Discovery of father’s Scout abuse file triggers memories, Rape Is Rape, Wrong Is Wrong

Discovery of father’s Scout abuse file triggers memories, what ifs for brother and sister
February 17, 2013 Associated Press

On opposite sides of the world, the brother and sister sat transfixed before their computers, reading a stranger’s account of long-ago secrets and deeply buried sins.

The memo was just four pages long, about an incident in 1963 at a Boy Scout camp in New Jersey. A Scout executive had gotten drunk during an overnight outing, then was discovered gambling with a group of boys. But there was more.

The brother and sister read on — about how this man “was observed molesting an Explorer Scout sitting at his side.” About how he was admitted, voluntarily, to a mental hospital. They read about an investigation that determined he had tried to molest another Scout. It found that this man’s “problem,” as the document called it, had apparently existed for decades.

They read, too, about a call from this local Boy Scouts council for “suppression of spread of incident beyond group with knowledge of it.” ”We know enough to advise that Brandon P. Gray should never again be registered in any capacity with the Boy Scouts of America,” the memo stated….

According to his file, Gray started drinking on Feb. 2, 1963, at the Scouts’ Mt. Allamuchy camp in Stanhope, N.J., during the annual Klondike Derby, an event in which Scouts pull sleds. That evening, he was discovered playing cards for cash in a cabin with several Explorer Scouts, in violation of camp policy.

Gray, the file said, “was observed molesting” one of those Scouts, whose age wasn’t mentioned. An adult in the room moved the boy away from Gray, but took no further action “in an effort to avoid a ‘scene,’” the record stated. Gray continued to drink, grew agitated and attempted to hit someone. Adult Scouts then subdued him and eventually he fell asleep.

By the next morning, Gray’s wife, Ruth, had been contacted and Gray admitted himself to a mental hospital. The Scouts then met with the Explorer, who confirmed “the violation.” Upon his release from the hospital, Gray was terminated. No records identified by The Associated Press show any charges or convictions for Gray in connection with the incident or any other charges for sex abuse….

After his dismissal on Feb. 7, 1963, Gray went home to his family. Carol was 12 years old. Jim was only 7.

Old memories can flicker and fade. But for Carol and Jim, some memories simply aren’t there, an abyss they say protects them from remembering some of the worst of their abuse.

Carol believes hers began when she was 5 years old. Years of psychiatric help and attempts to recover memories haven’t yielded much more. But a fact from her past lingers: “I believe that mine stopped when Dad started abusing my brother.”

Brandon Gray’s removal from Scouting was, his son said, the beginning of a decade of sexual abuse. It began soon after that February day in 1963 and continued until Jim graduated high school and joined the U.S. Marines Corps.

Unlike Carol, Jim has little trouble remembering. His father would stalk up the stairs and push his way into Jim’s room. Once, when Jim was about 11 years old, his mother walked in to find him and his father engaged in a sexual act. She turned and walked out. A day later, she moved Jim’s entire bedroom upstairs, the posters in the same place they had been in his old room, the bed in the same spot.

It was, he said, his mother’s attempt at physically shunting off the problem she could no longer deny….

“The worst thing about the sexual abuse, mental health problems, alcoholism and all that … are the losses,” said Jim, 58. “The loss of being able to maintain healthy relationships, intimacy, having children. These things that most people take for granted, I won’t have those.

“By the time I recovered, it was too late to do those things.”….

Jim contacted The Associated Press after the files were released in mid-October. He did so because he said he wants to show that victims of sex abuse can, with a lot of work, live full lives. He believes that he and his sister are proof of that.

He also wants to show the real consequences of the Scouts’ inaction….

He still struggles with the memories of his abuse.

“Am I healed? I wish that were possible,” he said. “Like a person who has lost an arm or a leg, I have learned to adapt. I do not think I will ever be healed. I can say that I am happy more than I am sad.”
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/02/17/discovery-father-scout-abuse-file-triggers-memories-what-ifs-for-brother-and/

Rape Is Rape, Wrong Is Wrong, Where Is Decency?
02/19/2013  Stuart Muszynski

From the public outrage over the oxymoronic statements of this past election cycle about “legitimate rape” and “violent rape,” we learned, thankfully, that most Americans agree that rape of any kind is wrong. However, if you’re following the sordid story of the Steubenville High School “Big Red” football players who were charged with raping a 16-year-old girl from West Virginia, you see how the cruelty, immorality and true violent nature of rape is defended, diminished and deflected.

The allegations are that last August, two high school football players raped the girl, then dragged her unconscious from party to party while many people looked on and did nothing. Multiple cell phones recorded the events, and later onlookers posted the videos on the Internet. The video footage showed a naked girl, out cold, along with other football players laughingly boasting that “She’s dead” and “I’m going to join the rape crew.”

Clearly they knew what was happening, but they were caught up in the moment with their buddies. Some team members and their friends stood by and did nothing while others encouraged the rape or actively took part in it.

That’s bad enough, but what occurred next, after the girl’s parents reported the rape to the police, is just as shocking.

Big Red Football Coach Reno Saccoccia suspended the two players who allegedly raped the victim, but didn’t suspend any of the players who live-tweeted the attack while it was happening or joked about it afterward. The coach’s reason was that the boys said that that they didn’t think they had done anything wrong….

Consider the following statistics:….One third of high school girls will be involved in dating violence. Twenty percent of teens will be sexually assaulted.

While schools are trying to address bullying, they are not addressing decency, goodness, kindness or respect. Ultimately, not doing so has a cultural impact on both community and country.

Almost fifty years ago, in March, 1964, 38 people watched from their New York City apartments as Kitty Genovese was raped and then killed. Thirty years later, dozens of motorists on a Detroit bridge watched as a woman who, beaten during a road rage incident, jumped off the bridge to her death to avoid her assailant. Bystanders just sat in their cars.

When addressing rape, gun violence, bullying and other types of violent behavior, our country must depend on good people who recognize evil and do the right thing by standing up to help. To ensure decency, we have no choice but to rely on our schools because some parents just are not doing their jobs.

Anna Sewell, a British novelist who wrote Black Beauty, said, “If we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop and do nothing, we make ourselves share in the guilt.”….

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stuart-muszynski/steubenville-rape-case_b_2718805.html

Inside the perversion files Tracking decades of allegations in the Boy Scouts

Boy Scout files on suspected abuse published by The Times

Viewable online: about 1,200 previously unpublished files kept by the Boy Scouts of America on volunteers and employees expelled for suspected sexual abuse.

By Jessica Naziri and Nell Gram, Los Angeles Times
December 25, 2012

The Times on Tuesday released about 1,200 previously unpublished files kept by the Boy Scouts of America on volunteers and employees expelled for suspected sexual abuse.

The files, which have been redacted of victims’ names and other identifying information, were opened from 1985 through 1991. They can be found in a database along with two decades of files released by order of the Oregon Supreme Court in October. The database also contains summary information on about 3,200 additional files opened from 1947 to 2005 that have not been released publicly.

Together, the material in the database represents the most complete accounting of suspected sexual abuse in the Scouts that has been made public. All of the material was obtained as a result of lawsuits against the Scouts by alleged abuse victims or by media organizations. The Boy Scouts kept the files for nearly a century for internal use only, to keep suspected abusers from rejoining.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-scouts-data-20121226,0,6477648.story

Inside the ‘perversion files’
Tracking decades of allegations in the Boy Scouts

This database contains information on about 5,000 men and a handful of women who were expelled from the Boy Scouts of America between 1947 and January 2005 on suspicion of sexual abuse. The dots on the map indicate the location of troops connected in some way to the accused. The timeline below shows the volume of cases opened by year; however, an unknown number of files were purged by the Scouts prior to the early 1990s. Last up­date: Dec. 26, 2012
http://spreadsheets.latimes.com/boyscouts-cases/

Cornish ‘white witches’ guilty of ritual sex abuse on girls, Prosecutor: Man raped, abused 13 infants, children and videotaped attacks, Boy Scout Child Sex Abuse Files Must Be Surrendered, Court Says

Cornish ‘white witches’ guilty of ritual sex abuse on girls
Police say children as young as three may have been involved in coven’s ceremonies
Steven Morris
guardian.co.uk, Friday 14 December 2012
Two members of a Cornish white witch coven have been convicted of carrying out ritualistic sex abuse on young girls.

Peter Petrauske, 72, who claimed to be a high priest, and Jack Kemp, 69, donned robes and carried pagan artefacts when they attended ceremonies during which children were forced to strip and then abused. Police believe children as young as three may have been involved.

The abuse only emerged after Kemp was arrested on an unrelated charge, prompting victims of past offences to come forward.

The pair showed little emotion as they were led from the dock at Truro crown court on Friday. Petrauske, who described himself as the high priest of a white witches’ coven in St Ives, was convicted of one count of rape, one count of aiding and abetting an attempt to rape and one count of indecent assault.

Kemp was found guilty of indecent assault and indecency with a child. He was cleared of four other sexual offences. The jury is still considering verdicts on several other sexual offences.

Police launched an investigation last year when Kemp’s arrest caused rumours to spread around their home town of Falmouth.

Alleged victims claimed that Kemp, an ex-soldier and tin miner, and Petrauske, a former member of the merchant navy, had taken part in rituals during which children as young as three were plied with alcohol, forced to strip in front of men wearing white robes and abused. They were given money and sweets to buy their silence and were too frightened to report what had happened, it was claimed.

Prosecutor Jason Beal said children’s wrists were tied and some reported having hot wax poured over their bodies; one said a dagger had been drawn over her body.

Beal said the duo “used the cloak of paganism” to commit the offences against children, arguing they were not pagans but child abusers.

One woman told how, at the age of five, she and other children attended a ritual at a stone circle with a fire in the centre. Petrauske and Kemp were among the men there, wearing “gown things” and necklaces, she said….

The woman, who cannot be named, also said she was raped by another man, a former parish councillor called Peter Solheim who was associated with witchcraft in Cornwall.

Solheim’s body was found by fishermen five miles off the Lizard Peninsula in 2004. He had been drugged and mutilated with a machete or an axe.

The woman told the Truro jury that she was bound and raped by Solheim when she was nine on a bed fitted with chains and a black whip with “star things on the ends”.

In the witness box Petrauske – also known as German Pete – said he had been a pagan for 55 years and had an altar in his bedroom. He accepted he had a dagger and whip but insisted they were all for ceremonial purposes only. He said he had no doubt the victims who gave evidence had been abused by men in robes but said he was not involved….

The pair had denied all the offences, which date back to the 1970s.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/dec/14/cornish-white-witches-guilty-ritual-abuse

Prosecutor: Man raped, abused 13 infants, children and videotaped attacks

John Burbine, 49, of Wakefield, Mass., is accused of sexually abusing more than a dozen young children.
By NBC News staff 6 Dec 2012

A Massachusetts man raped and sexually abused more than a dozen young children in their homes and videotaped the assaults, a prosecutor said Thursday.

The purported victims were as young as 8 days old, Middlesex District Attorney Gerry Leone said….

John Burbine, 49, of Wakefield, was indicted Thursday by a Middlesex grand jury on more than 100 counts of child sex offenses. He gained access to many of the children through a child care service operated by his wife, Leone said at a news conference Thursday.

According to authorities, Burbine and his wife advertised child care and tutoring services on various websites including parenting websites and coupon service websites. They also transported children to another family’s home for day care and ran a summer activities program in which they took children to various places, prosecutors said.

Burbine raped and sexually assaulted at least 13 infants and young boys and girls who were in his care from August 2010 through August 2012, according to the indictment. Many of the children were abused multiple times over several months or years, the charges allege.

The victims ranged in age from 8 days to 3½ years old and are from Stoneham, Medford, Newton, Reading, Melrose, Woburn and Waltham, prosecutors said.

Investigators said they found images and videos on Burbine’s home computer of the victims “posed in various states of nudity and engaged in sexual acts” “It is alleged the defendant videotape recorded the assaults on the victims,” the prosecutor’s office said.

“He committed these unspeakable crimes in the victims’ homes and communities. Further, the defendant filmed the repeated, unthinkable abuse,” Leone said. “The defendant gained access and opportunity to abuse young children through advertising child care services with his wife, who operated a tutoring and child care business, which was not licensed. Children are our most vulnerable victims and we will continue to prosecute to the fullest extent those who harm or exploit them.”

Burbine’s wife, Marian Burbine, 46, of Wakefield, has been indicted on charges of reckless endangerment of a child and operating an unlicensed day care business. Prosecutors said she was not present during the alleged rapes and did not know about them….
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/06/15735891-prosecutor-man-raped-abused-13-infants-children-and-videotaped-attacks

Boy Scout Child Sex Abuse Files Must Be Surrendered, Court Says
12/13/12 AP

LOS ANGELES — A California appellate court has upheld a Santa Barbara judge’s order saying the Boy Scouts of America must surrender decades of confidential files detailing alleged child sex abuse.

A lawsuit alleges that a local Scouts official tried to keep a boy’s mother from reporting his 2007 abuse by a volunteer leader to police.

The youth group denies the allegations.

“The BSA believes confidentiality of the files helps to encourage prompt reporting,” spokesman Deron Smith told the Times.

Lawyers for the former Scout who was sexually abused by a volunteer leader in 2007 say the files they seek will expose a culture of hidden sexual abuse….

In January, a Santa Barbara judge ordered all files since 1991 be turned over to the boy’s lawyers, but not the public. The Boy Scouts filed an appeal in April.

The order involves different files than the more than 1,200 made public in October by order of the Oregon Supreme Court. Those files ranged from 1965 to 1985.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/13/boy-scout-child-sex-abuse_n_2297354.html

Richmond homemaker was innocent victim of CIA brainwashing experiments, Boy Scouts’ opposition to background checks let pedophiles in

“Boy Scouts’ opposition to background checks let pedophiles in
Boy Scouts of America fought the trend of adopting criminal background checks for volunteers and staff, unknowingly allowing convicted child sex offenders to join.”

Richmond homemaker was innocent victim of CIA brainwashing experiments

By Kent Spencer, The Province December 2, 2012

Fifty years ago Richmond homemaker Gina Blasbalg was a victim of physical and psychological torture and unethical experiments. As a teen she was part of a CIA-sponsored program into mind control at the Allan Psychiatric Institute in Montreal. Today, times are happier, but Ralph and Gina Blasbalg still have a favourite bench to sit on at Garry Point Park in Richmond. Gina was an unsuspecting patient in the CIA-sponsored brainwashing program in Montreal, a young Ralph Blasbalg rescued Gina from daily rounds of pills she was being coerced to take. While she was withdrawing from the medication, they had a place they would walk to at night in Montreal. They called it their “crying bench.”….

Gina Blasbalg was brainwashed by the CIA. The Richmond homemaker was a victim of physical and psychological torture and unethical experiments.

The “medical misadventure” took place in Canada more than 50 years ago at the Allan Institute in Montreal.

Although traumatized by the experience, her story is one of triumph, and today her life is about giving back to young people….

The Allan Psychiatric Institute has been called a “House of Horrors” for good reason.

The so-called treatment of the teenaged Gina consisted of ingesting twice daily doses of 16 pills, under a nurse’s strict supervision.

The drug types varied widely and often had opposing effects.

In no particular classification, they included uppers and downers, depressants and anti-depressants, tranquillizers, barbiturates and truth serum.

The capsules came in a rainbow of colours: blue and brown, turquoise, yellow and red, azure, salmon, pink and white.

“We had to take our medication. If I didn’t I was told I would be put in the insane asylum,” she says.

The effects left her very weak.

“I was a zombie. I wanted to sleep.”

In additon to the pills there was physical and psychological torture.

She says one the worst things done to her was drug-induced contortions which twisted her muscles into unnatural forms.

“It was extremely painful and traumatizing. They wanted to measure the effect of the contortions so they could add it to their research,” she says.

The nitrous oxide given to her, called laughing gas, was anything but funny.

“I felt like I was spinning forever. I didn’t know if I’d ever come out of it. I dreaded it. I remember thinking, is this what it’s like to die?”

She was also given mind-altering LSD.

“I had a dream that I was flying continuously into a massive sticky spider’s web. I was screaming and somebody held me down.”

After long periods of artificially-prolonged sleep, doctors posed questions while she was hypnotized under a truth serum.

“They were able to penetrate my thoughts.,” says Gina.

She was one of hundreds of unsuspecting patients who never gave their informed consent to be used as guinea pigs.

And there was no way to dispute medical orders. “Welfare patients could not sue doctors,” she says.

She feels fortunate not to have received massive doses of electric shocks to the brain which many received at the Allan.

The CIA and Dr. Strangelove

At the top of the Allan’s chain of command was an enigmatic man called Dr. Ewen Cameron.

He was an imposing, Scottish-born figure who was later dubbed “Dr. Strangelove.”

“The chief,” as he was known, had made his mark as a member of a select team which studied Nazi leader Rudolph Hess in Germany after the Second World War.

He was a giant of international medicine who was the first president of the World Psychiatric Association.

Cameron wanted to delve into the inner depths of the human psyche and receive international acclaim — perhaps a Nobel Prize — for his work.

He thought the mind could be deprogrammed through extra-large doses of electric shock, sensory deprivation, drug concoctions and long periods of induced sleep.

Once the mental slate was wiped clean, he believed that minds could be reprogrammed by playing reassuring taped comments through pillows as patients slept.

The messages — things such as ‘You are a good wife and people appreciate you’ — were played over and over each day for hours at a time, and repeated for weeks on end.

“He wasn’t liked by the patients,” says Gina. “They were terrified of him. They tried to run away. I heard people begging for no more treatments.”

During a climate of fear engendered by the Cold War, the CIA gave him money to find out how to control the human mind.

It took two decades for it to be made public that the CIA and the Canadian government secretly contributed more than $500,000 to the now discredited program.

Cameron’s actions have been widely criticized since news of his work surfaced during the 1980s.

A 1986 Department of Justice report concluded that his therapeutic techniques were a “medical misadventure.”

The report’s author said it was an unjustifiable form of assault on the human brain.

He recommended the government award victims $100,000; 77 people have collected.

Montreal lawyer Alan Stein, who has successfully sued on victims’ behalf, says many patients didn’t qualify for the compensation, Gina among them.

Their records were lost (Gina was told her records couldn’t be found) or they didn’t meet the standard of mistreatment that was set.

Victims had to prove that they had been “put in a childlike state.”
http://www.timescolonist.com/health/Richmond+homemaker+innocent+victim+brainwashing/7640880/story.html

Boy Scouts’ opposition to background checks let pedophiles in
Boy Scouts of America fought the trend of adopting criminal background checks for volunteers and staff, unknowingly allowing convicted child sex offenders to join.

By Jason Felch and Kim Christensen, Los Angeles Times

December 2, 2012

Amid reports of widespread sexual abuse of children in the late 1980s, several leading youth organizations began conducting criminal background checks of volunteers and staff members.

Big Brothers Big Sisters ordered the checks for all volunteers starting in 1986. Boys and Girls Clubs of America recommended their use the same year.

One of the nation’s oldest and largest youth groups, however, was opposed — the Boy Scouts of America….

Scouting officials argued that background checks would cost too much, scare away volunteers and provide a false sense of security. They successfully lobbied to kill state legislation that would have mandated FBI fingerprint screening.

While touting their efforts to protect children, the Scouts for years resisted one of the most basic tools for preventing abuse. The result: The organization let in hundreds of men with criminal histories of child molestation, many of whom went on to abuse more children, according to a Times analysis of the Scouts’ confidential abuse files.

Scouting did not require criminal background checks for all volunteers until 2008 — despite calls from parents and staff who said its vetting system didn’t work.

In 1989, a Scout committee chairman in St. Paul, Minn., decried the organization’s “half-hearted” screening in a letter to headquarters.

“BSA is only creating an illusion of performing what they claim,” K. Russell Sias wrote to Scout Chief Executive Ben Love. “It becomes quite clear that BSA is more concerned in ‘passing the buck’ than in accepting responsibility for those who are its adult leaders.”

That same year, a Las Vegas scoutmaster with a criminal history of exposing himself to boys was arrested for sexually abusing a 12-year-old Scout. One parent said casinos did a better job of screening workers.

“The black eye which scouting has suffered in this … could easily have been avoided if the council had taken the simple expedient of doing a background investigation,” the parent wrote to Scouting officials.

From the time national background checks became widely available in 1985 until 1991 — when the detailed files obtained by The Times end — the Boy Scouts admitted more than 230 men with previous arrests or convictions for sex crimes against children, the analysis found.

The men were accused of molesting nearly 400 boys while in Scouting. They accounted for one in six of those expelled for alleged abuse during those years.

Scouting officials declined to be interviewed but said in a prepared statement that they have enhanced their policies over the years and tried “to ensure we are in line with and, where possible, ahead of society’s knowledge of abuse and best practices for prevention.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-scouts-screening-20121202,0,3619516.story

Boy Scouts and Catholic Church were inclined to silence on abuse

Boy Scouts and Catholic Church were inclined to silence on abuse: James Gill
By James Gill, NOLA.com  The Times-Picayune
October 24, 2012

After Catholic priest Gilbert Gauthe was found to be a child molester in 1974, then-Lafayette Bishop Gerard Frey decided a change was in order. So the next year, Gauthe was assigned extra duties. He became chaplain of the diocesan Boy Scouts. Any pedophile would have whooped, and Gauthe took full advantage….

Louisiana always figured prominently in the scandals that engulfed both institutions nationwide. Gauthe was the first to be unmasked in the endless succession of predatory priests who enjoyed years of episcopal protection. After Gauthe pleaded guilty in 1985, and was sentenced to 20 years in the state pen, Rev. Kenneth Doyle, spokesman for the U.S. Catholic Conference in Washington, said: “We don’t want to give the impression that it’s a rampant problem for the church, because it’s not.”

Then, New Orleans journalist Jason Berry, who covered the case, wrote a book predicting years of turmoil and multimillion-dollar court judgments against the church….

In 1976, four adult Scout leaders were arrested in New Orleans for running a troop where underprivileged boys were recruited for sexual exploitation. It was the movement’s first high-profile sex scandal in America. “Louisiana always figured prominently in the scandals that engulfed both institutions nationwide.”

The Scout leaders — Raymond Woodall, Richard Stanley Halvorsen, Harry Cramer and Lewis Sialle — were all sentenced to prison in 1977. At the same time parents of Gauthe’s victims found out what he was up to, and filed complaints with diocesan officials. Frey, in what we were soon to discover was the standard response of the church throughout the country, merely moved Gauthe to another parish, where he continued his unholy ministry until he was suspended in 1983 after aggrieved parents filed a lawsuit….

He (Gauthe) had no known connection, however, with New Orleans Troop 137, which hit the national headlines while he was preying on the youth of Lafayette. What was known at the time as the “Boy Scout sex case,” netted 17 arrests, and Troop 137 was identified at the trial of its leaders as “the nucleus of a nationwide sex and pornography ring, with boys recruited into the troop sent to other states for the pleasure of men there.” Troop leaders would recruit underprivileged boys and ply them with gifts so they could be prepared for sleepovers and naked pool parties.

http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2012/10/scouts_and_church_were_incline.html

Boy Scouts Perversion Files Document Sexual Abuse Cover-Up, Spark Public Interest

Boy Scouts Perversion Files Document Sexual Abuse Cover-Up, Spark Public Interest By NIGEL DUARA 10/20/12

PORTLAND, Ore. — A website with files showing the Boy Scouts of America’s cover-up of decades of sexual abuse is generating interest from people wanting to know who the alleged abusers are and whether people who molested them as Scouts are in the files.

Release of the files has also prompted a debate on the Boy Scouts’ Facebook page. Some people said they’d never allow their children to be involved in the organization and criticized the secrecy of the files. Others described positive experiences in the Scouts for themselves or their children, saying the organization’s efforts to prevent abuse have improved significantly.

The 14,500 pages of Scout files, from 1959-1985, were posted Thursday on the website of Kelly Clark, the Portland attorney who used the files as evidence in a 2010 lawsuit he won against the Scouts.

The website got more than 200,000 hits within the first few hours of the files’ posting, crashing the site.

Clark said his firm has received about four dozen emails from people about the documents. About half came from people who say they were abused when they were in the Scouts and were interested in filing lawsuits.

Some of the emails have given details about alleged abuse, Clark said.

There are also emails from people who tell of other alleged perpetrators who are not in the files….

In their own review of the files that were released on Thursday, the Scouts found that law enforcement had been involved in about two-thirds of the cases. The organization is going through the remainder to find cases where there seem to be good reasons to alert law authorities.

The Scouts have apologized for not following up. The files were created for the purpose of registering Scout leaders, Smith said, and were considered internal, confidential documents, which is why they weren’t always shared with authorities.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/20/boy-scouts-perversion-files_n_1992252.html

On Behalf of 25 Child Advocacy Organizations In Support of Boy Scout Survivors on Release of “Perversion Files” – Calling on All States to Eliminate the Statutes of Limitations Keeping Child Sex Abuse Victims Out of Court

October 18, 2012
Comment by Professor Marci A. Hamilton

on Behalf of 25 Child Advocacy Organizations In Support of Boy Scout Survivors on Release of “Perversion Files”

Calling on All States to Eliminate the Statutes of Limitations Keeping Child Sex Abuse Victims Out of Court

The Oregon Supreme Court ordered the release of the Boy Scouts’ “perversion files” in Jack Does I-VI vs. Corp. of the Presiding Bishop of the Church of Latter Day Saints, Corp. of the President of the Church of Latter Day Saints and Successors & The Boy Scouts of America, et. al (Or. June 14, 2012), available at http://media.oregonlive.com/portland_impact/other/S058601%5B1%5D.pdf  .

These files establish that the Boy Scouts knew about predators, but instead of protecting children by going to the authorities, they kept their identities secret and let them abuse more children. Marci Hamilton, one of the nation’s leading experts on child sex abuse in institutional settings, states, “The Boy Scout files, like the Philadelphia Grand Jury Reports on abuse in the Philadelphia Archdiocese and the grand jury report on abuse by Jerry Sandusky, document how yet another institution has covered up child sex abuse. They kept records and knew more than anyone else in the country about the recidivism of abusers, yet, they did not go to the authorities.

They enabled perpetrators and endangered one child after another. Internal records and investigations are never enough. Nor is sending the perpetrator away, with no notice to the authorities and the next community at risk. Sadly, the statutes of limitations for the vast majority of the Boy Scout survivors in many states likely have expired, making it difficult to prosecute or sue the perpetrators, or to bring the organization to account for endangering children. The Boy Scout’s perversion files are another stark reminder to our elected representatives that laws in many states favor the organization, aid the predator, and put children at risk. Right now, there are untold numbers of hidden child predators who are preying on one child after another, because the statutes of limitations have been configured to give them that opportunity.

It is a fact that approximately 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 5 boys are sexually abused. Thus, there is an iceberg of victims across the country, including many Boy Scout victims, who have no access to justice. Under the current statute of limitations in many states–which halt criminal prosecution and civil cases long before most victims are ready to come forward — those who caused the abuse or created the conditions for the abuse are being given a free ride.

The Boy Scouts of America is just the latest organization whose failure to report abuse led to justice denied. Now is the time for every state to look hard at its SOLs and to give child sex abuse victims a chance at justice.”….
http://www.cardozo.yu.edu/uploadedFiles/Cardozo/Profiles/hamilton02-447/PressReleaseBSA2.pdf

Boy Scouts ‘Perversion’ Files Show Locals Helped Cover Up Child Sex Abuse, Jimmy Savile: Labour faces embarrassment over former child sex claims

- Boy Scouts ‘Perversion’ Files Show Locals Helped Cover Up Child Sex Abuse By Scoutmasters

- Jimmy Savile: Labour faces embarrassment over former child sex claims
Labour faces embarrassment over its calls for a wide-ranging inquiry into Jimmy Savile as senior party figures have previously called for the relaxation of child sex laws.

- Jimmy Savile treated school like ‘paedophile sweetshop’
The Home Office has been dragged into the Sir Jimmy Savile abuse scandal after it was revealed he was allowed to stay overnight at a school for disturbed girls

- Jimmy Savile confessed to a reporter that his reputation would collapse after his death and he would come to be regarded as “crooked”, it has emerged.

Boy Scouts ‘Perversion’ Files Show Locals Helped Cover Up Child Sex Abuse By Scoutmasters
By NIGEL DUARA 10/18/12

PORTLAND, Ore. — An array of local authorities – police chiefs, prosecutors, pastors and town Boy Scout leaders among them – quietly shielded scoutmasters and others who allegedly molested children, according to a newly opened trove of confidential files compiled from 1959 to 1985.

At the time, those authorities justified their actions as necessary to protect the good name and good works of Scouting. But as detailed in 14,500 pages of secret “perversion files” released Thursday by order of the Oregon Supreme Court, their maneuvers protected suspected sexual predators while victims suffered in silence.

The files document sex abuse allegations across the country, from a small town in the Adirondacks to downtown Los Angeles.

At a news conference Thursday, Portland attorney Kelly Clark blasted the Boy Scouts for their continuing legal battles to try to keep the full trove of files secret.

“You do not keep secrets hidden about dangers to children,” said Clark, who in 2010 won a landmark lawsuit against the Boy Scouts on behalf of a plaintiff who was molested by an assistant scoutmaster in the 1980s.

The files were shown to a jury in a 2010 Oregon civil suit that the Scouts lost, and the Oregon Supreme Court ruled the files should be made public. After months of objections and redactions, the Scouts and Clark released them….

The 1959-85 files show that on many occasions the files succeeded in keeping pedophiles out of Scouting leadership positions – the reason they were collected in the first place.

But the files document some troubling patterns.

In many instances – more than a third, according to the Scouts’ own count – police weren’t told about the alleged abuse.

And there is little mention in the files of concern for the welfare of Scouts who were allegedly abused by their leaders. But there are numerous documents showing compassion for suspected abusers, who were often times sent to psychiatrists or pastors to get help.

In 1972, a Pennsylvania Scouting executive wrote a memo recommending a case against a suspected abuser be dropped with the words: “If it don’t stink, don’t stir it.”

In numerous instances, alleged abusers are kicked out of Scouting but show up in jobs where they are once again in authority positions dealing with youths.

One of the most startling revelations to come from the files is the frequency with which attempts to protect Scouts from alleged molesters collapsed at the local level, at times in collusion with community leaders.

On the afternoon of Aug. 10, 1965, a distraught Louisiana mother walked into the Ouachita Parish Sheriff’s Office. A 31-year-old scoutmaster, she told the chief criminal deputy, had raped one of her sons and molested two others.

Six days later, the scoutmaster sat down in the same station and confessed.

“I don’t know an explanation, why we done it or I done it or wanted to do it or anything else it just – an impulse I guess or something,” the man told a sheriff’s deputy.

The decision was made not to pursue charges. “This subject and Scouts were not prosecuted,” a Louisiana Scouts executive wrote to national headquarters, “to save the name of Scouting.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/18/boy-scouts-perversion-files-locals-cover-up-child-sex-abuse_n_1981596.html

Jimmy Savile: Labour faces embarrassment over former child sex claims
Labour faces embarrassment over its calls for a wide-ranging inquiry into Jimmy Savile as senior party figures have previously called for the relaxation of child sex laws.

By Martin Beckford, Home Affairs Editor
17 Oct 2012

Harriet Harman, the Opposition deputy leader, said the allegations that the late TV and radio presenter abused dozens of young boys and girls had “cast a stain” on the BBC and other trusted institutions.

But at the time Savile was at the height of his fame, Miss Harman was calling for the relaxation of the law on child pornography.

She was a leading light in the pressure group now known as Liberty, which advocated the lowering of the age of consent to 14.

The organisation, then run by the Health Secretary under Tony Blair, Patricia Hewitt, even counted among its affiliates a number of extreme pro-paedophilia groups whose leaders were later jailed.

It means that any independent public inquiry into the culture that allowed Savile to abuse children for so long with impunity, could end up looking into the radical left-wing demands for the liberalisation of child sex laws that were made in the 1970s….

As The Daily Telegraph first disclosed in 2009, in the 1970s the extreme end of the sexual liberation movement included groups who openly campaigned for the abolition of the age of consent. The Paedophile Information Exchange and Paedophile Action for Liberation affiliated themselves to the National Council for Civil Liberties, now known as Liberty.

NCCL complained to the press watchdog about their treatment by tabloid newspapers and in one article admitted it had “plenty of contact” with PIE, and argued that children are harmed by having to go to police and courts after a “mutual relationship with an adult”.

In 1976 the NCCL submitted a response to the Government’s plans to reform sex laws that was dubbed a Lolita’s Charter as it claimed “childhood sexual experiences, willingly engaged in with an adult result in no identifiable damage”.

The organisation said that children as young as 14 should be able to consent to sex, to reduce the “harmful effects of the present laws”.

It went on to say it is “logical” for the age of consent to be abolished but “we fear” it would not be “politically possible”.

Miss Harman, then a newly qualified solicitor, joined the group as legal officer two years later.

In April 1978 she wrote the NCCL’s response to the Protection of Children Bill, which was put before Parliament in order to tighten the laws on child pornography by banning indecent images of under-16s.

It claimed that the new law could lead to “damaging and absurd prosecutions” and “increase censorship”.

She suggested that pornographic photographs or films of children should not be considered indecent unless it could be shown that the subject had suffered, and that prosecutors would have to prove harm rather than defendants having to justify themselves….

Miss Harman left NCCL in 1982 when she was elected MP for Camberwell and Peckham, by which time several members of PIE had been jailed for conspiracy to corrupt public morals.

A spokesman for Miss Harman said: “This allegation is an outrageous slur. Harriet has fought for child protection from sexual abuse over the last 30 years – any attempt to suggest otherwise is untrue and malicious.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/jimmy-savile/9614516/Jimmy-Savile-Labour-faces-embarrassment-over-former-child-sex-claims.html

Jimmy Savile treated school like ‘paedophile sweetshop’
The Home Office has been dragged into the Sir Jimmy Savile abuse scandal after it was revealed he was allowed to stay overnight at a school for disturbed girls.

Richard Alleyne and Rowena Mason
17 Oct 2012

At least five former pupils have told how the DJ abused them during visits to Duncroft Approved School when it was under direct Home Office control.

They claim that the Jim’ll Fix star was given his own flat in the building in Staines, Surrey, by the headmistress in what one victim described as a “paedophile sweet shop”.

The institution for emotionally disturbed girls was under the direct supervision of the Home Office until April 1973, a report in the Daily Mirror claims.

It was visited regularly by government inspectors.

A former pupil Toni Townsend, one of three girls photographed with the star in 1972, told the newspaper: “Jimmy treated Duncroft like a paedophile sweet shop….

“He used to take his pick of the mix. He would wander around the school in a vest and tracksuit bottoms.

“He stayed in a flat on the top floor. He was the only man allowed to stay overnight. Who knows what horrors happened up there.

“The girls at Duncroft had been sent there by the courts for prostitution, drugs and because they tried to kill themselves. Who would have believed us against Saint Jimmy?”

A fellow pupil Carole Wells, now 52, told how Savile once assaulted her in his Rolls-Royce after the headmistress asked if she wanted to go for a ride with him….

Ms Wells said she reported the incident to the head who allegedly did not believe her….

Meanwhile his former assistant Janet Cope told how Savile had an explosive temper that terrified everyone from hospital staff to fund-raisers….
“He thought he was untouchable because he was hand in glove with the hospitals, royalty and the Prime Minister.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/jimmy-savile/9614091/Jimmy-Savile-treated-school-like-paedophile-sweetshop.html

Jimmy Savile confessed to reporter that he would be seen as ‘crooked’ after his death
Jimmy Savile confessed to a reporter that his reputation would collapse after his death and he would come to be regarded as “crooked”, it has emerged.

By Gordon Rayner, Chief Reporter
18 Oct 2012

In a previously unpublished interview given by Savile two months before he died, he admitted he was “not a straight punter”.

The Jewish Chronicle obtained a transcript of the interview, which was ostensibly about Savile’s work with Jewish charities, but which included the Jim’ll Fix It presenter’s enigmatic reference to his murky past.

Asked what he would choose if someone could “fix it” for him, Savile said: “A telephone in heaven.”

When he was asked why, he said: “Just leave it at that. That’s the trouble with you fellas, you always want to delve and go further.”

He then added that he was “not a straight punter. “When I’m gone, they’ll say ‘I always thought he was straight but he wasn’t – he was crooked’.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/jimmy-savile/9618674/Jimmy-Savile-confessed-to-reporter-that-he-would-be-seen-as-crooked-after-his-death.html

What Scout abuse scandal teaches us

What Scout abuse scandal teaches us
By Patrick Boyle, Special to CNN
September 20, 2012

(CNN) — After being smacked in the face by wave upon wave of sex abuse scandals for the past decade, it’s easy to feel nothing but angry or numb.

So Joe Paterno’s statue came down, a slew of dioceses went bankrupt, and thousands of once-secret documents about molesters in the Boy Scouts will soon be made public. It’s fair to ask: Have we learned anything?

That makes it a good time to step back and look beyond individual villains to the big picture. When you put together the stories of Penn State, the Roman Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts and other organizations hit by abuse scandals, you see they reacted in much the same way. Their behavior was shocking, but it was more common than we knew.

Thanks to lawsuits and news reports, we now see this: For decades, some of our most trusted institutions — from schools, camps and sports leagues to correctional facilities, foster care agencies and religious groups — have inadvertently enabled child molesters at the expense of victims. While leaders in many youth-serving organizations have confronted the abuse problem head-on, others routinely erred on the side of molesters, ignored the extent of abuse in their ranks, hid abuse from authorities and misled the public.

Why? To protect the good work of their organizations. They lost their perspective on where organizational protection ends and child protection begins….

http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/20/opinion/boyle-boy-scouts-abuse-scandal/index.html

Boy Scouts helped alleged molesters cover tracks, ITCCS Kevin Annett update, Social Interaction in Early Life

articles:
- Boy Scouts helped alleged molesters cover tracks, files show
- A paper trail of abuse
- Urgent Update from the International Common Law Court of Justice
- Social Interaction in Early Life Affects Wiring to the Frontal Lobes

Boy Scouts helped alleged molesters cover tracks, files show

When volunteers and employees were suspected of sexually abusing children, Boy Scout officials often didn’t tell police, files from 1970-91 reveal. In many cases they sought to hide the situation.

By Kim Christensen and Jason Felch, Los Angeles Times

September 16, 2012

Over two decades, the Boy Scouts of America failed to report hundreds of alleged child molesters to police and often hid the allegations from parents and the public.

A Los Angeles Times review of 1,600 confidential files dating from 1970 to 1991 has found that Scouting officials frequently urged admitted offenders to quietly resign — and helped many cover their tracks.

Volunteers and employees suspected of abuse were allowed to leave citing bogus reasons such as business demands, “chronic brain dysfunction” and duties at a Shakespeare festival.

As The Times reported in August, the blacklist often didn’t work: Men expelled for alleged abuses slipped back into the program, only to be accused of molesting again. Now, a more extensive review has shown that Scouts sometimes abetted molesters by keeping allegations under wraps.

In the majority of cases, the Scouts learned of alleged abuse after it had been reported to authorities. But in more than 500 instances, the Scouts learned about it from boys, parents, staff members or anonymous tips.

In about 400 of those cases — 80% — there is no record of Scouting officials reporting the allegations to police. In more than 100 of the cases, officials actively sought to conceal the alleged abuse or allowed the suspects to hide it, The Times found.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-boy-scouts-files-20120916,0,6937684.story

A paper trail of abuse
Since at least 1919, the Boy Scouts of America has maintained “ineligible volunteer” files intended to keep sexual abusers, among others, out of its ranks. The records have been closely held by the Scouts, which contends that confidentiality is essential to protect victims, witnesses and anyone falsely accused.

The Times reviewed about 1,600 of the files dating from 1970 to 1991. In hundreds of cases, sexual abuse was not reported to law enforcement, and Scout officials at times actively hid it from parents and the public. In at least 50 cases, the Boy Scouts expelled men for alleged sexual abuse, only to discover later that they had reentered the Scouts and were again accused of molesting.

Here are files from some of those cases. The Times has redacted victims’ names and other identifying information. Some files include explicit accounts of sexual abuse.

http://documents.latimes.com/boy-scouts-paper-trail-of-abuse-documents/

This is an update from Kevin Annett dated September 17, 2012, and is the official issuing of the public summons to church and state officials.
Filmed at Freedom Central HQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wTSPVJzT5w&feature=youtu.be

Urgent Update from the International Common Law Court of Justice
Posted on September 17, 2012 by itccs

This is September 17, 2012, and I’m Kevin Annett with the International Common Law Court of Justice.

Today, the Prosecutor’s Office of our Court is issuing Public Summonses to thirty two officials of church and state around the world, charging them with criminal offenses and summoning them to appear in our court. This Summons and the names and positions of these officials will be read today so that the world is able to follow these historic proceedings.

This Summons has particular force right now because of the refusal of the named churches and persons to respond this week to ten measures of justice demanded of them by their victims – and by a consequential Banishment Proclamation that has been issued against these churches by organizations of abuse survivors around the world.

http://itccs.org/2012/09/17/urgent-update-from-the-international-common-law-court-of-justice/

Social Interaction in Early Life Affects Wiring to the Frontal Lobes
09/13/2012  Dr. Douglas Fields – Neurobiologist and author, ‘The Other Brain’ GET UPDATES FROM Dr. Douglas Fields

A study published in tomorrow’s issue of the journal Science shows that social interaction during a critical period of early life has irreversible effects on maturation of connections to the frontal lobes of the brain, disrupting social interactions and cognitive ability into adulthood. Children suffering severe neglect are known to have cognitive dysfunctions and impairments in social interaction as adults, but the mechanisms were not understood.

Situated behind the forehead, the prefrontal cortex is responsible for complex analysis, abstract thought, motivation, and controlling socially correct behaviors. Interestingly, connections from other brain regions to the prefrontal cortex are not fully developed until the early 20s. A team led by neurobiologist Gabriel Corfas at the Children’s Hospital in Boston reared mice in isolated cages for two weeks after they were weaned from their mothers. When these animals reached adulthood, the nerve fibers (axons) connecting to the prefrontal cortex had a thinner coating of electrical insulation (myelin) than in mice reared in standard cages. Myelin insulation, wrapped around axons like electrical tape, greatly increases the transmission speed of nerve impulses. Slower transmission of information to the frontal cortex could degrade performance of this critical brain region. Indeed, behavioral experiments showed that these animals had poor working memory and impaired social interaction as adults….

“The findings make sense and are consistent with what we’ve observed in clinical studies on effects of early stress on the brain,” says Martin Teicher, a neuroscientist in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard University. Using MRI brain imaging, Teicher and his colleagues have found that early life stresses, including childhood sexual abuse, witnessing domestic violence, and experiencing verbal abuse from parents or peers, affect the structure of the prefrontal cortex and disrupt fiber connections (called white matter) to this and other brain regions. This new study is a major advance, Teicher says, because human brain imaging can only provide correlations, but animal experiments can demonstrate causation and help identify the underlying mechanisms.

Many alterations in brain tissue could produce the differences seen by MRI in children suffering neglect, but by removing the tissue and examining it under an electron microscope, Corfas and colleagues were able to prove that indeed myelin was thinner on these axons in socially isolated mice. What’s more, they were able to identify the cellular and molecular mechanism responsible for the thinner myelin and then manipulate them to test whether thinner myelin was sufficient to cause the behavioral effects seen after isolation….

Corfas notes that white matter disruptions in this brain region have been related to schizophrenia, and variations in the gene for the neuregulin-1 receptor are also associated with the disorder. Mutation in this gene is not enough to cause disease, but Corfas speculates that an interaction between variants of this gene and environmental stresses could contribute to schizophrenia and to other neuropsychiatric disorders such as PTSD, depression, or anxiety disorders. “We are not saying that isolation is producing schizophrenia,” he says. “Rather that people with alterations in the neuregulin genes could be more sensitive to environmental stresses that could cause defects in myelination and contribute to neuropsychiatric disorders.” Regardless, even in individuals with no genetic problems, connections to the frontal lobes will not develop normally without social interaction in early life.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-douglas-fields/social-interaction-early-life-frontal-lobes_b_1864234.html