Ariel Castro, Cleveland Kidnappings – History of Abuse, Pentagon estimates 26,000 sexual assaults

- Hints of a dark side in Cleveland abduction suspect’s life
- In note, Ariel Castro claimed he was sexually abused as a child
- Cleveland kidnapping suspect had history of abuse, former lover said
- Cleveland kidnappings: Suspect Ariel Castro had ‘no flaw,’ neighbor says
- Pentagon estimates 26,000 sexual assaults

Hints of a dark side in Cleveland abduction suspect’s life
By Daniel Trotta CLEVELAND  Wed May 8, 2013

(Reuters) – In hindsight, there were signs of a darker side to Ariel Castro, the Cleveland man suspected of abducting three girls and holding them captive for around a decade.

Divorced years ago and never seen in the company of women, Castro suddenly started showing up in the largely Latino, working-class neighborhood with a 6-year-old girl. It was his girlfriend’s child, he told neighbors.

Castro, 52, was believed to have lived alone, yet on his lunch break would bring home enough bags of fast food and beverages for several people.

He was a school bus driver given mostly “excellent” marks on his performance appraisals, but was repeatedly disciplined, including for one incident when he was accused of calling a young student a “bitch” and leaving the child alone on a bus. These incidents eventually caught up with him, and he was fired last November….

“Ariel was in my garage probably five or six years ago. We were recording a song, an idea we had – a little hard rock with some Latin,” said Joe Popow, 45, a father of six who said he has known the Castro brothers since childhood.

“And – you’re going to laugh – he said he was in the CIA. And I don’t know if he was joking or not, but it’s the way he said it, how serious he said it. I didn’t know what he was capable of. That just put me on defense, and I just started stepping away,” Popow said….
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/08/us-usa-missing-ohio-suspect-idUSBRE94704Z20130508

In note, Ariel Castro claimed he was sexually abused as a child
CBS News  May 9, 2013

A Cleveland man allegedly confessed years ago in writing to taking the three women he’s accused of raping and holding captive and said that he was abused as a child and raped by an uncle, CBS News senior investigative producer Pat Milton reports.

According to a law enforcement source, Ariel Castro apparently contemplated committing suicide in the lengthy, handwritten note discovered in his house from which the women – Amanda Berry, 27, Gina DeJesus, 23, and Michelle Knight, 32 – escaped Monday.

According to the source, Castro wrote about his whole life, saying that he was abused by his parents as a child and that he was raped by an uncle.

Castro also provided details about taking each of his alleged victims, who went missing in their teens and early 20s. The note was discovered by FBI agents searching his house this week.

CBS News correspondent Dean Reynolds reports Castro called himself a “sexual predator” and blamed the women for their own kidnappings, but he asks for whatever money he has to be donated to his victims after his death.

Investigators inferred from the 2004-dated note that Castro was going to commit suicide. He asked in the note that all of his money be provided to each of his victims….
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-201_162-57583660/in-note-ariel-castro-claimed-he-was-sexually-abused-as-a-child/

Cleveland kidnapping suspect had history of abuse, former lover said
By Alana Semuels and Ari Bloomekatz
May 8, 2013

CLEVELAND — One of the men suspected of imprisoning and abusing three recently freed young women was earlier accused of a series of violent acts against the mother of four of his children and was ordered to complete domestic violence and substance abuse counseling.

Grimilda Figueroa, who in various court documents filed in 2005 said she had four children with Ariel Castro, told authorities that Castro broke her nose twice, knocked out her tooth and threatened to kill her and her daughters several times.

“Ariel Castro and I were never married. During our relationship, he was very abusive,” Figueroa said, according to an affidavit filed in Cuyahoga County in 2005.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-ohio-women-cleveland-suspect-abuse-20130508,0,5534556.story

Cleveland kidnappings: Suspect Ariel Castro had ‘no flaw,’ neighbor says
By Michael Muskal and Alana Semuels
May 7, 2013
CLEVELAND – Ariel Castro, the former school bus driver who is a suspect in the kidnapping of three women who escaped years of incarceration, was a friendly man who befriended area children and gave no hint of what was happening behind the locked doors of his Seymour Avenue house, his neighbors say.

“If a kid didn’t have a father, they would look up to him. There was no flaw,” said Juan Perez, 27, who lives two doors down from the house from where the three abducted women escaped on Monday. “I guess he had a great mask to cover a monster.”

Castro was known for giving children rides in his four-wheeler. He attended neighborhood parties and would have a beer….

Hector Lugo, 31, who lives on the same street, said he still can’t believe the friendly guy who would give his nieces rides was allegedly the perpetrator behind kidnappings that have baffled this city for a decade.

“He used to drive my nieces on his four-wheeler. That’s what threw me off,” Lugo said. “They always thought of him as a cool person — a cool person to kick it with. He was an outgoing person, he never messed with anyone. He was always cool.”….
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-cleveland-kidnappings-ariel-castro-20130507,0,325028.story

Pentagon estimates 26,000 sexual assaults; Obama vows crackdown
By DAVID S. CLOUD Tribune Washington Bureau  Tuesday, May. 7, 2013

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon estimated that 26,000 members of the military were sexually assaulted in unreported incidents last year – 35 percent more than in 2010 – a severe trend that senior officials warned could threaten recruiting and retention of women in uniform….

police in Arlington, Va., arrested the chief of the Air Force sexual-assault prevention branch for allegedly groping a woman outside a bar near the Pentagon, the latest sexual scandal to hit the headlines. Officials said Lt. Col. Jeffrey Krusinski was removed from his post after the arrest.

….An investigation that began in 2011 at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas has turned up 59 cases of sexual assault of military recruits by drill instructors….
http://www.sacbee.com/2013/05/07/5402972/pentagon-estimates-26000-sexual.html

Chronic Child Abuse Strong Indicator of Negative Adult Experiences

Chronic Child Abuse Strong Indicator of Negative Adult Experiences

ScienceDaily (May 15, 2012) — Child abuse or neglect are strong predictors of major health and emotional problems, but little is known about how the chronicity of the maltreatment may increase future harm apart from other risk factors in a child’s life.

In a new study published in the current issue of the journal Pediatrics, Melissa Jonson-Reid, PhD, child welfare expert and a professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, looked at how chronic maltreatment impacted the future health and behavior of children and adults.

The study tracked children by number of child maltreatment reports (zero to four or more) and followed the children into early adulthood, by which time some of the children had become parents.

The study sought to determine how well the number of child maltreatment reports predicted poor outcomes in adolescence, such as delinquency, substance abuse in the teen years or getting a sexually transmitted disease.

“For every measure studied, a more chronic history of child maltreatment reports was powerfully predictive of worse outcomes,” Jonson-Reid says.

“For most outcomes, having a single maltreatment report put children at a 20 percent to 50 percent higher risk than non-maltreated comparison children….

In models of adult outcomes, children with four or more reports were about least twice as likely to later abuse their own children and have contact with the mental health system, even when controlling for the negative outcomes during adolescence.” Jonson-Reid says that there appears to be good reason to put resources into preventing ongoing maltreatment.

“Successfully interrupting chronic child maltreatment may well reduce risk of a wide range of other costly child and adolescent health and behavioral problems,” she says.

Jonson-Reid cites a recently published Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study estimating lifetime costs for a single year’s worth of children reported for maltreatment at $242 billion….

The study also found that maltreatment predicts a range of negative adolescent outcomes, and those adolescent outcomes then predict poor adult outcomes.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120515131321.htm

Child and Adult Outcomes of Chronic Child Maltreatment
Melissa Jonson-Reid, PhD, Patricia L. Kohl, PhD, and Brett Drake, PhD
Abstract

….RESULTS: Child maltreatment chronicity predicted negative childhood outcomes in a linear fashion (eg, percentage with at least 1 negative outcome: no maltreatment = 29.7%, 1 report = 39.5%, 4 reports = 67.1%). Suicide attempts before age 18 showed the largest proportionate increase with repeated maltreatment (no report versus 4+ reports = +625%, P < .0001). The dose-response relationship was reduced once controls for other adverse child outcomes were added in multivariate models of child maltreatment perpetration and mental health issues. The relationship between adult substance abuse and maltreatment report history disappeared after controlling for adverse child outcomes.

CONCLUSIONS: Child maltreatment chronicity as measured by official reports is a robust indicator of future negative outcomes across a range of systems, but this relationship may desist for certain adult outcomes once childhood adverse events are controlled. Although primary and secondary prevention remain important approaches, this study suggests that enhanced tertiary prevention may pay high dividends across a range of medical and behavioral domains.

http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/129/5/839.abstract

72 charged in online child pornography ring, Violence Against Women and effects

“the bulletin board distributed the equivalent of 16,000 DVDs of child pornography, adding that the department had recovered more than 1 million images in the U.S. alone.”

“In the United States, more than 20 percent of women have experienced intimate-partner violence, stalking or both. A full 17 percent have reported rape or attempted rape, according to background information in the study.”

72 charged in online child pornography ring

Fifty-two have been arrested in the U.S. and abroad and 13 have pleaded guilty in the case, the result of a crackdown by the Justice and Homeland Security departments. Twenty remain at large.
By Andrew Seidman, Washington Bureau
August 3, 2011

Reporting from Washington—
The Justice Department has charged 72 suspected members of an online child pornography ring that encouraged its members to engage in sexual acts with children 12 and under and submit gruesome, violent material to build a massive private database of images and videos on the Internet.

The crackdown is the result of a joint effort by the departments of Justice and Homeland Security launched in December 2009 to target about 500 people in 13 countries on five continents for their suspected participation in “Dreamboard,” a members-only online bulletin board that was created to encourage the sharing of graphic images and videos.

“The members of this criminal network shared a demented dream to create the preeminent online community for the promotion of child sexual exploitation,” Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. said in a statement, “but for the children they victimized, this was nothing short of a nightmare.”

According to court documents filed in Louisiana, where the ring originated, administrators for Dreamboard set up strict barriers to entry and created a sophisticated membership system that offered incentives for further contributions to the website. Individuals had to post child pornography in order to join the site. To maintain membership, individuals were required to continue to upload images of sexual abuse….

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said that the bulletin board distributed the equivalent of 16,000 DVDs of child pornography, adding that the department had recovered more than 1 million images in the U.S. alone.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/la-na-child-porn-20110804,0,5337258.story

Violence Against Women Can Take Lifelong Toll: Study
Research shows how rates of mental and physical illness rise, quality of life falls

By Serena Gordon HealthDay Reporter
TUESDAY, Aug. 2 (HealthDay News)

Women who’ve suffered from gender-based violence are more likely to develop anxiety disorders or other mental woes, experience physical and mental disabilities, and have worse quality of life than other women, new research shows.

Gender-based violence includes rape and other forms of sexual assault, intimate-partner violence (such as spouse abuse) and stalking.

Risks for these long-term problems rose with the intensity of abuse. For example, women who’d experienced three or four types of gender-based violence had 10 times the odds of developing an anxiety disorder than women who haven’t experienced such violence, the study found. The odds of a woman who’d been subjected to such violence developing a substance abuse problem were almost six times higher than for a woman who hasn’t experienced gender-based violence….

Results of the study are published in the Aug. 3 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association….

In the United States, more than 20 percent of women have experienced intimate-partner violence, stalking or both. A full 17 percent have reported rape or attempted rape, according to background information in the study.

The data for Rees’ study came from a national survey done in Australia on mental health and well-being. The survey included over 4,400 women between the ages of 16 and 85 years old.

In that group, 1,218 women (27 percent) reported experiencing at least one form of gender-based violence, while 139 had been exposed to three or more forms of gender-based violence.

The average age that women were first raped was 13 years old and 12 years old for sexual assault. The average age that women were beaten by a partner or stalked was 22 years old.

The more violence a woman was exposed to, the greater her risk of developing mental illnesses, according to the study.

http://consumer.healthday.com/Article.asp?AID=655484

 

Sirhan Sirhan ‘hypno-programmed’, Human rights law in clergy sex abuse suit

articles
1) ‘He does not remember it’: RFK killer seeks parole – Sirhan Sirhan’s attorney suggests assassin was ‘hypno-programmed’
2) Human rights law can be used in clergy sex abuse suit, judge rules – St. Paul lawyer’s attacks on church show increasingly international reach
3) Strong Link Found Between Victimization, Substance Abuse
4) Missing Link, Newsletter of The Linkup (The Newsletter of the Survivors of Clergy Abuse)

‘He does not remember it’: RFK killer seeks parole – Sirhan Sirhan’s attorney suggests assassin was
‘hypno-programmed’ 2/28/2011 LOS ANGELES AP

More than four decades after Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated, his convicted murderer wants to go free for a crime he says he can’t remember.

It is not old age or some memory-snatching disease that has erased an act Sirhan Bishara Sirhan once said he committed “with 20 years of malice aforethought.” It’s been this way almost from the beginning. Hypnotists and psychologists, lawyers and investigators have tried to jog his memory with no useful result.

Now a new lawyer is on the case and he says his efforts have also failed. “There is no doubt he does not remember the critical events,” said William F. Pepper, the attorney who will argue for Sirhan’s parole Wednesday. “He is not feigning it. It’s not an act. He does not remember it.”….

Pepper also suggests Sirhan was “hypno-programmed,” turning him into a virtual “Manchurian Candidate,” acting robot-like at the behest of evil forces who then wiped his memory clean. It’s the stuff of science fiction and Hollywood movies, but some believe it is the key…..

Pepper said in an interview with The Associated Press that he has had Sirhan examined several times by psychologist Daniel Brown of Harvard University, an expert in hypnosis of trauma victims. He will not disclose exactly what was accomplished in the sessions but said, “There have been substantial breakthroughs.” http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41822218/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/
also http://nhjournal.com/2011/02/28/assassin-maintains-he-can%E2%80%99t-remember-shooting-rfk/

Human rights law can be used in clergy sex abuse suit, judge rules – St. Paul lawyer’s attacks on church show increasingly international reach By Annysa Johnson of the Journal Sentinel  Feb. 28, 2011

A federal law that allows U.S. courts to hear lawsuits involving human rights violations in other nations can be used in a case involving Catholic clergy sex abuse, a federal judge in Los Angeles ruled on Monday.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Josephine S. Tucker appears to be the first time the 200-year-old Alien Tort Statute has been used to pursue a sex abuse claim against the Catholic Church. And it illustrates the increasing international reach of victims attorney Jeffrey Anderson of St. Paul, Minn., who is suing the Vatican and has opened a practice in London to pursue cases in the United Kingdom. Anderson represents a number of victims in civil fraud cases against the Archdiocese of Milwaukee.

“This is huge, very significant,” said Anderson, who filed the case on behalf of a Mexican boy after seeing the law used to bring cases involving Japanese women conscripted as sex slaves in World War II. http://www.jsonline.com/features/religion/117108133.html

Strong Link Found Between Victimization, Substance Abuse
ScienceDaily (Feb. 28, 2011) — A strong link between victimization experiences and substance abuse has been discovered by researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago….Researchers compared victimization experiences of unwanted sexual activity, neglect, physical violence, and assault with a weapon, across four sexual-identity subgroups — heterosexual, gay or lesbian, bisexual, or “not sure.” The study used data collected nationally from 34,635 adults from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions.

Hughes and her research team wondered if sexual-minority women and men are at a heightened risk for victimization. The results, Hughes said, showed that they are.

Lesbian and bisexual women were more than twice as likely as heterosexual women to report any victimization over their lifetime. Lesbians, gay men and bisexual women also reported a greater number of victimization experiences than did heterosexuals. Three times as many lesbians as heterosexual women reported childhood sexual abuse….
Gay men also had high rates of victimization, with about half of them reporting any lifetime victimization. They reported significantly higher rates of childhood sexual abuse, childhood neglect, partner violence and assault with a weapon than heterosexual men.

Not only are there higher rates of violence and victimization among sexual minorities, but there is also a higher rate of substance abuse, Hughes said.

Regardless of sexual identity, women who reported two or more victimization experiences had two to four times the prevalence of alcohol dependence, drug abuse or drug dependence as women who reported no victimization, she said.

The research also concluded that gay, lesbian and bisexual youth may use substances to cope with adverse psychological and interpersonal effects of victimization, increasing the risk for further victimization from others, she said.

The study was funded through grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, two of the National Institutes of Health. http://www.sciencedaily.com­/releases/2011/02/110224161516.htm

Missing Link, Newsletter of The Linkup (The Newsletter of the Survivors of Clergy Abuse) The collection of 22 newsletters is at http://cityofangels8.blogspot.com