New task force targets traffickers who force children into the sex trade

New task force targets traffickers who force children into the sex trade

FBI, Chicago police join forces to go after pimps

By Annie Sweeney, Chicago Tribune reporter

May 14, 2012

Inside the Harrison Police District station, the officers sat in a semicircle to be briefed about the shift ahead in one of Chicago’s most beleaguered areas.

But on this recent day, the topic was not the shootings and murders on these West Side streets, but a crime often pushed far back into the shadows — the thousands of young girls and women who are prostituted, pushed into the violence of Chicago’s sex trade.

FBI Special Agent Jonathan Williamson and Chicago police Sgt. Traci Walker were there to announce a new joint effort by the FBI and Chicago police to target child traffickers in the city….

The clandestine nature of sex trafficking makes it difficult to know exactly how many young women and girls work in prostitution, said DePaul College of Law researcher Jody Raphael. She has estimated that in Chicago as many as 25,000 are involved in the commercial sex trade, including exotic dancers.

Many who work the street or are sold on the Internet started out in the business in their teens. A 2008 survey of Chicago women working in prostitution who were 25 or younger and under the control of a pimp found that they began at 16 on average.

The younger the girl or woman, Raphael believes, the more likely it is she has a pimp or trafficker, in part because she is often recruited first into a romantic relationship.

Over the past decade, advocates have pushed law enforcement to re-examine how it views the crime of prostitution — especially for the young adults caught in the trade. Today, investigators are going after traffickers on one hand while extending social services to women working in prostitution. Chicago police, Cook County and federal authorities meet monthly to target offenders for the toughest punishment.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-human-trafficking-20120514,0,7415972.story

2 Children Found Living In Bus In Splendora, Tex

2 Children Found Living In Bus In Splendora, Tex
03/8/2012

SPLENDORA, Texas (Associated Press) — Two children who were found living in a stench-filled abandoned school bus near Houston, its windows blocked and the lot around it covered in trash, are in the custody of Texas child welfare workers, officials said Thursday.

A postal worker discovered the children, ages 11 and 5, at the bus in Splendora about 10 a.m. Wednesday, officials said. Their parents are believed to be in prison for embezzling money from Hurricane Ike victims in 2008. The children are not enrolled at local schools.

The bus appeared to have electricity, an air conditioning unit installed in one window and bunk beds inside for the children. But several neighbors told the Houston Chronicle that the children typically looked unkempt and could often be spotted running around at night.

“They always had dirty clothes on (and) no shoes, even in the winter,” said nearby resident Gayla Payne, who said the 11-year-old girl told her daughter that she bathes twice a week.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/08/2-children-live-in-bus_n_1333251.html

11 children, some tied to beds, removed from Texas home, some suffered abuse

Deputies: Children found tied up in Liberty County home
21 people were living in house Feb 21 2012

DAYTON, Texas -

Eleven children removed from a Liberty County home are in the custody of Children’s Protective Services.

Investigators said 21 people were living in a home on Ford Avenue in Dayton.

The children, ages 5 months to 11 years, were removed from the home on Jan. 24. Detectives said some of them were found tied up to a bed. Some of them suffered physical abuse and physical and medical neglect, officials said. The children belonged to seven separate families, officials said.  http://www.click2houston.com/news/Deputies-Children-found-tied-up-in-Liberty-County-home/-/1735978/8815936/-/iy2v6az/-/index.html

11 children, some tied to beds, removed from Texas home

Eleven children, some of whom police say were tied to a bed, are removed from a Dayton, Texas, home north of of Houston where at least 21 people were discovered living. KPRC’s Ryan Korsgard reports.

By NBC News, msnbc.com staff and news services  2/21/02

DAYTON, Texas — Authorities said Tuesday they removed 11 children from a crowded home used as an address by a registered sex offender after they found eight confined in a small, dark bedroom with restraints tying some to their beds.

Along with the children, 10 adults were living in the one-story, 1,700-square-foot brick home in Dayton, about 30 miles northeast of Houston, Child Protective Services spokeswoman Gwen Carter said. One month after a raid on the house, authorities are still trying to determine how the children are related and why they were there, she said.

The children, belonging to seven separate families, ranged in age from 5 months to 11 years, said NBC station KPRC of Houston.
http://usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/21/10469420-11-children-some-tied-to-beds-removed-from-texas-home

A Nation Betrayed Secret Cold War Experiments Performed on our Children E-Book

A Nation Betrayed: Secret Cold War Experiments Performed on our Children E-Book

ANNOUNCEMENT OF E BOOK – On the tenth anniversary of the original printing of A Nation Betrayed: Secret Cold War Experiments Performed on our Children and Other Innocent People [Annotated] by Carol Rutz, you may now purchase it as an E-Book in the U.S at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005IDOXL6  or www.story-e-books.com

It is available in the United Kingdom http://www.amazon.co.uk/  and Germany http://www.amazon.de/

It is still available as soft cover from Carol Rutz:
http://my.dmci.net/~casey/

From the Author

My goal in writing this book is to expose the misuse of power that took place during the Cold War.  Thousands of innocent children who have grown into adults are silently suffering from the effects of the experiments that were done to them by their own government.  Many have been diagnosed incorrectly and institutionalized.

Others, like myself, were able to obtain competent medical help, and are struggling to heal from the physical and mental ravages upon our beings.  How can we envision the future without visiting the past?  Will we let this story lay in the shadows forever, or do we have the courage to address the wrongs and give survivors back their voices?  You be the judge. Carol Rutz

“A Nation Betrayed” documents Carol Rutz’s incredible journey from mind control victim to freedom.  Her personal experience provides clear evidence of deeply hidden agendas within a shadow government.

Using electroshock, drugs, hypnosis, sensory deprivation and insidious trauma, Carol believes that the CIA conducted Mind Control Experiments on children in the government’s attempt to create a Manchurian Candidate. Your tax dollars paid doctors working under government contract in the U.S. and Canada to participate in these and other experiments in ESP, Remote Viewing, Radiation and research with Chemical and Biological Warfare.

US Child Maltreatment 2009 Statistics

US Child Maltreatment 2009 Statistics

Child Maltreatment 2009
U.S. Department of Health & Human Services
Administration for Children and Families
Administration on Children, Youth and Families
Children’s Bureau

….Victims in the age group of birth to 1 year had the highest rate of victimization at 20.6 per 1,000 children of the same age group in the national population.

Victimization was split between the sexes with boys accounting for 48.2 percent and girls accounting for 51.1 percent. Less than 1 percent of victims had an unknown sex.

Eighty-seven percent of victims were comprised of three races or ethnicities—African-American (22.3%), Hispanic (20.7%), and White (44.0%).

What were the most common types of maltreatment?

As in prior years, the greatest proportion of children suffered from neglect. A child may have suffered from multiple forms of maltreatment and was counted once for each maltreatment type. CPS investigations or assessments determined that for unique victims:

More than 75 percent (78.3%) suffered neglect;
More than 15 percent (17.8%) suffered physical abuse;
Less than 10 percent (9.5%) suffered sexual abuse; and
Less than 10 percent (7.6%) suffered from psychological maltreatment.

….Child fatalities are the most tragic consequence of maltreatment. Yet, each year children die from abuse and neglect. Forty-nine States reported a total of 1,676 fatalities. Based on these data, a nationally estimated 1,770 children died from abuse and neglect.

….Four-fifths (80.9%) of duplicate perpetrators of child maltreatment were parents, and another 6.3 percent were other relatives of the victim;

Of the duplicate perpetrators who were parents, four-fifths (84.7%) were the biological parents of the victim;

Women comprised a larger percentage of all unique perpetrators than men, 53.8 percent compared to 44.4 percent;

and Four-fifths (83.2%) of all unique perpetrators were between the ages of 20 and 49 years.

….Forty-four States reported that more than 3 million children received preventive services;
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cb/pubs/cm09/cm09.pdf

Parental Alienation Disorder: Why Label Children with a Mental Diagnosis?

also: Revealed, six decades of ‘ritual’ child abuse: Catholic schools and orphanages damned in report

Parental Alienation Disorder: Why Label Children with a Mental Diagnosis?

Journal of Child Custody Volume 7, Issue 4, 2010, Pages 266 – 286 Authors: Lenore E. Walker; David L. Shapiro
DOI: 10.1080/15379418.2010.521041

Abstract
The proposal to include Parental Alienation Disorder (PAD) in the new proposed Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-V) creates a host of problems. The first major problem is the labeling of children with a mental disorder who may simply be reacting with anger to the changes in their lives from the separation and divorce of their parents by rejecting one parent and aligning with the other. Diagnosis may bring with it shame and have a chilling impact on parents report of domestic violence.

Although proponents of PAD are aware that it is inappropriate to diagnose children who have been exposed to child abuse and/or domestic violence with PAD, they do not clarify how to make such differential diagnoses. It is suggested that there are insufficient empirical data to differentiate abused and traumatized children from those who are alienated or estranged from the rejected parent.

Nor are there sufficient scientific data to account for other child vulnerabilities such as neurological immaturity, Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), other anxiety and mood disorders, or oppositional defiant disorder. There are too few comparisons between the risks and benefits of adding a new diagnosis of childhood disorders to justify its inclusion in the DSM-V.

Appropriate intervention strategies recommended for PAD children include contact with the rejected parent, which differ widely from trauma victim/survivors who need assurance of safety and healing before contact is re-established. Ethical standards that may be impacted by this new diagnosis and admissibility issues raised by its predecessor, Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), are also discussed by the authors.

“As discussed, alienation is almost always alleged when the child does not want to be with a parent when there does not appear to be any ‘rational’ reason for these feelings. Of course, the definition of ‘‘rational’’ in these cases remains totally subjective to the person making the evaluation. Although proponents of labeling these children with PAD claim that using this label will assist in formulation of treatment goals and techniques, there are no empirical data to support this position (Bernet, 2010). Using the definition put forward by the American Psychological Association (APA) which requires two scientific studies replicating each other, there are no empirically validated interventions that support evidence that forcing a child to be with an unwanted parent will promote mental health.” (p.270-271)

“PROPOSED DIAGNOSTIC CRITERIA FOR PAD AND MAKING A DIFFERENTIAL DIAGNOSIS….Perhaps the most egregious part of this newly proposed diagnosis is the impossibility of making a differential diagnosis based on the child’s signs and symptoms and not the parents’ alleged behavior. Johnston (2010) discussed the confusion currently in the courts dealing with PAS=PAD and, in particular, defining who is alienated, the rejected parent or the child? There are so many explanations other than alienation for a child’s rejection of a parent during separation or divorce that to give children a new mental illness diagnosis is neither necessary nor appropriate. Surely anxiety disorders including PTSD from abuse are primary as has been discussed herein, as are other mood disorders, particularly depression. The criteria for children’s depression often include acting-out behavior and rejection of people and things that they used to like to do.
(p. 276 – 277)

“It is not appropriate to diagnose a child with a mental illness based on the parents’ behavior. In many cases known to the authors, both in practice and in supervision of other forensic evaluators, the child’s behavior could have been diagnosed as an adjustment disorder with anxiety or depression. Separation and divorce often means a new home or even two homes, new schools, new friends, and new schedules. Even when all goes well this can be a daunting challenge for most children.” (p. 277) http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all?content=10.1080/15379418.2010.521041

full article pdf and web page until 12/31/11 http://pdfserve.informaworld.com/903178__930160339.pdf http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section?content=a930160339&fulltext=713240928

Revealed, six decades of ‘ritual’ child abuse: Catholic schools and orphanages damned in report
By Tom Kelly 21st May 2009
Abuse was ‘endemic’ in childrens’ institutions
Safety of children in general was not a consideration
No abusers will be prosecuted
Victims banned from launch of shocking report

Church leaders and government watchdogs covered up ‘endemic’ and ‘ritualised’ abuse of thousands of children in Roman Catholic schools and orphanages in the Irish Republic, a shocking report revealed yesterday.

For six decades, priests and nuns terrorised boys and girls in the workhouse-style schools with sexual, physical and mental abuse.

But officials in Ireland’s Catholic Church shielded paedophile staff from arrest to protect their own reputations despite knowing they were serial attackers, according to the 2,600-page report, which took nine years to complete.

Irish government inspectors also failed to stop the chronic beatings, rape and humiliation, it found.

About 35,000 children and teenagers who were orphans, petty thieves, truants, unmarried mothers or from dysfunctional families were sent to Ireland’s network of 250 Church-run industrial schools, reformatories, orphanages and hostels from the 1930s up until the early 1990s.

The report by Ireland’s Commission to Inquire Into Child Abuse found ‘a climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions and all those run for boys’.

It added: ‘Children lived with the daily terror of not knowing where the next beating was coming from.’

Judge Sean Ryan, who chaired the commission, said that when confronted with evidence of sex abuse, religious authorities responded by moving the sex offenders to another location, where in many instances they were free to abuse again.

‘There was evidence that such men took up teaching positions sometimes within days of receiving dispensations because of serious allegations or admissions of sexual abuse,’ the report said.

‘The safety of children in general was not a consideration.’….
The report found that molestation and rape were ‘endemic’ in boys’ facilities, chiefly run by the Christian Brothers order.

Girls supervised by orders of nuns, chiefly the Sisters of Mercy, suffered much less sexual abuse but frequent assaults and humiliation designed to make them feel worthless.

‘In some schools a high level of ritualised beating was routine,’ the report said. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1184828/Revealed-decades-ritual-child-abuse-Catholic-schools-orphanages-damned-report.html

482 children died. Now what?

482 children died. Now what? Carol Capo

April 11, 2011

If 482 children had died in Virginia because of tainted formula or shoddy cribs, there would be people going door to door to recall all the suspect cans and cribs they could find.

If 482 children had died in Virginia because the brakes on a certain make of car were faulty, we would have demanded action from Congress — and got it.

482 children did die in Virginia, over the 11-year period that ended June 30, 2010. But they weren’t sickened by bad food or suffocated by collapsing cribs or crushed by careening cars. They died because the people who loved them, or should have, killed them or let them die.

That astounding number is the count of children who died of abuse or neglect at the hands of a caretaker, in just this state in just this period of time….

In Hampton Roads, in that time, 196 children died….
This is what we know about those 196 children: They were almost all babies. About half never got to celebrate their first birthday, and three-quarters were no older than two.

We know how they died: The single most common cause was inflicted head injury.

We know who killed them. 60 percent died because of the action or inaction of a parent; 11 percent were the victims of a parent’s lover, usually the mother’s.

http://www.dailypress.com/news/dp-nws-capo-column-0412-20110411,0,1411662.column

Children speaking up about crime, abuse: study

Children speaking up about crime, abuse: study (2011-01-03)
CHICAGO (Reuters) – Children are increasingly stepping forward and telling school officials, doctors and the police when they have been the victims of crime or abuse, U.S. researchers said on Monday. A telephone survey of more than 4,500 U.S. children and teens done in 2008 found that nearly half who experienced violence, abuse or crime told someone at school, the police or a doctor or nurse. That compares with 25 percent of cases in a similar study done in 1992, David Finkelhor of the University of New Hampshire and colleagues reported in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine….

More than 58 percent of the children and teens said they had been personally victimized at least once in the past year. This included bullying but did not include witnessing crime, such as domestic assault.
Nearly 46 percent said they had informed authorities of the victimization. This was especially true of more serious problems. For example, authorities had been told about 69 percent of the cases of sexual abuse by a known adult.

But children also spoke up about other problems, with 51.5 percent telling someone about emotional bullying, 48 percent telling someone about neglect and 47 percent telling authorities about a theft….

“That 58.3 percent of the children and adolescents in the study sample reported at least one direct victimization incident within the past year speaks to the enormity of the problem of victimization experienced by children and adolescents in our society,” Drs. Andrea Gottsegen Asnes and John Leventhal of Yale University School of Medicine in Connecticut wrote in a commentary in the same journal.

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wbfo/news.newsmain/article/0/0/1744253/US/Children.speaking.up.about.crime..abuse.study

Germany mass child abuse, Knights of Columbus accused of child abuse, porn ring

Germany admits enslaving and abusing a generation of children
Lawsuits accuse Knights of Columbus of child abuse
Federal authorities say they broke up a global child porn ring

Germany admits enslaving and abusing a generation of children
Government agrees up to €120m in compensation for three decades of post-war ‘Nazi-era’ brutality in foster homes  By Tony Paterson in Berlin  Tuesday, 14 December 2010

Germany has owned up to one of the most disturbing examples of mass child and youth abuse in its post-war history, some 60 years after the first teenagers started being locked away and mistreated by supposedly “caring” foster homes.

The country agreed yesterday to provide a €120m (£101m) compensation fund for the estimated 30,000 victims who were among the 800,000 children in German foster homes in the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies.

Institutions that for decades meted out inhuman treatment – including ritual beatings, periods of solitary confinement, forced labour and sexual assaults – were not youth remand centres or borstals as might be expected, but homes run by nuns and priests in former West Germany’s Catholic and Protestant churches, as well as state-run homes.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/germany-admits-enslaving-and-abusing-a-generation-of-children-2159589.html

Lawsuits accuse Knights of Columbus of child abuse NEW HAVEN, Connecticut Dec 14, 2010 (Reuters) – The Knights of Columbus was sued on Tuesday by two men who said they were sexually abused as children by a leader of a youth group run by the Roman Catholic fraternal organization. The federal lawsuits allege that Knights of Columbus officials knew a leader of the Columbian Squires youth group in Texas was molesting children but did not make any effort to stop him or remove him from the position.

The suits are believed to be the first child sex abuse claims filed against the Catholic group, said Jeffrey Herman, the attorney representing the two alleged victims….
“We emphatically deny the allegations that have been made,” said Patrick Korten, a spokesman for the Knights of Columbus.
With 1.8 million members worldwide, the Knight of Columbus is the world’s largest Catholic mens’ organization and is focused on charity work….

In one of the lawsuits, an unnamed Kansas resident claims the Squires leader abused him from 1978, when he was 10 years old, until 1986.
He claims the leader shared him with other youth counselors in the group and threatened to kill him if he told anyone, the lawsuit said.
The second lawsuit came from Texas resident Jim Dennany, who said he alerted Knights of Columbus officials in 1986 to assaults he said he suffered in the 1970s when he was a young teenager.

He claimed the group took no action, concealed the allegations and told him to keep quiet, according to the lawsuit….
The Knights of Columbus spokesman said the group first became aware of allegations of sexual abuse against Rivera in December 2009.
“We acted immediately, removing him from any responsibility involving youth programs,” Korten said. The group also alerted local authorities in Brownsville, Texas…
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6BD5LW20101214

Federal authorities say they broke up a global child porn ring By Michael Martinez, CNN December 15, 2010 Los Angeles (CNN) — Federal authorities announced Tuesday they dismantled an international child pornography ring that allowed its 35 male members to trade thousands of images and videos of boys in sexually explicit situations through a website.

The announcement was made in the wake of Monday’s guilty plea by a Georgia man to transporting child pornography using a secret Internet bulletin board called “Lost Boy.” That website operated from September 2007 to January 2009, when authorities shut it down and began investigating the men who operated it, officials said….

The investigation has also led to the identification of 27 victims of child abuse in the United States, including some whose images were posted on the Lost Boy bulletin board, officials said….

The bulletin board also had a “Handbook Project,” where members contributed to a guide on how to find and groom boys to engage in sex and how to move on to other victims when the current victim grows too old to be attractive to the members, authorities said.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/12/14/california.child.porn/index.html

Survivors of Extreme Abuse, Ritual Abuse, Student Sexual Harassment, Congo Rapes

Survivors of Extreme Abuse: The Awful Rowing Toward Social Emancipation S.M.A.R.T. PRESENTATION August 2010 “Survivors of extreme abuse have intimate knowledge of unspeakable treachery going on behind closed doors, including the deliberate, trauma-based dissociation of children, child, drug and arms trafficking, child pornography and murder. We can also identify the criminals committing these crimes, some of which are perpetrated by vast organized crime syndicates. In spite of great efforts by those in power in the last few years to normalize torture and state-sanctioned murder, the public would not abide these horrors if they had this information, if they knew what was going on.” http://www.scribd.com/doc/39485949/The-Awful-Rowing-Speech
also at
http://ritualabuse.us/smart-conference/2010-conference/survivors-of-extreme-abuse-the-awful-rowing-toward-social-emancipation/

Craighead, W. E.; Corsini, R.J.; Nemeroff, C. B. (2002) The Corsini Encyclopedia of Psychology and Behavioral Science Published by John Wiley and Sons ISBN 0471270830 – Sadistic Ritual Abuse  (p.1435 – 1438) http://books.google.com/books?id=JQMRmyOfpJ8C&pg=PA1435&vq=ritual+abuse&output=html&source=gbs_search_r&cad=1

1 in 3 schoolgirls ‘has been molested’ and many more face harassment By Daily Mail Reporter 15th October 2010
Almost a third of girls say they have been subjected to unwanted sexual contact at school, a poll found yesterday. Many more face harassment such as name calling on a regular basis, the poll revealed. The survey of almost 800 16 to 18-year-olds found that 29 per cent of girls questioned had been the victim of groping, kissing or touching while at school. Around one in seven (14 per cent) of the boys questioned said the same.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1320706/1-3-schoolgirls-molested-face-harassment.html

UN envoy says over 15,000 raped in eastern Congo   By Edith M. Lederer, Associated Press Writer – Oct 15, 2010
UNITED NATIONS – More than 15,000 people were raped in the volatile eastern region of Congo last year, according to the best data available, the top U.N. envoy in the African nation said Friday. Roger Meece, who heads the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Congo, said the scale of the security problems in the east, including sexual attacks, is “enormous.” Meece told the U.N. Security Council that the “horrific” mass rapes in late July and early August by rebel militias in eastern Congo’s mineral-rich Walikale region underscored the importance of protecting civilians….Somewhat different but equally troubling figures were provided by the U.N. Population Fund, which determined there were 17,507 sexual violence attacks throughout Congo in 2009 — including more than 9,000 in North and South Kivu which have been at the center of the conflict in the east.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101015/ap_on_re_us/un_un_congo_rapes