Vast international child-p_rn network uncovered

Vast international child-porn network uncovered   

By DENISE LAVOIE AP Legal Affairs Writer Aug 4, 2012

BOSTON (AP) — The men came from different walks of life on two continents: a children’s puppeteer in Florida, a hotel manager in Massachusetts, an emergency medical technician in Kansas, a day care worker in the Netherlands. In all, 43 men have been arrested over the past two years in a horrific, far-flung child porn network that unraveled like a sweater with a single loose thread….

Authorities have identified more than 140 young victims so far and say there is no end in sight as they pore through hundreds of thousands of images found on the suspects’ computers. They are also trying to determine whether the men who talked about murder and cannibalism actually committed such acts or were just sharing twisted fantasies….

Robert Mikelsons, a 27-year-old day care worker who baby-sat the boy, was arrested. On his computer were thousands and thousands of images of children being molested and raped, including the boy holding the stuffed bunny.
Photos and online chats found on computers owned by Diduca and Mikelsons led to more than three dozen other suspects in seven countries, including Canada, Britain, Germany, Sweden and Mexico. The oldest victim in the Netherlands was 4, the youngest just 19 days old….

Mikelsons also received an 18-year sentence, followed by indefinite psychiatric commitment, after confessing to sexually abusing more than 80 children….

What they found on Arnett’s computer was unlike anything some of the investigators had ever come across: long, graphic, online chats about his desire to abduct, kill and eat children. They said he had also made photos of a naked 2-year-old boy in a roasting pan inside his oven. The child and two other boys Arnett allegedly abused and photographed were later identified and found alive….

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CHILD_PORN_NETWORK?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-08-04-10-44-22

Arrests in major child porn investigation  Aug 4,2012
Some of the men charged in an international child porn investigation that has led to 43 arrests and the identification of more than 140 child victims….
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_CHILD_PORN_NETWORK_GLANCE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-08-04-10-28-26

 

Babies often tortured by fundamentalist polygamists: Witness

also:
Nine arrested in child sex abuse investigation – Rochdale

describes abuse
Babies often tortured by fundamentalist polygamists: Witness

By Daphne Bramham, Postmedia News January 13, 2011  Water torture of babies is one way some members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints instil fear of authority, a former member testified Wednesday.

“It’s quite common,” Carolyn Blackmore Jessop said. She was a witness for the B.C. government in the constitutional reference case to determine whether Canada’s polygamy law is valid….

Jessop talked about the practice during her testimony in B.C. Supreme Court.

Her assertions about water torture were not challenged by FLDS lawyer Robert Wickett during cross-examination.
Outside the courthouse, Jessop said water torture is common enough that there doesn’t seem to be any shame attached to the practice.

In her cousin’s baby book, there’s a handwritten note by her mother noting that when her daughter was 18 months old, she was becoming quite a handful and, as a result, was being held under the tap on a regular basis….

http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Babies+often+tortured+fundamentalist+polygamists+Witness/4100427/story.html

Nine arrested in child sex abuse investigation – Rochdale arrests made after a police inquiry into the sexual exploitation of teenage girls – Helen Carter guardian.co.uk 11 January 2011

Police investigating a group of men who allegedly groomed young girls for sex in Rochdale have made a series of arrests.

Greater Manchester police said nine men had been arrested on suspicion of causing or inciting child prostitution, sexual activity with a child and paying for the sexual services of a child. The men, aged between 20 and 40 from Rochdale and Heywood, were arrested on 21 December.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jan/11/nine-arrested-sex-abuse-rochdale

Is free will simply a myth?, Bush Six, Investigation into U.S. Torture

articles:
The uncomfortable truth about mind control: Is free will simply a myth?
Bringing the ‘Bush Six’ to justice
The Spanish Investigation into U.S. Torture

The uncomfortable truth about mind control: Is free will simply a myth?
In the Sixties, a groundbreaking series of experiments found that 65 per cent of us would kill if ordered to do so. By Michael Mosley 6 January 2011

We have vain brains; we see ourselves as better than we really are. We like to think that we exercise free will, that put into a situation where we were challenged to do something we thought unacceptable then we’d refuse. But, if you believe that, then you are probably deluded. I make this claim, based partly on the work of psychologist Stanley Milgram. Milgram devised and carried out ingenious experiments that exposed the frailty and self-delusion that are central to our lives. He showed how easy it is to make ordinary people do terrible things, that “evil” often happens for the most mundane of reasons….

Milgram argued that far from being in any way fake, his experiment demonstrated in a very stark way something that we all know happens, but which we can’t bring ourselves to believe. It is more comfortable to imagine that there was something uniquely evil or weak about German prison guards than to believe that most of us would behave the same way when faced by the same set of circumstances. “One of the illusions about human behaviour is that it stems from personality or character, but social psychology shows us that often human behaviour is dominated by the roles that we are asked to play.”….

Milgram once wrote that we are “puppets controlled by the strings of society”. Yet what is also true is that not all puppets jump when their strings are pulled. Many of the fast-food managers who were rung up the “policeman” refused to follow his orders. In Milgram’s own experiment, although 65 per cent of the volunteers were prepared to give apparently lethal electric shocks, that still left 35 per cent who would not.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/features/the-uncomfortable-truth-about-mind-control-is-free-will-simply-a-myth-2177014.html

Bringing the ‘Bush Six’ to justice – If those responsible for the Bush administration’s torture policy will not face charges in the US, then in Spain it must be Michael Ratner guardian.co.uk  7 January 2011

Today, the Centre for Constitutional Rights filed papers encouraging Judge Eloy Velasco and the Spanish national court to do what the United States will not: prosecute the “Bush Six”. These are the former senior administration legal advisors, headed by then US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who violated international law by creating a legal framework that materially contributed to the torture of suspected terrorists at US-run facilities at Guantánamo and other overseas locations.

Friday’s filing provides Judge Velasco with the legal framework for the prosecution of government lawyers – a prosecution that last took place during the Nuremberg trials, when Nazi lawyers who provided cover for the Third Reich’s war crimes and crimes against humanity were held accountable for their complicity.

CCR would prefer to see American cases tried in American courts. But we have joined the effort to pursue the Bush Six overseas because two successive American presidents have made it clear that there will be no justice for the architects of the US torture programme, or any of their accomplices, on American soil.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jan/06/george-bush-torture

The Spanish Investigation into U.S. Torture -  Synopsis
Seeking a venue in which to hold former high-ranking U.S. officials accountable for their individual roles in directing, implementing or planning the U.S. torture program, victims and human rights advocates filed criminal complaints in Spain in 2009.

Status – Currently, there are two investigations related to the U.S. torture program pending in the National Court of Spain. The Center for Constitutional Rights has made filings in both, in an effort to ensure that victims have their day in court and that the individuals behind the program that tortured and otherwise seriously abused detainees are prosecuted. (has pdfs of “Relevant Filings in U.S. Torture Program”)
http://ccrjustice.org/ourcases/current-cases/spanish-investigation-us-torture