Luis Walker, Air Force Staff Sgt., Faces Sentencing For Rape, Assault, Chile investigating 61 schools for child sex abuse

Luis Walker, Air Force Staff Sgt., Faces Sentencing For Rape, Assault
By WILL WEISSERT 07/21/12

SAN ANTONIO — An Air Force instructor convicted of raping a female recruit and sexually assaulting several others cried Saturday as he asked a military jury not to sentence him to life in prison.

Staff Sgt. Luis Walker is among 12 Lackland Air Force Base instructors investigated for sexual misconduct toward at least 31 female trainees, and he faced the most serious counts among the six instructors charged in a sex scandal that rocked one of the nation’s busiest training bases.

A military jury convicted Walker on Friday on all 28 counts including rape, aggravated sexual contact and multiple counts of aggravated sexual assault. Trial judge Col. Wesley Moore consolidated those charges into 20 on Saturday morning, saying some counts duplicated others, but the change did not affect Walker’s maximum sentence….

Five of the women testified Saturday at Walker’s sentencing, saying they couldn’t sleep or maintain relationships with men after the assaults. They said Walker’s actions eroded their trust in authority and affected their performance at work.

“It’s gotten to where I had anger issues even at work,” said one, who had left the military. “If anyone makes even the slightest sexual reference, I go off. I have zero self-control.”….

The women told jurors during the trial that Walker gained their trust to get them alone in his office or an empty dormitory, where he then forced them into kissing, touching or intercourse. The alleged sexual misconduct among instructors at the base apparently began in 2009, but the first woman didn’t come forward until last year. The women who testified against Walker said they didn’t tell anybody at first because they feared being booted from the Air Force…..

According to prosecutors, Walker had sexual intercourse with four of the 10 female recruits. He was also accused of making flirtatious or sexually suggestive comments, sending inappropriate text messages and sometimes groping his recruits.

Prosecutors also accused Walker of forcing five recruits to engage in sexual acts with him by threatening their military careers, and they said he intimidated two of the women into lying about his alleged misconduct. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/21/luis-walker-air-force-sta_n_1691690.html

Chile investigating 61 schools for child sex abuse  July 20, 2012

SANTIAGO, Chile — Chile’s attorney general is investigating 61 schools in the country’s capital for possible child sex abuse….

Attorney general Sabas Chahuan said Friday that his office will look at 49 schools in eastern Santiago and 12 on the capital’s west side. Several teachers have recently been accused of sexually molesting children at day care centers and schools in affluent neighborhoods on the city’s eastern side.

According to official estimates, reports of sexual abuse of children under age 14 jumped 22 percent in the first half of the year, compared to the same period in 2011. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-501715_162-57477114/chile-investigating-61-schools-for-child-sex-abuse/

Jerry Sandusky trial: Former coach allegedly wrote intimate letters to victims, Child sex-abuse cases under-reported, often ignored

Jerry Sandusky trial: Former coach allegedly wrote intimate letters to victims
Tuesday, Jun 5, 2012 Associated Press and Sporting News staff

Former Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky allegedly sent love letters and gifts to his victims, ABC News reported on the first day of jury selection in Sandusky’s child molestation case.

Known only as Victim 4, one of Sandusky’s eight accusers said he received intimate letters from the former coach. The letters will be read into testimony during the trial, which begins on Monday. Victim 4, who is expected to be the first person to testify, will also show gifts Sandusky gave him during the course of their relationship.

The letters, said to be in Sandusky’s handwriting, are expected to corroborate the accusations of Victim 4, who met Sandusky through the former coach’s Second Mile charity. Victim 4, now 28 years old, is one of seven alleged victims who will testify against Sandusky in the three-week trial.

Ben Andreozzi, Victim 4′s attorney, says the letters will play a key part in the case against Sandusky. “They have evidence to support his allegations, and there’s other evidence that has not been released to the public yet that I think will really resonate with the jury,” Andreozzi told ABC News….

Sandusky, 68, faces 52 criminal counts and potential penalties that could result in an effective life prison sentence for alleged abuse involving 10 boys. He has denied the allegations.
http://aol.sportingnews.com/ncaa-football/story/2012-06-05/jerry-sandusky-trial-jury-selection-sexual-abuse-penn-state

Child sex-abuse cases under-reported, often ignored Saturday, June 2, 2012 Sat Jun 2, 2012   By Bill Heltzel and Halle Stockton

….David Scott Zimmerman’s case is a cautionary tale about what happens when certain patterns of behavior are not recognized and reported. Another boy described abusive sexual conduct by Zimmerman to school officials — three years after the 1995 incident involving the first boy. Vincentian officials immediately suspended Zimmerman, notified police and the county prosecutor, and started their own investigation. Ultimately, 13 boys told police of sexual behavior by Zimmerman. This time, a public scandal engulfed the Catholic high school. Court proceedings show that the school made a deal with Zimmerman to keep quiet about his dismissal if he absolved the school of liability. He also kept his teaching license.

A proposed Pennsylvania law would make confidential deals like the one between Zimmerman and Vincentian impossible. Other states have already acted. Oregon recently passed a law that could make it easier to recognize sexual misconduct. The law, cited as a model, could stop abuse in its early stages. Recent changes in Oregon law were made because of the Sandusky case, officials said. As policymakers consider a response, teachers, parents and students can be alert to recognize classic “grooming” patterns that are precursors to the sexual abuse of children. Another effective step, experts say, is to ban the practice of “passing the trash,” a phrase that describes when a suspected school employee is allowed to resign quietly and without consequences.

“You can stop a lot of this behavior,” said Charol Shakeshaft, an education professor at Virginia Commonwealth University who studies sexual abuse. One of every 10 students becomes a target of sexual misconduct that includes such behavior as unwanted sexual comments, inappropriate touching, and even rape, Shakeshaft said. Yet only about 6 percent of child sexual-abuse cases are reported to authorities, and teachers….

Coaches or teachers suspected of abuse tend to single out students for special treatment, lavishing them with attention and rewards. They become unusually close to children, finding ways to spend time with them privately in school and on trips outside of school.

Recognizing these techniques and reporting them are the keys to stopping predators from abusing children, experts say.
http://www.timesonline.com/news/local_news/child-sex-abuse-cases-under-reported-often-ignored/article_8cf83740-ac23-11e1-842e-001a4bcf6878.html

Hundreds of Kenyan teachers sacked over sex abuse

Hundreds of Kenyan teachers sacked over sex abuse 7 October 2010
Most cases of abuse reported have occurred in rural schools – More than 1,000 teachers have been sacked in Kenya for sexually abusing girls over the past two years, the authorities say.
Senior government official Ahmed Hussein told the BBC that most of the victims were aged between 12 and 15….
Last year, 600 male teachers were dismissed and so far this year 550 teachers have lost their jobs for either kissing, touching or impregnating girls out a total teaching staff of 240,000 countrywide.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-11492499

measures to protect students from predators sometimes fail, pattern of abuse

Despite states’ efforts, measures to protect students from predators sometimes fail
By Michael Alison Chandler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, July 25, 2010  For nearly three decades, Kevin Ricks exploited gaps in a system that is supposed to keep sexual predators out of the classroom. He landed teaching jobs at one school after another — public and private, urban and rural, domestic and foreign — despite mounting evidence of his troubling personal relationships with male students. The emerging portrait of Ricks as a serial sexual abuser raises questions about why schools continued to hire him and what could have been done to stop him….

Maryland, Virginia and other states have long sought to bolster safeguards for students. They have required criminal background checks for prospective school employees, created tougher penalties for sex crimes committed by educators or others in positions of authority, and given employers liability protections to encourage them to speak candidly during reference checks. Many states also have required school systems to file reports when teachers are convicted of sexual crimes or resign amid allegations of abuse, so that their licenses can be reviewed or revoked.

None of these measures stopped Ricks. He held at least 12 teaching positions from 1982 until his arrest in February at Osbourn High School in Manassas….In 2004, a congressionally mandated study estimated that one in 10 students from kindergarten through 12th grade were victims of some form of sexual misconduct by a school employee — from being told a dirty joke or shown pornography to being inappropriately touched or raped. In 2007, an Associated Press investigation found more than 2,500 teachers nationwide had licenses revoked, suspended or denied from 2001 through 2005 because of sexual misconduct. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/24/AR2010072402589.html

Kevin Ricks’ career as teacher, tutor shows pattern of abuse that goes back decades By Josh White, Blaine Harden and Jennifer Buske
Sunday, July 25, 2010  What teachers, parents, students and even his wife didn’t know was that his journals contained decades of dark secrets, a running handwritten commentary of Ricks’s world of obsession, infatuation, pursuit, sexual abuse and international child exploitation. They didn’t know about his library of homemade pornographic videos and explicit photographs capturing his tequila-soaked sex acts with teenage boys he had handpicked. They didn’t know about the makeshift shrine boxes containing mementos of the episodes, including sex toys, soiled tissues and hair trimmings.

Even some of the victims didn’t know they were victims.
A four-month Washington Post investigation of Ricks’s career as a teacher, tutor, foreign exchange host and camp counselor has revealed a pattern of abuse that dates to at least 1978 and has left a trail of victims spanning the globe. But despite the abuse, Ricks moved from one teaching job to the next over nearly 30 years, navigating the nation’s public and private school systems undetected, evading traps designed to catch him.  In some cases, school officials and foreign exchange companies knew of or suspected Ricks’s inappropriate behavior and simply let him go, leaving the next employer with no idea what was coming.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/24/AR2010072402605.html

The Trial of Benedict XVI, Germany: 205 claims of abuse at Jesuit schools

Shanley recovered memory case
http://ritualabuse.us/research/memory-fms/shanley-recovered-memory-case/

The Trial of Benedict XVI By Jeff Israely and Howard Chua-Eoan Thursday, May. 27, 2010
How do you atone for something terrible, like the Inquisition?….When his turn came, Ratzinger, the church’s premier theologian, intoned a short prayer that said “that even men of the church, in the name of faith and morals, have sometimes used methods not in keeping with the Gospel in the solemn duty of defending the truth.”….

“He grabbed me, tickling and wrestling like I did with my dad, and I thought at first it was fun,” McDaid, who grew up in Salem, Mass., says of a parish priest. “But then something changed … He started grabbing my genitals. I felt him rubbing against me from behind … I was so scared. I knew this was so wrong. I looked out the window. I started praying.” That would happen again and again over three years. McDaid’s devout mother was delighted whenever the priest arrived to pick up her son, just 11 when the abuse started, to join other boys on trips to the beach. But, recalls McDaid, now 54, “the last boy out of the car was the one who would get molested.” He finally spoke to his dad, who then took him to a priest from the next town to report what had happened. “We waited for months. Then there was a rotation of priests. He left, but they made it look like a natural progression. They celebrated him with cake and ice cream.” The boy was left in silence and with his secret shame. The priest, Father Joseph Birmingham, went on to abuse boys in three other parishes in the Boston area before he died in 1989. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1992171,00.html

Germany: 205 claims of abuse at Jesuit schools
AP Thu May 27, 2010 MUNICH – A special investigator says in her final report that at least 205 former students claim to have been sexually or otherwise abused in Jesuit schools in Germany. Investigator Ursula Raue said Thursday she thinks the number is even higher, as “we cannot expect to have heard everything yet.” She said 46 Jesuits and non-clerical staff at the schools have been accused of abuse or of knowing of such crimes without acting.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100527/ap_on_re_eu/eu_germany_church_abuse

also at
http://www.wral.com/news/national_world/world/story/7677958/