Police bungle half of online child abuse cases, Two French soldiers suspended over child abuse allegations in Burkina Faso

Police bungle HALF of online child abuse cases: Examination of serious allegations was ‘superficial’ and basic police work not carried out, damning reports find

Experts say that 38 per cent of investigations involving vulnerable children are riddled with ‘inconsistencies’
While half of police probes into child abuse on the internet branded ‘inadequate’ in series of reports
In some cases, basic police work such as taking photographs of the scene were not undertaken
By Arthur Martin for the Daily Mail  1 July 2015

More than half of police investigations into child abuse on the internet are branded ‘inadequate’ by a damning series of reports published today.

Experts also say that 38 per cent of probes into all cases involving vulnerable children are riddled with ‘weaknesses and inconsistencies’.

In many cases investigations into child abuse or neglect were poor and plagued by delay, HM Inspectorate of Constabulary concluded.

Researchers found that the examination of serious allegations by officers were ‘superficial’ and crucial leads were not pursued.

In some cases, basic police work such as taking photographs of the scene, analysing mobile phones, or referring a child for medical attention were not undertaken.

During interviews with children, officers used ‘oppressive questioning’ techniques and in some cases were hostile towards the victims they were meant to be helping.

The findings are from three HMIC reports which warn that the police must reassess their approach to child protection or risk failing a new generation….
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3146630/Police-bungle-HALF-online-child-abuse-cases-Examination-allegations-superficial-basic-police-work-not-carried-damning-reports-find.html

Two French soldiers suspended over child abuse allegations in Burkina Faso
By Andrew V. Pestano July 1, 2015

PARIS, July 1 (UPI) — Two French soldiers have been suspended and an investigation has been launched due to allegations of child sexual abuse in Burkina Faso.

The soldiers are suspected of “committing acts of a sexual nature,” according to a statement by France’s Ministry of Defense, adding that an investigation has been launched by the Chief of Staff of the French Army, Gen. Jean-Pierre Bosser….

About 3,000 French soldiers are stationed in Burkina Faso, Mali, Chad, Mauritania and Niger as part of an anti-terrorism operation.

In another similar incident, a leaked United Nations report in April alleged 16 French peacekeepers abused children in the Central African Republic by exchanging goods, such as food, for sex between December 2013 and June 2014….
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2015/07/01/Two-French-soldiers-suspended-over-child-abuse-allegations-in-Burkina-Faso/3721435747266/

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Police may charge data centre in largest ever child abuse images bust, Alleged satanic priest gets bail, ‘Rape den’ initiation school branded girls

Police may charge data centre in largest ever child abuse images bust
by Lisa Vaas on March 4, 2015

Canadian police have seized over 1.2 petabytes of data from the dark net – more than four times the amount of data in the US Library of Congress – in what could be the largest child abuse image investigation ever.

In what would be a game-changing shift in prosecutorial tactics, police are considering going beyond the traditional method of prosecuting individuals and will potentially also press charges against the owner of the drives that hold that material – most likely, an Ontario data centre that houses the abusive images.

As Motherboard reports, police developed in-house password cracking software that’s slowly churning through the massive information trove.

Up to 7500 people – the number of unique IP addresses associated with the data seized – from nearly 100 countries could be implicated….

Police have developed password-cracking software that can cycle through 500,000 possibilities per second in order to sift through the seized data, which contains approximately 1.5 million compressed, password-protected RAR files, stored and analysed on the additional hardware they’ve had to purchase for the job.

Out of the 7500 IP addresses police have identified, 2200 of the users are in the US, 843 are in Germany, 534 are in Japan, 457 are in Russia, 394 in Canada, 380 in the UK and 374 in France. Until all the files have been password-cracked, however, there’s no saying how many of those files actually contain child porn…. https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2015/03/04/police-may-charge-data-centre-in-largest-ever-child-abuse-images-bust/

Alleged satanic priest gets bail
Sapa  04 March, 2015

The grandparents of a nine-year-old boy, his uncle, and a pastor were granted bail after a suspected satanic ritual that led to the boy’s alleged rape and molestation, according to a media report….

Magistrate Sharlotte Sithole said the medical report from 2013, when the boy was seven years-old, had no indications of sexual abuse or penetration.

On Monday, investigating officer Lt-Col Hendrik de Jager described the boy’s ordeal and said interviews revealed that over a period, possibly several years, the child was allegedly raped and molested multiple times by the group.

He said that there were threats to the boy and his mother, but on Tuesday Sitole said that there was no evidence of the threats.

The Star reported that De Jager said the uncle and grandparents allegedly took the boy to the pastor’s church once, where the adults donned masks and red robes and made a circle with red stones.

They surrounded the child, “prayed in strange tongues” and the child was asked to touch their genitals. He was also allegedly penetrated from behind by his uncle. http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/2015/03/04/alleged-satanic-priest-gets-bail

‘Rape den’ initiation school branded girls with hot irons: testimony
Sapa  04 March, 2015
An initiation school in Mpumalanga was used as a sex den where 21 girls aged between nine and 17 were repeatedly raped and physically abused, the Nelspruit circuit of the High Court in Pretoria heard on Wednesday.

One of the 21 girls testified against Johan Jabulani Mlombo, 48 and his wife, Sister Mapalase Khoza, 41, both from Masoyi near Hazyview, a Sapa correspondent reported.

The couple have been charged with assaulting and raping the girls at their initiation school in Mahushu, on August 29, 2012.

Both accused have pleaded not guilty to 27 charges of rape, three of sexual assault, and 19 of assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. They have been granted R1000 bail each.

….”I was the sixth victim to be called that night. She told me I had to see the big initiation and after we entered the main house, accused two asked me to enter inside a dark room.

“When I refused, she pushed me inside, closed the door, locking me inside with a male person. She did not enter but remained outside,” she said.

The girl testified the man inside gave her a cup of water to drink. He then told her never to tell anyone what was going to happen next.

“Although it was dark inside, I could feel he was naked on top and covered with a cloth at the bottom, because I touched and felt him. Using his hand, he removed my panties, climbed on top of me and raped me,” she said.

The girl testified she had been at the initiation school since June 2012.

“My parents wanted to remove me from this initiation school but accused two (Khoza) refused. We were forced to fetch firewood guarded by two people.”…. http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/2015/03/04/rape-den-initiation-school-branded-girls-with-hot-irons-testimony

Accused Craigslist killer Miranda Barbour sexually abused by uncle, Sexual Abuse Allegations for Private Boys’ Schools in Britain, Resources to end internet child abuse

– Accused Craigslist killer Miranda Barbour had traumatic start in life
– Childhood sexual abuse may have contributed to Miranda Barbour’s issues later in life
– Wave of Sexual Abuse Allegations for Private Boys’ Schools in Britain
– Resources to end internet child abuse ‘may be woefully insufficient’

Accused Craigslist killer Miranda Barbour had traumatic start in life Jill Burke March 16, 2014

The sensational headlines surrounding accused Craigslist killer Miranda Barbour portray a deeply troubled young woman. Her claims to be a practicing Satanist and that she killed not just once, but upwards of 22 times, gained immediate attention as people in four states where the supposed victims resided — including Alaska — began to question whether the newlywed teen mom’s story could be true.

Is Barbour seeking attention? Aiming for an insanity defense? Or is she earnestly using her confession and incarceration to protect the public from her self-declared murderous proclivities? Only time will tell.

Yet for all of Barbour’s grandiose claims, there is one aspect of her life story that is not in dispute — the sexual abuse she suffered as a toddler by an uncle….

Miranda often spent weekends at her aunt and uncle’s house. “Uncle Rick” encouraged the sleepovers. Only later would young Miranda’s frequent complaints that her anus hurt, and once that her “pee pee” hurt, come to be understood for what they were — the aftermath and evidence of multiple attacks in which she had been subject to anal and vaginal sexual penetration and fellatio. She had, in the words of the prosecutor, been “sodomized in every way imaginable.” It was one of the most physically extreme abuse cases the trial judge had ever seen, and it happened to a girl whom the judge described as “hardly more than” a baby….

In Richard Fernandez’s personal belongings, investigators found pornography and a sexual abuse “how-to” manual titled “Fun With My Sister’s Kids.” The book “encouraged uncles, fathers and grandfathers to engage in unclassified felony sex acts with their young nieces, daughters and granddaughters,” according to a prosecutor’s description of it contained in court records.

This book described and recommended the very abuse of which Fernandez was accused of and for which he later accepted punishment. He pleaded no contest, a plea that allowed him to avoid trial and do time but without admitting he’d actually done anything wrong….

Fernandez seemed destined for a revolving door experience between incarceration and free society. According to court records, he wasn’t adequately participating in a sex offender treatment program, had visited a “porn store,” viewed pornography on the internet and failed to find full-time employment. More than once, he’d found ways to get online. He’d used computers at his church and in his room at his halfway house to seek out prohibited material….

By May 2011 he was back in again with more time to serve, and two months later he faced a new case altogether, this time for possession of child pornography. Investigators had found hundreds of images of child pornography on his computer, after probation and parole officers seized and turned Fernandez’s computers over to Alaska State Troopers.

Fernandez is now serving out a 40 year prison term in the pornography case — 20 years to serve with 20 suspended.  He’s scheduled for release in 2035. He must also remain registered as a sex offender for the rest of his life….
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20140316/accused-craigslist-killer-miranda-barbour-had-traumatic-start-life

Childhood sexual abuse may have contributed to Miranda Barbour’s issues later in life Jill Burke March 17, 2014

Much about the life and recent arrest of former Alaskan Miranda Barbour is discomforting. The troubled young woman, a teen runaway who turned to Satanism, heroin, and has since given birth to a child, stands accused of murder for the stabbing death of a man police say she lured through an ad on the online  bulletin board Craigslist. But one unnerving detail of her bizarre and traumatic story may resonate more profoundly with Alaskans than others: the childhood sexual abuse she suffered as a toddler….

Barbour was preyed upon by a man her family should have been able to trust: her uncle.

That man, Richard Fernandez, has served time in jail, where he remains after unsuccessful releases on parole and getting slapped with a new criminal charge for possession of pornography.

How often child sexual abuse happens in Alaska is difficult to assess. The best estimates are flawed because not all agencies that respond to abuse share uniform data, and it’s widely held that many victims never report the abuse. Those that do come forward sometimes wait years before doing so.

Alaska’s rate of child sexual abuse is six times the national average, according to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence….

In 2013, a trio of university researchers from Canada published a summary of decades of study on the topic of child sexual abuse and its prevalence, outcomes and prevention strategies. They found that child sexual assault “… alters a child’s cognitive and emotional orientation to the world and causes trauma by distorting their self-concept and affective capacities.” Traumatic sexualization, betrayal, powerlessness, and stigmatization that occur during the abuse may have lasting impacts. Post traumatic stress, dissociation symptoms, mood disorders, depression, behavior problems, inappropriate sexualized behaviors, substance abuse, self harm and suicide are all possible effects on these young victims of abuse, researchers found.

Additionally, when very young children experience sexual abuse, it can be difficult for them to process the trauma. While turning into a killer isn’t a foretold consequence, aspects of Barbour’s personality and life story appear to parallel the known, lasting impacts on sexually abused children….
http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/20140317/childhood-sexual-abuse-may-have-contributed-miranda-barbours-issues-later-life

Wave of Sexual Abuse Allegations for Private Boys’ Schools in Britain
By STEPHEN CASTLE MARCH 16, 2014

LONDON — Prompted by publicity surrounding recent child abuse scandals involving well-known figures, dozens of British men are breaking decades of silence about molestation they say they suffered as boys at expensive private schools, forcing the schools to confront allegations that in the past might have been hushed up, ignored or treated derisively.

In one instance involving Aldwickbury School, which educates boys ages 4 to 13, a former student, who requested anonymity because of the intimate details of the case, said he suffered profound feelings of confusion and guilt after being abused by a teacher in the 1970s. He said the teacher molested him regularly during English lessons over a period of two years.

With the teacher dead, and in the absence of an apology from the school, the former student brought a civil case against Aldwickbury, which was settled with a payment.

Getting the school to face up to what happened more than three decades ago was, the former student said, like “knocking my head against a brick wall.”

Vernon Hales, the current headmaster at Aldwickbury — in Harpenden, about 30 miles north of London — said in a statement that the school had reported the allegations, which do not relate to any current staff members or pupils, to the relevant authorities and been told that no further action would be taken….

Britain’s fee-paying schools have a track record of brutality. These days, most have shed the strictness and austerity of previous eras, but many upper-class Britons remember childhoods of cold showers, inedible food and relentless corporal punishment.

The very nature of boarding schools — closed environments in which teachers can wield enormous power — can make them attractive to child abusers. But in previous decades, parents were often reluctant to challenge teachers’ authority, said Alan Collins, principal lawyer at Slater & Gordon, which represented the former Aldwickbury student. He has 30 to 40 more cases pending against schools across the country.

“You had deference and the attitude that ‘this sort of thing happens,’ ” Mr. Collins said, adding that when teachers were discovered abusing pupils, they tended to be moved on quietly to avoid public embarrassment and damage to the school’s reputation.

“Sexual abuse is a taboo subject,” Mr. Collins said. “People do not want to talk about it for the obvious reason that it’s really gruesome, and in this country there has been a tendency or a temptation to sweep it under the carpet.”….

Mr. Collins added that the victims had suffered significantly. “Child abuse has the potential to affect a person’s functioning, the ability to form and sustain relationships; it can affect the ability to hold down a job,” he said, noting that some of his clients in their 40s had held 30 positions because “they just can’t settle in a job.”….
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/17/world/europe/wave-of-sexual-abuse-allegations-for-private-boys-schools-in-britain.html

Resources to end internet child abuse ‘may be woefully insufficient’
Internet Watch Foundation recruit seven extra staff, but MPs warn that more may be required to improve online safety
Press Association  theguardian.com, Tuesday 18 March 2014

Efforts by the internet industry to eradicate images of child sex abuse may prove “woefully insufficient”, MPs have warned as they called for action to improve online safety. Members of the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) – including Google, which contributed £1m – have funded the recruitment of seven extra full-time staff to track down illegal images.

The move last year to more than double the existing staff came amid severe criticism of internet firms for inaction following a number of child murder cases with porn connections. David Cameron has led demands that they develop better protections to prevent such abuse and to prevent children accessing legal adult material….
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/mar/19/child-sex-abuse-online-insufficient-efforts