000 for each year held on that conviction and $25,000 for each year wrongfully served on parole, probation or on a sex offender registry.
Sex Offender Recidivism Fact Based Research Statistics
May 4, 2018The Genius
AVNETNEWS – The following Sex Offender Recidivism Fact Based Research Statistics show that “facts are stubborn things”, refuting the shill, rants and other myths, such as the unsupported “frighteningly high recidivism”. We must read this and understand these laws hoping to protect kids are in reality destroying kids and their families,
A Perspective on Recidivism
Most studies of recidivism begin with the statistics gathered on re-offending. Typically, these figures are assembled by states over three year periods, and this data is appropriately criticized for two principle reasons—that these figures do not reflect accurately what happens over a longer period of time, and that they cannot reflect crimes that are not prosecuted. But these studies do provide a tool by which to compare sex offender recidivism to recidivism for other crimes. And the recent sex offender recidivism numbers (which are included further down here) are lower than any other category of crime.
Persons working in the field—treatment providers and parole officers particularly—tend to rely more heavily on actuarial tools developed that provide predictions about the likelihood of reoffending. Not surprisingly, these tools yield higher rates than the three-year recidivism studies, but rates are often quoted in the 20% range
The myth of very high recidivism seems to rest on a handful of poorly designed studies. I include them here.
Year Study Rate Comments
2004 Ron Langevin—Canada
“Lifetime Sex Offender Recidivism: A 25 year Follow-Up Study”
320 sex offenders referred to a single clinic for eval between 1966 and 1974
61.1% sex crime recidivism
88.3% including confessions in counseling and new arrests that did not result in conviction; another measure that only included offenders outside their own family yielded a 94.1% rate
Criticized as a non-random sample limited to a group who were referred for major prosecutions (“the worst of the worst”).
The sample only dealt with period before prisons included a vastly wider range of offenders now arguably less prone to recidivism.
Study eliminated everyone whose records were lost or purged from system after 15 years because of no new crimes or charges, eliminating most non-recidivists from the study
Since at least 50% of the sample were already recidivists by Langevin’s definition, obviously he would dramatically inflate his figures, since the commonly accepted definition of recidivism is a new crime committed after release
In response to his critics, Langevin himself has cautioned against making claims about all sex offenders based on his data.
1997 Robert Prentky
Study of 136 rapists and 115 child molesters released from Bridgewater civil commitment center in Mass. 1959-1986.
32% sex crime recidivism for molesters; 25% for rapists (over widely varied periods).
Over 25 years, he estimated rates of 52% and 39%
Covers approximately the same period as Langevin study
Also only considers narrow range of offenders; average child molesters had 3.6 offenses already and average rapist had 2.5 offenses. By Langevin’s definition, the recidivism rate would have been almost 100% Even the Prentky team said, “The obvious marked homogeneity of sexual offenders [in this sample] precludes automatic generalization of the rates reported here to other samples.”
2000 and 2009 Andres Hernandes study at Butner FCI – sample of 155 child porn offenders in treatment 85% admitted in treatment to a previous hands-on offense, suggesting that child porn users overwhelmingly are also hands-on abusers The methods of the study are widely criticized for its poor research model. Confessions were coerced by the threat of dismissal from the program with resultant return to the general population bearing the stamp of sex offender. Like the Langevin study, this study also raises serious questions about definitions of recidivism. The study has been dismissed by judges as lacking credibility on multiple grounds. The 2000 study was never accepted for publication; although the 2009 article was accepted for publication by The Journal of Family Violence, the BOP requested that the article be withdrawn (it was not), and a bureau official wrote: “We believe it unwise to generalize from limited observations gained in treatment or in records review to the broader population of persons who engage in such behavior.” The journal’s peer review process has also been criticized as remarkably lax—it is alleged that the journal allows authors to suggest their peer reviewers and to blackball reviewers they wish to avoid. Thus far, we have not confirmed that charge.
Comparisons of who actually commits new sex crimes
According to a recent New York study:
95.88% of arrests for all registerable sex crimes are of persons previously non-convicted of a sex offense.
95.94% of arrests for rape are of previous non sex-offenders.
94.12% of arrests for child molestation are of previous non sex-offenders.
(Sandler, Jeffrey C, et. Al., Does a Watched Pot Boil? A Time-Series Analysis of New York State’s Sex Offender Registration and Notification Law. Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, 2008 Vol. 14, No. 4, 290)
These results are closely parallel to figures compiled by the US Department of Justice that show that 93% of child sex abuse is committed by a person whom the child knows. In 47% of the cases, the perpetrator is a member of the family. Only 7% of offenses are committed by strangers.
If sex offender recidivism were not exceptionally low, these figures could not be this high. The hugely disproportionate number of sex offenses committed by previously non-convicted persons raises questions about the utility and justice of a registry which subjects over 20,000 Oregonians to crippling restrictions, none of which address the source of the vast majority of sexual abuse.
Recent Reported Rates of Sex Offender Recidivism*
Most of these studies are based on the standard 3 year reporting system. More details are provided on the next page, including exceptions to the 3 year period. These recent rates are noticeably lower than reported rates a decade ago. This difference probably reflects at least two factors:
crime rates in general have been falling during this period, and sex
offender recidivism seems to reflect that trend;
2) current studies appear to include a larger and different demographic than a decade or so earlier when both statutes and enforcement procedures were substantially different.
In all cases but two here, the rates are 4% or lower. In more than half, they are 3% or lower. Taken together, these figures seem to underline the reason that the researchers in the last study (Connecticut) wrote:
These low re-offense rates appear to contradict a conventional wisdom that sex offenders have very high sexual re-offense rates. The real challenge for public agencies is to determine the level of risk which specific offenders pose the public. [emphasis added]
* All rates come from studies explained with references on the following pages.
Studies since 2007
2007 Missouri DOC study of 2,777 offenders released from 1998-2007 1.9% after 3 yrs.; 3.5% after 5 yrs. These rates were 1.1% and 2.7% for offenders who completed MOSOP, a mandated treatment program.
2007 Alaska Judicial Council report 3% in 3 yrs. Sex offenders had the lowest rate of reconviction for category of offense
2007 Minnesota DOC study 3,166 offenders released between 1990 and 2002 3% in 3 yrs. in 2002 10% av. rate over 8.4 yrs; in 1990, rate was
17% in 3 yrs. This might suggest that rates are falling substantially in recent decades.
2007 Jared Bauer of West Virginia DOC 325 offenders tracked for 3 years from 2001, 2002 and 2003 1% for sex crime w/ victim This rate might be inaccurate, since victimless crimes are not included, although there is little evidence to suggest that the other cohort would have a higher rate. 9.5% of sample returned to prison for other reasons.
2008 California SOMB report 3.55% in 3 years
Cites figures from CDCR for prisoners released in 2003
2009 Endrass et al—Swiss study of 431 users of underage porn .8% w/ hands-on sex offense; 3.9 % w/ hands-off sex offense Study covered 6 years; concluded that child pornography alone is not a risk factor for hands-on offenses.
2009 Orchowski and Iwama study of offenders released in 2001 for US Justice and Research Association AK – 3.4%
IA-3.9%
AZ – 2.3%
NM—1.8%
DE – 3.8%
SC – 4.0%
IL – 2.4%
UT – 9.0%
Comparison national 3 yr. rate was 5.3% for offenders released in 1994
2010 Maine study tracked releases for 2004-2006 3.8% in 3 yrs.
2010 California CDCR report 5% in 3 yrs.
2012 Connecticut Criminal Justice and Planning Division Study of 746 offenders released in 2005 1.7% returned to prison Study covered 5 years, not 3. It showed 3.6% arrests; 2.7% convictions.
Links:
2007 Missouri Study
2007 Alaska Study
2007 Minnesota Study
2007 Jared Bauer West Virginia study
2008 California SOMB study
2009 Indiana study
2009 Endrass et al study
2009 Orchowski and Iwama study
2010 California CDCR report
2010 Maine study
2012 Connecticut study
New York offender study
CA: POSTING MUGSHOTS ON INTERNET DRAWS CRIMINAL CHARGES FROM CALIFORNIA ATTORNEY GENERAL
May 16, 2018
[sacbee.com 5/16/18]
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra on Thursday filed extortion and money laundering charges against the owners of a website that publishes mugshot photos and charges a fee to remove them.
His office is targeting Mugshots.com, which pulls photos and identifying information about criminal suspects from law enforcement departments around the country. The site charges a “de-publishing fee” to remove someone from its archives, according to Becerra’s office.
Becerra said it has frustrated people who were accused of crimes they did not commit.
“This pay-for-removal scheme attempts to profit off of someone else’s humiliation,” Becerra said. “Those who can’t afford to pay into this scheme to have their information removed pay the price when they look for a job, housing, or try to build relationships with others. This is exploitation, plain and simple.”
Related links:
Use copyright law to battle mugshot extortion [abajournal.com 3/27/18]
NATIONAL
USE COPYRIGHT LAW TO BATTLE MUGSHOT EXTORTION
May 16, 2018
[abajournal.com 3/27/18]
After her DUI charge was dropped, Julie Cantu thought her nightmare was over. Then, she went on a date.
Over dinner, Cantu’s would-be-suitor was asking questions anyone asks on a first date. Then he asked about her criminal record. Caught off-guard by the question, she thought about the dropped charge. Her blood alcohol had been 0.021, well below the legal limit of 0.08, and she had no other contact with the law. How did her date know?
After getting home, the Florida resident and retired nurse went online and searched her name. Her mugshot, eyes puffy and red from crying, was displayed prominently between results for her LinkedIn and Facebook profiles.
Making matters worse, she did not find her photo on a newspaper or crime blotter website that reports local crime. Cantu found herself in the mugshot racket. Her photo was on Arrestmugshot.com, Mugshots.com and Tampacriminal.com—all of which demanded a fee to take down these photos (two of these sites, arrestmugshot.com and tampacriminal.com, are no longer active, with the latter now redirecting to a lawyer’s website).
After paying $175 to one site to take down the photo, she found her mugshot pop up on another, which asked for even more money. An exploitative game of online whack-a-mole had begun.
Cantu says she worried that the photo was “going to be there the rest of my life.”
Read more: http://www.abajournal.com/lawscribbler/article/use_copyright_law_to_battle_against_mugshot_extortion
Related links:
Lawsuits Seek to Bring Down Mugshot Profiteering [courthousenews.com 8/11/17]
New Blogs Part 9 Updated May 18 2018
It can be no secret that this page has gotten way to long. I am going to end this page with this entry.
It can not be a secret that I am a old fashioned Christian. I have practically memorized the entire Holy Bible in my life time. I have quoted the Bible many times in this blog.
My wife asked me recently; why I thought all religions were good? The only solid response I could come up with is; it is better than being a criminal. Well; doesn't it seem like the only way many criminals stop being criminals, is through religion?
I have always thought of psychology as a type of religion. I think psychology is invaluable as far as helping people who genially need help. The problem I have with psychology is when huge branches of it; grubbing for money, try to convince people they need help that do not. This is hugely counterproductive in maintaining a sane society in my opinion. Psychology in general seems very giving and helpful to people much like religion does.
I am so fascinated by other peaceful religions. Of course, I have come to terms with the fact, I have a great, unending love; for Catholicism. I was practically raised a Catholic and generations of my Sicilian family was Catholic. I went to a Irish Catholic school until eighth grade. I was a alter boy for my church and the Catholic church, I went to with my mom; every single Sunday. During High-school we moved to the country and we just attended a very modern Catholic Church. I never had a bad experience in the Catholic Church ever. I did not even know about priest's molesting children until I was exposed to it by the paranoid self destructive Nazi, ratings mongrels of the media/internet today. The media/internet that seems to insanely rule our gullible politicians of the world for now.
If I could practice any peaceful type religion, in some alternative universe, it would either be Buddhism or Hinduism. Shaolin Kung Fu has always fascinated me. Peaceful religions like these have always intrigued me. Tibetan Buddhism sounds very cool. I spoke about Tibet on this page stating with New Blogs Part 9 Updated March 23 2018 and I would like to end this page with that now. I still have my prayer flags on display and still like to look at them. I recently got this graphic, in my email from the Free Tibet folks; that explains those pray flags. It is my desktop background right now:
